Treasure

by Helen Brenna

  “Everybody’s been bugging me to do that for years. You got it right now, Annie.”

  “You’re going to take vacations, right? Every single day allotted by OEI.”

  “And then some. Promise.”

  Her demands could have bothered him. No one told him what to do, or how to do it. Instead, her possessiveness filled him like a steamy bowl of chicken soup on a cold, windy day at sea. Without realizing it, he’d been waiting for this his entire life. “Will you stay with me in Miami?”

  She looked at him, uncertain. “I guess…in a way…those Chicago roots were beginning to feel a little like lead boots—”

  Before she could object any further, he shut her up with a kiss. All was right with the world. He had Annie. In a matter of a few hours, at the most a few days, he’d have the Concha treasure, too. What more could a man ask for?

  As if nature stepped in to challenge his folly, the sky let go with a strong burst of wind, busting off branches of Andros pines and several large palm fronds and blowing them flat against him. They looked toward the darkening horizon, and all at once they became fully aware of the storm culminating around them. This was bad. Sheets of rain pelted their upturned faces, and several trees along the coastline fell over in the strong winds.

  “We need to find some shelter,” he yelled. “This storm’s breaking.” He grabbed her hand again and raced through the forest, back in the general direction from which they’d come. “I saw a grouping of low, overhanging rocks this way. They might give us some shelter from the weather.”

  Dodging branches, he pulled her behind him. The sky opened up and the rain poured down in sheets. The wind whipped around their heads from the south and bent the treetops like toothpicks. After several minutes of flat-out running, he slowed and dodged to his right. “Watch out,” he yelled and jerked her back against him. A round opening only three feet in diameter lay directly in their path.

  “What is it?”

  “A blue hole. Natural pits that can run two hundred feet deep. Andros is famous for them. I’ve only seen the ones underwater along the coast, but I’ve heard stories about a few of them on the island itself.” He dropped a heavy rock into the pit. They never heard it hit bottom. “You fall into that, and there’s no getting out.”

  They carefully edged their way around it.

  “We’d better go a little slower.”

  Another few minutes and they found themselves near a cluster of trees and bushes surrounding a four-foot rocky mound. They scuttled along the northern side of the rocks and slowed under a ridge, crouching to catch their breath. Between the narrow rock ledge above their heads and the thick bushes surrounding them, they found a relatively dry, though cramped, reprieve from the storm.

  “How long do you think this will last?” Annie wiped the moisture from her eyes.

  “No idea.”

  There was barely enough room for them to squat side by side under the ledge, let alone spread out their legs. “My calf muscles are already cramping. Maybe there’s more room back here.” She pushed aside a low-lying bush. “Jake, it’s a shallow cave. We can spread out back here.” She climbed over the bush and slid inside.

  He followed her and let the branch snap back into place, covering the entrance and throwing them into darkness. Drawing a flashlight from his pack, he turned it on and lit up the solid rock walls. After a very shallow entrance, the cave floor dropped, allowing them to stand. As far as he could tell, there was no end in sight. “Let’s check it out.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  ONLY A FEW FEET into the tunnel and the outside din of wind and rain died to a soft rumble, leaving the gentle trickling sounds of water and Annie’s own quiet breathing. The cave grew colder, more damp and deeper with every step they took. Unlike the other caves they’d explored on this island, most of this cave was below ground, making it nearly impossible to see its entrance. No wonder it’d escaped their search.

  “How far do you suppose this goes?” she asked.

  “I have no idea.”

  Stalactites, those slimy-looking gray, wet icicles, hung from the rock walls and roof. She tripped on a series of stalagmites protruding from the ground. Jake steadied her, grasping onto her hand.

  “Stop for a minute and hold this flashlight.” He pulled the Concha map from his back pocket.

  Heads bent together, they studied the drawing. It struck her why the pictures on this fabric had seemed so familiar. All this time, she’d had a copy of this map with her research back at OEI’s Miami headquarters. Captain Molinero must have made a paper copy of it and couriered it with his last known letter to his wife. Since he’d never returned to Spain and it was assumed the Concha had sunk off the coast of Florida, no one had ever discovered the picture’s true meaning. Until now.

  She opened her mouth to tell him. “This—”

  “This is it,” he interrupted, laughing. “If this triangle represents our cliff, we just walked through Captain Molinero’s cave door.” He reached for the flashlight. “Annie, come on.” He squeezed her hand and hurried around a tight bend in the cave.

  She followed him into a small cavern. “But—” She bumped into Jake’s back.

  He’d stopped and flashed his light around a huge grotto. Everywhere the beam touched there were cloth bags, old wooden trunks and mounds of cargo.

  “Ooooh,” she breathed out. “This is it.”

  He kicked open a gunnysack at his feet. Bar after bar of silver bullion spilled onto the hard rock floor. They’d stepped into a Bahamian version of Aladdin’s cave.

  “Jackpot! Annie, we found it!” He grabbed her arms and smacked his lips against her mouth, hooting with joy. The backpack slipped from his shoulder, and he jumped around the cavern, flipping open trunks and sacks, diving his hands into the golden contents. He stopped. “Now we know what happened to the Concha’s captain.”

  The halo of his flashlight illuminated a skeleton. “Molinero,” she whispered. The upper body, partially covered with what must at one time have been a shirt, leaned against the rock wall. The leg bones lay in front of the torso on the ground, one in an unnaturally skewed pattern, as if broken in several places. Hardened wax sat in several puddles by his side. Obviously, he’d been unable to move enough to care for himself.

  “He starved to death. In the dark. What a horrible way to die.”

  “You got that right.”

  “What happened to the crew?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.” Jake shrugged. “Something definitely went wrong. They didn’t plan on leaving this treasure here. I’ll bet they went down with the ship in the hurricane.” Jake found an empty sack on the ground and covered the skeleton. He turned back to the treasure. “Annie, find another flashlight in my pack and take a look at this.”

  She zipped open his pack. In the dark, she shuffled through the contents. Her fingers fumbled over the shape of a familiar object, and she recoiled in alarm. It couldn’t be true. He couldn’t have. Could he? She didn’t want to believe it.

  “What’s the matter?” He shined the light near her.

  She had to know. Forcing her shaking hands back into the pack, she grasped the object and drew it into the light. The Santidad Cross. Her fingers flew open. The heavy gold dropped with a sickening thud to the rocky ground. “Jake?” She met his steady gaze. “You lied to me.”

  For one long moment, he didn’t say a word, and then, unwavering, he met her gaze. “I have responsibilities, Annie. Do you have any idea how many families rely on OEI for their livelihood? How many people’s salary that cross would cover?” He held his hands out toward the treasure. “I didn’t know we’d find all this in a cave.”

  It felt as if the cross was dragging her down. Would she never be rid of that awful thing? “First, you lied to get me to take you to the Concha site. Then you followed me underwater to see where I’d hide it.”

  “No.” He shook his head, definitively. “I may have followed you, but I didn’t lie. I never told you I’d leav
e the cross.”

  Rerunning their conversations through her mind, she stepped toward him. He’d never promised anything. “That only means you were planning all along to keep it, weren’t you?” She stopped in front on him, clenched both her hands into fists and smacked his chest, rage and agony pouring out of her. “Weren’t you?”

  He wrapped his arms around her, stopping her and holding her tight. “I took it before D.W. found the brooch. I needed something to establish, without a doubt, that we’d discovered the Concha wreck site. You know that.”

  “All I know is that I believed you. Back there.” She pointed to the woods. “I started to think maybe it could work. Maybe, if I gave it a chance, you really could love me. More than treasure.” She pushed away from his warm chest, from the comfort of his strong arms. “More lies. That’s all it was.”

  She’d been a fool. He was born a treasure hunter. He would die a lonely treasure hunter.

  “Annie, what do you want from me?”

  “Something you can’t give.”

  “Let me explain—”

  “Nothing!” she yelled. “Nothing you can say will make any difference. You are so blind. I can’t live that way. I’m going back—”

  “To your little hole? Where you can hide away from life?” Anger pierced the depths of his dark eyes.

  “It’ll be different this time. The Santidad Cross is gone. I’ll be able to make a real life now.” She headed for the exit to the cave. “I’ll make my own way to Morgan’s Bluff. And back to Chicago. I don’t need you.”

  “Go ahead. Run away. Again. Landlock yourself where you don’t belong. Where no one can touch you. You talk about my blindness.” He paced the small cave. “It wasn’t the Santidad Cross that messed with your life. You did that to yourself.” He blocked her path. “Your inability to face your own parents’ deaths. That’s what crippled you, overshadowed your life—your fears.”

  “What do you know about fear? Or pain? Or love?” The tears dried on her face. She wanted to hurt him in any way she could. “You don’t experience real emotion. You hide behind your love for treasure so you don’t have to experience the real thing. You’re so focused on gold it’s all you see. Everything else, including me, is peripheral. Well, you can keep the Santidad Cross. And you can keep your sorry excuse for a life. I don’t want to be any part of it!”

  She ran from the cavern, up the steep, dark tunnel. Away from him. Away from the treasure and the cross. He could have it all. Brushing past the bush at the entrance to the cave, she plunged back into wind and rain. Anything was better than being in that cave, but the storm had intensified. Now what? Without the map it would be impossible to retrace the path they’d taken from their waterfall to this cave. Following the beach to Lowe Sound wasn’t a good idea with Westburne’s boat not too far off shore. The only thing she could do was head in the opposite direction from the beach. The road had to be that way.

  Blindly, she took off through the thick woods, rain pelting her face, wind whipping at her hair and branches scraping her skin. Too heartbroken to be scared, the tears came fast, mixing unheeded with the rain pouring from the sky. There was no denying it. She’d fallen in love with Jake, and what a fall it was becoming. She couldn’t go back to her old life in Chicago. Not after knowing she would have gladly given all that up for a chance at a life with him. She couldn’t go forward to a new life in Miami, either. Not after what he’d done.

  Her dreams exploded, a million tiny shards of unmet hopes shattered at her feet. For the second time in her life, her foundation slipped from under her. Her plan had failed. She was as lost today as she’d been after her parents’ deaths.

  She stopped and the rain poured down her face. No. That wasn’t true. She was no longer afraid of water, and she could dive. She knew who she was again after all these years. She might not know where she was going or what she was going to do. But she wasn’t going to hide as Jake had accused her of doing. She wasn’t going to landlock herself again. She was stronger today. As soon as she found the road and got off this island, as soon as she got as far from Jake Rawlings as she could possibly go, she would be okay. Her parents, for all their faults, had raised one tough cookie.

  Rubbing her eyes with the back of her hand, she pushed herself, running as fast as she could through the dense brush, stopping only occasionally to catch her breath and once to skirt another blue hole. Finally, she saw a clearing a few feet ahead. The road. She brushed through the final row of thick bushes and stepped, thankfully, onto a poorly maintained gravel track.

  Fighting a sudden burst of wind, she turned to her right and headed in the direction of the nearest town. With a little luck, she’d be in Morgan’s Bluff by dark.

  The gravel crunched behind her. Before she’d a chance to react a hand gripped her and swung her around.

  “Well, well, well,” a man said, his deep voice frighteningly familiar. “We’ve been looking for you.”

  ONE BY ONE, Jake opened and explored the gunny-sacks and chests in the cavern. There was more gold, silver, bigger emeralds, rubies and pearls and more exquisite jewelry, knives and other trinkets than he’d ever seen in his life. He took a mental inventory of the cargo in the cavern, gauging weights, and estimating totals. They’d found, indisputably, the biggest shipwreck in history. And it wasn’t on a ship.

  He laughed out loud. If only his father and Sam had lived to see this. As he’d promised, the Rawlings name would go down in the annals of treasure hunting as the Concha discoverers. This would pay off all of OEI’s debt, provide hefty bonuses for his employees and fund a lifetime of dry seasons. He could head out after any treasure he wanted, no matter how elusive or time-consuming. He’d be able to retire if he wanted, or travel around the world. Could he really be blind to what was important in life?

  Absolutely not. There was nothing wrong with wanting to have his cake and eat it, too. Annie was just the wrong cake. There were plenty of other varieties out there ready and more than willing to be tasted.

  “I didn’t lie to her,” he said aloud. “At least not intentionally.” He knelt and dug into the trunk at his side. Fishing out a gold nugget, he stared at it under the flashlight’s watery beam. Gold. Rich and lustrous. Worth the risks and sacrifices he’d made to find it. Right?

  Frustrated, he tossed the nugget back into the trunk and drew his own gold coin from the pocket of his shorts. There you are. The coin that had given focus to his dreams for most of his life. He held it under the light, willing himself to recapture that magic right now. Any minute it would come back to him. Any minute.

  Only the coin didn’t seem quite so beautiful this time around. Every scratch and nick seemed to mar the surface rather than enhance it. It was an old coin. Nothing special. The luster he’d once marveled at paled in comparison to the passion he’d witnessed in Annie’s eyes. He couldn’t think of a single antiquity he’d ever discovered that came close to the beauty of her face.

  “Damn it!” She’d ruined it for him. He’d never be able to look at another piece of ancient, Spanish gold with his past level of enthusiasm. He tried to imagine feeling passionate about anything, heading out to sea, diving, or charting surveys, and he couldn’t. She’d taken the fun out of it.

  He threw the coin—his coin—against the cave wall. It bounced several times before settling amongst the Concha’s cargo. He’d probably never find it again, and he didn’t care.

  When she’d been here, in this cavern, this treasure had been the most exciting thing he’d ever discovered. Now that she was gone, it meant nothing. The precepts he’d based every decision on in his sad, sorry life ricocheted through his empty soul like that coin had off the walls of this cave. This was life without her. Hollow. Barren. Pathetic.

  And right now, at this very moment, she was out in that ugly, dangerous storm. Like the fool she’d said he was he’d turned away from the real treasure in this cave, her love, and he’d let her go without a thought to her safety.

  Angry, lost, he ached to h
old her. He had been thinking of her as…what was the word she’d used—peripheral. He smiled, thinking of her and her big words. She hadn’t ruined his life. She’d clarified it. He loved her. And he was going to prove it to her every day for the rest of his life if she’d let him.

  Throwing his pack over his shoulder and retrieving the Santidad Cross off the hard ground, he ran out of the cave. “Million-dollar cross or not, Annie’s going to watch me drop you in the ocean like a penny in a wishing well.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “MANUEL JOSE CARRERA.” The man introduced himself to Annie. “We’ve met before. At the marina in Miami. You remember Enrique, yes?” He opened his hand toward the muscle-bound he-man on his right. “And Mitch Westburne?” Meeting him at the docks in Miami seemed like a lifetime ago. “And, of course, you know Ronny.” He flicked his head to the left.

  Annie glared at Ronny, but he didn’t seem the slightest bit ashamed of his complicity in Simon’s death. “Why, Ronny?”

  He shrugged. “Retirement’s coming. Manny offered me twenty-five percent. That’s a lot of money to a poor old sailor.”

  “Simon’s dead over a few percentage points?”

  “Don’t put it on me.” He shook his head. “I tried getting Jake to head back to Miami before things got out of hand. No one was supposed to get hurt. All the credit for that belongs to Manny.”

  “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.” Carrera pulled a gun out of his coat pocket. “Isn’t that right, Enrique?”

  Enrique followed suit. “That’s right, Manny.”

  “Where’s the rest of your crew?” Carrera asked Annie, looking around and studying the woods. “We found only one body on that sunken boat.”

  She swallowed. “I don’t know.”

  “Not a good answer.” Carrera shook his head.