Eric appeared over her head. “This once bloomed. They got as much as they could from the land and left it. The claim wasn’t deep.”
“The perfect place to hide a weapon.” Clark repeated Donald’s words. Eric nodded as he pointed at the BNl building. “Right, the basement.”
“Are you sure we’re safe out here?” Amethyst shivered, clutching her helmet against her chest.
Only the Bromi dwelt in the wilderness and they wouldn’t harm him. She’d be safe by association. “We’re fine. We’ll find shelter for the night and finish in the morning.” Clark unlatched the steamcycle seat to pull out their canvas sack of food and the two quilts. With Amethyst following, still clinging to her helmet, he kicked open the bank door and stepped inside. The yellow glow of twilight streamed through the broken windows across abandoned shelves and a desk covered in bird droppings. A rat scurried across the floor at the noise the kick made.
Amethyst yelped and ducked back outside. “Clark, that was—”
“A rat,” he snapped. “Try living with them constantly.” As a child, they would crawl into his bed and nip his toes. His mother would wrap vinegar rags around his feet, but the smell would make his stomach cramp.
He worked his hand lamp from his pocket and pressed the lever to make it light. Clark shone the white beam into the back room. The safe door hung open. A criminal had been there, taken everything and left it for the vultures.
Eric promised no one knew about the secret safe in the cellar.
Clark joined Amethyst at the front door and kissed her lips. They trembled, her eyes wide.
“It’s fine,” he whispered. “I’ll keep the rats away.”
“Where will we sleep?”
“Against the wall.”
“Sitting up?”
She shouldn’t have come. Every night she had a bed. Every morning a servant helped her dress. “I’ll keep the first watch. You can put your head in my lap.”
She licked her lips. “When’s the second watch?”
“Daybreak,” he lied. She could sleep. He was used to going without slumber for days.
He set one quilt over the floor and sat against the wall, resting one hand over her shoulders to ease her down. She curled into a ball with her head against his lap. He handed her the canteen and after she took a sip, he broke a biscuit in half for them to share.
“Tell me a story.” Amethyst tucked the second blanket around her and his legs.
He watched the night consume the street. “You sound like Mabel.”
“Little sister?” Amethyst snuggled into his stomach.
He ran his fingers through her curls. “Sort of. I miss her.” A rat scurried across the room.
A man floated near the desk, translucent, blackened eyes. He hovered as if staring at Clark before he disappeared through the wall. Harmless.
“When I lived with a Bromi tribe,” Clark said, “they taught me how to hunt. The chief wanted me to marry one of the girls. They loved my yellow hair. I couldn’t, it didn’t feel right.”
“Mmm,” Amethyst mumbled. Asleep.
Clark stroked her earlobe. “Good night, Ames.”
In the morning, he left her curled on the blankets while he located the loose boards in front of the safe. With Eric overseeing, he pried them up using the knife—five down. Numbness encased his brain as he stared at a metal trapdoor. Why did he do any of it? For years, his life had focused on escaping from the army. Finding random objects wouldn’t help that.
“You need a real purpose,” Eric rambled. “You’re doing a good deed. Can’t have any of these things being used by them.”
“By Horan.” Clark twisted the metal lever to the side twice and up once. Gears clicked inside and he lifted it. The beam of his hand lamp revealed a dusty chamber with a single canon. “That’s it?”
“Should be two,” Eric muttered. The ghost twisted his hands. “Must be two.”
Clark leaned forward to shine the hand lamp at the rest of the nooks. “Only one. Are you sure you want it destroyed? I’ve never heard of a canon that shoots lasers.”
“Haven’t heard of it because I made the only two,” Eric squawked. “No one else dreamed up the idea. They’re all in my imagination.”
Clark tucked the hand lamp into his pocket and dropped into the safe. Only six feet wide, he could still reach the top if he held up his hands. He crouched behind the canon and worked the back metal plate off the base to reveal a nest of wires.
“Cut them all,” Eric urged. “We can’t move the canon and I don’t want others using it. We don’t need laser cannons.”
“That we don’t.” Clark sliced the wires with his knife. A blue wire sizzled, but the others remained still. “What about the other?”
“I don’t know,” Eric murmured.
The dust didn’t seem disturbed, and the safe was small. His father must have forgotten how many canons he’d actually built.
“Sir?”
Senator Horan signed his name to a bank note. “What is it, James?” Birds tweeted outside his office window and farther in the yard, a steamcoach honked. It would be a perfect day for a ride with his wife, if he managed to wrangle her from her bed.
The servant in the doorway coughed. “I was monitoring the recordings.”
“Yes.” Senator Horan lifted a fresh banknote. As soon as his office duties ended, he’d drag his wife from her room. The people should see them riding together.
“Two people went to the safe in Dust Point.”
Horan’s hand froze with the stylus pressed between his fingers. “What?” Bromi went to Dust Point on occasion, but no one knew about the safe.
“One destroyed the canon and then burned down the town.” James gulped. “Sir.”
The safe had been a secret. Only a select few knew about it, and none of them would care after so many years to go after it. Senator Horan stabbed the stylus point into his desk and bared his teeth. “Have a sketch made of their likenesses. They’re to be found and brought to me.” It couldn’t be a coincidence. If someone knew about the safe, they might know about the others.
eat beat against Amethyst’s temple as she leaned against the pole outside the general store in Sweet Dust. Almost every blasted town had a perverted name about the miserable weather. Any place with that much dust shouldn’t be inhabited. Grit clawed at her throat and stuck in her nostrils. She pulled her handkerchief from her pocket and blew her nose. A cough scratched up her throat.
“Bah.” She’d never blown her nose in public before. How disgusting. Who cared here, in a town that contained only six—she’d counted—streets? The horses at the watering trough didn’t look her way. The man walking down the street spit tobacco juice into the packed dirt.
She tucked the silk scarf Clark had insisted she bring over her mouth and ducked her head. Her heels clicked the stones underfoot as she wandered along the buildings. They were squished together like in the city, but they only had one or two stories, with cracks between the wood. Most of the windows had shutters without glass.
Amethyst paused outside the sheriff’s office, the building barely bigger than her closet at the ranch. Through the window, she saw the sheriff seated at a desk, his feet propped on the edge while he whittled a hunk of wood. Behind him loomed the bars of a cell.
“I feel so safe now,” she muttered. The man’s stomach pressed against the buttons of his shirt. Officers of the law needed to be fit and stable…like Clark. He would make an excellent sheriff. Maybe they could found their own town—they had enough money. He could be the sheriff and she could rule over the rest. They would have dance clubs and a fancy hotel. People would come from everywhere. They could call it No More Dust.
Laughing, she turned to head back to the bank where he wheedled with the attendant to give him access to his father’s safe. According to Clark, Eric accompanied him to tell him the passwords to get into the metal box.
Her gaze fell on the Wanted posters tacked to the sheriff’s front door. The one in the m
iddle made her lick her lips.
A crude sketch of Clark. She wouldn’t have recognized him except for his name. Goes by Clark Treasure, Four-Hundred Dollar Reward, Wanted by the Army. Should she tear it down? That might seem suspicious. Her father would protect Clark if it came to it, and Donald would too.
The poster beneath it made breath snare in her lungs: two pictures with a thin line drawn between. A man and woman, eerily familiar in looks, as though someone had copied a photograph of them. Them. They weren’t labeled, but it had to be her and Clark. They even had the same clothes on.
Wanted by Senator Horan.
How had he figured out what Eric wanted them to do?
He didn’t have their names yet. That had to be worth something. Oh, bloody horror. Hopefully he didn’t recognize her from all the newspapers. Girls mimicked her looks all the time. She ground her teeth as she ripped the poster down and stuffed it into the front of her jacket.
Clark stared at the money in his hand and licked his lips. Even in the desert, when he’d almost died of thirst, his mouth hadn’t been so dry.
That money, the bills in the new leather billfold, belonged to him. He owned over one-thousand dollars.
“I shouldn’t have taken so much out,” he murmured. The gas lamp made the bills seem to glow.
Eric hovered in front of him with his shimmery arms crossed. “You left another five-hundred in the bank. It will keep gathering interest. That money will help both of you.”
Amethyst leaned over the bed to stare out the window, the lace curtain clenched in her fist. She hadn’t stopped trembling since she’d found the poster. He doubted she could see anything in the night outside.
Clark set the billfold on the dresser and crossed the room to her. He slid his arms around her waist and pressed her hips back against his groin. “Relax.”
She whipped around with widened eyes. “We’re wanted, Clark. That’s not good.”
He chuckled. If only she knew how time took away that fear until it became a dull pain and then only a nagging reminder, an annoyance. An amusement. “They won’t find us. Hundreds of people look like us.”
“There’s only, like, ten people here,” she exclaimed. “None of them look like us!”
He rubbed his thumbs into her shoulders to relax her muscles. “We’re about fifteen miles from Sweet Dust. We’re on the river again, so there will be people everywhere.” He’d driven to the river just to find a place more populated, rather than stay in Sweet Dust as he’d planned.
“Senator Horan,” Eric said. “He must’ve used one of my moving photographs. He can survey what’s going on wherever he keeps the lenses. He won’t hear voices, though.”
“Great.” Clark narrowed his eyes at his father. “Another awesome invention on your part. Do we need to steal one of those soon too?”
“What?” Amethyst turned her attention back to the window.
“I have the plans….” Eric began.
Clark peeled her hands away from the window and forced her to sit down. “We’ll be safe. They may know what we look like, but they don’t know who we are. We’ll be fine, honey. Your father will protect us. He wouldn’t believe we were doing horrible things.” Clark grinned to show off his teeth. “Such horrible, nasty things.”
She blinked at him, her hair falling across the pillows. “You called me honey.”
Clark brushed a curl off her cheek. He’d called Mabel “honey” when they were growing up as a name for a flustered, pretty girl who didn’t know when to calm down.
He leaned forward to touch his lips to hers. “I can keep you safe. I’ve been wanted for years. I know how to stay a step ahead.” Even if they were caught, Garth Treasure would protect them. That name could do wonders. No one would expect his bastard son to be wanted by the army, either. They’d used Amethyst’s name to rent the room to be safe, but he’d paid.
Clark unfastened the top button at Amethyst’s throat. “The door is locked. No one will bother us.” Laughter meandered from below in the eatery. “We can be as loud as we want.”
Her eyes still wide, her body still trembling, her lips parted…she didn’t shy away. He kissed her as he started on the next button. “Trust me. We’ll be safe.”
“Clark?” She tipped her face up and his lips landed on her neck. Despite the scent of sweat and dirt, she still held the lavender odor of her soap.
“Hmm?” He nibbled the flesh where shoulder met neck.
“Can we go to Hedlund City?”
He nuzzled the underside of her chin. “The capital of Hedlund?”
“I have a house there,” Eric said from behind the bed. Clark shifted to glare at his father. He’d assumed the ghost would disappear once he started acting amorous. Did Eric want to watch? Clark bared his teeth at the ghost and Eric lifted his hands in surrender as he vanished.
“Take me there,” Amethyst whispered. “I really want to see the city. I miss the clubs and…everything.”
They could break from the mission. “We’ll go there next…honey.” The inventions were hidden away, unused. Senator Horan wouldn’t attack with them, or whatever he plotted, if they took a short detour.
lark clutched the metal gate of the brass fence surrounding the mansion. Adam Street in Hedlund City, where houses had upwards of five stories and were surrounded by locked fences. The yards were green, lush, with flower beds and trees. A paradise in a city that bordered the ocean on the left and the desert on the right.
“We’ll have to fix the yard up,” Amethyst said from beside him.
Clark clenched the bars tighter. This yard, belonging to his father’s mansion, had overgrown with weeds.
Not his father’s mansion. His.
“We can hire a gardener,” she continued. “I know my father has a house here somewhere. I’ve never been there, but he mentioned it in a letter. He uses a gardener.”
“A gardener,” Clark murmured. Behind them, steamcoaches rattled by on the cobblestones. Wind rustled Clark’s hair and ticked the backs of his ears bared by his ponytail.
“The code is 7925326,” Eric said.
Clark stretched his fingers before he entered the code into the touch pad on the gate. Seldom-used gears creaked and Clark held his breath. They might have rusted. The gate might no longer work.
The two doors parted on squealing hinges. Clark clenched Amethyst’s hand before he released to grab his cycle, pushing it through the gate.
She followed him, wrinkling her nose at the shaggy bushes. “We’ll figure something out with those.”
Clark retyped the password to make the doors slide shut, sealing them within…his home. He actually owned a house. Clark whistled.
“I used to love sitting in the garden,” Eric said. “I would lounge on one of those benches and jot notes about upcoming inventions. Sometimes I would have luncheons here. My housekeeper loved putting together a party.”
Clark stepped off the path of weeds growing over stone slabs to brush vines away from a bench. Gears had been engraved into the stone back. More flowering vines hung off a table beside it.
“We could do luncheons out here,” Amethyst gushed, as though she’d heard what the ghost said. “We can get matching outfits, entire new luncheon wardrobes.”
He’d never fantasized about new clothes because of how rarely he got them. Now, he could actually afford a wardrobe, not just one item. He could get a suit that matched and fit, tailored to his body.
“We can do a luncheon every Wednesday. No, every Monday.” Amethyst spread her arms and twirled, her heels clicking against the stone walkway. “We’ll be famous throughout the city. They’ll say things about us. We’ll be famous in all of Hedlund for having outrageous Monday luncheons. We’ll do themed ones, like circus themed or train themed—”
He yanked her around and shoved his mouth over hers. None of it could be real, yet it was. He had the girl, he had the money—he had a bloody mansion!
“Let’s go see the inside.” She spun away and skipped up the s
teps to the double front doors decorated with stained glass windows. She could have been a child, swinging her arms and humming.
Clark jogged after her and entered the code into the pad beside the brass doorknob.
“We’ll have to get maids in here to clean,” she prattled. “Everything is atrocious, but it will all look stunning when it’s done. I’ll have to take you to New Addison City. Wait until you see what life is like there! We can gather ideas for ways to decorate here.”
“We can’t stay here.” His hand trembled as he turned the knob and pushed the left door open.
“Why not?”
“Your parents would wonder. We’re supposed to stay with them. I’m not supposed to know anything about Eric Grisham.”
“You deserve all this,” Eric said from behind. “It should all go to you, my boy. My son. My heir.”
Clark’s skin tingled as he stepped into the foyer. Dust had settled over the marble floor and someone, a servant of long ago, had draped white sheets over the furniture. A chandelier hung from the ceiling. The doors on either side were shut, but the wide staircase led upward into a shadowed world of shuttered windows.
“I can invite the gang here to live,” he whispered. “Pay them back for all the help they gave me.”
“You want….” Amethyst gulped, her eyes wide. She would want to tell him those ragamuffins, or whatever pleasant language she chose, didn’t deserve to live in a mansion like the privileged. “We can decorate rooms for them,” she finished in a rush.
Clark blinked. “For truth? You wouldn’t mind?”
“It’s your house,” Eric said. “Put whoever you want in here. You should’ve seen some of my guests. No one was ever turned away.”
Amethyst crossed on her toes as though the dirt on the floor would poison her, and kissed Clark’s cheek. “It’s your home. If it makes you happy to help them, that’s fine.”
“My house.” Clark slung his arm over her shoulder.
“I’ll hire servants. We’ll get everything cleaned up, and a landscaper can help with the yard. We can paint, too. My room in New Addison City has blue walls with white clouds painted on. Everyone says how gorgeous it is. If you don’t mind.” She peered up at him from beneath her lashes.
Treasure, Darkly (Treasure Chronicles Book 1) Page 18