Rattled
Page 1
Rattled
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
About The Author
Rattled
Chris Eboch
Cover Art and Design by Lois Bradley
Pig River Press
For Phil, my greatest adventure
Pig River Press
Copyright 2011 by Chris Eboch
Smashwords Edition
ISBN: 0615462472
ISBN-13: 978-0615462479
All rights reserved. For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, contact the author through her website at http://www.krisbock.com.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents other than historical references are the product of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Erin could hardly believe what she was seeing. Could this be it? After all this time waiting, searching, had she finally, finally, found what she was looking for?
She forced herself to sit back and take a deep breath. Don’t make assumptions. Don’t rush into things. She wanted to leap up and scream her excitement, but years of academic training held. Slow down, double-check everything, and make sure you are right!
She leaned forward and ran her fingers over the grainy photograph. With that one image, everything seemed to fall into place. This was the clue. It had to be.
She fumbled in her desk drawer for a magnifying glass and studied the symbols in the photo more closely. At a glance, they looked like your standard Indian petroglyphs. You could find them throughout the Southwest, tucked away in caves or scattered among boulder fields. She’d been on a hike just a few miles outside of town which took her past a wonderful series of handprints and spirals, and what looked strangely like a robot.
But this was different.
If she was right—and she had to be right—these symbols were a map. A map that could lead her to one of the greatest caches of buried treasure ever.
Erin flipped back a few pages, to the first photograph, the one that showed an overview of the boulder field. She confirmed that it had numbers identifying the specific rocks that the book then showed in detail. She could see a few outcroppings that would help orient anyone searching for those petroglyphs. The book also had a map of the area, and clear directions. She would be able to find the carved map. If the landscape hadn’t changed too much the last century, anyway.
She pushed that thought aside, jumped up, and did a little dance.
She reached for the phone. In a few seconds a voice said, “Yeah.” Erin could hear the sound of some tool on metal in the background.
“Camie? I found it!”
The working sounds stopped. Camie said, “You’d better not be talking about that sweater you lost.”
Erin laughed. “No, I found the clue! I know where the treasure is—well, at least, I think I’ve found the first clue that will—”
Camie cut her off. “Forget the disclaimers. You really found something? You mean, we might actually do this?”
The two women screamed into the phone at each other.
Erin collapsed into her desk chair, her cheeks sore from smiling. “I’m so excited I can hardly breathe. Look, are you at work? I’ll come by. I can get out of here in, oh, fifteen minutes, so I’ll see you in half an hour?” She leaned over her desk and gazed down at the photo in the battered old book. “I want to show you where we’re going. We need to make plans.”
“I’ll be here waiting.” Camie’s voice purred, with a touch of twang. “Honey, we’re going places.”
Erin hung up and gazed at the book a moment longer. Who would believe she’d found the clue to one of the most fabulous hidden treasures ever, in a battered old library book? The book must have been sitting there for years, quietly hoarding its secrets. But she had found it. Six months of research had led to this.
In the beginning, it had been a whim. Something to distract her from the tedium of teaching history classes at a small science college where students didn’t value history. Researching lost treasures was fun, and she’d written a few articles about it for magazines. Reading the books on lost mines and buried treasures, you’d think the entire country was covered with them. The Southwest had more than its fair share, from miners who lost track of their remote gold mines, to prospectors who had buried bags of gold and never returned to retrieve them, to bandits who had hidden stolen loot and been killed.
But among all the legends, all the fact and fiction, one story stood out. The Victorio Peak legend had it all. A Franciscan priest and a swindler. Torture, murder, a government cover-up. Where was the truth, among all the stories? Erin wanted to find out. Over time, and with Camie’s encouragement, she’d started to take the treasure hunt more seriously. It wasn’t so much for the treasure itself—that would most likely belong to the government or the landowners. But from the start, she’d recognized the potential, should she ever unearth new information. Forget academic publications; this was the kind of story which could capture the general imagination and catapult her into success as a writer of popular nonfiction. It would make her reputation, open up new job opportunities—change her life in ways she hardly dared dream.
She touched the book gently. The pages were falling out; she didn’t want to risk carrying it around. Instead, Erin snapped a picture of the petroglyphs with her phone. That would be enough to show Camie for now.
She put the book back on her shelf among the hundreds of others she either owned or had borrowed from various libraries. Then she flipped through her stack of topographic maps and found the right one in southern New Mexico. She tucked the phone and the map into the small waist pack she used when biking around town.
Her stomach rumbled, a reminder that she’d been so caught up in her work she’d skipped lunch. She forced herself to stop and have a bowl of cereal. She ate standing up in the kitchen while her mind raced through the planning of the treasure hunt. The timing was perfect; she’d made her students’ final papers due the previous week, before finals. She just had to turn in grades and field a few tearful last-minute requests for extensions, and she’d be done for the semester. What better way to spend the summer, than hunting for buried treasure?
Erin shook her head. Who would’ve thought that she, the quiet, studious girl who’d spent her entire adult life in academia in one way or another, would be planning such an adventure?
She checked that the front door was locked, a habit left over from living in bigger cities, grabbed her bike helmet, and went out the back.
Erin wheeled the bike around the front of her house and mounted. At the corner, she paused and looked both ways. The long frontage road was dangerously narrow, with a cement wall on one side and a ditch on the other. Fortunately, traffic was normally light, and at this time of day the road lay empty. Erin pushed off, still grinn
ing from her find. She rode on the right side, by the ditch, instead of facing traffic, because it was just too frightening to ride alongside the wall when a car passed.
She’d gone a block when she heard the hum of a car engine as it pulled out from a side street behind her. She rode along the very edge of the pavement, even though the car would have plenty of room to pass her without oncoming traffic.
Erin glanced over her shoulder. The black SUV 20 feet behind her hadn’t bothered to pull out into the road at all. Jerk. When would drivers learn to share the road with bicyclists? Erin pulled onto the two-foot wide gravel strip between the pavement and the ditch. She couldn’t stop without risking a skid, but she slowed so the SUV could pass.
The engine roared. Erin glanced back again.
Black metal bore down on her. Her heart lurched and the bike wobbled. This guy was crazy! She whipped her gaze forward, rose up in the seat, and pumped the pedals with all her power, skimming along inches from the ditch. He was just trying to scare her. She’d get his license plate and—
She felt the bumper hit her back tire. The bike seemed to leap into the air, and she went flying. The dried mud and weeds of the ditch seemed to rise up to meet her.
She didn’t even have time to scream.
Chapter 2
Erin floated in darkness. Where was she? What was happening? Why did she feel like she would throw up if she tried to move?
Something was tugging at her waist. Hands? A vague thought floated through her consciousness—don’t move an accident victim. She tried to speak, though she wasn’t sure what she wanted to say. Call 911? Help? Maybe the hands were help. Somebody was there, anyway. She wasn’t alone. She tried to open her eyes, tried to ask what had happened.
The tugging at her waist stopped. She thought she heard a murmur of voices. The slam of a car door jolted her so she flinched. She only noticed the car engine when it revved up and moved away.
Silence. The air lay hot and heavy over her. The pain started to fragment into specific sensations—pounding in her head, a shooting pain in her neck, burning in her hands, knees, and one elbow, grass prickling her left cheek. She remembered the accident. She could hear the faint murmur of traffic on the highway, on the other side of the cement divider. But that was all.
What had happened to the person trying to help her? Had she imagined it?
Blackness threatened to draw her in. She had to resist it. Erin sucked in a breath and tried to focus through the pain. She’d had an accident. She was alone in a ditch. It could be hours before someone found her. She had to move, get up to the road at least. She shouldn’t move, but she had to.
She opened her eyes and saw a haze of yellow slashes. She blinked and tried to focus. The colors shimmered and would not turn into solid shapes. She blinked rapidly, tears threatening to blur her vision more. What was wrong with her eyes?
Finally she understood. Weeds were growing inches from her eyes, too close for her to focus. She lay on her stomach, head turned to the side. If she concentrated, she could feel the ground despite all the aches.
Erin flexed her right hand until she felt the ground beneath her. She waited until her brain understood where her arm was. She took a deep breath and gritted her teeth. With a groan, she pushed with her hand and rolled over. She lay gasping.
“Shit.”
Had she said that? She didn’t think so. She forced her eyes open. She gazed up into a face, almost close enough to kiss. Blue eyes stared down at her. They seem to grow larger, filling her vision like the sky, drawing her in like a pool of cool water.
“Hold on,” a man’s voice said. “Don’t try to move. I’m calling for help.”
Help. Yes, help would be good. She closed her eyes with a sigh.
“Stay with me,” the voice demanded. Annoying. She wanted to sleep.
She heard more words, something about an accident, but didn’t try to make sense of them. Her head pounded.
A hand grabbed her wrist. “Don’t move.” Had she? She must have, her arm was in the air, her fingers brushing her head, although it felt strange, wrong, swollen and stiff and distant. Oh, right—she was wearing her bike helmet. She always wore her helmet. You never knew when you might have an accident.
The strange hand gently guided her arm down until it lay alongside her again. Erin whimpered. Rough fingertips brushed her cheek. “You’ll be all right,” the voice said. “Everything is going to be okay.”
Oh, good, Erin thought. That was all right then.
“Look at me. Stay with me.”
Erin blinked against the brightness until the blur above her resolved into those blue eyes. She could get lost in those eyes. She wanted to get lost and let everything else slip away.
The pain in her head started to shriek. No, it was something outside. A siren, wailing ever louder as it drew closer. Lights flashed in the corner of her vision. She moaned and closed her eyes against the pain.
The voice whispered over her, husky and gentle. “You’re all right now. You’ll be all right.”
Erin sat in her hospital bed, propped up by a couple of pillows. Her head still ached, her hands, elbow, and knees burned, and the side of her face stung. Her right middle finger, which she hadn’t even noticed while in the ditch, throbbed inside the metal brace that held it in a slight curve. But painkillers beat back the worst of it, and after resting for hours, her head felt fairly clear.
“You gave me a scare, you know,” Camie said.
Erin smiled. “Sorry. I’ll try not to do it again.”
Camie leaned back in the plastic visitor’s chair and shook her head so her blond curls bounced on her shoulders. “Just don’t ever tell me again you don’t want to go caving because it’s too dangerous. I’ve never been in the hospital.”
“That’s because you refuse to go even when you should. Remember your broken ankle?”
Camie grinned. “A minor detail. Anyway, it was still broken in the morning when I went to the doctor, so what’s the difference?”
Erin gazed at her hand, the splinted finger, the thick bandage over the heel where she’d torn up the skin. “It really isn’t fair. I’m the cautious one, the one who plays it safe, and look what happens.”
Camie shrugged. “Accidents happen everywhere. After I broke my ankle, people acted like, ‘Oh, you broke it rock climbing. Serves you right.’ And then they’d tell me about how they broke their ankle slipping in the shower or tripping over a curb or playing tag with the kids.” She rolled her eyes. “You never know what’s going to happen, or how much time you have left, so make the most of what you have, I say.”
“I have been trying new things,” Erin said.
Camie got up and perched on the edge of Erin’s bed. “You have, and I’m proud of you. Western riding, even rock climbing. You’re turning into quite the adventurer.”
“Thanks to you.”
Camie grinned. “I just love being a bad influence.”
Erin looked at her hand again. “I guess I won’t be doing anything too exciting for a while.” She wasn’t sure whether she felt disappointed or relieved.
“You’ll be giving people the finger everywhere you go,” Camie said. “And you’ll have a perfectly good excuse.”
“You mean like this?” Erin held her splinted finger toward Camie.
Camie touched Erin’s knee through the hospital blanket. “Seriously, you had a bad scare. Is it going to change what you’re willing to do?”
Erin hesitated, frowning. “I’m not sure yet. I’d like to say that I’m brave enough for it to make no difference.” The memories had blurred into one big jumble of confusion and pain. Even the thought of trying to sort them out left her feeling queasy. “But it was awful, and it’s still so mixed up in my mind. It might be hard for me to get on a bicycle for a while. And I don’t know how I’ll feel going past that place in the ditch.” She shuddered.
“It’s bad timing,” Camie murmured. “What with the treasure hunt.”
“I know.” Erin
leaned back and closed her eyes. “I can’t think about that right now. I always loved exploration and discovery—in books. Real life is more complicated.” She opened her eyes and looked at Camie. “Don’t worry, I’m not giving up. It’s too important for that. I just... maybe I need a little time.”
“Yeah. Of course.” Camie rose and turned away. She took one step and stopped.
Erin followed the direction of her gaze and saw a man standing in the doorway. A handsome man, tall and lean in a black T-shirt and faded jeans. She didn’t know him, and yet he seemed somehow oddly familiar.
“Can we help you?” Camie asked.
The man’s gaze shifted to Erin. “Erin Hale?”
Erin nodded, suddenly aware of how she must look with her tangled hair and scraped face. At least Camie had brought her a clean shirt and shorts, so she wasn’t wearing one of those awful hospital gowns.
Camie took another step forward, positioning herself between Erin and the man. “Do you work here?”
“No.” He stepped into the room and moved to the end of the bed so he was in line with Erin again. “I, uh….” He looked from Erin to Camie and back. “I found you. In the ditch.”
“You’re the one who called the ambulance!” Camie exclaimed. She broke into a huge smile that had the man staring. “I could just kiss you for that.” To prove her point, Camie grabbed the man’s arms and planted a kiss on his cheek.
He edged back. “Uh, yeah, it was nothing.” He looked at Erin. “I just wanted to see how you’re doing. I didn’t come here for gratitude or anything.” He shrugged, looking uncomfortable. “I just got interested, you know. I know we’ve never met officially, but I couldn’t help wondering if you were okay.”
Erin could feel the warmth rising in her cheeks under his gaze. She tried to tell herself that no one expected her to look gorgeous in a hospital bed. And he’d already seen her in bad shape. But she wished she’d had a shower and a hairbrush, while at the same time wishing he would come closer, so she could get another look at those eyes.