by E. M. Moore
“We’ll get it back though,” Lucas assures me.
I can only hope he’s right. Those artifacts mean the world to me.
Behind me, a low voice promises, “You bet your ass we will.”
I turn to find Cole at the bar, eyes promising danger. A shiver starts in the base of my spine. I’m pretty sure Cole would do anything to get me my things back.
Literally, anything.
13
After a couple days of focusing on the treasure and everything else being quiet, we head up to the trailhead with Ninja and Dave. I figured it was best to actually learn Dave’s name instead of always thinking of him as Cole’s “other guard.” Speaking of, the big bad gang leader doubled over with laughter the first time I called his stealth-like guard by my nickname, and despite all the tattoos and muscles, Ninja himself blushed like a besotted schoolboy. It turns out, Ninja’s real name is Rodney, but I’m going to stick with Ninja.
If anything, it’ll be good to have the extra help with us, not only for safety reasons, but they’re also excellent pack mules. We brought every bit of equipment we could think of, plus extra food in case we decide to stay in the mountains longer.
We take more breaks on our trek up the Superstitions with Ninja and Dave. They’re in super good shape, but when you’re not used to hiking up a mountain, there’s nothing that can prepare you for it. Depending on how long they’re stuck with us, they could be getting accustomed to it quickly though.
To pass the time, Ninja questions us about the treasure. I tell him my family’s part in it, and I swear by the time I’m through, he has gold bars in his eyes. It’s called the treasure craze. There’s something about the idea of hordes of gold somewhere that people home in on. It’s that kid in every one of us who played pirates or talked themselves into believing they’d actually find something buried in their front yard with their little plastic shovel.
In my case, it was way more than a pipedream. I actually had a story to go along with my treasure fantasies. I had a definitive reason to want to search.
“You’re so beautiful,” Lucas remarks, rubbing his shoulder with mine.
“W-what?” I stammer, completely taken off guard. I was off in la-la land.
“Something comes over you when you talk about the treasure. You get this awe-inspiring gleam in your eyes.” His eyelashes fan over his cheeks, and I nearly jump him right then and there, but Ninja interrupts us.
“How close do you think you are to finding it?” He loses his footing on the rocks and catches himself. After wiping his hands on his pants, he peers up at me expectantly.
“Since we all hooked up, I have a really good feeling.” I glance at Stone who’s still avoiding me. I’m hoping this trip will help him get over himself. Yes, I’m upset about losing the contents of my family’s safe, but I also know that after seeing Lucas almost get hung to death right in front of my eyes, that there are more important things than antique papers and a ring I don’t wear.
I mean, a very few things, considering the gold nugget was going to be used as undeniable proof that we actually found my family’s gold vein. However, Stone just happens to be one of them.
While we’re here, Cole is going to check in with the analysis team we sent the traps to so we can see where they are and make sure they’re also not double-crossing us. He’s using whatever evidence they discover as another way to help mete out who’s working for Lance. Cole thinks if he knows who the team is, he might be able to attack them in another way to get them off our backs.
My hope is that if the people Lance hired follow us up the mountains, they won’t have any idea how to survive it. After seeing the two big, strong guards Cole sent with us struggle, I figure we have a good shot of being better than them at one thing.
Stone takes over answering a myriad of questions about the equipment we brought. At the end of the conversation, I’m wondering if Ninja’s going to jump ship from the Dragons and come work with us. When I jokingly tease him about it, Ninja stands straighter. “No can do, Dakota.” His lips are pulled taut and thin. “Even if I didn’t owe Cole everything, I couldn’t. Once you’re a Dragon, you don’t leave.”
My stomach knots. “Not ever?”
“Not unless you want your former friends to hunt you down and kill you,” Dave chuckles.
I’ve learned that the “other guard” is a little off. He’s awkward as fuck without very many personable personality traits. He loves guns and violence though. The only time I hear him animated is when they’re discussing dark things like what they’ll do if the team Lance hired follows us up the mountains.
Thankfully, he doesn’t talk all that much.
With everything else going on, I’m relieved we never placed my family’s treasure map in Stone’s safe. We kept it in our bags along with all the other modern maps we bring with us. The ex-military team didn’t think to search there. Considering they don’t know we have a map, I can breathe easy about it.
I tried talking to Stone about the fact that we still have the map, and he brushed it off, telling me he should’ve been able to keep everything safe.
We stop a few more times for water breaks. The weather is absolutely gorgeous today, but there’s no way Ninja or Dave would be able to handle this trek in the summer. They’d be puddles of sweat soaking into the mountain floor, the sun making them evaporate right in front of our eyes.
When we get to camp, they’re absolutely exhausted. We take another break while we bring out the equipment, deciding what we’re going to focus on first. It’s later in the day than it usually is when we arrive at our search destination, so we’re working on limited time.
Stone pulls the metal detector out. I walk toward him, knowing there’s nowhere he can avoid me up here.
Behind me, Wyatt answers Dave’s question about how we all go to the bathroom. That’s important mountain etiquette right there, and I’m glad he’s explaining it to them.
I wrap my fingers around Stone’s arm, and he flinches. I pull back with a sigh. “You know, you’ve got to stop that. I’m going to get a complex that you don’t want me to touch you.”
“I want you to. I just want to be worthy of it.”
I place my hands on my hips, anger rushing to the surface as I watch Stone try to deflect me again. “Okay, this is seriously getting frustrating. I let you have your little pity party but enough is enough, Stone. It’s done. It happened. We can be pissed about it or we can make something out of it. Cole’s working on getting it back.”
Stone’s lip curls. “I should be finding it.”
I close my eyes. His reaction is so uniquely him, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. “You don’t have to save the day every single time. You’re of better use up here, and also, you know, alive and uninjured.” I’m still not over the fact that he was going to track his father down into who knows what mess.
“You entrusted me with one thing,” he growls.
“I’ve entrusted you with more than one thing. The ring and the papers, yes. But this,” I say, pulling his hand away from the metal detector and placing it on my chest. “This is the most important thing, and right now, you’re breaking it.”
His gray-blue eyes soften. “I just—”
“I know, I know. Blah, blah, blah. You’re gonna say something about you sucking and I’m going to turn around and say what I just fucking said. We’ll get the ring back. We’ll get the other stuff, too. And even if we don’t, you know what we can do to get back at the fuckers who took them from us?”
He hides a smile, but his eyes are still fierce. “What?”
“We can find the rest of the treasure and throw it in their faces.”
He lets the smirk out now. I positively glow under the curve of his lips like it’s the first daybreak I’ve seen in a hundred years. “That’s true.”
“Now, can we be the Wilder-Jacobs team again and actually put all these investors’ money to good use by finding the treasure? We have a shot to do what your father
never could. Won’t all those buttoned-up business blowholes who didn’t side with us be super pissed? They’ll probably have heart attacks on the spot.”
Stone chuckles. “You’ve been spending too much time with Cole. He’s warped your brain.”
I stretch onto my tiptoes and kiss his lips. He doesn’t take it further which tells me he’s still not one hundred percent okay. It’s fine. I have all the time in the world up here on this mountain. I can keep working on him.
Stone brings out the grid map, using what we worked on in previous trips to narrow down the area that we’re going to search today. He informs the newcomers that the item he’s holding is probably the most precious thing we have in our possession. In fact, when everyone else gets down to business after his little speech, he takes a picture of it with his phone.
He’s not wrong. This map tells us where we’ve already searched so we don’t waste our time looking in the same places again.
Even though Stone still hasn’t let me back in completely, he makes sure we’re partners for the rest of the time we have left to search tonight. Ninja tells us he’s been ordered to stay wherever I am, so the three of us head to our new search grid.
Once we get there, I stare out over the landscape and see familiar landmarks of where we’ve already searched. It’s starting to look like we’ve actually accomplished something. No, we haven’t found the lantern yet, but we have found where it’s not. It’s like what Edison supposedly said about making the first lightbulb: I didn’t fail. I just found 2,000 ways not to make a lightbulb.
If that kind of thinking worked for Edison, it’ll work for us, too.
Once Stone and I start sectioning out our metal-detection area, Ninja loses all concern about the treasure. He keeps his eyes peeled, and I’m impressed by his single-mindedness. He holds his gun in his hand, lowered to the rock and sand at our feet as he starts a perimeter walk and doesn’t stop.
The familiar beeping of our equipment starts, and Stone and I stay together as we do our up and backs, making sure to overlap slightly over the line we just searched. Today, we have a bunch of hits, but they’re nothing big: bits of old flatware from miners, antique metalwork. It’s obvious this area was used for a camp back in the day. We don’t find what we’re looking for, but it’s still exciting. The constant beeps from the machine keep us on our toes, but it also slows our search because we dig up each and every detection.
Each time it sounds off, nerves flutter in the pit of my stomach. Sure, after the fifth fork it kind of gets redundant, but I’ve always been a story-loving girl. The fork may be insignificant, but what about the tale behind it? What if my previous treasure hunters used one of these forks? Better yet, what if it was my original ancestor himself, making camp while he searched for a vein he could mine on? We’re talking years and years of history.
If the Superstitions could talk, they would tell one hell of a tale. Green vegetation dots the brownish-red rock and dirt terrain that make up the mountainside. To our north-east, the crags of the mountain jut toward the sky in sharp lines. It’s formidable and beautiful at the same time. I’ve counted myself lucky on so many occasions to be able to enjoy this landscape in a way that not many other people do.
“You have that look in your eye again,” Stone almost whispers.
I peek at him. The detector is in his hand, but he’s staring back at me as if he might have been watching me for a while now. “Sorry, I was just thinking.”
“You’re so breathtaking up here. I fell in love with you surrounded by these rocks. To me, you’ll always be the mountain girl with the big eyes and determination that makes me think I can do anything.”
“We can, can’t we?”
He shakes his head, finally smiling again. “When I’m with you, I always think so.”
He reaches for my hand, and I take it. For the first time in days, he touches me. He rubs his thumb up and down my knuckles, and I hope that this is Stone finally getting out of his own head.
The moment is short-lived. Both of us stop when we hear the telltale sound of trouble. Straining my ears to hear where it’s coming from, I gasp in a breath and hold it.
Fuuuck. It’s off to the south, right where Ninja is walking. “Stop!” I yell.
Ninja freezes, his narrow focus darting at eye level for the threat.
“Don’t move,” Stone demands.
We check the ground around us to make sure we’re okay. When it’s clear, we walk toward the rattle. When you’ve been in the mountains as much as us, you get used to this. We never leave for a trip without our snake guards, and we made sure Ninja and Dave had some, too. But that doesn’t mean snakes can’t bite around the guards.
The rattle sounds again. “Shit. Fuck,” Ninja curses. “Is that what I think it is?”
“It’s a rattlesnake, man.” Stone keeps his voice low and steady. “Stay where you are. Dakota and I are coming.”
My heart beats a mile a minute. Ninja could get seriously hurt or even die from a bite if we can’t get him medical attention right away.
“I don’t like the sounds of your voices. Am I fucked or what?”
We creep closer, careful to keep our eyes peeled for the predator. We come within feet of Ninja, searching the ground near him. Rocks of all sizes greet us with sand interspersed throughout. When the rattle sounds again, we spot the snake next to a fairly large boulder about a foot and a half away from him.
That’s...not good.
“Okay,” Stone starts. “It’s to your left. What you need to do is move very slowly to your right. When I tell you to,” he rushes out, speaking up when Ninja starts to move automatically. “Very slowly,” Stone explains. “I’ll tell you when to take the steps, okay?”
Ninja nods, and I don’t think it’s my imagination when I see more sweat dotting his brow now than before.
“Now,” Stone tells him.
Ninja takes one step, then we wait to see what the snake is going to do. It stays where it is, however, the rattle gets louder. “Dude....”
“It’s fine,” I soothe. “He’s not near you.” My words are calmer than I am. This is really nothing to fuck with. One wrong move….
“Now,” Stone instructs again.
Ninja takes another step.
The snake uncoils. Stone and I take a step back, keeping our distance. “Now,” Stone repeats once the snake settles again.
Ninja takes another step, moving slowly just like Stone told him to. If he moves too fast, the snake could perceive it as a threat and lash out.
His next step crunches the gravel, and I grimace, wrapping my fingers around the small knife I keep in my pocket. The rattling heightens, and the creature lifts its head, forked tongue slithering out of its mouth. Its top coil rises into the air, beady reptilian eyes glued on Ninja who’s not far enough away yet.
“What’s going—” Ninja starts, but the snake makes its attack, darting through the air. I whip my knife out and throw it. The blade slices through air, coming to a stop near the snake’s head. The limp reptile falls to the rocky ground in a heap.
Stone’s mouth drops. He stares at me in wonder and then at the snake. “What the fuck?”
“What is it?” Ninja demands. I can see his knees quaking from here.
“Jesus Christ.” Stone runs his hands through his hair as he strides toward the snake for a closer look. Sure enough, I got him.
“Can I fucking move or not?” Ninja bellows.
“Move,” I tell him.
Ninja hightails it out of there, whipping around with his gun aimed at the floor where Stone is. “Whoa, whoa,” Stone calls out, lifting his hands into the air.
Ninja’s eyes round. “What the fuck happened to it?”
“Dakota got him.”
Stone drives the blade through the body, completely severing the head. Ninja looks from the dead snake to me and lowers his weapon. “You did that? Jesus, why didn’t you just do that in the first place then?”
I walk over to Stone and ge
t my knife back. “I don’t like killing them if I don’t have to,” I explain. Then, I grab a sweat rag from my pocket and pick up the snake’s body. It was a big boy, that’s for sure. I grin. “I’m about to show Wyatt how to cook a rattlesnake without killing us.”
“I am not fucking eating that,” Ninja protests, still a little red-faced.
“Why not?” I tease. “It was going to eat you.”
14
As promised, I show Wyatt how to skin and cut up the snake, so we can put it over the fire. Rattlesnake is a delicacy if you know how to do it right, and I’m lucky to have had a fa—well, a person in my life who knew these mountains in and out and taught me how to do it.
Ninja appears pleased with himself under the shadows of the flames. He lies back, then immediately sits up to stay where the light from the fire still hits. Big, scary guard fears the desert predators now. “If any of you tell Cole I almost shit my pants...” he warns.
Wyatt laughs. Dave nearly chokes on the snake meat in his mouth. “First thing when we get back, I’m telling.”
“No can do,” I tell him. “What happens in the Superstitions, stays in the Superstitions.”
Dave narrows his eyes. “Did you just steal Vegas’ motto?”
“Vegas stole it from us,” I inform him.
Stone curls his hand around my body. He’s been beaming ever since we called Wyatt, Lucas, and Dave back to make camp. He can’t keep his hands off me. Wyatt nearly tripped over himself when he saw the snake in my hands. He was an excellent student as I taught him how to filet our meal, which is good because one wrong move, and we could poison ourselves. “That was fucking epic,” Stone gloats. “I can’t believe you killed the snake with your knife.”
“Fuck you,” Wyatt grouses. “I really wish I’d been there.”
Lucas chuckles, his eyes gleaming orange under the glow of the fire.
These are the times I miss in the mountains. The camaraderie, the thrill of the hunt, the search. I’ve been so focused on one thing that I lost sight of the fact that being up here can be a hell of a lot of fun.