by Caleb Wygal
“I don’t. That would be a disservice to the world. If I found it, I’d make sure some museum somewhere would be able to preserve it and display it for many generations of people to enjoy.”
“Do you think Riddick would do that?”
“No. He’d keep it for himself locked away in some basement somewhere.”
“Awesome. So we’re on the same page here. Do you have any other ideas?”
After a minute, Darwin begrudgingly said, “I don’t.”
“Ok. Then let’s try this,” Lucas pointed in the direction Lynn had disappeared. “If she doesn’t go for it, then I’ll pull some money out of savings and go the rental route as a last resort. Happy?”
“Not really, but what other choice do I have?”
“That’s my Darwin.”
“Wait. You asked her what time she was getting off tonight before all that happened at the marina. I thought you said you weren’t here to pick her up.”
Lucas smiled. “Hey, you’ve gotta admit she’s cute.”
Darwin shook his head, and then smiled. “You dog.”
• • •
Lynn removed her apron, balled it up, and placed it into an employee locker beside the breakroom at the back of the diner. She didn’t know what she was getting herself into. She was famished, broke, and about to give up on her dream of living at the beach.
She didn’t expect living expenses to be so high here. She’d had a breakup with a guy back home in Kirksville, Missouri while attending Truman State University. She had been close to attaining her degree in restaurant management when her boyfriend roommate started doing drugs and getting violent with her. He beat her once while high on crystal meth to within an inch of her life one night. She spent days in the hospital with a severe concussion and a broken arm from when she tried to defend herself with his baseball bat.
The neighbors heard the commotion and called the police. When the city cops arrived, they broke down the door and hit her boyfriend with a taser. Her boyfriend barely felt it and kept charging at the cops. They hit him with another taser. He had had an irregular heartbeat since he was a young child. One pulse from the taser would have subdued him had his body not been numbed from the meth. The second pulse led to cardiac arrest. He died on their apartment floor.
Lynn might have been able to cope with the event better had she not had to lie in a hospital bed for four nights. She had a few friends and fewer family members come visit and console her. While they provided a pleasant distraction to what had happened, they couldn’t be there twenty-four hours a day.
When she was by herself with nothing but a small television droning on in the corner of the room, she thought of her life. Where she was. What had happened. What to do next.
She’d had a mixed childhood. She was happy when she was younger. Her parents had split when she was in middle school. That didn’t end well. Her dad was a creep who did . . . things to her brothers. He never tried anything with her, although her mom threw him out before he got the chance. After the divorce was final, Lynn never saw him again. Not that she had any desire to see him again to anyway. Her mom tried to make ends meet on her own, although she could never hold down a job for long. She died from thyroid cancer just after the youngest son graduated from high school. Lynn was sad for a while. She and her mom had never been particularly close.
Lynn imagined that she’d probably eaten more ramen noodles than anyone had in the world her age. That was the poor person’s feast. Twenty cents a pack down at the grocery store. She could eat for days for a few dollars.
Her boyfriend had made her stop associating with her friends. She was to give him her undivided attention. At the point in her life where she was in the hospital, she had few close friends because of that. Her three brothers fled Missouri as soon as they could. One went to Alabama, another to New York and the oldest joined the Marines. He was in Afghanistan somewhere, she thought.
Upon release from the hospital, Lynn tried to go back to school. Her heart just wasn’t in it. She needed a big time change in her life.
She decided to move. She’d always heard great things about the beach. A girl she went to high school with and her family always vacationed in Hilton Head. Lynn had never been there, but remembered the wonderful stories her friend told about their travels.
One night, Lynn decided to quit school, pack up her things, and move. She thought that would make her happy. Anything was better than here, she thought at the time.
The next day, she told her landlord her situation. Thankfully, the property-owner was a cheery white-haired woman in her late-seventies. She knew what Lynn had gone through and was sympathetic to her cause. She agreed to let Lynn out of her lease.
She went to the bank, closed her checking account—which still had a healthy balance from her share of her mom’s life insurance policy—loaded her things into her car and headed East.
Here she was again, coming up on a major life decision. Stay here or give up and go home?
Three years after her move to the East coast, she had less than a hundred dollars in her checking account and only a smattering of acquaintances. She hadn’t had much success making friends since her move. Some of that, she had to admit, was because of her. After what happened with her boyfriend and the pain he caused, she found it difficult to open up to anyone. She kept to herself mostly, reading old Louisa May Alcott or Janette Oke books about romance in the late nineteenth century. That was her escape to another time, another era. When men were noble and came on horseback to save the day for the heroines.
She knew she was attractive. Her distinctive red hair made her stand out. With her job, it was only natural for men of all ages hit on her. To their disappointment, she hadn’t allowed herself to make herself available. She’d had no romantic involvement with a man since coming to Hilton Head.
There was something about this Lucas guy, though. He looked a few years older than she did, and he seemed kind and intelligent. And those eyes. Oh, those blue eyes. She felt as though she could get lost in them for days. When he offered her dinner, she couldn’t resist agreeing.
She punched the time clock, grabbed the drinks the guys had requested, plus a coffee for herself. She expected a long night being swept away into the Canadian West by the book resting on her nightstand. Plus, she thought, it would show Lucas they had at least one thing in common. She knew from earlier that he loved coffee. This gave her a chance to show her love for it as well.
As they had dinner and went through several cups of coffee and Darwin drunk an amount equaling a two-liter of Coke, Lucas laid out their story. His friend occasionally chipped in on the narrative. She knew nothing of pirates or Blackbeard, although as she became absorbed in Lucas’s eyes, the story captivated her. She was sucker for a good story and they were offering her a chance to be a part of it. He even offered her five-hundred dollars, plus expenses to take them. That might be what she needed to help make the rent at the end of the month.
Without thinking of her job, what tomorrow might hold and that these guys were complete strangers and seemed to be involved in something potentially dangerous, she asked with a smile, “So when do we leave?”
• • •
A million stars hung over Riddick’s head as he pulled the speedboat into one of the many shipping centers owned by his company along the East Coast. The briny smell of the sea clung to him.
He needed to put on an Oscar-worthy performance for any employees who might be around the office. He knew a shift-change had just occurred and the night crew would be in. If they were doing as they were supposed to, they should be busy. He hoped his employees would move even faster upon seeing him.
Perhaps they’d be too busy to notice his foul mood. Really, if this were they early 1700’s, he’d select a random employee—one of the smaller ones—take him into a backroom somewhere and beat him senseless. Blow off some steam. The real Blackbeard could have done that back in his day. Today, he’d have to worry about lawsuits and getting arreste
d.
He wanted to take out his frustration on something or someone. He was so close to attaining the treasure he’d been after for over thirty years. Then, those morons—his henchmen—may have ruined everything. He didn’t know exactly what he had wanted them to do when he had directed their attention back at the marina. But destroying both cars in an attempt, to what? Run them over?
At least, he thought, unless those idiots squealed, they couldn’t be traced back to him. Riddick could claim he had never seen them before. The car was owned by a friend of a friend of whom Riddick knew wouldn’t want the attention of authorities. If that friend knew what was good for them.
He still had a few things going for him. Not all hope was lost. While Darwin piloted the yacht along the Hilton Head coast, Riddick took a moment to riffle through the young man’s backpack. In it, he’d found the printout of a treasure map. What was shown on the map looked like the same description Darwin and Lucas had said they’d found in the diary of Mary Ormond. Lucas must have made that part up rather than revealing the existence of the map. Riddick couldn’t believe his eyes. They’d kept it from him.
What it depicted didn’t look like anything around Hilton Head. He’d folded it and placed it in his back pocket before zipping up the backpack.
If he could figure out the general area shown on the map, he’d be able to find the X that marks the spot. Without being able to keep an eye on Darwin and Lucas, Riddick needed to ascertain their whereabouts from elsewhere.
As luck had it, he had a line on how to do that as well . . .
30
Lucas had taken a shot in the dark propositioning Lynn to take them to their next destination. He hadn’t thought about what he and Darwin would do if they didn’t find the treasure there. They couldn’t have her chauffeur them back to North Carolina. Darwin and Lucas would cross that bridge when they came to it.
She drove them back to her apartment. It was across the street from an outlet mall just off the island. She went in, packed a few things for an overnight stay, and returned to her car. Lucas remembered they had nothing but the clothes on their backs, so Lynn took Darwin and Lucas to a nearby Target where they could buy some inexpensive clothes, underwear, socks, toiletries, and a cell phone charger for Lucas. Darwin had the chargers for his devices in his backpack.
When Lucas laid out the scenario and the problem he and Darwin had, he expressed to Lynn a need to get on the road and head north as soon as they could. He wanted to be on Edisto Island at first light tomorrow. He knew a small town named Walterboro just off I-95 where he could get them all hotel rooms. It was the last stop before Edisto, an hour away from the interstate.
Lynn jumped at the opportunity to earn a quick five hundred dollars in cash. Maybe, for once, she could have an adventure of her own. Rushing home and grabbing some clothes and things from her bathroom and skipping town right away was no big deal to her. She was ready for something unexpected to happen in her life. Here was her chance to be in some story such as one out of her books.
As they were on their way from Hilton Head to the interstate, Lucas said, “Lynn, I never did catch your last name.”
“Oh, I’m sorry,” she said while concentrating on the dark road ahead. “Russell. What are yours and Darwin’s?”
“Mine is Caine. Darwin is a Trickett.”
“Gotcha. Nice to meet you all, I guess.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you too,” Darwin said from the back seat.
Lucas felt sorry for the guy. Darwin rode in the backseat where there wasn’t nearly enough room to accommodate his large frame. Lucas, while not as big as Darwin, was above average height. He felt cramped in the front seat.
Could have been worse, he thought. She could have drove one of those tiny Fiats.
He purchased a charger at Target that worked in a cigarette lighter or in a traditional power outlet. With his phone almost dead, he plugged it in and searched for a hotel in Walterboro. At least it wasn’t a long drive to get there from Hilton Head. From there, it would leave them with about a sixty-minute drive in the morning to Edisto Beach.
Early in his relationship with his soon-to-be ex-wife, she had introduced him to Edisto Island. Most people in the Charlotte area went to Myrtle Beach when going on vacations. Lucas had been there a few times, and always thought it was too busy. His brother and his wife went there all the time. They shopped, dined at a variety of restaurants, played putt-putt at amusement parks, or caught a show. The beach was an afterthought. He knew most people who went to Myrtle enjoyed the attractions over the surf and sand.
Lucas was different. When he went to the beach, he went to the beach. All he wanted to do was get his toes in the sand, sitting low in a beach chair, with a cool beverage in hand and watch the waves roll in. That was paradise itself. He could block out everything else going on with his life and just zone out.
Kristen took him to Myrtle a few times and noticed he didn’t seem to care for the glitz, glamour, and horrendous traffic. She suggested a place her family went to a few times when she was young that didn’t have the same hustle and bustle. In fact the place she proposed was unincorporated to guard against just that, and had a laid-back way of life. The local islanders referred to the lifestyle as “Edis-slow.”
There was a different vibe to Edisto Lucas enjoyed. It was unincorporated, the only town on the East Coast to hold that distinction. The island did not suffer from the inevitable creep of hotels, chain restaurants with neon lights, high-rise hotels, putt-putt courses and other trappings of normal tourist destinations. The grocery store and mini-mart on the corner were allowed only because of necessity. The island is off the beaten path. The closest stoplight is thirty minutes away. The closest McDonald’s an hour.
Lucas fell in love with the place the first time he went. Since then, he’d been back a dozen times. Sometimes a couple times a year. He’d met some interesting people there and made some contacts. One, he knew, might be able to help.
Lucas booked two rooms at a Microtel Inn in Walterboro. A room with two queen-sized beds for him and Darwin and a king size bedroom for Lynn. He knew he was financing this venture, and was glad to see the hotel offered a free continental breakfast.
They all got to know each other on the trip up the interstate. Lynn told them about what brought her to Hilton Head (leaving out the being broke part and the thoughts of moving home to Missouri) while Darwin and Lucas filled her in on their backstory.
“Lucas, tell her about what happened with the Mahoney’s,” Darwin said, noting that Lucas had not mentioned that.
“Ah, it’s nothing,” Lucas said.
“Don’t be so self-deprecating,” Darwin said, and then to Lynn, “Lucas here came to work one morning and found his boss dead in the parking lot.”
“What?” Lynn asked, eyes bulging.
“Yeah,” Darwin continued, “the complex was surrounded by a security fence with only one way in or out. You had to have access codes to get in. Lucas was the last person to see him alive—other than the killer of course. So, Lucas became the prime suspect.”
“Wait,” Lynn said, knitting her eyebrows. “Was this the thing that happened where the owner of that big Mahoney’s restaurant chain was shot by his wife?”
“It was. Lucas solved it.”
She took her eyes off the road for a second and glanced at Lucas. “That was you?”
He shrugged. “It was.”
She didn’t know what to say. She remembered that story. It was national news for about a week. She double take. Oh my, she thought, this guy was a real-life storybook character. Now she was very glad she came along.
• • •
The next morning, they all met in the dining room adjacent to the Microtel Inn lobby. Lynn was freshly showered. Her hair was still damp. Lucas thought she looked and smelled wonderful.
After checking in the night before, they adjourned to their separate rooms. Lucas made a call while Darwin cleaned up. After Lucas climbed out of the shower, they f
ell asleep almost at once. The events of the previous day took their toll on them. Lynn had stayed up well into the night, swept up in the frontier of the Canadian West while reading When Breaks the Dawn by Janette Oke. She briefly imagined Lucas in the role of Wynn Delaney, the hunky hero of the tale.
While Lucas was in the shower, Darwin spent some time doing research on their destination. When he finally had a chance to compare the spot Lucas saw with the map Blackbeard had drawn three hundred years ago, he knew they were on the right track. With a few exceptions, which could owe to human error on Blackbeard’s part, the two maps were almost an identical match. It would be difficult to get there. There were no roads to or from the area.
Darwin then shared a few texts with Lisa back at the museum telling her what they discovered and thanked her for her help in them getting this far.
Lucas poured himself a cup of hot coffee from a carafe, grabbed a bland-looking muffin and a waxy apple before joining Lynn and Darwin at a small table in the corner of the dining area. A Belgian waffle, eggs, bacon, sausage patties and a healthy covering of thick syrup sat in a pile on Darwin’s small Styrofoam plate. Lynn nursed a steaming cup of coffee in both hands as though trying to stay warm. The remains of a bowl of Fruit Loops sat in front of her. A few purple and green cereal fragments floated in the milk.
“Morning,” Lucas said as he sat.
“Good morning,” Lynn smiled.
Darwin couldn’t speak. His mouth was full of food.
“Did you sleep well?” Lucas asked.
She nodded. “I did. You?”
“Like a log. Except for Darwin’s snoring.”
His big friend glanced up with a mouthful of food at the comment with a scowl on his face causing Lucas and Lynn to laugh.
“So what’s up?” she asked. “What now?”
Lucas took a bite of his muffin, chewed, then said, “After we finish here, we’ll check out and get on the road. I called a guy I know down there that has a fishing business on the island. He has a big shrimping boat called the Sarah Jane, and rents out other boats to tourists. He’s going to hold us one until we get there.”
