Whisper In The Dark (The McKinnon Legends-- The American Men Book One)

by James, Ranay

  However, as much as she felt she might be able to love him for the rest of her life, she was not sure he was worth the trauma of dealing with Candice. Leaving now would hurt, but she would survive. If she stayed her heart would be lost, yet Robert was right on one major point: Brandenburgs usually fought to the bloody end. And she was a Brandenburg to her core.

  “What’s it going to be, play and continue the hunt or fold and walk away?” he asked again softly, his heart beseeching hers, willing her to answer the way he wanted.

  “Play. Now, shut up and kiss me.”

  He breathed a sigh of relief and did way more than kiss her.

  Chapter 49

  “Something about the cache we found bothers me,” she said, turning in his arms to face him and propping herself up on her elbow.

  It was nearing dawn and they had slept together for the first time since Tahoe. Not exactly a romantic setting, but neither seemed to mind.

  “Don’t you ever sleep?” he asked through the fog of waking.

  “Not much, no. Get used to it,” she said as he pulled her in for a good morning kiss. “I know the mother lode Thaddeus buried is out here somewhere. I can almost taste it,” she said as she got up and began making coffee while he dressed. “Do you think the things we found yesterday have anything to do with the James boys when they came in the spring of 1878?”

  “I doubt it. The records were sketchy, but whatever they came in with that spring was a lot more than what this small box would hold,” he said holding up the box giving it a small shake.

  “What do you think was actually in there? There has to be more than just this one stash. Maybe this was to throw whoever was looking for the mother lode off the scent,” she asked as he closed the small strongbox.

  He would take it back to the ranch and dissect it more thoroughly. He wanted to be sure he was not overlooking something. The markings on the oil skin wrapping were somehow familiar. He just could not put his finger on them, at least not before he had one cup of coffee to get his brain defogged. Flipping it over front and back, he was amazed at its condition. After a hundred and thirty years it was still useable which was suspect in his mind. Even wrapped in the oilskin this part of Texas was not arid, so there should have been more deterioration. It had been freshly placed, sometime very recently, he guessed. The sod over it was freshly turned and the growth very newly formed. He was sure she had not noticed that clue of the freshly disturbed soil. When he had pushed the spade into the ground, her attention had been on the horses.

  “But why bother to rebury it once it was cleaned out? Let’s face it. Whoever stashed this would never have bothered in the first place if all that was originally here was this junk,” she said picking up one of the few ragtag items that had been found inside the box. “Maybe it was a kid who put it here? You know what I mean, sacred mementos, a treasure to only the person hiding them. Perhaps Kyle buried it as a kid?”

  Or maybe not as a kid? It was the same question he had rolling through his mind.

  Maybe this was the clue and not the stash, he thought as he looked at the brand embossed on the front the skin.

  Then Robert realized what it meant. “I’ve got it, Kate! I know what we are looking for now.”

  “Good,” the voice startled them both. Robert and Kate both turned at the sound of the familiar voice. “You can take me to it.”

  What choice did Robert have looking down the barrel of a gun?

  Chapter 50

  “Lyles?” Robert could not believe he was standing there with a gun pointed at them.

  “You bastard, you killed my brother,” Kate was going after him with talons flared. It did not seem to matter or register with her he was holding a gun on them. Robert grabbed her, pulling her back.

  “Let me go, Robert! Let me go!” She fought still screaming and kicking out at Mr. Lyles.

  Fighting hard to restrain her, he swung her around, and away from the man she believed was responsible for Kyle’s death. In Robert’s mind it did not add up that Mr. Lyles was Kyle’s killer.

  “No! Let me go, Robert! I’ll kill you! You bastard! You killed my brother!” she screamed, fighting Robert to no advantage.

  “No, Katherine. I did not have a hand in Kyle’s death,” Mr. Lyles reassured her to no avail. She was still fighting.

  “Settle down, damn it!” Robert growled at her as she continued to fight against his grip. “I believe him, Kate. I believe him,” Robert repeated.

  He still held her fast. Until she calmed down there was no way he was letting her loose.

  She went deadly still in Robert’s grasp.

  “Then there are others in play,” she spoke the obvious.

  Robert watched as Lyles lowered the gun.

  “Katherine, there have always been others in play. Why do you think all of the Brandenburg men have died young and under strange circumstances? You think it was an accident your father died?”

  She had never thought of it in quite those terms.

  All of the successive males from Nathaniel forward had died young and tragically, each leaving a young son to follow in his footsteps. Thaddeus was supposed to guard the James brothers' stash after Nathanial's death. Tragically, Thaddeus died before telling Kate’s grandfather its location. Her father figured it out with clues left behind. The responsibility was to have been passed onto Kyle. It was obvious her father never shared that information with her brother.

  Knowingly or not, all the Brandenburg men had borne the burden of guarding a treasure they never knew for sure existed. Only Nathaniel knew for certain until her father broke the code, and he had not shared the deadly information with Kyle. Now, Robert was the possessor of the knowledge. She only prayed he did not die for that knowledge like so many good men before him.

  Mr. Lyles’s forlorn look showed Katherine he was not her enemy.

  “Katherine, if you had only taken Robert up on his offer to buy the ranch, we would not be in this mess. He would have owned the land. Then the treasure would have continued to be nothing other than local legend and myth. His influence would have prevented anyone from trying to disturb it.”

  “So all that talk about me needing an ally and Robert being a fair and just man was all a play to get me to sell?”

  He agreed, but not completely.

  “I was only looking out for you. When I saw the ranch was up for grabs and Robert was willing to play along with your foolish notion of the legend to pacify your desires for independence, I knew then I had to get involved.” He turned to Robert. “This stash must be moved, Robert. Don’t you see? Katherine will never be safe as long as there is knowledge the treasure actually does exist. Your sons will suffer the same fate as Thaddeus, Gideon, Karl, and Kyle.”

  “Not while I’m alive,” Robert vowed.

  “I must move it, so I can retire safe in the knowledge I have fulfilled my obligation to the brotherhood, and so Katherine and you can live a long and full life. If they come after me, so be it. I’m an old man. I stopped living the day Dallas married Brice’s mother. I have been dead for forty years.”

  Katherine was beginning to piece things together.

  “You were there the night I came home, and you were the one I saw out by the barn the night the house burned.”

  “No, that was not me. I would never harm George and I did not set the fire. I have no desire to harm either one of you. Get me the treasure and I will hide the cache as commanded. It will leave you free of the responsibility of this accursed obligation. It has brought nothing except death and destruction for five generations. It is time to end it for your sake.”

  Robert could not agree more. “Fair enough, but only if Katherine goes free. Only if I know she is totally out of harm’s way and safe will I help you.” Robert pushed her behind him.

  “No, Robert, this is my fight, not yours,” she said stepping back in front of him. “Tell me where it is and I’ll see to it this ends here and ends now, today. I am the last living Brandenburg. It is my birthright
.”

  “You are a McKinnon now,” he corrected her.

  “Then we do this together.” She was resolved. He was not going to budge her.

  “So the prophecy is coming true.” Mr. Lyles stepped back as if an invisible flame were rising from the earth.

  “What prophecy?” Kate asked to satisfy her morbid curiosity.

  The elderly gentleman began to recite what was some of the most disturbing words Katherine had ever heard:

  And the last of her kind shall she be the beneficiary.

  And he who dare harm her shall be burned and stripped flesh from bone, left to rot in a grave of obscurity.

  From the ashes of the old shall she raise a new house filled with the blood of her womb.

  “What the hell is that suppose to mean?” Katherine asked.

  “I always thought it meant the South would eventually rise again filled with the blood of the Southerners who believed. However, now I’m not so sure. It has been too many years since the war, and the reasons for the post Civil War brotherhood have faded, justifiably so. The foretelling has been passed down from father to son, ritualistically more so than actual belief. I love my country, but the treasure was born in blood. As such, it must stay hidden until it is ready to give up its secrets.”

  Katherine had been half listening as her mind began to reminisce. She remembered her old great-aunt and her stories. Her head snapped up interrupting him.

  “I know. I know where it is, Robert. Mr. Lyles you are welcome to have it. Get it off my land and take the curse along with it. Come on.”

  She mounted her modern day horse in the form of the ATV Lyles and his men had ridden in on and headed back to the Golden Circle. It was time to place old ghosts to bed, and there was no better day to do it.

  Chapter 51

  Razor watched from a discreet distance as the old man held the couple at gunpoint. Good, he thought, it would save him the trouble of torturing them for what, if any, knowledge they might possess. He knew they had unearthed the stash he and Brice had buried, just as planned. However, when he found it in Kyle’s truck, he never dreamed it actually was a clue to the real treasure or he would have kept it for himself.

  Keeping a discreet distance all week and following both groups around the ranch, he had been giving regular reports to Tony. He was ready to be done with this. Following them back to the ranch, he took up sentry in a small grove of trees the fire had just managed to spare.

  He felt bad about the fire, which was strange for he usually had no feelings of remorse; however, for some strange reason, he felt guilty. He was careless tossing a cigarette butt to the ground by the electrical box while he was attempting to bypass the security system. He pulled her out of the house only because they needed her and it had been hard not to take her back to the old foundry to have a little fun. Now, he was glad he had not given into his first impulses.

  High powered binoculars allowed him to see Katherine and Robert heading for the only building left standing, the bunkhouse.

  So, he thought, Tony’s hunch had been right after all. It was looking like a safe bet to make that the treasure was in the bunkhouse based on the fact the party was there and it confirmed the information Tony pried out of his grandmother, Rosa just before he killed her. If the old man had not walked in on them that night, they might already have found it. They had not found anything in there using the metal detector the first time. Perhaps this would prove fruitful. It was a large rectangular building and would take a while to search, so once they were inside he made his move setting himself up to lie in wait.

  His mission was clear: get whatever they walked out with and get the girl, or never show his face again to Tony Booth, great-great-great-grandson of John Wilkes Booth, assassin and staunch member of the Sons of Liberty, a secret brotherhood he had never heard of before. Razor did not buy the story of the infamous connection with the man who shot Lincoln. Basically, he thought it was a bunch of crap. In an unusual bout of curiosity, Razor looked up Booth's biography and found Booth had never married. That did not mean there was never an illegitimate son that history was unaware.

  However, it really did not matter when one boiled it all down, he thought. Tony had promised to make him rich, and that did matter.

  Chapter 52

  Robert let her take the lead. She was heading in an entirely different direction than he would have taken them, but once he saw her intended destination, he felt she just might be on to something. Thaddeus’s gold would have been buried years after the James brothers came to visit in 1878. In fact, the bunkhouse had been built the same summer. He recalled seeing the historical placard on the side of the doorway and this was not just a coincidence to him. Could the house have been built around the gold? It was a distinct possibility and made perfect sense to Robert’s way of thinking.

  Stepping into the room where George was attacked, Kate averted her gaze away from the blood staining the well-worn floorboards.

  “Robert, let me have the oil cloth. I need to see the branding.”

  Reaching out her left hand for the cloth, she continued to run her right hand down the length of the interior wall. There, barely discernible in the dim light, she found what she had been looking for covered in layers of paint and dust. The tiny indentation in the wood consisting of the brand matching the one on the cloth jumped out at them now that they knew what they were looking for.

  “Here.” She pointed to the floor just below the marking on the wall.

  Not exactly X marks the spot, but close enough, Robert thought.

  “Be careful, it is branded with the mark of death. Before all this started I would have said it was hog hooey. Now, I’m not so sure,” she cautioned.

  “Stop!” George shouted, short of breath, from the doorway. “Don’t touch anything. You must perform the moving ritual.” The look of relief at having stopped them was evident.

  “You have known all along?” Katherine fought the betrayal building inside her. “You knew and let Kyle die?”

  “Katie, I had no idea what Kyle was doing. If I had, I would have stopped him. There is nothing here worth dying for, trust me. It would not have helped us anyway. And yes, I have known all my life what this spot represented. Your father told me rather than telling Kyle.”

  Apparently her father felt and George agreed that she and Kyle were safer not knowing the secret, not that it saved her brother.

  George breathed a heavy sigh of relief. “It has been a terrible burden to bear. I’m glad it is finally over. Take it, Lyles, and get this done. I pass the torch.”

  “I accept this torch,” Lyles quickly responded.

  “Ok, now,” George said nodding.

  “That’s it?” Kate asked.

  She would have found it humorous if so many lives had not been lost. What they were about to uncover had not seen the light of day for what she suspected to be over one hundred and thirty years.

  “What can I say?” he shrugged. “The Brotherhood needed to develop a quick ritual. The stashes buried all over the South were usually moved in a hurry. I’m sure the James Boys never dreamed this one would stand for so long.”

  Prying up the old floorboards, the nails creaked and protested the movement after almost a century and a half of stability. Shining the flashlight into the crawl space, Robert found what had been the demise of several good men.

  Pulling four leather pouches and one wooden box from the well-protected space, it was indeed as he suspected. The bunkhouse was built around this booty.

  It hit him what this represented. It represented a piece of history thought to have faded with time. Yet, this institution was still a living, breathing machine. George and Mr. Lyles’s commitment to the secret brotherhood proved that the remnants of past beliefs were still felt strongly here in this part of the country. How many more were out there willing to kill or die for these buried caches? Some were worth millions. He strongly suspected this was not one of those wealthy millions, not in a financial sense.

&n
bsp; Jesse James himself had brought this to Nathaniel in the summer of 1878 for safekeeping. He had kept his promise for whatever reason, so had George. Now, the torch was passed.

  “May I look?” Katherine asked holding out her hands for the items her brother had died for in a lame and futile effort to save the ranch. Robert looked to Lyles who nodded his consent.

  With shaking hands she folded back the pouch flap on the leather saddlebag pulling out documents, yellow and faded with time. Robert watched as she took the items, walking a short distance away she turned her back to them all. Understanding her need to physically touch the things that had wrought such destruction and devastation to her life, he gave her some space.

  For Kate, the finality of this search began to sink in. She closed her eyes, shaking her head in disbelief. She was looking at notes, crude hand-jotted maps, minutes of secret meetings held after the Civil War, and bills of lading showing where certain shipments had been transferred. These showed where gold and coins and other items of value were delivered and who was responsible for carrying out those deliveries. The list she was holding was of the men who were members of the Knight’s original chapters. It was damning information if placed into the right hands. If what she suspected was true, then direct descendants were still involved with the Knights of the Golden Circle or whatever they were calling themselves these days.

  Turning back she looked at Robert. He knew she was hoping for some assurance. She was standing there looking for some sign to let her know there was something here justifying the loss of her brother’s life.

  He could not give it. It would be a lie.

  “Information,” she said her voice rising. “Kyle died for this crap?” She held it tightly in her fist shaking it at them.

  Robert heard the frustration and disbelief.

  “Treasure is not always currency, Kate,” Mr. Lyles said as he took the damning documents gently from her hands. She gave no resistance. She wanted the filthy things out of her sight.