by Jess Rinker
She puts a hand to her forehead. “Grandpa, what were you thinking…”
“We should have known,” I say.
“So Mom and Dad were right.” Frankie’s shoulders slump. “It is a game.”
“No,” I say. “I don’t think so. Remember his poem said something about treasures all over town? I think he hid clues with parts of the treasure all over town so Throop wouldn’t find it. This is going to lead us to something bigger. I just know it.”
“And Throop’s covering all the bases—following us and trying to get the house, too,” Frankie says. “This is so much bigger than we thought, Sav.”
“So you think this key opens a chest after all?” It would definitely be way easier if that was the case.
“Maybe, but knowing Grandpa that’s too easy. I think this opens a door somewhere. Maybe for the next clue,” Frankie says. “Maybe this little code will tell us where? Can you solve it, Sav?”
“Not here. But it’s easy enough. I need Grandpa’s Morse code book. It’s still in the study at home.”
Frankie claps her hands under her chin. “I bet once we figure out all the clues and find whatever’s hidden at each spot, we will have to put them together to find the main treasure location.”
“Why didn’t he get the treasure himself, then, if he knew where it was?” I say, exasperated.
“Maybe he ran out of time? But maybe he knew we could reach it, with the right clues?”
“That sounds about right.” The voice cuts through the night like a sail ripping across the sea.
Throop.
We both startle and gasp. Frankie hides the key behind her back. For a moment he’s only a voice. We look around wildly to see what direction he’s coming from but there’s nothing but dark tree shadows.
“Where are you?” I yell. And then, like the universe is trying to help us, a flash lights up the woods and we see him. With Peter standing right next to him. “Peter Dare! Did you tattle on us? Traitor!” But he looks pale and frightened and I realize I’m wrong.
Throop must have caught Peter on the way out.
Throop talks before Peter can say anything. “It truly was genius, after all, leaving the fate of an ancient legendary treasure in the hands of two small, unsuspecting little girls, thinking his secrets would be safe with you. Either a genius or completely insane.” Throop laughs. It’s a sound I’ll never get out of my head as long as I live.
The laugh of a desperate man.
He smiles with thin, nearly invisible lips and digs his long fingers into Peter’s shoulder. Peter winces.
“Let my cousin go!” I pick up a shovel and point it at Throop like a sword.
“Your family bonds are simply touching. No worries. I intend to do exactly that. After you hand me whatever it is you found in the bag. I couldn’t quite see from this vantage point.”
“The bag was empty,” Frankie says. I think she sounds convincing but Dunmore Throop shrugs.
“Suit yourself.” He turns with Peter still under his grip and starts to walk toward the beach rather than the road. He must have a boat anchored out there, and that’s how he’s been snooping around so much and so quickly. I wonder where he could possibly be going. But I don’t have time to think about it because he’s trying to steal our cousin!
“Wait!” Frankie says. “You can’t take him. That’s kidnapping!”
“I’m well aware,” Throop says. I’m pretty sure he rolls his eyes. “But I’ll be off this island before you even get home and who’s going to believe two little treasure-hunting misfit girls like you?”
Peter sniffs.
I can’t tell if Throop is serious about taking Peter or if he’s only trying to scare us, which is working. But I can tell Peter’s going to start crying any second and I can’t bear that. I grab the key from Frankie’s hands and hold it up.
“Savannah! No!” she scolds me, but I have a plan.
“You want it?” I say to Throop. “Let him go first or I’m running this straight out to the ocean. You can’t chase me and hold him at the same time.”
“Now let’s not be hasty,” he says, a grin spreading across his face. “You can’t outrun me.”
“How do you know?” I have to shout over a loud rumble of thunder. The storm is getting closer and making me nervous, but not as much as Throop makes me nervous.
He fidgets a little bit, like the thunder unnerves him too. And then he makes his biggest mistake.
He lets Peter go.
I yell, “Everybody run!”
24
Thar She Blows!
Frankie and Peter glance at me for less than a second and run in opposite directions. They don’t know my plan, but realize quickly that Throop can’t catch all of us. I dash farther into the woods, leaping over branches, ducking under draped moss, with my fingers wrapped tightly around the key. Throop is loud as he crashes through the brush after me, and he doesn’t know the woods like I do. He’ll never catch up. I turn back and run in the direction Frankie went, listening carefully for her quieter footsteps between the thunder and pat-pat-pat of fat raindrops starting to hit the sand. I catch up to her quickly.
“Oh my gosh, you scared me, Savvy!”
I hold my finger to my lips and hand off the key. “Go straight home,” I whisper through haggard breaths. “I’ll meet you there.” She tries to ask me where I’m going, but I turn back the way I came without answering.
“Savvy! There’s a storm coming!”
But I keep going.
Straight to the beach, because I know that’s where Throop will go.
The storm is over us, but still hasn’t let loose its full power. The ghost crabs scuttle out of my way and into their little holes in the sand to escape the rain as I break through the underbrush and stumble out onto the beach. I trip and my knees hit the sand. Catching my breath, I listen carefully for Throop, but only hear the now-violent crashing of the bay waters upon the beach between bursts of thunder. Way up on my right, there’s a small motorboat pulled up onto the sand.
I knew it. He’d been sneaking around the island by boat, probably watching us to see where we were going. There are many points along the island where you can see the village from the water. People are always waving to us from the bay when we’re walking around certain parts of town. I inspect Throop’s boat for any clues or personal belongings of his, something to prove my point that he’s up to no good, but it’s completely empty. Throop’s not that easy to fool. But neither am I. I’ll find a way to prove to my parents that he’s up to something bad.
This is the worst place I could be in a thunderstorm, and I’ve got to get home. But there’s a scuffling sound behind me, feet in sand. I spin to see Throop trying to sneak down the beach toward me. Just then the clouds open up and the fat drops turn to sharp needles. We’re both soaked in seconds.
“I see you!” I yell through the noise and keep my hands behind my back, pretending I’m still hiding the key.
“You stay right there, young lady,” Throop says, holding a finger up and squinting like he might lose sight of me in the rain.
Cold settles in my bones, the rain stabs at my skin. It’s miserable. I raise my hand up in the air, as if I’m going to throw something into the water. “Don’t come any closer.”
“Throw it if you like, little miss,” Throop says. “You’ve already done the hard work of unraveling the old man’s clues. I should have known his sentimentality would make him tie this all to you girls. I can surely find a key in a shallow bay.” But he stops walking anyway. Crosses his arms across his chest. I do the same. Two pirates in a duel. The rain feels like needles on my face.
“You said you didn’t know what was in the bag.”
“I lied.”
“It doesn’t belong to you,” I shout over the thunder.
“Yes, actually, it does.”
“How?”
Throop laughs and looks around at the whipping branches and sheets of rain. “Hardly the time to explain it to a ch
ild!”
“I’m not afraid of a little rain. Besides, you’re taller than me. The lightning will go for you first!” I shout. “So explain!”
“Look. I don’t want to hurt you or your sisters or your family, but Cornelius should have known I’d come back for what I rightfully gained. He had no right leaving this to children.”
I keep my feet planted in the sand, which keeps shifting with the soaking rain, but my knees are bent, ready to run at a moment’s notice. “I’m not giving you anything without an explanation,” I say.
Throop takes his hat off and pushes his sopping hair out of his face before he puts his hat back on. “Years ago, Cornelius and I were looking for the Queen Anne’s Revenge together. Do you know what that is?”
“Of course I know what that is! It’s one of Blackbeard’s boats!” I yell. Any member of the Dare family would know this. “He ran it aground to escape capture and it’s never been found,” I say as the rain pelts my face. But it doesn’t sting as much as the realization just that moment that that’s what “QAR” stands for. The ship! And the clue was on the walking stick all this time.
“You’re the smart one,” Throop says. “Cornelius told me. I forgot.” He looks out at the horizon in the direction the storm is quickly moving toward. I nearly jump out of my spot to run away, but I have to know more, so I force my feet to stay still, reminding myself the key is safe with Frankie. Even though I’m not.
“Anyway?” I yell impatiently. “You haven’t convinced me anything belongs to you.”
“We were a team for several years. We found many artifacts including that key, which your grandfather believed went to something on the Queen Anne’s Revenge. A locked box, maybe a little cupboard, that one of Blackbeard’s crew stole and carried off the ship before it sank. I didn’t agree about the treasure but wanted to help the old man find the shipwreck. Because that would be joint investment, joint profit. See what I’m saying?”
“Yes.” I no longer need to shout as the rain is dying down, and the thunder and lightning follow the clouds across the bay.
“Somewhere along the line, your grandfather didn’t think my motives were ‘pure,’” Throop says, making air quotes on “pure.” “He foolishly believed everything we found belonged in a museum. But treasure hunters don’t hunt treasure to lock it up behind a glass case simply for people to drag their sniveling children by it.”
“You wanted to sell everything and be rich and famous. And he didn’t,” I say. I can understand both Grandpa’s point and Throop’s, which kind of scares me. Why shouldn’t a treasure hunter get something out of all their hard work?
“I wanted to sell that key and use the money to keep looking for the ship. But your grandfather insisted it was part of a greater treasure. He put an end to the hunt for the Queen Anne’s Revenge and kept all the research we’d done for himself.”
Throop might be telling the truth, I think. He’s very convincing and obviously Grandpa did have at least one of Throop’s books. If Grandpa was right, the ship and the bigger treasure are still out there. But if Throop is right, and the key is all there is, and it’s worth a lot by itself, I want to sell it to save our house. We could give Throop and Uncle Randy the money and keep our home.
Grandpa, I’m so sorry.
Throop takes a few steps closer. He looks like a drowned giraffe.
“So you see, lass, we can work together.”
“How do I know I can trust you?”
“Give me the key and I’ll leave your house alone. I promise.”
I shake my head. Little does he know I don’t even have the key. But something still doesn’t make sense—the conversation Peter heard about Throop wanting something inside our house. “No, I’m taking it home. My parents will know what to do with it.”
Throop lunges toward me, and I run faster than I ever knew I could run, back into the woods, dripping with the quick end-of-summer storm, toward the slight orange hint of the sunrise. Although a couple of times I find myself doubling back on my own footprints, eventually I break through the woods into the road by the clumps of grasses and post and rail fence that line the park.
I lean on my thighs and catch my breath, looking up and down the street, but I don’t see Frankie or Peter. I have no idea if either of them has made it out of the woods and gone home or what.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I ask the empty street. Frankie could be home cozy in our attic right now waiting for me or she could still be zigzagging through the trails. My plan seemed like a good idea in the moment, but I didn’t think it through to the end. I can’t leave her or Peter here if they’re still in the park somewhere. But I don’t have a second to decide, because all of a sudden there are strong arms wrapped around my middle and I’m lifted off my feet.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Throop asks, sounding amused and as if he’s better than me, better than all of us.
“Nowhere with you, you scurvy dog!” I shout and squirm and kick, but I can’t get free from him. He laughs that cold, desperate laugh at me.
“It’s not really you kids I want anyway, lass. I told you. Just the key.”
“I don’t have it!”
Throop puts me down and finally sees my empty hands. His eyes narrow into slits that match his non-existent lips. And that’s when I fear for my life.
“Where is it?” he roars.
“It’s already safe at home and you can’t touch it!” I scream at him. Then I almost run off down the street, but suddenly Frankie bursts through the bushes, also soaking wet, gasping and stumbling into the street.
And the key is gripped tightly in her hand.
25
Blow the Man Down!
“Get away from my sister,” Frankie says.
“Don’t give him the key!” I shout. Throop grabs my arm. “Run home, Frankie!”
“The two of you are something else,” Throop says, still sounding like he thinks this is all a fun game that he’s going to win. And then Peter comes bounding out of the woods, and we are right back where we started. I wonder if Throop is right. Only instead of sticking around and helping us, Peter takes one look and runs faster than I’ve ever seen him move in his life.
“So much for defending your honor,” Throop says. “Now listen, girls, I have a better trade. Let me have the key and I’ll make sure your house is untouchable. I’ll make sure your parents don’t ever have to sell it.”
My heart beats a little faster. But I don’t believe he’s telling us the truth.
“You’re just telling us what we want to hear,” Frankie says. “We’ll keep the key and then we won’t have to sell the house anyway.”
“I can buy your home and ensure you never have to leave regardless of treasure, no treasure, key or no key.”
“Don’t believe him, Frankie.” I try to pull my arm out of his tight grasp but I can’t. “He’s lying!”
“Be still,” he says, tightening his hand even more.
Footsteps and voices reach us before I can see who it is, and all of a sudden Throop’s hand leaves my arm.
And then I see what he’s looking at. A group of people rush toward us, with the cresting sun behind them; only their dark silhouettes give them away. As they get closer, I realize it’s my parents, Peter and his parents, and Jolene.
“Oh, you’re done for now, Throop!” I say, backing away from him as quickly as I can.
Jolene rushes up to Frankie and me, and hugs us quickly before she turns on Throop. “You stay away from my sisters, you scallywag!” She lunges at the confused man. I have to say, with that eye patch Jolene does look pretty fierce. Even in her footie pajamas.
“What’s going on here?” My dad grabs ahold of Jolene before she can bite Throop. Throop’s expression has changed completely. I don’t know how he does it! Instead of looking like a squinty-eyed madman, he looks like our friendly mailman.
“I was only helping the girls find their way out of the woods, Jack,” Throop lies, his voice now quieter
, but still like he thinks he’s better than everyone else.
“It’s not true, Dad,” I yell. “Don’t believe him.”
Before my dad or anyone can react, Throop tips his green hat. “I’ll be on my way now that everyone is safe and sound.”
“Wait a second there, bud,” Uncle Randy says. “You’re in the woods in the middle of the night with my son and my nieces and you think you’re going to walk away with no questions asked?” He grabs on to Throop’s arm like Throop did to me. “We’ve already called the sheriff. You’re waiting right here.”
Throop rips his arm out of Uncle Randy’s grasp. But he keeps his voice calm. He hands Uncle Randy one of his cards. “Call me tomorrow and we will straighten everything out. Everyone’s safe and sound and that’s all that matters.” He walks briskly down the street opposite the sunrise, into the darkness.
“What a weirdo,” Peter says, his clothes dripping on the street.
My dad looks at us. “You’re all okay? Right, girls? He didn’t hurt you, did he?” He turns our faces to see if there are any scratches or anything. We shake our heads and before I can tell them all the stuff Throop said, Officer Howard shows up and asks us all a bunch of questions about Throop, like what he was wearing and what he wanted, which we have to pretend we don’t know.
“What were y’all doing out here so late anyway?” he asks when he’s done.
“Playing manhunt,” Peter lies. For the first time ever.
The grown-ups tell Officer Howard which way Throop went and he tells us to head home. He’ll call us in the morning with any news.
“We had this guy all wrong,” Uncle Randy says as we walk back. “We owe you all an apology.” He puts his hand on Dad’s shoulder.
“It’s okay,” Dad says. “I know you were trying to help.”
“Good news is I don’t think he’ll be back,” Uncle Randy says.
“What makes you say that?” Mom asks.
“He’s way outnumbered, first of all. And he just got run out of town by a band of local pirates.” Uncle Randy grins at us.
