Rattled

by Kris Bock

  “You sure he won’t just run off?” Drew asked.

  “He’ll stay close to us,” Camie said. “Nice flight. How long does it take to learn to fly one of these?”

  Drew grinned. “I recommend getting your small plane license first. Then you just have to add a few dozen hours with an instructor in the helicopter. I give lessons, if you’re interested.”

  “I just might be,” Camie murmured, her gaze roving over the helicopter like a serious car shopper eyeing a potential purchase.

  Erin shook her head. She had enjoyed the ride, but the idea of learning to fly one herself had never occurred to her. It wasn’t something ordinary people did. “Great flight,” she told Drew. “Um, can we pay you when we get back? This came up so suddenly, I didn’t think to bring cash. So unless you have a credit card machine in there....”

  He put a hand on her arm. “Don’t insult me. I know you’re good for it.”

  She felt her cheeks warm but kept her eyes on his and said, “Thank you. You saved our lives—maybe literally.”

  He ran his hand up to her shoulder. “I feel better knowing we left those thugs behind. I don’t see how they could find you out here now. But you’re stranded without the Jeep. You’re miles from any road.”

  “We have our phones in an emergency.” Erin checked hers to make sure she got reception. “It’s not great, but it should be okay, so long as we’re up high.”

  “Better turn it off now,” Camie said. “We won’t be able to recharge batteries. Plus, I’m convinced someone had a way of listening in on your phone. That’s the only thing that explains their first attack on you.”

  Erin quickly shut down the phone. Surely no one could track it all the way out there. They might have a device to listen in from her neighborhood, but she and Camie had turned off their GPS functions before they left home that morning. Still, she wasn’t about to take chances.

  Camie slipped on wraparound sunglasses and a broad-brimmed hiking hat. “Let’s get the gear unloaded and pile everything in that patch of shade.”

  Erin and Drew each grabbed a rubber tub while Camie hauled out her Finder. Soon they had the gear piled next to a rocky outcropping which provided shade a few degrees cooler than standing directly in the midday sun. “Good enough for now,” Camie said. “We have the rest of the afternoon to scout out a good campsite and get settled.”

  Drew wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. “Just how far are you going?”

  “As far as we need to go,” Camie said.

  He gave her a look, and Erin explained. “We have a sort of map, but we don’t know exactly how far we have to go or how long it will take. I’d guess we’ll be traveling a mile or two, but it could be a lot more.”

  “I don’t like leaving you alone out here,” Drew said.

  Camie gave him a grin. “No worries, we’re big girls.”

  “I know you can take care of yourselves under normal circumstances,” Drew said, “but for safety, someone ought to know exactly where you are. The desert is dangerous. What if you get injured or trapped and don’t have your phone on you? What if your phones stop working? Unless you can hike out, you’ll be stranded here.”

  Camie looked at Erin and raised her eyebrows slightly. Erin hesitated. It would be comforting to have Drew as backup. Yet she didn’t want to feel dependent on a man, just when she was doing so well at tackling adventure on her own. And yet, if anything did go wrong, she didn’t want to be dependent on a battery-powered phone that might not get reception in bad weather and certainly wouldn’t underground, if they ever found the cave.

  The questions swirled through her mind as Drew and Camie looked at her. Could she trust him that much? Should they let him in on their secret? It didn’t seem right, somehow, that he should waltz into their lives and immediately be given everything they had worked so hard to discover. He’d been a big help, but he hadn’t paid his dues.

  “Maybe I should mention that they call this Diamondback Canyon,” Drew said. “I assume that refers to the rattlesnakes found there.”

  Erin winced. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll show you the map.”

  She scrambled back up the slope and led the way across the plateau along the edge of the arroyo. She took a big step up onto a rock outcropping where she could gaze out over the boulder field. She could feel Drew’s gaze on her face as he stepped up beside her. She kept her focus on the landscape ahead. She had excellent color photocopies of the relevant pages of the book, but she also had a good memory and had spent hours studying those images. She let her gaze wander, relaxed, laying the map in her mind over the view ahead.

  A rock outcropping matched up. She rotated her mental map slightly until another feature fit. She ignored the gash of the arroyo, refusing to be distracted by the changes of the last century. Then suddenly everything slid into place.

  “What exactly are we doing?” Drew asked. “No one could be watching us.” He gestured toward the empty landscape all around to prove his point. “Can’t you just show me the map?”

  Erin smiled but didn’t look away from a spill of rocks scattered around a raised mound. “We’re on our way there.”

  She grabbed Camie’s hand and squeezed, excitement bubbling in her like a shaken bottle of champagne. Camie’s smile looked like it might split her face. “Well let’s go!”

  They scrambled ahead, leaving Drew to trail after them. Erin stopped at a cluster of boulders and studied them with her hands on her hips. “It looks right—the positions, that outcropping above. And look!” She pointed at a pale spiral, 18 inches across, etched into the darker reddish rock. “That’s one of the petroglyphs!”

  Camie crouched and touched the boulder in front of her. “Here’s another. Looks like a deer or elk or something.”

  Drew stopped beside them, frowning at the boulder field. “I don’t get it. What are you looking for?”

  Erin grinned at him. “There’s an odd legend about this treasure. Some sources mention a petroglyph map. It’s supposed to be in an ancient Celtic language, Ogam. Some people theorize that Celtic people, ‘white Indians,’ lived here over a thousand years ago. Supposedly they were the first ones to use the cave to store their treasure, and they left a map to it.”

  Drew gave her a skeptical look.

  Erin laughed. “Exactly. It’s so patently nonsense that most people ignore the tale altogether. But I wondered if there could be truth behind it. The Spanish who traveled here in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries often did leave carved stone maps to their mines or buried gold. Etchings of turtles were common landmarks.”

  Drew turned back to the rocks with more interest. “So we’re looking for a turtle?”

  “Something more complicated than that. A full map, etched onto a rock like a petroglyph, but most likely of Spanish rather than Indian design. Pretty easy to miss, especially if you weren’t looking in the right place.”

  She gestured toward a distant peak. “People had focused on Victorio Peak because one man, a known con artist, claimed he found treasure there. But I started to wonder—What if he was simply lying, to trick investors into giving him money for the recovery? What if the treasure lay safely hidden miles away? I found a picture of this petroglyph in a book. That book didn’t have anything to do with the so-called Victorio Peak treasure. It was just about petroglyphs, but it focused on this one because of its oddity. It doesn’t fit the pattern of traditional Indian glyphs. Because I had been looking for a map like this, I realized I might have found a clue.”

  Erin moved to the left, studying the rocks. It had to be there. Surely, with everything else so neatly in place, that one most important rock couldn’t have been damaged or moved. She didn’t think she’d be able to breathe normally again until she found it.

  “There!” She scrambled over a couple of boulders and crouched in front of one that had been half hidden. The rock formed an almost perfect oval like a shield about 2 feet high and 18 inches wide. Drew and Camie knelt on either side of her. E
rin touched the bottom of the boulder, where a pale line formed a mountain with an odd scooped out section on the top. “Here’s the peak above Silver Valley.”

  They all turned to look behind them at the mountain Drew had pointed out from the air, before looking back at the rock. “This line is the trail.” Erin ran her finger alongside the thin, pale mark that divided the boulder almost in two. “The arroyo wasn’t so deep in the photos, but it must basically be the path. I hope it hasn’t moved too much over the years.”

  “So what are these circles?” Drew asked.

  Erin hesitated. She thought she knew how to read the landmarks and gauge the distances. But she hadn’t planned to tell Drew even this much. They had to keep a few secrets. She brushed hair away from her damp forehead and smiled at him, hoping he wouldn’t be too offended. “If you want to find us, that’s what you’ll have to figure out.”

  He frowned at the rock, then looked back at her. “In other words, don’t call me, I’ll call you? I guess I’ll wait for your call. I should get going.”

  She touched his arm. “Drew....”

  He shook his head. “It’s all right, I understand. I don’t have to like it, but I can understand. This is your quest, not mine.”

  They rose and climbed over boulders to flatter ground. “You did it,” Camie said. She threw her arms around Erin and they hugged, laughing.

  Finally Drew said, “I’m going to get jealous in a minute here.”

  They released each other, and before she could even decide if she should, Erin threw her arms around Drew and kissed him. He held on when she would have backed away and smiled into her face. “Now that’s more like it. How long do I have to wait for another one of these?”

  Erin and Camie exchanged glances. “Three days?” Erin suggested. “If you don’t hear from us earlier, of course. We have food enough for three days, so we’ll need to either resupply then or go home if… we’re done here.” She didn’t want to say “if we have to give up.” She couldn’t quite bring herself to say “if we’ve already found the treasure.” She’d been working on this project for so long, it seemed impossible that it might be over in just a few more days. But she couldn’t bear to think that they might fail and have to go back to the beginning. Better to focus on the next step and not think too much about the future.

  “That should work,” Drew said. “I have to go to Silver Valley tomorrow, so I’ll be around. And I’ll try to keep my schedule pretty clear the next couple of days.”

  He dipped his head and Erin met his kiss. She’d expected something brief, given that he’d been annoyed with her and they were standing in the hot sun with Camie a few feet away. But he held her close and kept his lips on hers until she melted into his embrace.

  When he finally eased back, Erin sighed, flushed with heat that came from inside, not the glaring sun. Her eyelids felt heavy, but she eased them open and gazed at him, wanting one last long look.

  He tipped his forehead down to hers. “That’s definitely more like it. Don’t forget me.” He released her, gave Camie a wave, and strode away, pausing to pet Tiger where he sat watching them from a patch of shade.

  Erin watched him go, then noticed Camie’s grin. “All right, go ahead and say it.”

  Camie shook her head. “You didn’t leave me anything to say.” She pushed her damp hair off her face. “Much as I’d love to start hunting now, we should set up our camp first. We can’t risk stumbling around in the dark and tripping over a rattler.”

  “Will snakes be out after dark?”

  “They do most of their hunting at dusk. We’ll want to sweep the area for scorpions, too. They’re nocturnal. You don’t see many in town until the end of summer, but why take chances? Drew was right about that—help is a long way off.”

  Erin nodded. “Even stumbling and twisting an ankle would cause problems, especially at night. I guess we work during the day and make sure we’re back at camp before dusk.” She glanced at the clear blue sky above, but had lived in New Mexico long enough to know that storms could blow up while your back was turned, and whether or not it was “monsoon season” had little to do with the weather. “I know we should stay out of the arroyo to avoid any chance of flooding. But I’d rather be out of sight in case anyone scouts for us from the air.”

  Camie scanned the horizon to the north. “I’m with you there. If we’re lucky, they’ll be busy hunting for us over by Victorio Peak. But at the risk of sounding repetitive—” She looked at Erin, and they finished the sentence together. “Why take chances?”

  Erin sighed. Rattlesnakes, scorpions, flash floods, twisted ankles, a dangerously handsome helicopter pilot, and somewhere out there, mysterious goons who weren’t afraid to hurt people to get their hands on the treasure. How could not taking chances still hold so many risks?

  Chapter 16

  Drew stopped by Silver Valley to check on a few things. That would keep him away from town for several more hours, so anyone watching for his return wouldn’t be able to guess how far he’d taken the women based on the flight time.

  All afternoon he kept glancing at his phone, making sure Erin hadn’t called. It was good that she hadn’t—that meant everything was fine. But he wished she would. Maybe he’d call her in the morning. She’d probably have her phone off, but he could leave a message, just remind her he was ready to help.

  He chuckled at himself. He didn’t mind giving the occasional pretty girl a free helicopter ride, but he didn’t like it when women pestered him for favors or acted like he owed them. Erin had strictly avoided asking him for favors, had sometimes seemed reluctant to take his help when he offered it. And here he was feeling left out because they didn’t need or want his help hunting the treasure. Oh well, at least he could laugh at himself.

  The sun was setting as he flew back, but the dimming light didn’t bother him. New Mexico sunsets looked even more spectacular from the sky. Clouds to the west faded from a dark purple high up to streaks of orange and crimson and down to a liquid gold fire as the sun set behind the black silhouette of the mountains. The mountains weren’t much by Montana standards; the one “mountain” that loomed over town only rose about a thousand feet. But Drew had to admire the sunsets. They lit up the west in garish colors and turned the distant mountain range to the east a startling rosy color, like the inside of a watermelon.

  By the time he landed, stars pricked an indigo sky. The tiny airport wasn’t well lit, but blue lights identified the runway, and any small planes coming in would make announcements over the radio.

  He landed near his rented hangar and shut down the helicopter. Drew wanted to be ready to go at a moment’s notice, in case Erin and Camie needed him. He was embarrassed fantasizing about rescuing the damsel in distress. He’d be downright humiliated if he actually got the chance and blew it. Because night was falling fast and the moon wasn’t yet up, he decided to pull the helicopter into the hangar so he could do his safety check under electric lights. The airport didn’t even have decent perimeter security lights, just a street lamp near the gate, but that was a small town for you.

  Drew headed for the hangar. He’d gone two steps when something moved out of the shadows along the building. He paused, senses on alert, as two men came toward him. Both were wearing hats and he couldn’t see their faces clearly in the dim light. They might not have been the men from the SUV, but his guard went up. Neither man was tall, but one was stocky—it was hard to tell in that light how much was muscle—and two against one was always an extra challenge.

  The men stopped a few feet from Drew. They didn’t say anything. Drew couldn’t tell if it was supposed to be an intimidation tactic or if they just hadn’t figured out what to say. Drew waited, smiling slightly, letting them make the first move.

  The bigger man shifted and glanced at his companion. Finally the smaller man spoke. “You took a couple of women up today.”

  Drew didn’t bother to confirm or deny it, just kept a look of polite interest, though his muscles had tensed in
a fight or flight response.

  “We’d like to know where you took them.”

  “I’d like to know tomorrow’s winning lottery number,” Drew said. “We can’t always get what we want.”

  “We’ll make it worth your while.”

  Drew considered. “How much?”

  “Five hundred dollars.”

  Drew snorted. “Pocket change.” He considered walking off to make his point but didn’t want to turn his back on the men.

  The men exchanged glances. Drew wished he could get a better look at their faces. They could have been Anglo or Hispanic. The one who spoke had a local accent, nothing special. He said, “We’ll make it two thousand.”

  Drew let the silence hang before he said, “Ten thousand.”

  The silence went on longer this time. Finally the smaller man cleared his throat and said, “Five thousand. That’s as high as I can go.”

  Drew grinned. “Let’s see it.”

  “We don’t have that much in cash now. We’ll give you an advance for the info and bring the rest tomorrow.”

  Drew shook his head. “Gee, I’m sorry. You must have mistaken me for an idiot. You can come back when you have the money.”

  The men took a step closer to him and spread out. The big one shifted his weight like a pro wrestler getting ready to rumble. The smaller one said, “Why don’t you tell us now? Or in a minute, you’ll tell us for nothing.”

  Drew decided to take a gamble. “Tell you what, come into the hangar and we’ll talk.” He turned toward the building with a friendly “come along” gesture. “You want a beer? I got a little fridge in there.” He wondered if the men would be stupid enough to follow him into the hangar, where he could see them in the light. Their behavior to date had seemed determined but not especially bright.