Make Them Pay

by Allison Brennan

  “And then I’ll kill them. You can watch. It’ll be fun.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  “Liam, we need to head back to camp now.” Dante looked pointedly at Eden.

  Eden hadn’t wanted to push Liam, but she no longer had a choice.

  “You promised,” Eden told her brother. “It’s getting dark. We have to get out of here before we can’t see. The trails are too dangerous to navigate at night. And the animals—it’s not safe.”

  “I know it’s here.”

  They’d been at the valley floor for three and a half hours. It had taken them hours to clear away the vines and shrubs that had grown around the area. They knew they were at the right place—they’d uncovered part of the stone foundation of the church. Just as described in the journal.

  But they hadn’t found the cavern. They had inspected every inch of the hillside behind the church for a cave or inlet or something that indicated there was a path into the mountainside, but rock blocked them.

  This wasn’t a one-day job. They could be here a week. Longer. They needed more supplies and equipment. The three of them couldn’t do it all themselves.

  “Ten more minutes,” Liam said.

  Her brother sounded desperate, and desperation bred mistakes. She knew how important this was to him—proving, once and for all, that the treasure their parents had been searching for was here, that their hunt was almost over. It had become an obsession, and Eden fed it—because she wanted to look Kane in the face and say, I told you so.

  “Liam—” Eden stopped, looked at Dante. She didn’t know what to say. When they first arrived, she had never seen her brother so happy—so in awe. A child again. As if their parents hadn’t suddenly died, as if their brothers hadn’t disowned them. As if everything were right again in the world.

  They knew they were in the right place, but time had worked against them. Storms. Earthquakes. Mother Nature. Time shifted, changed what had been.

  “Oh my God, Eden!”

  Liam’s voice sounded odd, and she walked over to where he was kneeling at the corner of the foundation, directly behind the broken stone cross. He had used a pickaxe to break up the stone. It was grueling, tiresome work, but Liam hadn’t stopped. A full three-foot-by-three-foot stone wall had been reduced to manageable pieces, which Liam had pushed aside one by one.

  Liam fell to his hands and began digging into the hard dirt. The rocks slipped, and that’s when Eden saw. The rocks and dirt were falling into an underground cavern. Liam began to slip as the foundation sagged. Eden screamed and grabbed on to him, but the slide stopped.

  Dante rushed over, stood behind Liam. They all stared into the dark hole, shining their flashlights.

  “I have to go in,” Liam said.

  “It’s too late,” Dante said. “We don’t know what’s down there, we don’t have enough lights. We need to get back to camp. The sun officially sets in forty minutes, and the woods are already getting dark. We have to go back now.”

  “No!”

  Eden saw a glint of something in the earth below. She shined her light down. Shallow stone steps led into darkness. On a shelf built into the earth next to the steps was something that caught her light.

  “It’s a statue,” Liam whispered. “I have to get it.”

  “No,” Dante said. “If you fall down there, we don’t have the equipment to get you out.”

  “Lower me,” Eden said. “I’m the lightest. If you hold my feet, I can reach it.”

  Liam turned to Dante. “I have to know. If that’s Saint Michael the Archangel, this is it. This is it!”

  The journal had told the story that the head of the heavenly host, the warrior of God’s Army, Saint Michael himself, guarded Paradise. It was a biblical story, but one Father Gregorio had believed would protect the treasure from the enemies of God, those who had slaughtered members at Father Gregorio’s expedition.

  Liam begged. “Please.”

  Dante relented. Eden lay on the ground. Even though the earth had shifted when Liam had found the opening, the ground around them appeared solid. She shimmied over to the opening, took a deep breath and tasted dirt and clay. Then she said, “Grab my feet.”

  Her brother and Dante held on to her as she hung upside down into the cavern. Her fingers brushed the statue. “A couple more inches!” she called. Pebbles fell around her, but she was going to get the statue for Liam. It might be the only way to convince him to go back to camp tonight.

  She slipped and gasped. She grabbed hold of the statue with her right hand and shouted, “Get me out!”

  Dante and Liam pulled her out. The statue was extremely heavy—heavier than it looked. As soon as she was back up she scrambled away from the opening, breathing heavily.

  “Eden—please—” Liam held his hands out.

  She handed him the statue.

  Liam took the statue from Eden as if it were an infant. He poured water over it, rinsing away generations of dirt and dust.

  Faint color came to life. Chipped paint over the dull gleam of gold. A sword that should have been in Saint Michael’s hand had broken off—when Eden couldn’t tell, but the breakage was as dirty as the statue, telling her it had happened long ago. One of his wings was missing, but the body was all there. The detail in the statue told them this was in fact Saint Michael the Archangel. The statue that guarded the treasure. As it was written in the journal, as they’d always believed.

  Liam and Eden had spent their life studying art and artifacts. There was no doubt that this statue was solid gold. It stood approximately eighteen inches high and weighed at least twenty-five pounds. If it was pure gold, they held nearly half a million dollars in their hands. Even if it wasn’t pure gold, its value was historically immeasurable.

  “It’s here,” Liam said, caressing the statue. “It’s really here.”

  “We’ll come back tomorrow with lights, rope, equipment, whatever it takes.” Dante was equally excited but far more pragmatic. “But now we need to leave before it gets any darker.”

  “Liam,” Eden said, “I’m not leaving you here. But I don’t want to be stuck down here all night. There’s a storm coming in, we have no shelter. We don’t know if the stream will flood. We need to be smart about this.”

  She held her breath. For a split second she thought Liam was going to argue with them. Fight them. Refuse to leave. She and Dante couldn’t force him, and she wouldn’t leave him alone. He walked over to his backpack, took out his extra shirt, carefully wrapped the statue, and packed it up. “We did it. Eden, Dante, we did what our parents could never do.”

  “I wish Gabriella was here,” Dante said.

  Eden took his hand. “Me too. Call her when we get back to camp. She’ll come tomorrow, I know it.”

  They left the site of their dig, packed their tools, and started up the trail that would take them around the edge of the valley and back up the mountainside.

  It wouldn’t take as long to get back to camp as it had to reach the valley—they had marked their path, cut away shrubs and trees, so while they were mostly going up, it had been cleared. They stopped once to drink water and silently watch the sunset.

  Eden wondered what her parents would have thought. If they had really believed or had just given Liam the quest so that he would feel special. Either way, good or bad, they had done something that no one in two hundred years had been able to do. They had found the Alamo Treasure. They had uncovered history. And that, alone, would sustain Eden for a long, long time.

  “Fifteen more minutes,” Dante said, “give or take. I’m starving. We eat, sleep, then pack up before dawn. It took us three hours to get to the site this morning—it’ll only take us half the time now that we’ve cleared the way.”

  “We can’t tell anyone,” Liam said. “There’ll be people all over this place, destroying the church, looting, taking what’s ours.”

  “You mean, what’s going back to the people,” Dante said. “We agreed—take a finder’s fee, then the rest goes on the m
useum circuit. First to the Smithsonian to authenticate, then to Mexico. This is world history. It belongs to everyone.”

  “That’s all in the plan, but we can enjoy it alone for a while.” He cuddled the statue. Eden hadn’t seen him take it out of his pack.

  Eden wasn’t certain Liam would give any of it up.

  * * *

  Kane walked over to where Noah was monitoring emergency transmissions. Already the winds had picked up accompanied by light, intermittent rain, though the tent Liam’s team had pitched was shielded on two sides by the terrain and would provide decent shelter. “Weather report?”

  “Upgraded to a tropical storm, but right now doesn’t look like hurricane-force winds. We’ll get wet here. The coastal area will get hit hard, forty-five-to-fifty-mile-per-hour winds with surges up to seventy. Storm hits land by midnight. Small craft west of McAllen are grounded at ten p.m., advisories west of Laredo, through six a.m. If we leave tonight, we would have to fly west of these mountains, then northwest around Monterrey, then a northeast route into the States through Rio Grande City, then backtrack to Hidalgo, though getting there might be problematic because of the winds. We’ll be eating up the fuel. It’s about an additional one hundred fifty miles.”

  “I won’t have enough fuel even if it was a straight shot.”

  “Where were you going to refuel?”

  “I have a few places I can go, but nothing in that direction. How’s Sean’s plane?”

  “In this weather? I can make it at least to Rio Grande, but then it’ll be hit or miss. I can use the winds getting there, but as soon as I turn east I’ll be blasted. If we get out sooner, I might be able to make a straight shot up to McAllen before the advisory goes into effect.” Noah looked at him oddly. “You’re not planning on leaving tonight, are you?”

  “I have to get to Guadalajara. Jack’s gone dark. I need you to take everyone to the States as soon as they get out of that goddamn jungle.”

  Kane was worried. About Lucy, about Sean, about Jack. He’d been sitting here for hours waiting for his brother and sister to show themselves. They were playing treasure hunters while Lucy was being held captive by a drug cartel.

  “Did you call Stockton?”

  “Yes. His SEAL team won’t be ready to deploy until twenty-one hundred, and they can’t do a damn thing without intel. They’ll be within fifty miles of the Flores compound by twenty-three hundred awaiting orders.”

  Kane heard a whistle from the head of the trail. Nate had taken the last hour of standing guard. The whistle indicated that the subjects were approaching and would be visible within five minutes. Kane and Noah both turned off their flashlights. It had gotten dark rapidly over the last thirty minutes, and for the last ten Kane had thought he was wrong about the camp, that Liam and the others had decided to stay in the valley below after all.

  Siobhan was in the tent—the safest place for her at this point. He leaned inside and whispered, “Stay put.”

  She nodded, and Kane partially zipped the tent.

  He and Noah positioned themselves on either side of the path, far enough into the trees that they wouldn’t be spotted. Nate would be taking up the rear, waiting until the targets passed him, then trailing them and cutting off their escape route.

  Kane wanted to take care of business quick and without injuries. He saw movement in the brush, then heard Liam’s voice. Kane couldn’t quite make out what Liam was saying.

  Dante stepped into sight first. He saw Kane a fraction of a second after he stepped toward Dante. Kane immediately brought Dante to his knees and pulled the weapon from his back holster. Kane then pulled Dante up and pushed him away from the entrance of the path.

  “What the hell?” Dante said.

  “Quiet.”

  Liam and Eden came into view. They were twenty feet from Kane. Noah was closer, but Liam was carrying something in his arms. “Hold it, Armstrong. Liam, put down the rock,” Kane ordered.

  “Kane? What are you doing here?” Liam glanced around, spotted Noah. “Well, I’m be—”

  “Put the damn rock down, now.”

  “Rock? This is a gold statue! We found the treasure Mom and Dad looked for their entire lives! This is a solid gold statue of Saint Michael the Archangel. The journal said that Saint Michael would guard the treasure.”

  “Down.”

  “No!”

  Liam took a step toward him and Kane adjusted his gun.

  “You wouldn’t,” Liam said. He had no fear. He never had.

  “Stop it, both of you,” Eden said. She looked from Kane to Noah and back at Kane. “What on earth is going on?”

  “I don’t want to hurt any of you. Put your tools down, keep your hands up. This ends now, Eden,” Kane said.

  “Didn’t you hear us? We found the treasure! The gold that was intended for the Alamo—it’s real! We found it and made history.”

  “You kidnapped a federal agent. Your sister-in-law.”

  Eden blinked. “Sean’s girlfriend?”

  “You have no idea what you’ve done. But this farce is over. Put down the pickax, Eden!”

  She hesitated, glanced at Liam. He pressed the statue against his chest. “How did you find us? Who betrayed us?” He looked at Dante. “Was it Gabriella? I knew you both had softened!”

  “Gabriella wouldn’t betray us,” Dante said.

  “But she’s all tight with Jack Kincaid. Isn’t that what you said? That Gabriella might be upset that we brought Jack’s sister with us?”

  “If you’d asked me first, I would have told you hands-off, but you haven’t been thinking lately, Liam! Just— Let’s go back to the safe house. We’ll talk about this.”

  “Your days of diplomacy are over,” Kane told Dante. “You crossed a line there is no returning from.”

  Liam was shaking. “You are a fool, Kane! This … this is so much bigger than any of us!” He held up the statue. “This is history. We’re going down in history. I succeeded where so many have failed. I did.”

  “You worked for some nasty people in order to get this treasure. Was it worth it? Worth selling your soul?”

  “That’s all on you, big brother,” Liam spit out. “You took those bonds six years ago—you put me in a bind. I couldn’t imagine that you, of all people, would cost me my freedom.”

  “You’re wrong, Liam. You made your own decisions.”

  “You took the bonds! I owed people, and I couldn’t deliver—I’ve been in debt to them ever since, because of you! I never thought you’d do something like that—”

  “I didn’t know what you’d gotten yourself into, Liam. If you had come to me, told me the truth from the beginning—”

  “Right, the truth. You are a self-righteous prick, Kane. Thinking you’re better than me. You took everything from me. The family business—replaced me with an outsider! You took the bonds, forced me and Eden to work for assholes. That’s on you, Kane, you!”

  Kane could scarcely understand the rage and venom in Liam’s voice. This wasn’t his brother. Maybe he had never known Liam. He certainly didn’t know the man he had become.

  “Eden, tell him to stand down,” Kane said.

  “Don’t talk to her!” Liam shouted. “You never listened. And you aren’t any better than me. I haven’t killed anyone, Kane. How many people have you killed?”

  “This isn’t about blood. This is about honor. You think our parents would be proud of you because you sold your soul for gold?”

  “Don’t twist this around. Everything I did was for the greater good!”

  “You are delusional.”

  “Stop saying that!”

  Noah spoke for the first time. “Put the statue down, Liam.”

  Liam was breathing heavily. Kane glanced down at Dante—he was trying to get up. Kane put a foot on his back. “Don’t, Romero.”

  “It was my dad,” Dante said quietly. He sighed. “I shouldn’t have confided in him.”

  “Uncle Carlo understood the ramifications of you kidnapping a
federal agent and bringing her to Mexico.”

  “Is that what this is about?” Liam laughed. “Your precious little Lucy is just fine. I called Sean hours ago and told him where to get her.”

  Kane wanted to hit him.

  “The Flores cartel kidnapped Lucy from Dante’s house,” Kane said through clenched teeth. “The same cartel that held Sean’s son hostage. The same cartel that killed Gabriella’s fiancé. Lucy and Noah stopped their human-trafficking organization in Texas—do you think the cartel is going to give her a medal? They’re going to torture and kill her if Sean and Jack can’t find her in time.” Kane kicked Dante. “And you, I expected better from you, Romero. You left Gabriella unprotected to chase after some gold?”

  “Gabriella is fine—she stayed behind to protect herself.”

  “Jasmine Flores is on the warpath. She sent her people to get you, Romero—do you think when she finds out that Lucy was at your fucking house she’s not going to think Gabriella is a spy?”

  “If Gabriella is in danger, I have to go.” Dante tried to get up.

  Kane kicked him back down. “You are all going back to the States. Rick Stockton is on his way to Texas, and he’s handling the paperwork. You’re not getting out of this.”

  “Goddammit, Kane!” Dante exclaimed. “I can help.”

  “What are you all talking about?” Liam said. “You’re going to go and fight the damn drug cartel? You’ll all get yourselves killed. This is insane—you’re insane.”

  “Liam—” Eden said.

  Liam shook his head. “Kane, you never understood! I wasn’t the soldier like you or the good son like Duke or the genius like Sean, but I have something none of you ever had. Faith. Dreams. I found the treasure. I found it!”

  Kane glanced at his sister. She looked frozen in place. The wind whipped her long hair around her face. Fat raindrops began to fall.

  “Liam, it’ll be here,” she said. “No one knows where it is except us. Dad would understand.” She turned to Kane. “This is all your fault. None of this would have happened if you hadn’t taken the bonds six years ago.”