by Kathy Reichs
“Like you’ve never forgotten anything,” Chance shot back. “I’m on medication!”
I tried the digits in numerical order. The handle turned and the door swung open.
The safe’s interior was divided into levels.
Our prize rested on a red velvet cloth on the top shelf.
Anne Bonny’s cross was slender and delicate, beautifully carved from a single piece of cherry wood. The upright was two feet long, with the horizontal bar crossing six inches below the apex. The central ring formed a perfect circle at the point where the two parts intersected. A clear crystalline substance filled the space between arms and ring, causing the cross’s heart to sparkle in the lamplight.
Gracefully, uniquely, and perplexingly, the top tine curved gently to the right.
“That’s it,” Shelton breathed. “That’s the symbol on the treasure map.”
“Treasure map?” Chance didn’t miss it.
“Shelton, I swear, you’d make the worst secret agent in history.” Hi smacked his forehead. “Dead within hours. I’d probably off you myself.”
“Talk about this map,” Chance pressed.
No one spoke.
“Hey! I did my part. You promised to explain if I produced the cross.” Chance waved a hand at the safe. “Voilà! There it is!”
“This cross may be tied to Anne Bonny’s lost treasure,” I said.
Choosing my words carefully, I gave Chance a sanitized version of the events of the last few days. The other Virals listened in perturbed silence. But a deal is a deal.
“Wow. I didn’t see that coming,” Chance said when I’d finished. “Where’d you find the map?”
“On eBay,” Ben said. “Treasure map section. We paid the Buy It Now price.”
Chance ignored him. “And there was nothing at the end of the tunnels?”
“Only a goofy poem,” Shelton said. “Tory’s getting it translated.”
Wince. Cursing a blue streak, I reached for my iPhone.
“What?” Hi said.
“I’m such a dope.” I scrolled through my unread email. “Aunt Tempe sent me her translation two days ago. I fell asleep and forgot all about it.”
Finding the message, I read aloud:
On the moon’s high day, seek Island People.
Stand the high watch, hold to thy faith, and look to the sea.
Let a clear heart guide you through the field of bones.
“Great.” Shelton tugged an earlobe. “Now what the frig does that mean?”
“It says ‘island people’?” Ben sounded excited. For Ben.
“Yep.” I double-checked. “Both words capitalized. ‘On the moon’s high day, seek Island People.’”
“Moon’s high day!” Ben’s eyes gleamed. “That must be another full moon reference, like in the Sewee legend. ‘When the night sky burned as daytime.’”
“Sounds reasonable,” I agreed. “But how does that help?”
“And who are the island people?” Hi asked.
“I don’t think it’s a who.” Too agitated to stay still, Ben began pacing. “When I was a kid, my grandfather would take me fishing. Wherever we stopped, he’d teach me the old Sewee name for the place. He never accepted European changes.”
“Progressive,” Chance muttered.
Ben was too absorbed to notice. “One I remember—an island named Oneiscau.”
“Wonderful,” Chance said. “Let’s plan a cruise.”
“I think we should.” Ben stopped pacing. “In Sewee, Oneiscau translates to ‘Island People.’”
We all stared in shock.
I recovered first. “Which island?”
“No idea.” Ben shook his head in frustration. “My grandfather died when I was eight. But I remember seeing it once in a book about Charleston’s barrier islands.”
Hands fumbled for smartphones and began tapping furiously.
“How do you spell that?” Hi asked. “Sounds like a lot of vowels.”
“Got it!” Shelton won. “It’s Bull Island!”
“That’s close!” Ben exclaimed. “Just two islands north of here.”
“Oneiscau was renamed Bull after a colonial leader,” Shelton read. “Right about the time Bonny was hijacking ships in the area. She’d have known both names.”
“Bull Island borders Sewee Bay,” Ben added. “Smack in the heart of ancestral Sewee territory. Most of the tribe lived near there.”
“If Bonny operated that close to Sewee villages,” Shelton said, “a tribal legend would make sense. Ben’s story could be dead on.”
“Both poem and legend mention a field of bones,” I said. “I don’t know what that means, but the similarity lends credit to each reference.”
Hi pocketed his phone. “FYI, the full moon is tomorrow night.”
“Then we need to be there,” Chance said firmly. “Could be our only shot.”
No one responded.
Chance glanced from face to face. “What?”
“You’re not coming,” Ben said. “Not in this lifetime.”
“Of course I am.” Chance reached into the safe and removed the cross. “This is mine. If you need it to find buried treasure, I’m in.”
“We don’t need the cross,” Shelton said. “Not for sure.”
Chance’s smile held zero warmth. “I’ll call the police the moment you walk out that door.”
“They’ll haul you right back to the Crazy Town Inn,” Hi pointed out. “The cops must be looking for you right now.”
And me, I thought glumly.
Marsh Point would be frantic to find Chance. Who had they already contacted? The police? Bolton Prep? Kit? The awful possibilities tightened my gut.
Chance shrugged. “This lovely jaunt won’t last anyway. Do you think I plan to live as a fugitive forever?” He snorted. “I’m a Claybourne. I was bored, but I’m not stupid.”
“What you are is delusional.” Ben fumed. “The treasure belongs to us.”
Chance’s hands found his hips. “Cut me out, and I’ll make sure you get nothing.”
Unexpectedly, twin yellow beams flashed across the room.
“Headlights,” Chance warned. “In the driveway.”
“Kill the lamps!” Ben ordered.
Shelton and Hi did. Then we huddled in total darkness.
“Who uses this place?” I whispered.
“No one. My father’s in prison, as you well know. And the servants don’t come after dark.”
The front doorknob jiggled.
Chance rose. “If some lowlife thinks he can rob me, he’s about to learn a harsh lesson.”
I grabbed his arm. “We didn’t tell you everything! Someone’s been following us. And whoever it is fired shots down in the tunnels.”
Chance dropped back into a crouch. “Guns? Seriously?”
“Yes. So let’s sneak out the way we came.”
“Someone’s at the back door!” Shelton hissed from behind me. “We’re trapped!”
Glass shattered in the kitchen.
My heart pounded. “Is there another way?”
“The basement.” Chance tucked the cross under his belt. “Follow me!”
We raced down a hallway to a steep, narrow staircase. Descending at full speed, we reached a dark earth-floored cellar.
“This way.” Snatching a flashlight from a shelf, Chance hurried to a pair of wooden doors on the back wall.
“Tunnel.” Chance yanked one side open. “This cabin was originally part of the Underground Railroad for escaped slaves.”
“Where does it lead?” Shelton asked. He’d clearly had enough of tunnels.
“The boathouse. Fifty feet.”
Something rattled at the top of the stairs.
“Go!” I whispered.
We slipped into the passage, and Chance pulled the door shut. Scurrying like rats, we quickly reached the tunnel’s end.
Chance palm-pushed a trapdoor above our heads. Hinges groaned. The wooden panel swung open and flopped to the floorbo
ards.
Cupping his hands for my foot, Chance boosted me up through the opening.
All was quiet in the boathouse.
I turned to help Shelton and Hi. Ben came next. Then he reached back and pulled Chance after him.
We sprinted down the dock and jumped aboard Sewee. Ben fired the engine and slammed the boat into gear.
Feet pounded down the planks behind us.
“Too late,” I whispered.
Sewee sped out into the cove.
WE BROKE FOR dinner.
Chance was restless, full of questions, but no one else felt like talking.
For the Virals, getting chased by thugs was becoming routine.
After a quick check of the premises, I smuggled Chance into the townhouse and scrounged up some mac and cheese.
“Don’t think I’m cooking for you.” The water was taking forever to boil. “This box just happens to be family size.”
“If you’re grounded, where’s your father?” Chance was idly spinning a quarter on the countertop. “He’s not exactly running a supermax prison here.”
“He’s at a movie with Whitney.” I snorted. “He just texted a reminder for me to record Deadliest Catch. Sometimes I’m awed by his cluelessness.”
“My father is serving life in prison. I’ve got you beat.”
Chance’s attempt at humor fell flat.
We ate our pasta in silence.
“Whaddyagot?” I said.
Videoconference. Chance and I sat side by side before my computer screen.
“Plenty.” Shelton flipped the pages of his notepad. “Bull Island is the perfect place to stash something you don’t want found.”
“Oneiscau,” Ben corrected. “That’s the true name.”
“I’m sticking with words I can pronounce,” Shelton said. “Take it up with Google Maps.”
“Shelton’s right.” Hi was munching on a french bread pizza. It wasn’t pretty. “Historically, there haven’t been many people or structures on the island since the Sewee disappeared.”
“Pirates loved it,” Shelton added. “Bull was so popular with bandits that colonial authorities built a watchtower there.”
“How big is the island?” Chance asked.
“Five thousand acres.” Hi read something off screen. “Bull is the largest barrier island within the Cape Romain National Wildlife Refuge. It’s all forests, swamps, dunes, and beaches.”
“Who lived there?” I asked.
Ben chimed in. “The Sewee until the early 1700s. The English landed in 1670, on their way to settle Charles Town. One was Stephen Bull, and somehow he got the island named after him. Jerk.”
“No one lived there after the Sewee?”
“Very few,” Shelton said. “In 1925, a Senator Dominick purchased the island and built a manor house. The Refuge was established in ’32, and Dominick sold to the Fish and Wildlife Service in ’36. The manor house operated as an inn until the 1960s, when the whole shebang was declared off-limits for development.”
Chance leaned in front of my webcam. “So you’re saying Bull Island has been essentially unoccupied since Bonny escaped in 1720?”
“Yes,” Hi answered. “Bull Island is a class-one remote wilderness area, which means it’s basically untouched. The manor house is still used by Refuge employees, but nothing else was ever built out there.”
“That’s not to say no one visits,” Shelton said. “There’s a daily ferry. The bird watching is supposed to be top notch, and the island is criss-crossed with trails. But Bull is closed to the public after dark.”
“Perfect,” I said. “That’s when we’ll go.”
“Tomorrow night,” Hi reminded. “Full moon.”
“Five thousand acres.” Chance scratched at his thin beard, puzzled. “How will we know where to look?”
“I’ve got an idea about that,” Shelton said. “The second line of Bonny’s poem reads, ‘stand the high watch, hold to thy faith, and look to the sea.’”
“So we’ll be looking east,” I said.
“Remember the watchtower?” Shelton glanced at his notepad. “In 1707, the South Carolina General Assembly authorized lookouts on six coastal islands, each to be built on a hill or high dune.”
“Bull got one,” Hi guessed.
“Yep. It was called a Martello tower, and would’ve been manned by a white dude and a couple of Sewee, for the sole purpose of watching for pirate ships. If they saw one, they’d fire a cannon three times, then run like hell.”
“Heroes,” Hi said. “What happened to the thing?”
“The Union blew it up during the Civil War.”
I saw where Shelton was headed. “You think the tower is the ‘high watch’ mentioned in Bonny’s poem?”
“Makes sense, doesn’t it?”
“It does.” I smiled. “Good job. We have a place to start.”
“Any thoughts on the field of bones?” Ben asked.
“No,” Hi admitted.
“Not yet,” said Shelton.
“Keep looking.” I yawned, exhausted by another long day. “Let’s talk again in the morning.”
“Wait!” Chance glanced at me in surprise. “We aren’t going to discuss what happened at the cabin?”
“What’s the point?” Ben said. “We don’t know who was out there.”
“You’re hanging with us now, bro.” Hi flicked imaginary dust from his shoulder. “Don’t worry so much.”
“Truth.” Shelton fist-pounded his chest. “We’ll keep you safe.”
“Good night, tough guys.” I logged off.
Chance propped his feet on my ottoman. “What now?”
“We lay low until tomorrow night. You hide up here.”
“But I’m bored. Don’t you have a Wii or something?”
The front door opened. Keys hit the hall table.
“Tory, I’m home!” Kit’s voice carried up the stairs. “Wanna watch some 30 Rock reruns?”
“Coming!” I turned and whispered to Chance. “Read a book. Bridget Jones’s Diary is on my shelf. You’ll love it.”
I shut the door on his groan.
WE LEFT JUST after midnight the following night.
Quiet as a whisper, Chance and I crept downstairs. Kit had gone to bed early and was usually a heavy sleeper. Nonetheless, my heart raced with every creak of the floorboards.
In the living room, Coop padded over and whined softly.
“Stay, boy.” I led him back to his doggie bed, praying he’d cooperate. Then Chance and I slipped through the front door and raced to the dock.
Ben was already aboard Sewee, double-checking the gear we’d assembled that afternoon. Shelton and Hi arrived moments later. We eased from the pier and motored north toward Bull Island.
A full moon hung low on the western horizon. Bright. Timely. It glowed like a giant white eye, alleviating the need for battery-powered light.
We rode in silence, each wrapped in our own thoughts. The only words spoken were occasional navigational commands.
Ben crossed the harbor mouth, rounded Sullivan’s Island, and headed back into The Cove. We’d decided to take the Intracoastal Waterway—a combo natural and man-made canal running between the barrier islands and the mainland. Traveling the open sea after sunset was too risky.
Before long we reached the Claybourne cabin we’d fled the previous night. The property was dark and quiet. Continuing north, Sewee passed island after island on our right. Sullivan’s. Isle of Palms. Dewees.
Then the waterway narrowed. Signs of human influence fell away as we crossed into thick, undisturbed swampland. The only sounds were the hoots and peeps of nocturnal birds and an occasional muffled splash.
We huddled close together aboard our little craft, keenly aware that humans were interlopers in such wild, primal Lowcountry.
After what seemed a lifetime, Ben pointed to a black shape on our right.
“That’s the southern edge of Bull Island,” he said. “Most of the high ground is on the northern side.�
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“Should we anchor here?” I asked.
“We need to go farther up the waterway,” Ben said. “The next stretch is pretty raw, but leads into Sewee Bay. From there we can cut through the swamp and come ashore on one of the beaches.”
“Let’s hustle.” Hi gestured at the gloom around us. “This place feels like Jurassic Park on crack. I don’t wanna get chomped by a velociraptor.”
We entered a narrow channel overhung with trees that blocked the moonlight and wrapped our vessel in shadow. As our progress slowed, my anxiety increased.
Finally, the canal opened into a wide tidal lake. Scattered docks appeared. Ben skirted the shoreline, then turned into a network of narrow creeks. Shelton sat next to him, relaying GPS directions stored on his iPhone.
After a zigzag course we pulled into Bull Harbor. I could hear the Atlantic surf not far off.
“There she blows.” Ben pointed to the landmass looming ahead. “Oneiscau. Bull Island.” To Hi, “You have that map handy?”
“Yep.” Hi tapped his smartphone.
“Which way?” Ben asked. “The island has only one dock.”
“We should anchor near the watchtower,” Shelton blurted. “Keep the boat close.”
“Why?” Hi asked.
Shelton’s teeth glinted in the moonlight. “Call it a hunch.”
“Care to share more?” I said. “We’re on a tight timetable.”
“Not just yet. But I’ve got an idea. Humor me.”
“Humoring you means getting in the water,” Hi grumbled. “It better be worth it.”
Shelton slapped Hi’s shoulder. “Seeing you in a wet tee is reward enough.”
“Which way to the fort?” Ben asked.
“Hard to starboard.” Hi’s features glowed blue in the light of his phone’s display. “The watchtower is near Bull’s northeastern point.”
Ben skimmed past dense forest growing tight to the water’s edge. Live oaks and palmetto palms jockeyed with cedars, loblolly pines, and sprawling magnolias. The tangled understory blocked all view of the island’s interior. Like Loggerhead, I thought.
As Sewee crept forward the woodland gave way to marsh. The water grew shallow. Reeds and spartina grass poked from its surface. Frogs croaked. Insects hummed and whined all around us.
“Bull Island has an enormous alligator population,” Ben whispered. “So … uh … keep your head on a swivel.”
