Chapter Ten
Amanda Stanton
Dear god, this guy was annoying, he really fricking was.
For some reason, despite the frantic last several hours I’d had with him, I was starting to get a handle on this. I was still frightened and overcome by the reality of it all, but at least I wasn’t a sobbing mess in the back of his car.
Blame it on all of those stories my great-uncle had once told me, the ones about adventure and treasure, the ones the rest of the family had told me were nothing but lies. Despite the crazy awfulness happening to me, I was starting to realize that those stories had likely been true. Dammit if there wasn’t something romantic about that, something to distract me from the fact I was being hunted by god knows who with god knows how many guns.
The possibility of realizing how true my great-uncle’s tales had been was pretty much the only thing stopping me from truly freaking out. If I threw myself headfirst into this adventure, and I didn’t give myself time to appreciate how much trouble I was in, then I could hold myself together.
My great-uncle had been able to do it all those years back. Why couldn’t I do it? Hell, Sebastian, who was turning out to be an annoying lecherous idiot, could obviously do it too. If he could do it, goddammit if I wasn’t going to do it better.
With a sniff, I reached out my hand and gently ran my fingers across the inscription carved into the plain gravestone. I didn’t know what I was looking for. There’d been a passage in my great-uncle’s journal that had suggested that ‘the stone which lay under the sky god’s tree holds the key.’ I knew from my studies that oak trees were the tree most often struck by lightning, and therefore had been associated in ancient times with gods of the sky. I assumed this gravestone was the stone the passage referred to, being, as it was, under an oak tree.
“Hey, do you possibly want to give me the journal, so we can, I don’t know, get this over with before Maratova and his men find us?” Sebastian looked up at the sky, possibly checking that helicopters or nasty soldiers weren’t jumping down from the clouds above.
While I had no doubt Sebastian was right, and that Maratova and more were after us, for some reason I didn’t feel as if we were about to be disturbed anytime soon. Plus, although I didn’t know how these things went down, I assumed getting my hands on the next Stargazer Globe would at least give us some leverage. Plus, it was something to keep busy with, and I needed to keep busy.
Sebastian leaned down, setting his gun into the back of his pants and grabbing my elbow. He yanked the book out from underneath it, despite my protestations.
“You jerk,” I complained as I fell against the gravestone.
He grinned, picked up his gun, and started to leaf through the book. I resisted the urge to lash out and kick him in the shins. I stood up, dusted off my skirt, and swore at him. “You keep on going on about how quick we need to be, but you don’t appreciate that not only am I the great-niece of the guy that wrote that book, but I’ve read it, as well as most of his other notes.” I crossed my arms tightly in front of my chest.
It was Sebastian’s turn to ignore me, and he did a sterling job, one eyebrow raised as he flicked through the journal.
“You know, you are an insufferable jerk,” I continued with another sniff.
“I didn’t see you complaining about me when I saved you from the guy outside the library,” he said without looking up as he gently turned the pages of the journal.
I snorted. “I didn’t see you complaining when I saved you from that guy outside the library, or have you forgotten it was me who pulled up in front of him, opened the door, and got you out of there before he could shoot you to pieces?”
He smiled, but it wasn’t a nice smile, and it wasn’t a smile that suggested he was giving in to me. He did, however, look up. “I imagine what we’ll be looking for is in the dead center of the church,” he gave a yawn as he closed the journal with a snap. “I think you will find all that junk about clues is to confuse us. I’ll bet you that the only place structurally secure enough is the center of the church.”
Jesus Christ, he had such a sanctimonious look on his face. Seriously, not even his mother could like this guy. There was something so exquisitely arrogant about him, something so…. Well, let’s put it this way: all I wanted to do was slap him.
Without saying where he was going, or suggesting I follow, he turned and walked back to the front of the church. He could get stuffed if he thought I was going to follow him. He might have thought he was the world’s greatest treasure hunter, but that didn’t mean that he knew my great-uncle. Arthur Stanton had loved clues, he had loved games too. Every Saturday when I’d gone to visit him as a child, he would always hide things around the house for me and would leave me clues written on scraps of paper hidden beside the fridge or behind the couch. Sebastian could think what he wanted, but honest to god it was wrong and fueled more by his testosterone than his reason.
I turned back to the gravestone, sticking my tongue firmly behind my teeth as I tried to think. The inscription on the gravestone was simple, and it didn’t seem like a clue.
“The stone under the tree,” I mumbled under my breath. I repeated it several times as I walked around the gravestone, careful not to walk over the grave itself. Unlike Sebastian, I had respect for the dead.
I checked the back of the gravestone, running my hand all the way across its length in case there was a mark to indicate a message had worn off over the years. There wasn’t anything. I then decided that perhaps the stone under the tree indicated something else, and I turned to survey the old oak behind me.
I stared up into its gnarled, many-branched trunk. There wasn’t a stone lodged anywhere, not that I could see. If the stone was buried at the roots of the enormous tree, then I was stiff out of luck, because I didn’t have a spade and I didn’t fancy asking Sebastian for one. It was at that moment I started to hear loud banging noises emanating from the church behind me, interspersed with even louder and irritatingly manly grunts.
Muttering to myself about how annoying that man was, I tried to think of what else a stone could be. Whenever my great-uncle had posed me a riddle, or begun a game which I couldn’t end, he had always told me to think of at least 10 possibilities of what I could do next. He called it fluid thinking and had muttered something about how he had learned it from a great priest in Peru. Basically, when you are stuck, try to think of 10 possible solutions, and force your mind to finish the task, no matter how hard it gets, and no matter how much your mind wants to wander away.
So I held out my fingers in front of me and waggled them for a bit. “The stone could mean the gravestone.” I held up a thumb. “The stone could mean a stone buried under the roots of the tree.” I held up another finger. “It could mean a name, like John Stone or something.” I held up another finger, smiling as my answers were starting to become more creative. “It could mean a gem or some other precious stone, perhaps in a ring, and perhaps the inscription is on the inside of the ring.” I held up another finger, my answers coming quicker. “It could mean a characteristic, perhaps something that is stone-like, concrete, solid, but not technically made of stone.” I began to bite my lip harder, turning around as I stood there, staring up at the church, the rest of the graveyard, the oak, even the woods beyond, as I tried to think of yet more possibilities. “What else does stone mean?”
I blinked, smiling with surprise as a fantastic thought popped to mind. “Stone as in the unit of measurement.” I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. I turned back to the tree and wondered how a clue could be found in a unit of measurement that was somehow meant to be under a tree.
I remembered another snippet of my great-uncle’s advice: if you are having trouble seeing a solution, take 10 steps back. Arthur Stanton, bless his soul, always did things in groups of 10. It was another reason that the rest of my family, especially my Great-Aunt Imelda, had thought him batty.
Considering how crazy my current situation was, adding some more crazy to it didn’t seem l
ike it would make a difference. So I took 10 steps back from my situation, my hands clasped behind me as I inched my way through the graveyard, keeping my eyes on the oak tree.
The solution didn’t pop out at me, and I stared at the oak tree, head on the side, waiting for inspiration to strike.
That would be when I heard the guffaws of laughter behind me.
“You are fucking mad,” Sebastian said between even harsher laughs.
I turned, cheeks irritatingly flushed at being disturbed so rudely. “Shut up,” was all I could manage.
He had a spade slung over his shoulder, one arm resting on it easily. He had taken that ridiculously expensive-looking jacket off, and had rolled up the sleeves of his white shirt, the first several buttons undone. I noticed the deep marks on his wrists – no wonder he’d been so well dressed this morning. I wondered to myself what had happened to him last night – perhaps he was into S&M? I noticed also that somehow, despite the fact that the end of his spade was covered with dust and clogged with dirt, his shirt was still as pristine as it had been first thing that morning – so he was a neat freak too.
He must have caught my gaze as it lingered over his arms. “Staring again?” he questioned.
I shot him an irritated look. I tapped my hands on my legs and tried to raise my head up until I was staring down my nose at him, despite the fact that he was a fair bit taller than me. “Well, so have you found it then?”
I could tell by the less-than-triumphant look on his face that the answer was no. That didn’t stop him from offering me one of those awful, excessively-arrogant smiles. “No, have you fallen over and broken your neck from walking backward in a graveyard yet?” He brought the spade down in an easy arc and let it sink into the soft ground below him.
I sucked in my lips, trying hard to think of something more dignified and witty than shut up.
“Excellent comeback,” he said after a while. His expression hardened. “How can you be so sure,” he grabbed the journal that had been tucked into the pocket of his pants and gestured with it, “That your great-uncle wasn’t lying?”
“Are you suggesting that because you haven’t been able to find the globe after two minutes of digging, in a place that you arbitrarily decided was the right one, that the globe isn’t here?”
His lips pulled back over his teeth, and he snorted out a laugh. “Listen to me, lady, I have been in this business a lot longer than you have. This,” he gestured to the church and the graveyard with the journal, “Doesn’t feel like a treasure trove to me.”
I crossed my arms and stared back at him. “Well, it isn’t meant to be a treasure trove, is it? It’s meant to be the location of a treasure map. The map is meant to lead us to treasure,” I said each word clearly as if I was talking to the densest of children.
He shook his head, lips pulling up even further over his perfect teeth.
“Did you find anything in there?” I didn’t uncross my arms, and nor did I tone down the harsh edge to my voice; this guy deserved it. “Or did you just find dirt?”
He raised his eyebrows and dipped them again. “You are showing far too much attitude, and not nearly enough gratitude. Or have you forgotten that I saved you last night? Would you have preferred I left you to the less-than-kind activities those mercenaries and criminals could have dished out to you?”
I hated the fact I shook at that. I might have been holding it together, even going toe-to-toe with this irascible and pompous idiot, but that didn’t mean that I had forgotten what happened last night. Nor did it mean that I had gotten over it. I was going full steam ahead here, in the hope that I didn’t have the chance to truly appreciate how much trouble I was in.
Sebastian kept his gaze stony, his stance tense and macho. I fancied, as my own shoulders twitched at his words, and my eyes blinked and half closed, that he softened. Shifting his jaw from side-to-side, he glanced at the oak behind me. “Did you find anything?”
I shook my head. “I’m still in the looking-for-clues stage,” I admitted honestly and with an annoyingly innocent voice which I tried to cough into submission.
“Well, all I found was a set of scales. But I was right. There was treasure at the center of the church; it just isn’t what we’re looking for.”
I looked up sharply, letting my lips open in surprise.
He must have thought I was shocked and awed by his ability to find treasure so quickly, and one corner of his mouth clinked up in a self-satisfied grin. “It is gold too, or at least gold-plated.”
Blinking, I rushed past him, heading to the church. It was a long shot, but he had found scales, so did that mean that the stone in the clue was the unit of measurement? Before I could race off and see the scales for myself, I realized I still hadn’t solved the clue properly. It had spoken of the stone found beneath a tree.
Sebastian chuckled lightly as he drew to a stop beside me, spade slung over his shoulder again. “Keep your skirt on, rookie; the treasure isn’t going anywhere.”
“Is there a tree in the church?” I asked, playing with the end of my fingers as I always did when I was thinking hard.
“Not yet, but I imagine when these woods have their way, they will encroach right into that church,” Sebastian answered, and for the first time he didn’t add a sarcastic grin or mean wink to it.
I plunged my top teeth into my bottom lip, noted the way Sebastian smiled curiously at that and turned to run toward the church.
Perhaps I’d been wrong, and the tree referred to in the passage wasn’t the one in the graveyard. Perhaps, somehow, there was a tree in the church, or at least something that technically fitted the description of the sky god’s tree.
Showing too much excitement, and even grinning wildly at the possibility I might solve this clue, I ran into the church. Sebastian had pulled aside the broken pews and had even rolled several of the massive stones that had fallen down from the ceiling above to the side, clearing a neat semicircle right in the dead center of the church.
There was a rough hole dug right into the middle of the clearing, several of the flagstones shifted off to the side, and a neat package sitting reverently on top of one, chunks of dirt covering the stained cloth with leather tied around it like a parcel.
I rushed over to it, Sebastian warning yet again that unless I slowed down, I would break my neck.
I sat down next to the package once I reached it, pulling down my skirt as I did, lest it rode up from behind.
I picked up the package gently, placing it on my lap as I unwrapped it. It was a set of scales; Sebastian hadn’t lied about that. It did look like it was gold. An infectious smile spread across my face as I tried not to get too excited at the possibility I could figure this clue out.
“I found that; it’s mine,” Sebastian clarified, letting the spade clang down beside him as he walked right up to me and loomed there.
As I held the scales, playing lightly with the mechanism, and gently moving it around as I surveyed it, I strove to ignore him.
“As great as it is – and you should remember it’s mine,” he clarified again, “We need to find the globe that is meant to be here. If it is here,” he sighed deeply. “Every second we stay here is a second they,” he stabbed a finger at the door, “Get closer to finding us.”
I put a finger to my lips and hissed out a shhh. Then, still biting my lips, I looked around the church. There weren’t any trees that I could see, unless they were tiny. I let my eyes settle above me, and noticed a sturdy wooden beam that ran across the length of the church, supporting the heavy ceiling above.
I stood up, careful not to drop the heavy scales, head still turned toward the ceiling.
“What wood do you think that beam is up there?”
“Probably oak, probably from the woods outside, why? Do you think we can knock it down and use it to smash our enemies?” He took the chance to gesture with his gun. “I think I’ll stick with my gun.”
I did a dance as the word ‘oak’ issued from his mouth. The tre
e of the sky god. I had a set of scales in my hand, scales that had been found under an oak tree, or at least a section of such a tree.
“Do you have a stone on you?” I asked Sebastian.
Sebastian’s eyebrows smoothly peaked together. He leaned down, picked up a small stone from next to my foot, brushing too close to my leg as he rose, and handed it to me. “You are mad.”
I took the stone and threw it away. “Not a stone, a stone.”
He laughed loudly. “Fuck,” he let the word draw out. “Sorry, a stone,” he said, voice dripping with sarcasm.
I put one hand on my hip, despite how heavy it was to hold up the scales with the other. “I need a unit of measurement. You know, a stone of weight.”
If he looked incredulous and sarcastic before, he looked dismissive now.
“Look, there is a passage in my great-uncle’s journal that says there is a clue to the globe’s whereabouts on a stone under the sky god’s tree. The sky god’s tree, I think, means an oak tree, because that’s what was often associated with sky deities in ancient times,” I kept my words clear and slow, as if I was leading a class of five-year-olds, “And now that you’ve found a set of scales, I think the word stone refers to the unit of measurement. So maybe if we could—”
Sebastian leaned in, grabbed the scales off me, brushing past my arms as he did, and stared down at them.
“Excuse me,” I blurted out.
He placed the scales on the ground, picked up his spade, and before I could stop him swung it around in a great arc and struck it.
I gave a stifled scream. “What are you doing?”
While his first blow had dented the scales, it hadn’t broken them. He pulled up his spade to strike again, and before I could stop him, he settled yet another blow.
“It’s gold.” I tried to reason with him, as he struck again with a seriously excessive manly grunt pushing his chest out.
“Soft metal,” was all he said as he tried to strike it again. After several more blows, the weighing mechanism snapped off. Letting the spade clatter to the ground, Sebastian dropped to his knees, grabbed the base of the scales in one hand and tipped it up. He shook it, and a small parchment of rolled-up paper tumbled out and onto the ground by my feet.
The look on his face was a mix of schoolboy enthusiasm and irritatingly attractive charm. He raised an eyebrow, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand and dipping his head. “There is your clue, Amanda.”
I leaned down to pick it up, but before I could get there, he snatched it off the ground, looking right into my eyes as he passed me and stood. He pulled off a string tightly wound around the parchment and threw it to the ground. Then he unwound the old paper, eyes darting over whatever he saw written there.
I stupidly stood there and waited for him to offer me the parchment once he had finished with it, or at least tell me what was written there. He didn’t; he shifted his jaw from side-to-side – something he did a lot – and wound the paper back up and popped it into the pocket of his shirt. He shrugged at me. “Looks like old Stanton was fond of clues then.” He turned from me, leaned down and grabbed the spade, and headed for the door.
Teeth bared with frustration at how arrogant this man was, I balled my hands into fists and followed him. “I could have told you that, if only you could listen.”
I marched behind him, dodging my way around the obstacles that littered the floor and drawing up beside him as he made it to the front door.
That would be when he flung out his arm, stopping me in place.
The sound of a car drawing to a halt outside filtered through the crack of the half-open door.
“Fuck,” he said quietly, repeating it several times with a bitter twist to his voice.
Heart in my throat, I tried to move past to see who it was. Though the fear twisting through my gut and rushing down my back told me to turn and find somewhere to hide, it was better to ensure there was something to run from first.
When the sound of gunfire or the guttural, horrible laughs of criminals didn’t meet my ears, I sucked my lips in with a pop. “Maybe it’s someone else, someone who isn’t after us,” I suggested innocently.
Rather than tell me to shut up, Sebastian turned to me and cut a finger across his throat.
I got the message. I took several steps back.
That would be when I heard whistling. A pleasant, competent tune that seemed to drift peacefully through the door. I was no expert on bad guys, but I didn’t know whether they whistled while they worked.
“Visitors? Been a long time since we’ve had visitors,” a man with a thick Yorkshire accent said as he walked toward the door of the church.
Sebastian took a step to the left, raising the spade up above his shoulder, getting ready to strike.
I freaked out. I dashed in front of Sebastian, opened the door, and thrust myself through it.
I had no idea what would meet me outside, and whether the whistling Yorkshireman was a whistling Yorkshire hit man, but I couldn’t take the risk. I wasn’t anything like Sebastian, and I had no experience with this thing; so excuse me if I thought twice about clocking potentially innocent people over the head with a spade.
My cheeks red from fright, my breath shallow and quick, I stumbled through the door and right into the arms of a stunned-looking farmer.
He didn’t have a gun, or not that I could see. He wore a simple tweed jacket and a small cap on his bald, round head.
He blinked as I appeared panting on the doorstep.
“Hello there,” he said politely, “You are a bit flushed, Miss, everything all right?”
I tried to get a hold of my breath and nodded. “Ah…. Hello,” I managed, “I’m fine.”
He nodded. At no point did it look as though he was about to grab two pistols from the back of his pants and gun me down. If I was any judge of character, I would say that this man was about as nice as the friendly smile on his face suggested.
He nodded at me again. “Nice church, isn’t she? Doing a bit of sightseeing, ma’am?”
I nodded.
“I see. I often come up here myself, have a look at the old place, check that no more vandals have desecrated her.” He looked sincere.
I winced. Did vandalism include digging a dirty great hole in the middle of the church, finding treasure, and bashing it to pieces with a spade?
“Did you have a fright, miss?” The man asked kindly. “Only you are still all flushed?”
The door opened from behind me, and Sebastian walked out, thankfully not wielding his spade or gun. I could see the gun neatly and discreetly tucked into the back of his pants, and he had obviously left the spade inside. He had an even smile on his face and nodded at the old man.
The man looked surprised, and he slid his eyes from Sebastian to me, one eyebrow arching up. “I reckon I can figure out why you are all flushed, miss,” the man laughed, “You know, it used to be the same in my day; this old place was where all the lovers went to get away from prying eyes.”
I blinked, confused. That would be when Sebastian leaned in, looped an arm around my middle and yanked me over to him. He didn’t bother answering the man, he just offered him a half grin.
The man laughed heartily. “Well, sorry to have disturbed you two.”
Before I could clarify the situation, and point out that I hadn’t, and never would be, caught in a compromising situation with Sebastian Shaw, Sebastian began to pull me down the steps.
“Well, you two enjoy the rest of your day, but not too much.” The man chuckled as he waved us goodbye.
Sebastian had a firm hold of my waist as he tugged me toward the car.
“Get off me,” I said as I wriggled free, huffing heavily, hair messy against his shoulder.
“Suit yourself,” he let go of me, walking easily toward the driver-side door, “Hurry up and get in the car.”
As I did, I heard a shout from the church. Obviously the kind old gentleman had realized how much vandalism we’d gotten up to. I p
atted my hands wildly in front of my face. “Drive, drive.” I snapped at Sebastian as I saw the form of the previously kind old gentleman running out of the door and toward us.
Sebastian hardly had to be encouraged, and brought the car around in a screeching turn and bombed down the drive.
Trouble and Treasure (#1, Trouble and Treasure Series) Page 10