by E. M. Moore
I start down the steps, the back tire thumping against each stair before I pull the bike out onto the road.
Wyatt runs out of my dorm after me, leaning over the wood banister that hovers over the gulch. “What the fuck, Dakota? I’m supposed to be watching you.”
I ignore him as I take off, then realize I can do better than that and steer one-handed while giving him the one-finger salute. The last thing I need is to be “watched over”. I’ve been taking care of myself from a very young age.
I shake my head, disbelief coursing through me. I pedal as hard as I can, heart thumping. I’m betting Wyatt will be hot on my heels in a minute or so. I have the advantage of knowing where I’m going, but Clary is so small, he could still find me just driving through the streets aimlessly.
The morning sun isn’t as hot as the afternoon sun, but the clothes I threw on are still rimmed in sweat when Dickie’s place comes into view. Relief floods me until I hear the roar of an engine behind me.
A quick glance over my shoulder, and I find Wyatt’s stone-cold blue eyes focused on me as he whips around a corner, tires squealing as he fights for control through the turn. He narrows his gaze as he steps on the gas, headed straight for me. Icy fear and panic send warning bells through me. But he wouldn’t hit me, would he? That’s just crazy.
The closer he gets, though, I’m not so sure. The devil is in Wyatt Longhorn’s eyes, and he’s aimed them straight at me.
7
The faster I try to get away, the more the rickety bike starts to shake. The wheels vibrate, and if it wasn’t for the roar of the engine, I’m sure I would hear the bike coming apart underneath me. I struggle to regain control over the piece of shit, but the bike slips off the pavement and into the gravel. I skid and over correct, and all of a sudden, I’m falling.
I throw my hand up to protect my face and my shoulder takes the brunt of the fall. Pebbles and sharp rocks tear my skin as I come to a grinding stop, my feet tangled up in the bike still.
I groan, kicking the bike off me. I move to my back and my eyes shutter from the sun. “Fuck,” I hiss as I try to get to my feet. Pain shoots through my shoulder, and I cradle it to myself.
The squeal of brakes makes me shoot upright, my body protesting the whole time. A door slams, and Wyatt Longhorn comes out from around his truck. “Jesus, Dakota.” His voice is void of any emotion.
His gaze drops to my shoulder, and it’s then that I really feel it throbbing. I look and find blood trickling down my arm.
“Christ almighty,” Dickie’s gravelly old voice calls out.
My shoulders slump forward in relief. “Dickie.”
He moves closer, his gaze widening when he’s close enough to realize it’s me on the ground in front of him. He has a shotgun in his hand because he’s just that old school. When you’re Dickie and a noise sounds that’s loud enough for you to hear, you grab your gun before you investigate. It’s practically law.
“What in the hell? You okay, sweetheart?”
I investigate the wound on my shoulder further. My shirt is dusty and the scrapes on my shoulder are enough to have blood dripping and pooling. I move my gaze to Wyatt who’s leaning casually against his truck with his arms crossed like he had nothing to do with this.
I sigh. “I’m—”
Dickie moves his attention to Wyatt, interrupting my “I’m fine” response. “Who the hell are you?”
Wyatt steps forward, hand outstretched.
Dickie pulls his gun up to a shooting position, tucking his chin against the butt. “Where I’m from, when a girl falls on her bike, you run over to help her. Only assholes stay back. Are you an asshole, boy?”
Wyatt, who shot his hands in the air as soon as Dickie shoved the gun in his face, stares down the barrel. He swallows, but still has the gall to look almost unaffected, like he doesn’t care if he lives or dies. Like staring down the length of that gun could be salvation for him instead of tragedy.
Dickie doesn’t even give Wyatt a chance to respond. Not that he was going to anyway. “You know this asshole, Dakota?”
I pull myself to my feet, brushing my shorts off along with the small stones embedded in my knee. “Unfortunately, yes.” I glance down at my bike. It’s completely fucked now. The tire is bent. There’s no just pumping air into it again to save it. I could legit cry. Between the fall, my shoulder, the bike, and not knowing what the hell Wyatt’s true aim was, the ground underneath me doesn’t seem as stable as it was before. I’m having my own personal earthquake. “Go away, Wyatt,” I say, voice steady. I stand up straight, crossing my arms in front of myself. “You better leave before Dickie here gets trigger happy. His hands aren’t as steady as they were. It might even be an accident.”
“Or not,” Dickie says.
For the first time since yesterday morning, I feel powerful. Wyatt shakes his head, a sneer curling his lip. “You’re just delaying the inevitable.”
“Fuck. Off.”
“I suggest you do as she says, boy.”
Wyatt mosies around the front of the truck before heaving himself inside. He glares at the two of us as the truck inches forward. I almost can’t believe my eyes. A gun pulled on him, and he still acts like he has the upper hand. Just what in the world is fucking wrong with this kid? With all of them?
Dickie whistles as soon as Wyatt’s vehicle is out of sight. “Kid’s got balls. I’ll give him that.”
I take a step, testing my weight on the knee that slid over the dirt and gravel. It’s sore but I don’t think I did anything catastrophic to it.
Dickie looks me over. “You best come inside now. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Once we’re inside and Dickie puts his shotgun back in its resting place on the wall above his workbench, I tell him what happened. I don’t mention that I’m unsure if Wyatt was trying to hit me or not, but it really doesn’t matter. He should’ve known I would freak out at him trailing me like that.
My stomach twists. Getting involved with Lance Jacobs and his little errand boys, is a terrible idea. Is it possible Wyatt was trying to hit me? My mind rejects the thought now that I’m not in the middle of it. Though, Lance was going to hit me yesterday. I’m sure of it. He would’ve if Stone hadn’t stopped him, which tells me he, at least, might be okay with physical violence.
Dickie smacks his hand down on the stool next to his bench. I pull myself onto it as he hobbles over to the archaic First Aid Kit on top of the refrigerator. It’s grease stained, and he has to blow the dust off before setting it down in front of me. This is not making me feel all that safe, but I trust Dickie.
His still nimble fingers open the box and rummage through what he has. He takes an alcohol pad and swipes it down my scuffs and scrapes. Next, he puts a sterile pad over the wound on my shoulder before applying some tape to hold it there. I glance over to find the tape and pad littered with smudges but I’m fairly certain the scrapes and the other side of the pad are free from dirt.
He packs up his kit. “Now that we’ve got that out of the way, why don’t you tell me why it looked like you were paler than Casper out there?”
I bite my lip. Dickie arches a brow at me when I don’t immediately answer. I don’t know how much to tell my dad’s friend because I don’t want him to be worried. Dickie has enough problems of his own, and I really don’t want to become one more. “It’s about the treasure,” I finally say, trying to choose my words wisely.
Dickie immediately looks interested. He’s a tried-and-true treasure believer. “How so?”
I blow out a breath. “That boy there was an associate of Lance Jacobs. They’re offering me a pretty sum for my family’s…information.”
Dickie rubs his stubbly beard. The hairs are so coarse, they audibly scrape against his calloused palms as he muses on what I’ve just told him. Even Dickie doesn’t know what we know. My dad and he were partners, but he never let him in on the most-trusted clues we had. That’s how serious we are about it. “You know what I think about that, Dakota
Wilder. No need looking to me for my opinion.”
I close my eyes briefly. Dickie was always one hundred percent behind the lore that came with my family and searching for the treasure. He thinks it’s a curse, and considering how things turned out, I might have to agree with him now. The only thing is, he thinks it’s a curse we can win.
I’m not so sure about that.
Maybe the real curse is to have our family name ruined and impoverished and left to die with nothing to show for it. Dickie, though, likes the tales of old. He knows my family history about as well as I do, but instead of seeing a lost cause, he sees hope. He’s just been waiting for me to announce that I’m going back out there looking for treasure instead of my dad because that’s what Wilder’s do.
He has more faith in me than I do.
“Your father never liked those Jacobs.”
I nod, my mind forcing the images of Stone, Wyatt, and Lucas to the forefront. If I hand them over what I know, coupled with their thousands spent on high-tech tools, they might just find that treasure. A Jacobs. Not a Wilder. “There are a few here in town,” I tell him. “They’re watching me until I decide what to do.” I busy myself by looking at the bandage on my shoulder. “I don’t think they’re going to give up. They don’t seem the type.”
“I don’t need to tell you my thoughts,” Dickie reiterates again. “If it weren’t for my eyesight, I’d be out there looking for the gold myself.”
It’s more than just his eyesight that’s off. It’s his balance, his old limbs, and his health. There’s no way he’d be able to cross the rough terrain anymore. Plus, there’s the liability factor. What if he had a heart attack up in the mountains? It could be a days’ hike back. Or a helicopter ride, if you were in a place that could accommodate one. No, Dickie’s treasure hunting days are long over. “I just don’t know,” I say.
“I know that your Pops wanted to find that treasure more than anything.”
His words aren’t meant to hurt, but they do all the same. There were too many times when I felt those words to be a simple fact. ...more than anything. Meaning more important than me. More than his sanity. More than our well-being. Don’t get me wrong, I loved my father, but obsessed is an understatement. It’s lonely living with a recluse with a one-track mind. “Yeah, he sure did,” I say on a sigh.
“The terms?”
“Generous,” I admit, but leave out the gut-wrenching feeling that I’m giving up a lot. Sure, I’d be securing my future with college and a sum of money that means I won’t have to worry about anything that comes up but putting myself in league with the Jacobs’ just seems wrong...and possibly extremely dangerous.
“You know what it’s like out there,” Dickie says, turning toward the opening of his bay garage. From where we are, you can just see the peak of one of the mountains. Even though I doubt Dickie can actually see it, his eyes glaze over like he can, like he’s staring at a long-lost love just returned. “Sponsors hand money over like water just for a slice of the pie. We’re the real winners. The adventurists. The researchers. The hunters. The boots on the ground to get shit done while they sit in their city high rises demanding updates. Cooped up in their steel cages, wishing they were like us.”
I try to picture Lance Jacobs back in Phoenix, and that picture is so easy. The only thing I can’t picture is the cage part. Nor the part where he actually cares that we’re the ones putting our lives on the line to find the treasure. Guys like Lance Jacobs think they’re entitled to the treasure because they can throw money at it. They don’t understand the blood, sweat, and tears my family has put into finding it over generations. They think cash solves problems. And maybe it does. I’ve heard countless stories about backers and hunters actually finding their sought-after horde, both parting ways happily, living their lives like kings.
“Why did Pops think he was close?” I ask Dickie. I’m ashamed I don’t know the answer to this question. Marilyn created a gap between us a mile wide. I didn’t make time to listen to Dad go on and on about the treasure because... Well, because I’m a shitty daughter. I scuff my feet against the footrests of the stool. I threw myself into schoolwork instead.
Dickie cocks his head at me. “You don’t know?”
I shake my head.
His gaze narrows to beady slits, but then he turns toward the Superstitions again. “I guess that information is lost with your father then. He didn’t tell ol’ Dickie. I know that.”
Surprise shoots through me. He tells Dickie practically everything. Not our secrets, but everything else, he would’ve shared. My skin pricks. If he didn’t tell Dickie, maybe he really was onto something.
I could tell Dad was excited during his last treks into the mountains. He hinted toward finding another clue and asked me to meet him a number of times. I’m too stubborn for my own good because look what that got me. We may never know where Dad was and why, and how close he got.
And there comes the real travesty about what happened. If I’d just asked Dad about the treasure, met with him one time, I might’ve been able to answer the questions about where Dad was headed when he walked up the trail to the Superstitions on the west side of the mountain that day. Instead, all I could do was shrug and rely on old information.
The guilt of that will follow me around forever because my father paid the price.
8
Like a moth to a flame, the new students on campus attract everyone. Wyatt, Stone, and Lucas are everywhere. It’s like Saint Clary’s has three new shiny toys and everyone wants their chance to play with them.
No matter how much I wish it wasn’t true, jealousy rears its ugly head. It’s not only that they just got here and already have more friends than me. Yes, that part really isn’t fair, but it’s also watching the girls paw all over them like they’re a drink of ice water in this heat.
Life isn’t fair though. If a Wilder knows anything, we know that.
Thankfully, Dickie gave me a ride to campus since my bike is fucked now. He said he’d look at it, but I don’t have hope that it’s salvageable, or if it is, if it’s even worth saving. I guess with the money I get for scrapping the truck, I can buy a new bike. I’ll have to think on that when I walk back to the dorms later. My dad always said walking was the best exercise. Bodies and minds aren’t meant to be idle, and walking takes care of that. Then again, my dad said a lot of things, and I’m wondering if the majority of them were to make up for the fact that we were going without. Sure, you can walk. But if you have a vehicle to actually take you places, isn’t that automatically better?
After lunch in Saint Clary’s cafeteria where the displays of curiosity about Stone, Wyatt, and Lucas come to a head, I try making my way to class only to have the three new hotshots at the school surround me. Wyatt, if I’m not mistaken, is more reserved than earlier. If I look closer, he may even have shadows under his eyes, like he didn’t get enough sleep on my terrible, hand-me-down sofa. I smile at that. Maybe they’ll let me sleep in my dorm alone now.
As usual, Stone moves closer than needed. “Do you have an answer for us, Dakota?” His gray-blue eyes are sharp today, like the crackling of the air before a big storm.
No thanks to them, I haven’t been able to concentrate the whole day. At least one of them is in every single one of my classes, glaring at me, watching me. My mind has been filled with what to do about Lance Jacobs’ offer but knowing what I’m going to do and saying it out loud are two very different things. Maybe I’m actually holding out hope that I won’t have to say yes. That I can stick with the plan I had after my father went missing.
“Why do you want to find the treasure?” I ask Stone, narrowing my gaze. “Is it all about the money?”
Stone’s gray-blue eyes sear a brand into my flesh. Before he can say anything, Wyatt answers, “Of course it’s all about the money. What else would it be?”
I try to scrape away the hard surface of Stone’s skin to see what’s underneath. The hidden stuff is always the most important, and he’s teemin
g with secrets. Wyatt and Lucas are the same. The three of them are like science experiments, ones that could go very, very wrong.
Lucas runs his hands through his hair, looking every bit the part of alley cat. I heard him talk earlier. It was nothing really. A simple exchange. He dropped his pen and the girl sitting next to him picked it up. When he said thank you, the girl who picked it up promptly turned to her friend and fanned her face. She wasn’t wrong. His voice is rich and deep. I guess there’s a good reason why my father kept me away from these guys.
“We have our reasons.” He reaches out to grab one of my curls, giving it a quick tug in his hand to straighten the strands of hair and then letting them bounce back. It reminds me of what the boys used to do to me in elementary school. “What I never understood is why the Wilders think their reasons are more important. Like you’re somehow better than us.” His voice bleeds through me, leaving an aftertaste of tang.
“We just don’t like the way you go about things. Obviously,” I say, pulling my shoulders back. “You guys are blackmailing me for my family’s stuff.”
The guys laugh, sending a shiver through me. They don’t have a care in the world about me or my family or what they do to get the treasure, do they? My family does, though. At least we still have morals, even if we are single-minded.
I wish I could slap the grins right off their faces. I smirk at Lucas. “Did Wyatt tell you what happened this morning?”
Their humor dies in an instant.
My lips curl up. “He met my friend Dickie...and his gun.”
I don’t really know what I’m trying to say to shut them up. I don’t know that Dickie would’ve actually shot him. I mean, maybe. Or maybe I’m trying to tell them getting me on board won’t be so easy. I do have some friends. Well, a friend. A friend who doesn’t mind aiming guns at people to protect me. It’s a reminder that they’re not the ones who have all the power.