Glitter and Gold, page 24
“I’d say you fared pretty well,” she says.
I chuckle. “Not as well as you, apparently.”
“That’s because I copied what you were doing,” she says, a tight-lipped smile dimpling one cheek. “Like always.”
I squeeze her hand four times.
“Keep that on for at least an hour,” Wyatt says. “You could do with some stabilization.”
“Thanks.” I rub my shoulder. “Sure you’ll be okay to move in a few hours?”
“It’s fine. Really,” he says. “Feeling a lot better already. I’ll be careful and keep the extra pens and pills right on me. Just in case it happens again.”
“In case what?” I ask. “How would it happen again?”
“Sometimes there’s a second wave allergic reaction that can be just as bad.” He pushes down his pant leg. “Never had one, but you never know.”
I stroke my fingers through his damp, sweaty hair. “Nothing’s going to happen to you. I promise.”
35
Now – August 2018
Second Expedition
Our humbling encounter with the swarm subdues our return to the trail. Every whisper is a risk, every spoken word a luxury.
Startled birds take flight from their nearby branches as a lone beep warbles from Joss's direction. I shoot her a sharp look.
“Sorry,” she whispers, her face pallid. “Alarm. Forgot.” Her words are flimsy in the heavy silence.
While the unease lingers, the lack of conversation gives me the headspace to strategize our evasion of who might be stalking us.
There was a possible third person with the Callahans. There was whoever set the snare trap back near Willow Creek. They could be the same. My mind even carries me to Lee Kowalski—I’d heard he’d resumed hunting in El Cobre in the last few years, and he’d never forgiven Mama or me by proxy. He’d even tailgate or antagonize me on occasion through town. I brush away the thought of the most likely suspect.
Keaton.
Logic wound through my racing thoughts—distrust proved right as pieces clicked into place. His body had to be broken from that fall. Even injured, he was dangerous, but now we had a chance. If it was Keaton, we just had to reach the point of divergence at Cowboy’s Saddle, where the decoy map he had would lead him down a false trail.
The real map, weighted and clammy, is concealed against my body. There’s a twinge of satisfaction for crafting such a ruse, knowing a sun-like blaze made from Rubio is ahead in our path—one Mama never saw on her trails.
By mid-afternoon, the start of the Copper Peak escarpment unfolds ahead—a tall, layered sedimentary cake sitting perpendicular to the horizon—where we’ll hike up to Cowboy’s Saddle. A massive, wilting lone pine stands before us, thick with waterfalls of sap and festering cankers, surely on its final annular rings. The tree is a hesitant welcome committee, a signal of changing terrain.
Mama never laid eyes on this tree, as she’d always taken a different route to the escarpment. Pride and pain tangle together as my eyes find the carved symbols high on the trunk—thirty feet of proof I'd already surpassed Mama's reach.
“Guys, look!” The excitement in my voice is palpable.
Joss squints, her voice trembling with disbelief, “Is that—?”
Wyatt grins. “Means we’re headed in the right direction.”
The blaze is a replica of the one drawn in Narciso Rubio’s authentic secret map—a distinct circle adorned with fanning curlicues like a sun to denote we’re on the right track.
When Rubio carved it hundreds of years ago, the blaze would have been at his height. But now, the blaze is more one with the tree than it ever was to its artist. Having aged with it—surviving against all odds over the centuries—wildfire, storms, drought, pests. A human-made marker that the wild could have easily swallowed up, a beacon to say, “Treasure’s this way.”
The blaze on the lone pine buoys our spirits for the afternoon.
Wyatt spots the next blaze. Two interlocking arrows are etched into an immovable boulder. “This almost always means a meeting point.” He traces an index finger around its border. “Do you think it means we’re closer than expected?”
I bite the inside of my cheek. “Not exactly.”
Wyatt’s eyes twinkle. “How do you figure?”
Discomfort crawls beneath my skin as I turn from his knowing look—the moment has come to share our true map with Joss. Rubio's symbols were enigmatic and deliberately confusing. His journal shows how contradictory they were to other blazes scattered across the world’s treasure trails. If Rubio’s swirling curlicues ended in a counterclockwise motion, it didn’t mean to “go left” but “go right.” The universal symbol for the wrong direction is the arrow nocked to the right, but Rubio’s version translates to “keep going.”
As the only one who’s seen the real map’s path and how to decode and retrofit the relative blaze symbols, I must enlighten them.
The more they know, the more they can help, Laney.
I’ve held it from Joss long enough. For all our differences, she’s risen to every occasion where it matters: administering Wyatt’s EpiPen, readjusting my shoulder, mustering courage to escape the flash flood, and challenging me to face my fears to embark on this adventure.
“Wait, what?” Joss doesn’t miss a beat, picking up on the unspoken current between me and Wyatt. “What am I missing?”
“There’s something you should know.”
She looks at me with wide eyes as I retrieve the journal pages wrapped around my body and share the page with the sepia-inked sketch of the cave. “Look at these tunnels. It’s there.”
“Yeah, D. I can see that now.” Her tone is clipped, and then she falls silent. “After everything,” she says, face souring into a pinched expression. “Convincing you this is your legacy, your way out of your problems, then helping you organize, hell—saving you now and then—and you still hold back from me?”
“Please,” I say as a puffy patch of clouds blots the sun. “Don’t take it that way. Chalk it up to my trust issues. It was a good thing with all that’s happened with the Callahans and Keaton. You knowing could’ve put you at risk—”
“Joss, you have to understand,” Wyatt began, his tone calming, trying to mediate.
“Wait, he knows?” she asks, the hurt in her voice evident. Her jaw clenches, cheeks now burnished by our days in the sun. “I don’t know how many more hoops I have to jump through for you, D.” She shakes her head, storming off into the pines. “Hope if this is the wrong direction, you’ll tell me.”
Wyatt and I remain silent, exchanging loaded glances as my remorse expands.
More blazes dot our path—swirly suns, aimful arrows, and stark geometric shapes etched in rock faces and hulking trees.
Still begrudging, Joss finds the next blaze: a cairn of carefully constructed rocks with carvings in one smooth stone in the middle—a straight line followed by three slanted parallel lines.
“Alright, Keymaster,” Joss says dryly. “What’s the meaning of this one?”
I take her jab in stride—I deserve it. “Rubio doesn’t make it easy, that’s for sure.” I pull out the map, comparing the centuries-old topography to our current view.
“I think he wants us to follow the escarpment from that side in that direction,” I add, pointing northeast. “See how the slanted lines follow the same direction as the mountain line when standing at the cairn?”
“Feels off, though,” Wyatt says, evaluating the tight-knotted pattern of rocks like a quality control inspector looking for a defect. “There’s also the chance someone messed with this cairn, rebuilt it. This direction takes us farther away from Diego Pass than continuing more west.”
“I’m inclined to agree with the land surveyor,” Joss says, eyes narrowing into a harsh squint. “Over a pile of rocks, that is. We know where Diego Pass is. Let’s get to it where we know we can.”
My fingers hover over the fragile parchment as my eyes lift to search the distant skyline. “There’s a reason his route goes this way. The cairn, the lines, the mountain, it all matches up.”
Wyatt hesitates, combing his dark locks back with his fingers. “But taking the route you’re suggesting leads us away.”
“Please,” I say. “At least give the cairn a closer look, see if it’s changed all these years.”
He takes the map from me, comparing it to the cairn, looking closely at the vegetation pattern. He nods. “It feels against the grain of what we should be doing, but by all accounts, you’re right.”
Joss sighs. “Guess we’ll find out. Let’s go.”
As we trudge along, I see the glints of wisdom in Rubio’s breadcrumb path to the treasure. We skirt another flood plain that we might have otherwise encountered, the rushing water hissing through the trees from afar. Treacherous gray gorges that slice the landscape bypass us. Slippery edges that can trip up the most skilled hikers we steer clear of, thanks to Rubio’s directions.
The sun wanes earlier out here, hiding its glory behind the tall ridges and vistas we’ve crossed. Shadows now bathe us in a chilly blue veil as we prep to set up camp below the mountain’s saddle, the rocky vastness dwarfing us. Wyatt joins me at the nearby rivulet to fill the canteens to boil while Joss pitches the tents for the evening.
The slant of our gait on a higher elevation slope ignites the pain in my ankle. I wince.
“You okay?” Wyatt asks, breathing heavily, his face worn with fatigue.
I nod. “How about you? You okay? Need us to slow down for a bit?”
“Nah.” Wyatt places his warm, rough hand over mine as I screw on the canteen cap. “I’ll be good.”
“Still, got the medicine handy?”
He moves his hand from the canteen lid to the curve of my jawbone. “Always looking out, huh?”
Guilt shadows my deep affection. He wouldn’t be in any of these perilous situations if it weren’t for me. I tilt my head toward his hand, my lips brushing his palm. “Just tell me you’ll be fine.”
He smiles. “I’ll be fine, but—” He scans the surrounding slopes.
“Think anyone followed us?” I ask, finishing his question. Our nuanced emotions have once again been brushed aside for survival. “I don’t think so. Would’ve been hard to keep up with our pace, even when we stopped for you to recover. We’re almost in the clear.”
He nods. “We’ve been swift.”
We sit in exhaled silence, the stream serenading our brief and blissful moment. One day, eons from now, its gentleness will have transformed into a gorge, redefining the landscape. Change is the only certainty, and I can’t help but think Wyatt and I mirror that change. I hope it brings us together rather than apart again.
By dusk, we snuff out the campfire to keep a low profile, our stomachs roiling with hunger.
“I’d give anything for some of that rattlesnake,” Joss mutters.
We huddle in blanketed layers instead, keeping our battery-powered lanterns on their lowest settings. The blue-tinted light illuminates our faces with an eerie hue. Wyatt’s knee grazes mine as we sit across from Joss.
My words pivot away, dancing around the raw spot where map secrets still sting. “This time tomorrow, we could have our hands on the treasure.”
She blows air into her palms and smirks. “As long as we can get to Cowboy’s Saddle, right?”
“Yes, you know I’m sorry—”
Her blue-green eyes widen when she looks up, jaw gaping. A dark object swishes into my peripheral, followed by a thud. Wyatt had fallen to his side. Before I can turn around, the disembodied figure wallops the side of my head, and a throbbing pain branches through my nerves before everything goes dark.
36
Now – August 2018
Second Expedition
A burning assails my face before my eyes open to a roaring campfire, and a powerful headache matches its intensity. Through the flame’s tentacles, against the indigo canvas and its infinite blips of stars, Keaton’s sharp face emerges ghostlike.
“Evening, sunshine,” he says to me, smacking his gum, the left side of his face tattooed with scrapes.
Somehow, it doesn’t surprise me to hear his voice, given the skitters in the brush at dawn and the spooky rotten animals. But what does surprise me is the bristly rope binding my wrists behind my back. My skin burns at the tight bindings, but they seem to tighten even more when I try to move.
Keaton's laugh cuts through my panic.
“Your friends tried the same thing in vain.” He removes items from his inner jacket pocket, and my heart drops. “Also took it upon myself to fetch these.” He waggles the real map and key. I shudder, thinking of how he must have lifted my shirt and unclasped the chain around my neck. How’d he found them? Was he close enough to hone in on our conversation?
“Don’t worry,” he continues. “I was a perfect gentleman.”
That’s when I see Joss and Wyatt seated around the campfire. My heart clenches to see Wyatt looking tired and ragged, a large goose egg building above his brow. Joss’s cheeks are tear-stained.
“So.” He pauses as if for dramatic flair. “Last time I saw you, you left me for dead.”
“You’re dangerous,” Wyatt says. “You left us no choice.”
“You killed Tommy Ray!” I shout.
“And you tried to kill me!” The campfire pops and crackles. “So, I’d say that evens things out, yeah?”
I grit my teeth. “No—”
“Hey, you don’t get to cherry-pick morality when it suits your means.” He removes his gun from his waistband, buffing it with the hem of his shirt. “But maybe now, we can come to an understanding.”
“You’re deluded if you think I’m leading you anywhere near the treasure.” Rage and humiliation churn in my gut as saliva arcs toward his boots, each emotion clawing for dominance while his betrayal stings fresh.
But he laughs, confident in his control.
A sharp pain pulses behind my eyes, echoing my regret for ever agreeing to let him join our expedition. Now, he knows the treasure's location and has the key to access it. I should have found a better way to leave him behind or kept trying to reach help through the radio.
But every choice in this harsh terrain comes with consequences. And if protecting Wyatt and Joss means paying a price, I will do whatever it takes.
Keaton's grin sends shivers down my spine, as it’s wide enough to see the gum embossing his back teeth. “I don't just think you'll lead me to the treasure; I know you will.” He brandishes his gun.
It’s up to me to find a way out of this.
Wyatt wriggles in his restraints, kicking up dirt with his heels. “If you hurt her, I’ll—”
“You’ll what?” Keaton rests his hands on his hips, gun at the ready. “Kill me with your feet?” He removes his copy of the decoy map from his pocket before crouching beside me. “Now I know there’s something here you’re not telling me, something you’re hiding. I know a liar when I see one.”
“Yeah, check a mirror.”
Joss sniffles. She’s been quiet, and I only notice how her body trembles with silent tears as she hangs her head low. Joss's eyes dart to a sharp stone near Wyatt's foot. But just as Wyatt subtly shifts his position, Keaton's gaze follows Joss's, and with a jaunty kick, he sends the rock skittering.
“See what your poor leadership’s done to your pretty little friend here? Shame, shame, Joss.”
I stiffen.
“If you’d just listened to me, been a little more judicious, well, we wouldn’t be here right now like this, would we?” He looks back at me, scrutinizing my face. “Are those bee stings?”
Silence builds my shield as his words hang between us. He turns, sizing up Joss and Wyatt in the fire’s light. “Did you all have a little brush with bees?” He removes something from his jacket pocket: Wyatt’s prescription labeled antihistamines and EpiPens, flashing them like a game show presenter. Panic cinches my breath. “Did some pocket-picking, and I’m guessing some friends had a little more trouble than others here—”
“Give those back!” I demand, the rope fibers clawing into my flesh.
He twirls one of the pens between his fingers with a sinister grin. “Oh, these?” He chucks them into the darkness with all his strength. “Whoops. Hand slip. Let’s pray your guy here doesn’t have a follow-up reaction.”
Joss’s cries are audible now, her head and shoulders trembling. A passing wind slants the campfire flames, which reply with a sizzling hiss.
“You bastard,” I mutter.
“See, I know a thing or two about allergies. The EpiPens, all that. Me, the kid at school with the inhaler, can you imagine? Lucky for me, it’s shrimp. The likes of which aren’t anywhere out here.” He kicks dirt in Wyatt’s direction. “He’s looking a little swell-y, eh?”
“If anything happens to him, I swear to God—”
“You’re in no position to dole out threats. If you want to see this sister you’ve talked about again—”
Fury rips through my throat and explodes into the night air, primal and raw. “No need to get hysterical.”
“What do you need me for?” I allow a dark, hopeless despair to numb the fury in my veins. In his ruthless game, I was a pawn like the Callahans and Tommy Ray. “You’ve got what you came back for.”
“You make a good point.” He sucks air between his teeth. “But I may have questions about this strange map.” He unfolds its thin parchment from his pocket. “Stuff that still doesn’t make sense. Plus, I want to see your faces when I take the treasure and leave you with nothing.”
My body springs forward as rage takes control, only to jerk back sharply when the rope bites into flesh. “Sleep tight, everyone,” he says, heading into my tent, keeping the flaps open. “We got a big day tomorrow, and I need everyone well rested.” He points his index and middle finger towards his eyes before turning his index finger in my direction.
