And Lana had been there once more to save her. She gazed admiringly at her classic profile. Lana was hanging tight on to the handle above the window and gripping the side of her seat with the other, but she had a sort of thrilled, animated expression on her face that Michelle found very attractive. Lana was more like her than perhaps anyone wanted to give her credit for, particularly the woman in the driver’s seat.
Emily, from what she could see, was serious, her keen gaze concerned, but she was also incredibly calm, driving through the snowy night as if it were a perfectly sunny day, glancing in the rearview mirror at her pursuers every so often but not seeming fazed at all. Regardless of any personal animosity, Michelle was forced to admit the woman had it together.
“Do you have the cross?” Lana asked.
Michelle shook her head. That was the only part of her actions she regretted. “Pierre had it resting on his lap,” she explained. “I would have tried to grab it, but I didn’t want to give them any warning about what I was about to do.”
“I wish you’d given us some warning,” Lana said, glancing back at her. “You nearly gave me a heart attack.” She seemed to see Michelle for the first time, and her eyes narrowed. “You’re bleeding.”
“I’m all right,” Michelle assured her. “Nothing serious.” She leaned forward between the seats and tried to see Emily’s face. “Will they catch us?”
“Unlikely,” Emily said confidently. “The rental’s a four-cylinder. This has eight. On their best day, they couldn’t catch me. In this weather? They don’t stand a chance. Frankly, it’s harder for me to maintain a slow-enough speed to keep them interested in chasing us than it would be to lose them right now.”
Michelle blinked at the revelation that Emily was deliberately luring them on and realized she’d concocted some sort of plan. She just hoped it was a good one. They were already traveling far faster than she was comfortable with, while the lights behind them never wavered.
“Why didn’t you tell me about your father?” Lana demanded suddenly.
Michelle started. Lana was using that authoritative tone that was like a whip across the back, stinging and sharp. “My father? What are you talking about?”
Emily looked at Lana. “She doesn’t know Juan told us Hector is her father.” She glanced back at Michelle. “You’d better tell her. You’re already on pretty thin ice with us.”
Michelle’s heart sank to her boots. She couldn’t believe Juan had spilled the beans. “It’s not like that,” she said, trying not to sound too defensive. “I mean, Hector is my father, but I didn’t grow up with him. He wasn’t married to my mom or anything. They were just ships passing, you know? Neither of us knew until I was in my last year of high school when my mom finally told me. And I told him.”
“Are you connected to Tulane University at all?” Lana was relentless, her questions hammering like body blows, one after another. “And don’t you dare lie to me again, or I swear, you won’t have to jump out of this car. I’ll throw you the hell out myself.”
Michelle gulped, and Emily offered Lana a sideways glance of pure admiration. “I go to school there,” she admitted, conscious that a threat from Lana sounded so much more dire than any Juan or Pierre had made. “When I discovered Hector was into all this Acadian stuff, I became a history major. He was paying for my degree so when I discovered the letters while I was working on my thesis I told him about Father Beauséjour. Then Hector showed me Thomas’s diary because they were in Grand-Pré together.” She paused, trying to find a good spin and failing utterly. “I think I went a little crazy when I discovered the existence of the cross. I guess I wanted to show Hector what I could do on my own, without his money. If I could find the cross, I could somehow pay him back and prove I was a real historian at the same time. I swiped the materials from the university archives, took the diary from Hector’s collection, and headed for the airport. Hector sent Juan and Pierre to bring me back. They do all his dirty work.”
“But they didn’t run you off the road.”
“Not exactly,” Michelle admitted. “I mean, they did, in a way, but it was an accident. They were just trying to get me to stop. I lost control when I came around the curve and went down over the bank. Then they saw you coming, and they kept on going rather than stick around. I don’t think they knew I was in danger of going into the river.”
“Juan just shot at us,” Emily said coldly.
“He was probably trying to take out your radiator or your tire or something. He’s not that great a shot.”
“Christ,” Emily muttered. “Americans and their guns.”
“If they work for your father and were only trying to take you home, why the hell did you jump out of the car?” Lana sounded less angry now and more puzzled.
“Because I don’t think that was the plan anymore,” Michelle said. “They were talking about melting down the cross and how much they could get for it. I was afraid they were about to cheat Hector and leave me on the side of the road while they took the cross for themselves.” She swallowed. “So when I saw you following us, I thought it was my only chance of rescue.”
“Hang on,” Emily said suddenly, putting the discussion on pause as they crested a ridge. “This next part’s a bit tricky.”
As they descended the long hill, rather than brake, Emily kept her foot steady, not accelerating but not slowing either, and she’d shifted into the lowest gear. At the bottom of the hill was a bridge, not very large but spanning a river swollen from snowmelt and choked with ice. The water hadn’t reached the level of the road, the bridge far too high for that, but was still more expansive than Michelle suspected it should be, spreading from one hill to the other rather than flowing shallowly over rocks as it cut through a ravine of meadow and trees.
“Here we go,” Emily said as they shot across the bridge without losing speed and started up the next hill. “Bridges always freeze first. A little black ice should do the trick.”
The lights behind them abruptly wavered wildly back and forth. Michelle twisted in her seat, looking out the back window to see the rental car go sideways across the bridge and pinball between the thick, green metal supports before flying through the guardrail on the near side of the bridge. The headlights sailed gracefully through the darkness to land on a flat stretch of ice and water several meters below.
“Holy shit!” Michelle knew her mouth had dropped open, but she couldn’t help it.
Emily stopped, threw the car in reverse, and backed down the hill until she was once more on the bridge. “Stay in the car,” she ordered in the sort of tone that indicated they had better listen or face the consequences. She quickly went behind the car, opened the trunk, grabbed her backpack, and moved to the end of the bridge, peering over the side through the gaping hole in the guardrail.
Michelle, for all her bravado, didn’t intend to disobey.
Lana did roll down her window so she could see, the icy air chilling the interior of the car and blowing snowflakes onto her face. Michelle unfastened her seat belt and wormed her way up front so she could watch over Lana’s shoulder. They couldn’t spot the other car from up here, but they could see Emily leaning over the bank, one hand on the bridge rail for support, her large black flashlight in the other, the bright beam flashing off the snow flurries dancing in the air.
“Get out of the car and stand on the roof,” she said in a loud, authoritative tone. She waited, obviously for a response, then reached for the rope slung over her shoulder, presumably showing it to the men below. “I’m going to toss you the end and pull you up the bank. But first I want to see the weapon.” She turned her head and looked back at Lana. “Get down,” she hissed. “Below the window in case he fires.”
“The gun’s in the car,” Michelle heard Juan yell. “Get us out of here.”
“Show me the weapon!” Emily repeated, unmoving.
“We don’t have it. It’s still in the car. Throw us the fuckin’ rope!” That was Pierre. Michelle hoped Emily didn’t belie
ve him.
“Show me the weapon or I’m getting back in my car and driving away from here,” Emily said, her tone resolute. “By the time I contact the authorities and return here, you’ll either have drowned or frozen to death. Take your pick.”
During a pause, both Lana and Michelle shrank down in the car as they saw Emily ease back behind the bridge railing, using it as cover. “Throw the weapon away from you as far as you can.”
They heard a cracking sound. Not gunfire as Michelle first thought but, rather, the grinding of ice moving against metal. “Jesus, get us out of here!” Juan screamed.
“Throw away the gun!” Emily repeated. “This is your last warning!”
“Okay, okay, I’m tossing it,” Pierre shouted. “See! There it goes.”
Emily stood up, rising from the protection of the bridge railing. Taking that as their cue, Lana and Michelle also straightened, craning their necks to see, though they couldn’t discern much from their vantage point. Michelle was almost beside herself in frustration and made a move for the driver’s door, though Lana grabbed her arm.
“No,” she said firmly, her eyes dark. “Let Emily handle this. She knows what she’s doing.”
Emily stood up, and after placing the flashlight in the crosspiece of the bridge rail so that it angled downward to light the way, she secured her end of the rope to one of the splintered guardrail posts and tossed the other end down over the bank. “All right, Juan, tie the rope around your waist and climb up first. You or your friend make a wrong move and I pull this slipknot, releasing the rope. You can take your chances after that.”
Peering through the windshield, Michelle watched as Emily stood on the bank, balanced on the balls of her feet, the rope twitching violently as someone used it to climb up the rocky slope. Juan’s dark head appeared over the edge, and that’s when Emily moved, grabbing him by the scruff of the neck and hauling him the rest of the way. The way she held on kept him off balance, forcing him facedown onto the wet pavement. Kneeling over him, knee dug firmly into the small of his back, she secured his hands behind him with some long white, plastic zip ties, then did the same to his ankles.
After that, she went through his pockets, retrieving his phone, as well as Michelle’s, ignoring the shouts from Pierre, who continued to demand she toss the rope to him. Instead, she calmly pressed three numbers on the phone, undoubtedly 911, and spent the next few minutes speaking intently, all the while keeping Juan immobilized beneath her.
After she hung up, she dragged Juan over to the rail of the bridge and secured him to it with more zip ties. Only then did she undo the rope from around Juan’s waist and move back to the bank. Michelle couldn’t help it. She got out of the car before Lana could stop her, slipping a little in the slush as she raced over to Juan.
“I told you to stay in the car!” Emily said angrily.
Michelle ignored her, searching through Juan’s pockets. “Do you have it?”
“It’s still in the car.” He tried to shake her off, limited by the way his hands were secured. “Get away from me.”
“Michelle, leave him alone.” Lana came up behind Michelle and pulled her away.
Michelle shook her off and ran over to where Emily was looking down over the bank. Now she could see how the rental car had landed on the flooded meadow below, the bumper caught up on some jagged rocks poking up through the ice but still rocking precariously beneath Pierre. Both men were fortunate it had landed right side up. Had it landed upside-down, they would probably be dead at this point. Pierre staggered at little as he stood on the roof, his craggy features a mask of fear.
“Hurry up!”
“Where’s the cross?!” Michelle screamed.
“In the car on the front seat!” He looked wildly at Emily. “Throw me the rope. It’s going to give way! Please!”
“Get the cross!” Michelle shouted at him. Frantically she looked around, trying to find a way down the sheer embankment to where the car was slowly shifting sideways with the current.
“It’s not safe to go back in the car,” Emily warned Pierre, though he gave no indication he might try. “I’m tossing down the rope. Tie it around your waist!”
As she did so, Michelle took a step over the edge of the bank. She couldn’t lose it now. Not after everything she’d been through.
“Lana, grab her!” Emily cried.
Michelle felt herself yanked backward. Distantly, she was aware of tears streaming down her face, of struggling to reach the car below as Lana pulled her back and then finally pinned her against the bridge railing.
“Michelle, stop! You can’t get down there.”
“No, don’t let it go!” she cried helplessly as Pierre stepped down on the car trunk that was rapidly being covered with water and took a huge leap for the bank, catching hold of the rocks there. He began to climb up, aided by the rope, and when he reached the top, he suffered the same treatment from Emily that Juan had, swiftly subdued with cleverly applied leverage and secured with zip ties.
Below, the car finally surrendered to the current, breaking loose from the bank as large chunks of ice slammed into the side and carried it downriver. It tilted downward as it reached a deeper part of the river, showing the rear underside and axle, and then it began to subside. Michelle reached out, barely conscious of Lana almost lying on top of her in order to keep her down, to keep her from plunging down the bank after it
The rear bumper with the car rental sticker was the last thing Michelle saw, and then it was gone, sinking beneath the ice and the rippling black surface.
Chapter Twenty-seven
The red and blue flashing lights cast surreal reflections over the surrounding hills as cruisers from both the Cheticamp and Baddeck detachments were on scene, along with a couple of ambulances, two fire trucks, and a tow truck sitting idle on the off chance it might be needed to haul out the sedan. The vehicles lined each side of the narrow highway from halfway up the hill to the bridge. Down below, on the edge of the flooded riverbanks, two RCMP constables, secured with harness, were retrieving the gun from where Pierre had thrown it into the rocks. Meanwhile, the EMTs were treating him and Juan for possible exposure. Emily hadn’t released them from the bridge railing until other officers were on the scene and could take over. The two men had become considerably cold while waiting, and neither was dressed for this type of weather.
Emily supposed she should feel guilty about that, but it was difficult when she thought about how close that gunshot ricochet off the hood had come to Lana’s head. Not to mention the unsightly dent and scratch that now marred the paint of her beloved Challenger. A little cold wouldn’t hurt them, she thought, as she eyed them darkly.
At the moment, she was leaning against the front of her car, arms crossed over her chest, Lana standing next to her, as they watched Michelle being treated in the back of the other ambulance. She looked very small huddled in the shelter of a blanket, her eyes blank and staring straight ahead, seemingly heedless of the attention being paid to the various lacerations she’d acquired during her ill-advised leap from the car. Despite her antipathy, Emily felt sorry for her.
“She looks lost,” Lana said.
“It’s hard to be that close to your heart’s desire and lose it at the last moment,” Emily said.
Lana leaned into her, nudging her with her shoulder. “Speaking from experience?”
Emily grinned at her. “I’m rather hoping I have my heart’s desire. Unless I’m wrong?”
“Maybe just a little ahead of yourself,” Lana said, but she smiled, too.
“Listen, they’re probably going to take us back to Cheticamp while all this is sorted out. That was where the illegal confinement took place. It may take a few days before you can go home.”
“I don’t really have anyplace else to be,” Lana said, with a bit of a sigh. “At least I’ll be able to return the snowshoes and register for another night at the cabins. Which is good because I was not looking forward to that credit-card statement.” She lif
ted her chin. “What about you?”
“Me?” Emily winced. “The paperwork alone is going to take forever. Then I’ll have to explain everything to my supervisor. I don’t think participating in a treasure hunt will play particularly well with him.”
“Well, tell him you just came along to protect me.”
“Oh, yes, I’m sure that’ll make it so much better,” Emily said, dryly, and inserted a Cagney impression in her tone. “Hey, Boss, I was chasing this dame, see, and it just got out of hand.”
“Dame?” Lana laughed. “So you like old movies, too.”
Emily, feeling the brush of snowflakes against her face, grinned. “Yep, and on a night like tonight, I’d much rather be curled up in front of the TV with popcorn and you than out here pulling a car out of the water.”
“Do you think they’ll actually find it tonight?”
“Depends on the current,” Emily said. “According to Constable Collins, Middle River eventually empties out into Nyanza Bay, but the car will probably catch up on some rocks long before that. God knows, there’s plenty of incentive to find it now, rather than wait for spring. The cross will be discovered.” She glanced over at Michelle again. “In the meantime, she’ll get credit for uncovering its existence, even if they downplay how she went about finding it.”
“I think that’s all she really wants. The acknowledgement of her research.”
“Is it?” Emily felt a qualm ripple through her. “I hope you’re right.”
She lifted her head as Collins approached. He was young, clearly only months into the job, with one of those mustaches three decades out of date that rookies always seemed to favor.
“They’ll be taking Miss Devereaux to Cape Breton Regional Hospital in Baddeck for observation overnight,” he explained. “The EMTs think she may have sustained a concussion.” He glanced briefly at Lana and then lowered his voice. “Did she really jump out of the car while it was moving?”
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