Chapter 24 #2
or kayaks. “Who comes out here? I wonder. Military history buffs?”
“Who knows,” Jazmine said. “Might just be a spot local kids like to explore.”
“Hope they haven’t explored any graves,” Seb said, gliding up to the bank with the nose of his board and stepping off after Punkin.
We all followed suit, pulling our boards onto shore. Then we took a look around. White pines circled an open area that was
overgrown with creeping vines and tangled underbrush. I spotted the remnants of a few structures—old bricks, and what might
have been a log cabin at one time but was now just half a wall. If you squinted, you could see how it would’ve made the ideal
spot for a snug encampment at one point in time. But now it was nothing but blight and ruin.
The ruined stone lookout stood tall in the center of it all. It was crudely built from mismatched hunks of stone, and when
it was still intact, it probably stood four stories high. Now, the back half of the tower was missing. Definitely not climbable
unless you wanted to feel what it was like to have a building collapse around you and get buried in stone.
“Bastards!” Seb said, slapping his neck. “These mosquitoes out here are no joke.”
We had insect repellant. I got him to turn around so I could retrieve it from the front pocket of his backpack, and when we’d
all doused ourselves with it, we explored the encampment. The good thing was that there wasn’t much to look through but what
we’d already seen when we paddled up. The bad thing was that the wild grass was to our waists, so it was difficult to see
anything on the ground.
Seb and Jazmine got out the collapsible shovels and extended their handles so they could use them to swat at the grass. “Where’s
a machete when you need one?” Seb asked.
“Let’s focus, shall we?” Jazmine said. “Tell us what the letter said again so we know where to look.”
“Behind the tower,” I remembered. “Mabel said it was behind the tower marked with a cross. So, over there . . .”
Where an entire wall of the tower had collapsed into rubble.
“What if the grave is under all this stone?” Benny asked. “No way we can move all this, even if we did it all day.”
He wasn’t wrong, and I shared his worry. But we carried on, splitting up and combing the grounds around the rubble, swatting
at the high grass, searching for anything. After slapping my millionth mosquito and nearly reinjuring my weak ankle on a loose
rock, I stopped to take a breath. A dark shape caught my eyes in the nearby woods. I cautiously took a few steps into the
trees.
It was a cemetery.
A ruined one, covered in moss and juniper shrub. I quickly counted seven simple gravestones that all seemed to be made from
the same rock used to build the tower.
“Guys!” I called over my shoulder. “Come here, quick!”
I pulled aside foliage to make my way closer to the graves while the gang ran up behind me.
“Oh. My. God,” Jazmine said, letting her mouth drop open.
“It makes sense,” I said, excited. “Why would they bury soldiers right next to the lookout tower? Off here in the woods is
more ideal.”
“Are they solider graves?” Seb asked while Punkin sniffed around.
None of them had names. One of them had a date of 1811. “That’s my guess. How could this be left out here, forgotten like
this? It’s so sad. That guy who talked to you about this place—had he seen these?” I asked Seb.
He shrugged. “Didn’t mention them. But I didn’t tell him I was looking for a grave, either. Wait, do any of these have crosses, or are they all these plain stones?”
Benny crouched and brushed away a blanket of decomposing leaves.
There it was. A flat cross made up of several pieces of stone was embedded in the forest floor.
“Holy shit.”
“Is that the only one?” I asked. “Check around before we start digging.”
We ran around the graveyard, buzzing with excitement as we searched.
“Nothing,” Benny said. “This is it. Has to be.”
We’d take turns digging, starting with Jaz and Seb. It wouldn’t be easy, I knew that much after digging up the time capsule.
In movies, people always dig graves in minutes when it would really take hours with a shovel. And when Seb’s and Jazmine’s
arms grew weary—harder to dig with these little camping shovels than the full-sized ones we used before—we were about to trade
off.
But Seb thrust his shovel into the ground, and went very still.
“What was that noise?” Benny asked. “Sounded like metal.”
“Hit something. Not rock. Oh shit, hold on.”
“Can’t be a coffin,” I said. “It’s not deep enough.”
He threw the shovel aside and began scooping out dirt with his hands, working frantically as we all crouched around the grave.
Then I saw it under his fingers as he wiggled it free.
A tin container with a lid. Orange and black. When Seb wiped away dirt, we all saw vintage artwork and the words: “Sir Walter
Raleigh Smoking Tobacco.” Seb’s face was wide with anticipation when he looked up at me just for a moment, then he cracked
open the lid.
Inside was a piece of muslin cloth that was tattered and falling apart, half-eaten by bugs. But when I reached inside to pick it up, the material fell apart in my fingers to reveal what it had been hiding.
Two gold wedding bands held together by a piece of twine. Initials were engraved inside the bands: “R.T.M.” and “M.E.S.”
“It’s Jack’s and Mabel’s wedding bands,” I said, absolutely floored.
“Oh shit,” Jaz whispered.
“WOO-HOO!” Seb shouted.
“Hell yeah!”
“Is this real?” Benny asked. “These are really what we need to finally get the treasure?”
“I think so,” I answered, feeling stunned. Like I’d been punched in the solar plexus.
But before I could think too hard again about a mystery lock near the cottage that these rings might somehow open, noise farther
inside the forest caught my attention. Not just mine: Punkin started barking a loud warning.
We all looked up to see two figures emerging from shadow, one big and one very small.
“Digging up graves is such a bitch, isn’t it?” the big one said, pointing a handgun in our direction.
Pretty Paul.
Somehow the disconnect of seeing his scarred face all the way out here didn’t surprise me as much as the small figure who
stepped to his side.
“Lulu?” Benny said, standing up and looking dazed.
“Hi, Benny,” she said, sounding slightly less perky than usual. “Really sorry it came to this.”
My heart pounded fiercely. I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew it wasn’t good. As fast as I could, I dropped the rings inside the tobacco tin and shoved the lid back on.
Punkin barked enough to wake the dead. Paul kicked out his foot at her, but she just jumped back and kept barking.
“Shut your mutt up or I will,” he told Seb, who shouted at the dog to get behind him. She sort of obeyed.
“What the hell, Paul?” Jazmine shouted, standing up from the grave. “Have you lost your mind? Put that thing down.”
“Why are you here?” Benny asked Lulu, a look of growing horror on his face.
Paul laughed without humor. “Shit, Benito. They say you’re as smart as little Ivy League, over there, but I’m not so sure.
Lulu’s my cousin, you fucking idiot. No one suspects sweet, little Lulu. She’s been playing you all summer.”
Holy shit! I knew something was off about her.
“You rancid little bitch!” Jazmine shouted, and for a second, I thought she was going to jump on Lulu. But she didn’t get
a chance.
With an angry shout, Benny went berserk, rushing Paul like a linebacker.
He stopped short when Paul lifted the muzzle to Benny’s forehead.
“Back off right now,” Paul said, “or we’re going to need that hole you just dug.”
Benny slowly raised his hands with hatred burning in his eyes, and we all stood in place, chests heaving, waiting for a pin
to drop. Everyone except Punkin, who’d backed away but still barked. And Seb, who sighed deeply and crossed his arms over
his chest.
“Come on, Paul,” he said. “You think that piece of plastic in your hand is going to fool me? You taught me that trick, jackass. It’s not a real gun.”
Paul’s head slowly swiveled to look at Seb with curiosity. Then he smiled and aimed the gun at the open hole of the grave.
A bullet ripped through the air and hit the dirt a few feet in front of me. A cloud of debris exploded. Punkin lurched away,
finally cowering behind Seb.
“Jesus!”
“For fuck’s sake!”
“What the hell, Paul?”
Paul’s face stared back through the falling dust, eyes fixed on Seb. “Guess you don’t know everything, do you? Big Burg sent
Lulu out to Kalamazoo for recon after that gold brick turned up in the sewer. Didn’t expect you’d just invite her to move
into Morales Manor, Benito. Talk about a gift . . .”
“What the hell?” Benny mumbled, shock lining his face.
“Personally,” Paul said, “I told my daddy no way in hell a twenty-six-year-old barmaid could pass for a college student, but
the girl is good.”
Lulu gritted her teeth and made an apologetic face. “Really sorry, Benny. I had fun. I truly did.”
Benny’s face crumbled. My heart hurt for him.
Paul tapped the side of the gun with his index finger several times. “Knew you weirdo Wags were really onto something when
you wouldn’t invite Lulu to this grave-digging party. What’d you find? The pair of ring keys? Don’t act so surprised. It’s
pretty easy to learn someone’s phone passcode when you’re sleeping with them. We’ve seen your texts, Benny.” He craned his
neck toward me. “And yeah, I see you trying to hide what you just found, Malone. Go on, hand it over to Lu.”
He pressed the muzzle of the gun against Benny’s head to emphasize his command.
Punkin began barking again.
What could I do? I handed the antique tin to Lulu when she reached for it, and told her, “Please, don’t do this. These rings
belong in my family. They’re part of history.”
“Sorry,” she said. “It’s not personal.”
How could it not be personal? She was living with Benny, hanging out with all of us. I’d been betrayed by so many people in
my life—my own father, even Seb—but you never got used to the empty feeling.
“Check to see what’s in there,” Paul told Lulu.
She complied and held up the rings. “Bingo.”
“Beautiful. Big Burg will be happy,” he said, instructing Lulu to put them back in the tin for safekeeping. Then he shoved
Benny in the chest, forcing him to back up with the rest of us before he trained his sights on Seb. “Now, if you’ll do me
one last favor, old buddy of mine, old pal. We know there’s a lock these fit into near that old beach cottage. Wanna tell
us where that is?”
“You could try sticking them up your asshole, see what that unlocks,” Seb said.
Paul sighed heavily and pointed the gun at me. “Lulu says you got a little thing going with your old flame here. Maybe you
don’t want to see her head explode. I wouldn’t.”
I wouldn’t, either, but Seb’s face showed no worry.
“We don’t know where the rings go, you prick.
Haven’t figured that out yet. See, if you and Lulu had been a little smarter, you would’ve waited for us to suss that out before you charged in like a blind bull, stomping all over this pitiful spy operation you set up with Lulu,” Seb said.
“But you didn’t, and now all you’ve got are a couple of old wedding bands worth diddly shit. ”
Paul squinted at Seb like he was trying to figure out if we were holding out on him. Then he lifted his head toward Jazmine.
“Is he telling the truth?”
“Is that what you want to ask me?” Jazmine said. “Think really hard before you answer, because the minute you walk out of these woods,
you and I? We will never speak to each other again. Not as friends, not as enemies, not as anything.”
He blinked furiously and clicked his jaw to one side. “We’ll see.”
“We’ll see nothing,” she said. “You just declared war against us.”
“I couldn’t care less about this hidden treasure shit,” he said, defensive. “This is my dad’s deal. Like every idiot in this
stupid town, he’s chased it since he was a kid. So if you want to fight a war, you’re going to have to go toe-to-toe with
Big Burg. I’m just the messenger.”
“You are who you’re aligned with,” I said. “Can’t have it both ways.”
“Can’t change your family,” he said. “You should know that better than any of us.”
I glared at him.
He chuckled darkly. “Yeah, Big Burg says your old man used to run with him now and then, back in the day. By the way, is Hound
Dog Lee still spending your dead mama’s fortune? He had the right idea—didn’t run around town, digging up old graves to hunt
for treasure. He just married the treasure.”
My face heated. I hadn’t heard anyone call my father “Hound Dog Lee” since I was a kid. “Keep my mother’s name out of your
mouth,” I warned him.
“Right. Well, how ’bout this. You tell me where the lock is that these rings unlock, and I’ll never speak of old Hound Dog or your old lady again. RIP.”
“We don’t know, shit stain. We don’t know,” Benny shouted.
Paul cocked a brow. “All right, already. Calm your ass down, Benito. I believe you. Treasure hunting is hard. That’s why we’re
letting you do the legwork. Here’s what I’m going to do. Lulu and I are going to hold on to these rings for safekeeping. Meantime,
your little Nathan Drake gang will do whatever it is you do and figure out where these gold bands go. You can’t open a lock
without the keys, so now we need one another.”
“Absolutely not,” Seb said. “Give us back the rings and we’ll cut you in.”
Paul laughed. It almost made him look like a normal human being. “Nice try, bruh, but I’m not falling for the biggest liar
in town. We keep the rings. You find the lock. If we don’t hear back from you in, say, a week, I might be forced to take more extreme measures. That beach
cottage looks awfully flammable, wouldn’t you say? Or maybe the Moraleses’ mansion. Or—wait, inspiration is hitting. How about
Neely’s Marina . . . ?”
“Not funny,” Jazmine gritted out.
He looked at her, and something like hurt crossed his eyes. He blinked it away and told her in a softer voice, “Not laughing.”
“If you think you can threaten my friends and family like this and walk away, you are so much dumber than I ever imagined,” Jaz said, sounding fierce but vaguely heartbroken. “That was a hard line you just crossed. Can’t uncross
it. So I guess we are really and truly over.”
“You and I? We never started,” Paul told her bluntly. “So there’s nothing to be over. We’re just back to being enemies now, like the good old days.”
Fucking hell. I tried to quickly think of some other way to bargain with Paul, but he was already whistling for Lulu to head back into
the woods with him. “One week,” he said, pointing his gun at us while he backed up. “Be seeing you.”
Then he turned around, stuck his gun in the back of his waistband, and disappeared into the trees with Lulu.