by E. M. Moore
Contents
Also By E. M. Moore
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Pre-Order This Fearless Girl
Facebook Group & Newsletter
Heights Crew
The Ballers of Rockport High
Spring Hill Blues
The Rockstars of Hollywood Hill Series
Safe Haven Academy Series
Safe Haven Academy Series Blurb
About the Author
Those Heartless Boys
Saint Clary’s University
Book One
By
E. M. Moore
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by E. M. Moore. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact E. M. Moore at [email protected].
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition October 2020
Edited by Heather Long
Cover by 2nd Life Designs
Huge thanks to my beta readers: Bibi, Ashton, Lisa, Jorden, Summer, Jennifer, Angie, and Julia!
Also By E. M. Moore
Saint Clary’s University
Those Heartless Boys
The Heights Crew Series
Uppercut Princess
Arm Candy Warrior
Beautiful Soldier
Knockout Queen
The Ballers of Rockport High Series
Game On
Foul Line
At the Buzzer
Rockstars of Hollywood Hill
Rock On
Spring Hill Blue Series
Free Fall
Catch Me
Ravana Clan Vampires Series
Chosen By Darkness
Into the Darkness
Falling For Darkness
Surrender To Darkness
Ravana Clan Legacy Series
A New Genesis
Tracking Fate
Cursed Gift
Veiled History
Fractured Vision
Chosen Destiny
Order of the Akasha Series
Stripped (Prequel)
Summoned By Magic
Tempted By Magic
Ravished By Magic
Indulged By Magic
Enraged By Magic
Her Alien Scouts Series
Kain Encounters
Kain Seduction
Rise of the Morphings Series
Of Blood and Twisted Roots
Safe Haven Academy Series
A Sky So Dark
A Dawn So Quiet
Chronicles of Cas Series
Reawakened
Hidden
Power
Severed
Rogue
The Adams’ Witch Series
Bound In Blood
Cursed In Love
Witchy Librarian Cozy Mystery Series
Wicked Witchcraft
One Wicked Sister
Wicked Cool
Wicked Wiccans
Prologue
People say when you’re drawn to the Superstitions, it’s only a matter of time before something bad happens.
Volcanic activity formed the mountain range centuries ago. Comprised of layers of breccia and granite and melded together with lava, these rocks are as unforgiving as they are beautiful. It’s like God made a jagged fortress out of the skyline and spray painted it in rusty reds and browns.
Most people don’t venture up here. For generations, my family hasn’t been most people. Our paths are off the beaten track. The road less traveled by. Filled with dreams, adventure, and hope. Some would call it a fool’s hope, but I’ve never felt that.
Not until today.
“Do you understand what I’m saying, Dakota?” Lionel asks. He just happens to be Clary’s Chief of Police and the head of the rescue team who’ve been searching these mountains for my father for the past three days.
Missing. It sounds damn near impossible. Wrong in every sense of the word. No one knows these mountains better than my father. Everything he knew, he learned from his father and his grandfather who learned it from his father and so on until he passed all that knowledge onto me. We’re Wilders, after all. Searcher royalty, if there was such a thing. We’re not the go-up-into-the-mountains-and-don’t-come-back type.
“Dakota?” Lionel asks, urging a response out of me.
It’s funny if you think about it. My dad says Lionel is a good-for-nothing, immature novice who wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground, and now he’s taken point on searching for my father? It’s laughable, really. Though, my father’s thoughts on the Chief of Police are most likely skewed on account of everyone in Clary hating us. If we saw the chief’s cruiser coming up the dirt road, it was never for anything good.
I gaze up into the chief’s light eyes. There are barely any crow’s feet maturing his features. If wisdom is determined by the number of wrinkles on someone’s face, Lionel would be a dumbass and my father would be an Einstein-level genius. “I hear what you’re saying,” I tell him calmly, even though my insides are roiling.
Our little tête-à-tête is hidden behind a temporary, pop-up canopy tent, ground zero for the search party that committed to finding my father after he didn’t return from the mountains four days ago. Blue tarps stretch along one side and hang from ceiling to ground, shielding the interior of the tent from the sun, and right now, they’re also blocking us from the prying eyes of the media waiting on the other side. Trust me, when a renowned treasure hunter goes missing, people take notice. Reporters from local TV channels and papers have been showing up for days. One guy even said he was from The Arizona Republic. We’re big time if Phoenix’s largest newspaper is on the trail of my father’s disappearance, which also means that this story will be everywhere in a few hours.
“I know this is tough.”
He wouldn’t know anything, actually. I still don’t believe it. My dad, lost in the Superstitions? Dead, possibly?
Nah. It’s just not true.
I joined the search party myself, of course. I took them to the places we used to set up camp. I followed the trail I last knew he was on, volunteers fanning off, using sticks to move the sparse desert vegetation out of the way to cover every inch of space. Helicopters and their constant noise overhead were the anthem to our fight.
Nothing. Not one single find in three days. Now, Lionel wants to call off the search. We can’t look forever, he’d just said. At some point, someone has to make the decision that he didn’t make it. If he’s injured and can’t move, he’ll starve to death. Or, he may have met with a venomous snake or a fall he couldn’t recover from.
The truth is, there are hundreds of ways to die up in the Superstitions, and not all of them are natural.
So, yes, I get what Lionel is saying. We haven’t found any trace of Dad. We didn’t even find remnants of his camp. There’s no evidence whatsoever that Dad was even in the mountains, except from what he told me and the fact that his ancient truck was parked at the trailhead we always parked at when we went searching.
I turn to gaze upward toward the rough terrain of the mountainside. In the distance, Weavers Needle pokes out of the landscape, a distinct spire of rock that sticks out like a beacon, always calling, calling, calling.
My stomach churns. Today, my family’s legacy feels more like a curse.
“Do you—?”
“No,” I say, cutting him off. I don’t want to do anything right now, but if he’s about to ask me if I want to be the one to stand in front of all of those reporters and call off the search for my dad, he’s fucking crazy. I’ll never call off the search for my dad. Not until his dead body is in my arms. Not until I see it with my own eyes.
“That’s fine,” Lionel says, lips pulling down on his wrinkle-free face. “I’ll just go out there and give everyone the news.” He hikes up his jeans with soft hands around his belt buckle, acting more important than he is. “We did all we could, Dakota. You know how dangerous those mountains are.”
It doesn’t seem like we did all we could. If we did all we could, we’d know where Dad is.
Except, I’ve seen the skeletons up in the mountains. Plenty of them. Visitors go missing every year, never to be found again. The Superstitions are dangerous. But the idea that they took out my dad? No. My mind rebels against that thought. Dad was no beginner. He’s one of the most sought-after Superstition treasure hunters and trail guides around. He grew up among these rocks. He knows them better than anyone.
Lionel places his hand on my shoulder briefly and then parts the tarps to walk back into the tent. Everyone’s still milling around, not just the media but the volunteer searchers, too. They’re expecting the announcement that’s about to come, so I don’t know why it’s such a shock to me. At each step of the process, I thought it couldn’t get any worse. When Dad didn’t come home, I went searching myself. When I couldn’t find a trace, I contacted Lionel. Then, there were the volunteers and the attention and the planning and the questions. When everyone showed up to help, I thought we’d find Dad that day. I thought that every day since, too. Even today. Right up until this very moment.
I don’t know why I was so short-sighted. Every day we can’t find him is a nail in his coffin.
Lionel’s voice booms over a sudden influx of questions, and I jump. Once I get my bearings, I walk around the edge of the tent, staying to the side and out of view. Lionel asks for silence like he’s giving some sort of press conference, which I guess, in reality, he is.
Look at that, Dad. The Wilders are finally making the news. Just not in the way we wanted.
I skim the crowd, watching over the eager-eyed reporters. I can’t blame them. Nothing big ever happens in Clary, and one person’s pain is another’s entertainment. Everyone will want to know what happened to Clark Wilder, “Superstition Mountain Treasure Hunter of Almost Forty Years.”
While Lionel is giving what sounds like a well-practiced speech, the hair on my neck stands. My dad always told me to listen to my intuition. Intuition has helped us Wilders more times than we’d like to admit is one of his favorite sayings.
The feeling continues as I roam my gaze over the crowd, searching for the source. It takes me three passes, but eventually, my stare collides with Stone Jacobs.
My stomach bottoms out as his blue-gray eyes sear into mine. As usual, his face is impassive, unreadable, and he’s flanked by his friends who might as well be his brothers. Wyatt and Lucas are so far up the Jacobs’s ass, it’s not funny. I was surprised when they showed up to help search. The Wilder and Jacobs families haven’t gotten along in a century. Not since the Jacobs started searching for the Wilder treasure. Our mutual hatred has been ingrained ever since, and stoked like a fire every chance our two families get.
I narrow my gaze at their tiny group. No doubt those three assholes are gloating right now. The Wilders just lost their patriarch—literally—and while searching for the treasure no less. In their minds, that puts them a step above us.
Not on my fucking watch.
Two years ago, Lance, Stone’s father, threatened to kill Dad for stealing his wife. No joke. Death threats, fights, and underhanded dealings are all a part of our families’ mutual past. Dad couldn’t help it if Marilyn preferred a Wilder, though, right? I mean, who wouldn’t?
Sarcasm aside, I wish Dad wouldn’t have made Stone my stepbrother. That’s some disgusting shit right there. Sure, steal her away, but don’t marry her. Fuck. Even now, I hate that I’m connected to him. Hate that there’s more than just family feuds tying us together.
However it happened, though, Dad got the girl. Whether I hate the bitch or not, it felt damn good to have taken something from someone who has stolen so much from us. A smirk parts my lips as a memory of Lance showing up at our door comes to mind. I’d never seen someone so irate. So out of his mind with jealousy and anger. We can’t compete with the Jacobs’ money, but I guess money isn’t everything, is it?
Stone and I still haven’t looked away from each other, so I stand witness to his brows pulling in at my sudden smile. That boy doesn’t miss a thing. Always watching and calculating to the point of being creepy. He sets my teeth on edge, skin prickling under his scrutiny.
Well, he’ll just have to wonder what’s going on inside my head. Lord knows I’m never sure. But one thing I do know with certainty, whether Dad’s here or not, things won’t change on this front. The Wilders and the Jacobs are destined to be enemies, and that means I’m on my own.
I turn and walk away, leaving the media circus and the prying eyes of the Jacobs family behind me. The least I can do is tell the evil stepmother that they’re calling off the search before she finds out from the news—or worse, from Stone.
I grip my hiking bag straps and take off down the trail toward the truck. The Superstitions might be behind me right now, but I’ll be back. When everyone else returns to their normal lives, I’ll be up on the trails.
I have two things to search for now. The treasure and my dad. Neither one is going to stay lost forever.
1
Two Months Later…
Finding shit in my father’s house is like looking for gold in the Superstition Mountains. No wonder my family has never been able to accomplish either task.
“Paperwork, paperwork,” I mumble to myself as I sift through the disarray of books and journals in his study. To think this is only a miniscule portion of his stash. The War Room is something else altogether. I glance at the ticking, old-time clock on the wall. “Shit.”
Being late is nothing new for me because if it wasn’t about the family business, it wasn’t important. However, since Pops went missing, acclimating into the real world has been a priority, even if I have failed at it so damn epically.
I turn and run right into an open drawer. A slew of curses spit from my mouth as I rub away the pain in my hip. With more force than necessary, I slam the drawer closed, listening to the contents inside get thrown backward into the wood. If my father were still around, he’d be asking me what in the Sam hell I’m doing in here. Sam hell was one of his favorite phrases. To this day, I still don’t know what it means. Anyway, he’s not here, so I quickly shake that thought away. Dwelling on things was never a Wilder forte.
Apparently, finding receipts and work orders for my father’s ancient truck isn’t either. They’re about as elusive as searching for treasure. I make my way out of the study, pausing in the hallway. My father’s old room is to my left. The raw wood walls that make up the house quickly dig the roots of a bygone life into me, tangling around my ankles and making me just stop and think. Just for a moment.
A mo
ment is too much.
I take a deep breath and start forward. I don’t have time to search for the paperwork, not if I want to make it to my first class on time. Somehow, though, I get sucked out into the garage. Beside the camping gear and the prospecting pans, shelves of rusty tools on decaying work benches decorate the century-old building. I scan the area, all the while my head telling me I need to leave or I’ll be subjected to everyone turning and looking as I make my way into my first class at Saint Clary’s this semester, History 201. It’s okay. The professor wouldn’t know his ass from a hole in the ground. I lost all respect for him when he thought he was going to talk about the history of Clary back in 101. Please. The guy is a dumbass. I know more about Clary in my pinky finger than he does in his whole body.