Shiloh shook her head. “Not necessarily. But finding the actual treasure is only part of what I’m interested in. I can’t explain, not now, but I need help finding where a treasure is or might have been at one point in time.”
She pulled the book from the purse, which she’d kept tight against her body since they had exited the car. “Do you recognize this?”
“I believe that looks like the copy I used to have in my library.” Mary reached for it and ran her hands over the hard cover. “The Pilgrim’s Progress. It’s an edition I hadn’t read yet, but I used to see it up there on the shelf—until it went missing years ago.” Her expression dimmed.
Shiloh laid her hand over Mary’s wrinkled one. “May I see it again?” She reached out and took the book back.
“Do you have any idea what this means?” Shiloh opened to the page with the note written on it and handed the book to Mary.
Mary’s eyes widened as she read. “I’d heard rumors, but I’d thought...all small towns have their rumors. Who knew this one might be true?” She shook her head. “Well, what do you know.”
“So it makes sense to you.” Shiloh did nothing to conceal her excitement.
“Well, certainly. It appears the note is talking about the book. Haven’t you read The Pilgrim’s Progress, young lady?”
Shiloh’s face fell.
“And I certainly have my suspicions about who L and E are.”
A sliver of hope found its way back to Shiloh’s expression.
Mary Hamilton nodded. “Yes, I suppose L would be my great, great, great—to tell you the truth, I’ve forgotten how many greats there are—aunt Laura.”
“What do you know about her? Anything that might help?”
“I know she died terribly young. Everyone said she died of a broken heart.”
Adam felt his own heartbeat quicken. Was it possible?
“And I suspect that E is the man she was rumored to have fallen in love with.”
“And that would be?” Shiloh leaned forward in her chair.
“Why, the most notorious pirate of them all, of course. Edward Teach, better known as Blackbeard.”
SEVENTEEN
“Blackbeard?” Shiloh repeated. “Blackbeard?” She’d intentionally not mentioned the name of the pirate whose treasure she sought, not wanting to lead Mary to “remember” legends that didn’t exist in an effort to help.
“Yes, dear. I’m assuming you have heard of him?”
The twinkle in Mary’s eyes said she was more than aware that Shiloh knew who the pirate was. Shiloh supposed her reaction hadn’t exactly been subtle.
“So your great, however many greats, aunt Laura supposedly fell in love with Blackbeard.”
“Oh, yes.” Mary nodded. “That’s how the story goes. They met on accident, so I’ve been told, one time when his ship docked near Treasure Point. It was love at first sight. He left, of course, and went back to his life on the sea, but they supposedly exchanged hundreds of letters. Aunt Laura never married.”
Shiloh felt as if she’d struck gold in every sense but literal and had the feeling even that would come soon.
She glanced back down at the book that Mary still held in her hands. Apparently, there truly was a connection between the Hamilton family and Blackbeard. But how did that get her closer to the treasure? Unless Blackbeard had hidden it on the family’s property somewhere. Shiloh fought back a groan. The estate covered acres! Even if they knew for a fact that the treasure was on their land, it could still take years to recover it, if they ever did.
Mary’s eyes were still fixed on the note. “You know, it also could be...” She shook her head. “No, don’t listen to me. It’s just the ramblings of an old lady who wishes she could help.” She started to shut the book, paused and reopened it to the inscription again. “But it’s possible that...”
Shiloh waited, leaning closer to Mary.
“There’s an area on the property, in the woods between the house and the ocean, that we were warned as children to avoid, due to the snakes and alligators that love to inhabit those kind of places....” Mary got a faraway look in her eye. “Of course, no generation of children listened. We all went down there to explore but found it was every bit as bad as our parents had said and never stayed long. For as long as I can remember, our family has referred to that swamp as ‘the Slough of Despond.’”
Shivers of anticipation threatened to overwhelm Shiloh as her breath caught in her throat, and she reached out her hands. “May I see that again?” She motioned toward the book.
Mary nodded and delivered it to Shiloh’s waiting arms.
“‘May you find reward even in the Slough of Despond.’ He wasn’t talking figuratively. He meant it literally.” Shiloh closed the book and stood. “I’m so sorry, ladies, but we have to go.”
They were both nodding. “I would be upset if you did anything else, my dear.” Mary pulled her into a hug. “Go find that treasure and finish this.”
“I’ll do my best.” Shiloh had said the words so many times, out loud and to herself since her cousin’s death. And finally, she felt as if she might be able to follow through with them.
* * *
“This must be it.” Shiloh wrinkled her nose at the smell of decay and mud. “It matches Mary’s description of the spot perfectly.”
Adam, who’d waded farther into the muck than she had, took another step and the noise of the suction between his boot and the swamplike mud made her cringe.
Still, she knew if a little mud was the messiest this got, she’d be lucky. And the uneasy churning in the pit of her stomach told her that she wouldn’t be. Shiloh had three goals—find the men who’d started this, make sure justice was served and keep both her and Adam alive.
The fear gnawing at her said that accomplishing all three was a lofty goal. She’d narrowly avoided death how many times in the past few weeks? Didn’t that kind of luck run out eventually? Still, she didn’t have a choice. They were too close to quit. She took a deep breath to push past the fear.
“Help me, Lord,” she whispered as she took another step into the mud, keeping a watchful eye for gators or snakes, both of which could prove just as dangerous as the men she was pursuing. No booming voice from the sky confirmed that God was listening, but somehow confidence settled over her and she knew that He was.
“So what are we looking for, exactly?” Adam’s low voice and the way he looked at her each spoke of his reliance on her abilities. If only she possessed a tenth of the assurance he did. Still, his faith in her bolstered her courage.
“That I can’t tell you. The note seems to have been intended to be enough for Laura to find the treasure he’d hidden for her but be inconspicuous enough for no one else to figure it out if they found the book. He was being vague on purpose, knowing she’d know where to look.”
“We could go for shovels, dig around a little,” he suggested.
Shiloh eyed the area, which had to be fifty yards wide and almost as long. She racked her brain for other possibilities, places here that Blackbeard could have hidden his treasure that wouldn’t require digging up the entire area. Surely if the treasure was left for a woman he was in love with, he would have made reaching it possible for her. Shiloh couldn’t picture a woman of hundreds of years ago—especially one who’d been raised in as pampered an environment as Laura Hamilton—digging up the entire coastal slough with no help.
For a moment Shiloh was gripped with a panic that the treasure might have been found years ago. But the anxiety eased as quickly as it had come. Surely Mary would have known if the treasure had ever been recovered—and she’d certainly given no indication that it had. Anyway, it wasn’t the treasure she needed to find; it was the treasure’s hiding spot. As Shiloh and Annie had believed all along, all she needed to do was find the right location and wait.
The men who had killed on their quest to find this treasure wouldn’t give up until they’d found where it was hidden. And when they found it, they’d be caught.
And justice would finally be served.
Adam’s voice jolted her from her thoughts. “Let’s look around some more for now, make sure we’re seeing everything there is to see.”
With another deep breath, Shiloh waded farther in. The ground beneath her feet, under the layers of mud, was disturbingly soft, as if it might pull her in. She decided she’d start her search by walking the entire perimeter.
Shiloh was three-fourths of the way around when she stepped on a piece of ground that felt different. Harder.
“Hey, Adam!” she called. “I need your help.” Her heart raced as she stomped her foot again to see if she’d imagined it. No, this place was distinctly harder. She walked a couple of steps forward. It appeared to be six, maybe seven, feet long.
Was she stomping on someone’s final resting place—a grave buried along the swampy area?
“What is it?” Adam asked as he approached.
She pointed to the ground. “There’s something down there,” she whispered, not sure if she was afraid of being heard or trying to regain some feeling of reverence in case this was, indeed, part of a centuries-old graveyard.
“Okay. What?”
She shook her head. “Not sure. Maybe a grave? The ground under my feet here is harder. Like I’m standing on solid rock instead of mud.”
“It would make sense. I was on my way over here to tell you that I saw several rock slabs that may have been headstones, over that way.” He motioned with his head in the direction.
Shiloh looked down, then back up at Adam. “Do we investigate this one? Just in case? Or apologize profusely for stomping all over them and leave?” She shifted her weight and stepped off the side of the grave. As she did so, her foot caught on something. The stone beneath her other foot shifted.
She heard someone shrieking as the world tilted away and realized it was her, just as the leg she’d been standing on gave out completely and she found herself falling.
Adam grabbed for her arms, trying to get a good grip, but the ground underneath him was too slippery, and then they were both plummeting.
Smells assaulted Shiloh’s nose as her body hit something hard, rolled down something—stairs?—and crumpled into a heap. The odors of the muddy bog now mingled with something musty with age. The ground beneath her was cold and hard. How had she fallen on stone? Hadn’t the stone just given way?
Mud coated whatever surface they’d collapsed onto. Shiloh guessed it must have fallen into this hole with them.
“Adam?”
“Call me crazy, Shiloh, but I think we might have found something.”
She loved how, despite every bone in her body aching from the fall, her mind being overwhelmed with the thought of what they were doing, her palms sweating as nerves threatened to overtake her, Adam could still make her laugh. “Yeah, I’d say so.”
Wherever they were was dark, and though the hole they’d fallen through was letting in some light, it was dimmed by the tree branches above them and didn’t offer much help in identifying their surroundings.
She put her hands out and felt the stone that formed the walls. “It’s some kind of tunnel underground.” Shiloh shivered—whether from the dampness of the space or the anticipation of what might come next, she wasn’t sure. All she knew was that they were one step closer to the treasure, and they were walking right into a piece of history that had been preserved for over two hundred years.
She reached out and felt the walls again, appreciation for whoever had built them growing within her. She knew it was possible, especially with modern engineering, to build something like a tunnel under a swamp or even underwater, but the idea that someone had done it so long ago, without the technology available in the present, was impressive.
Shiloh focused and then let herself think out loud as she tried to sort through where they were. “We fell down stairs, right?”
“That’s what they felt like to me.”
She squinted but still could make out only dim shapes. She patted the place on her hip next to her gun where she usually kept a flashlight.
Not there. She closed her eyes. So close... “You don’t have a flashlight, do you?”
She heard the same frustration she felt in his deep sigh. “No.”
That left them with only a few options. And exploring the rest of this tunnel now wasn’t one of them. Either they could both go back for flashlights, or one of them could, while the other stayed and kept watch here at the entrance.
“Neither of us is leaving without the other.” Adam’s matter-of-fact tone left no room for argument.
“Do you think we can figure out how to close it?”
“We’re going to have to try. It’s the only option.”
Shiloh stood, keeping one arm above her to stop her head from hitting the ceiling, but when she reached up, even from a standing position, there were several inches left.
“Ouch.”
Apparently, Adam hadn’t put a hand over his head.
“People were obviously shorter back in the tunnel-building days.”
She could barely make out his shape, but it looked as if he was having to hunch over to avoid hitting his head again. He led the way up the stone stairs, and as they walked, Shiloh finally had a moment to marvel at what they’d discovered. Secret tunnels hadn’t been uncommon in the peak of the pirate days. She’d even explored several of the famous pirate tunnels in Savannah, back before they were declared a hazard and closed up for good.
She wondered if Blackbeard had specifically built this tunnel just to hide a treasure for his secret love, or if this tunnel, and others that were likely nearby, had been used to smuggle goods to and from a docked pirate ship.
Adam was almost back aboveground when Shiloh heard a noise from somewhere behind her, deep within the recesses of the earth.
She froze.
And she heard it again.
“Adam,” she whispered. Then slightly louder. “Adam.”
He turned and stepped back down to where she was. “What is it?” He lowered his volume to match hers.
She laid a hand on his arm. “I heard something.” Shiloh felt him stiffen—and he certainly didn’t relax at her next words. “We can’t leave. If there’s someone down there, we need to go now. Or it might be too late.”
* * *
Adam felt the urgency in Shiloh’s touch, heard it in her voice. What remained unspoken was that she was staying—with or without him. There was no way he’d get her out of this tunnel until she found what...and who...was waiting farther in. Down the stairs into the unknown pitch-blackness.
They didn’t have flashlights. Exploring without them, especially when there were likely criminals somewhere in this underground maze with them, seemed foolish.
But Shiloh was right. Leaving now, knowing whoever was down there could disappear with the treasure and be gone forever, wasn’t the right choice, either.
“Okay,” he said.
Shiloh let out a deep breath that she must have been holding.
“But on one condition.” He reached for his cell phone. “We go up long enough to call the chief for backup.”
“But...” She sighed. “All right. Let’s go.”
They walked the last few steps to the top. Adam found the chief’s number and hit Call.
Nothing happened. He glanced at the corner of his phone’s screen. No service.
It figured.
“Does your phone have service?” he asked Shiloh.
She pulled it out and shook her head. “It’s not uncommon in the woods around here. Especially as you get closer to the ocean and farther from town.”
Ada
m could have hit something. Now what?
Shiloh turned pleading blue eyes on him. “Please, Adam. We have to go now. I’ve worked too long to let them slip through my fingers, and that’s what they’ll do if we leave. I know it.”
He wanted to argue. But he also knew her words carried some truth.
Either decision was a bad one. But if there was a chance they could end this today and stop the threats on Shiloh’s life—that would make this risk worth it.
“I’ve got a lighter,” Adam offered. “A guy I met at seminary kept one in his pocket, and it came in handy more often than I would have thought, so I started carrying one.” He slid the silver Zippo out of his pocket. “Grab a couple of branches. At least that way we’ll have them if we need them and can get a little light for a minute or two. It won’t be like having a flashlight, but it’s better than nothing.”
Shiloh waded through the mud, more eagerly than before, and found several fairly dry sticks. Adam started down the stairs, then whirled, curled one hand behind Shiloh’s head and brought her toward him in a deep, desperate kiss. She returned his fervency, and Adam held her tight for another minute and then pulled back.
He summoned the courage to say the three words to her that he’d known were still true from the moment he’d seen her angry, beautiful face through his driver’s-side window when he’d arrived in town.
But the focused look that came back into her eyes moments after Shiloh opened them said it still wasn’t the right time. That seemed to be the story of their lives.
“Come on.” She hurried down the stairs in front of him, like a woman on a mission.
He followed behind her, praying he’d get the chance to tell her how he felt and that this ordeal would have a happy ending.
Treasure Point Secrets Page 17