Fatal Fortune (Blackmoore Sisters Mystery Book 8)

by Leighann Dobbs

  Luke turned toward the ocean and frowned. “How would someone get on the island without us seeing?”

  Buzz shrugged. “We’re watching constantly during the day and set up a camera at night, but if they came in without lights, I suppose someone could have landed.”

  “Sounds like that would be pretty dangerous,” Jake said. “The entire perimeter of the island is rocks.”

  “Maybe they swam in like I did,” Matteo suggested.

  “Never mind that. Why would someone leave a paranormal-energy gun just lying up here?” Morgan asked.

  Fiona stepped over to the rock wall. “I think I might know why. Something about these rocks reminds me of the cave-in in the cavern.”

  She ran her palm flat along the boulders. The area didn’t have a pile of rubble like the cave-in in the cavern. It was just big boulders and ledge with a few smaller rocks.

  Fiona ran her hands over the area between the boulder and the ledge where a few smaller pieces of rock had wedged between. Dust puffed out of the spaces in between, and a slight humming sound came from the rocks. As her palms passed over, a few sparks of light jumped out from the cracks.

  She snapped her fist shut and turned to face them. “Something volatile happened to these rocks recently. The energy in the rocks is still vibrating from the movement. I think the ledge was blasted, then somehow it was fused to the boulders. It must have taken powerful energy to make this happen.“

  Celeste looked down at the gun. “You mean one of Bly’s men used this gun to blast a hole in the ledge here? How would they know to do that? And why?”

  “They must have suspected there was a tunnel just beyond the ledge,” Luke said.

  “But why would they seal themselves in?” Jolene asked.

  “Maybe they didn’t intend to seal themselves in. Maybe they just wanted to blast a hole in the rock,” Celeste said. “That would explain why the gun was on the outside. Something must have happened, and the rocks opened, they jumped in, but then somehow the rocks fused back together. One of the guys must have dropped the gun. Maybe he got injured or something.”

  “So the real question is… what are they doing in there, or are they lying dead crushed under these rocks?” Matteo said.

  Morgan stepped up to the rocks and closed her eyes, screwing them shut. “They’re in there. I feel the vibes.”

  Jolene nodded. “I can see their energy trail. Blue and green with excitement, but somehow something went wrong. They must not have intended to cause whatever happened that blocked them in.”

  “And whatever they did caused the cave-in in the cavern and the flood chambers to be opened,” Fiona said.

  “Probably. It’s still possible our digging around in the cavern caused the flooding. They might have had that booby-trapped. It makes sense they would want to protect what was in there. There might even be more treasure hidden there, and while I doubt that pirates other than Mirabella knew the value of the relic, they would want to protect the other treasure for its monetary value,” Celeste said.

  “We may never know if it was whatever Bly’s guys did here or your digging that caused the flooding, but what I’d like to know is how did these guys get here, and what led them to this exact spot?” Jake asked.

  “I know how they got here.” Gordy pushed aside a pine bough and stepped into the group, his breath coming in short bursts. He bent at the waist, resting his palms on his knees. He thrust his chin out toward the ocean. “I found an inflatable. A Zodiac FC420 pulled up on the rocks down there along with a tent and camping gear.”

  “A 420?” Luke said. “That’s pretty small. If they brought gear, that would mean there wouldn’t be room for too many of them.”

  “There could only be two of them. There’s no way it could fit three people and gear,” Jake said.

  “Good. At least we know we only have to battle two of them.” Jolene smiled. “Should be easy peasy.”

  “Yeah, especially since we now have one of their guns.” Morgan studied the gun in her hand. “We need to figure out how to use this thing.”

  “I remember seeing them use it before, and they simply slid this lever and then pulled the trigger like a real gun.” Jolene pointed to a lever on the side and then the trigger.

  “Be careful with that.” Luke grabbed the gun from Morgan. “It’s dangerous. It could be damaged and might backfire or something. I’ll save it for Dorian, and she can have someone reverse-engineer it. In the meantime, maybe I should send her a message to see if she has any intel on why Bly’s men picked this spot.”

  “And I think I know why they picked this spot.” Cal peeked out from behind a large outcropping of ledge and motioned for them to join him.

  They went to stand beside him, and he pointed at a jagged piece of ledge stuck up into the air. It was faintly chiseled with letters just like the rock they’d found in the box from LeBlanc’s old store.

  “I think this is the missing piece of rock that goes with the ones we have.” Cal took out his cell phone and snapped a picture.

  “Bly must’ve gotten a lead after all. It must have led them to this very spot. But how could they have solved the puzzle without the rest of the rocks?” Luke asked.

  Cal, still frowning at the inscribed rock, rubbed his chin. “I don’t think they could have. I think they might’ve gotten a lead to this piece of the puzzle and assumed the relic was right near it. They might not realize there is more of the puzzle to solve and that the relic is near here. But I don’t think it is.”

  “Well, of course it isn’t. I had the darn thing in my hand down in the cavern down there.” Celeste pointed in the general direction of the cavern, which they couldn’t see from their vantage point. ”That’s not anywhere near here.”

  “If Bly’s guys are in there, do you think they know we’re here on the island?” Jolene asked.

  “I’m not sure.” Matteo had come to stand close behind Jolene. She looked at him funny and then inched away as he continued talking. “When I did my intel, they were following up on the fake lead from that box they’d stolen from the store. None of them knew that you girls had been in the area, so they might not know we are here. As far as I know, they have no idea we are following a lead too.“

  “If they do know that we are here, they might be trying to get the relic out without us even noticing. With only two of them against all of us, they might not want to risk a battle. Even with those energy guns,” Luke said. “Bly has intel too, you know, and it’s pretty good.”

  “Either way, now they’re stuck in there.” Jake pointed to the rocks. “Which gives us a head start, so I say we get our scuba gear, dive into that cavern, retrieve the relic, and get the heck out of here before we have to cross paths with them.”

  “Well, that’s the thing.” Cal glanced from the inscription on the rock to the direction of the cavern. “I need my paper and pencil to do some calculations, but from what I’m seeing with this missing piece, I’m not sure the relic is where you guys think it is.”

  “We saw it there,” Morgan said. “And besides, those rocks were etched three hundred years ago. Maybe things have changed on the island since.”

  “Or maybe you’re wrong.” Fiona shot Cal an apologetic look. “Either way, we know what we saw in that cavern, and we better get in there and extract it before Bly’s guys figure out they are on a wild goose chase and come after us.”

  While the others headed to the cabins, Celeste stayed behind with Cal, who was still scratching his head and puzzling over the markings on the rock. She was curious as to why he was still puzzling over the rock when they already knew where the relic was.

  “What’s going on? You seem distracted by this rock, and we really don’t need to decrypt the code anymore anyway,” Celeste asked him.

  Cal stepped back from the rock and pulled his cell phone out of his back pocket then navigated to earlier photos showing the other rocks as well as photos he’d taken of the notes he’d made while trying to decrypt the code.

>   “See these?” He pointed to the photos of the rocks. “The translation should be directions, steps we take to find the relic, right?”

  Celeste nodded. “Yeah. So?”

  “Well, these three pictures show all the inscriptions. Look at how many letters there are. It’s not really enough for much direction.”

  Celeste frowned. There were sixteen letters and a few other characters that looked as if they could be separators or some other type of code marker. “I guess it doesn’t seem like a lot. Do you mean it’s supposed to say something like ‘fifty paces to the oak tree, turn right, and at thirty paces, x marks the spot’?”

  “Something like that. At the very least, it should give directions to landmarks and where to go from there. But I don’t see how it could possibly be much direction with so few letters. I thought the missing rock would have more letters on it.”

  “Maybe there is another rock?” Hadn’t Mirabella said something about three large Scotch pines? There weren’t any in the area, not even an old tree stump that would be large enough.

  Cal looked at his photos again. “I don’t think so. Look at the edges of the rocks—they all match up. It doesn’t look like any more is missing.”

  He looked out over the ocean, his eyes cloudy. Obviously, his mind was on his calculations and not the view. Then he frowned and turned to her, his eyes filling with concern. He wrapped one of her curls around his finger. “Your hair is still wet. Are you warm enough? I don’t want you catching a cold.”

  Celeste’s heart warmed at his concern. He slipped his arm around her, and she snuggled into him.

  “I’m fine. It’s warm out. But if you’re right about the code on the rocks, does it really matter? We don’t need directions anymore, because I found that box.”

  Cal looked puzzled. “Box?”

  “Yeah, I found a jeweled box in that cavern, and the relic must have been in it.”

  “So you didn’t actually see the relic?”

  “No. But it must have been in there. I mean, the box was all fancy and…” Celeste’s words drifted off. The cavern had obviously been dug out by someone. She assumed pirates wanting to hide treasure. And that was why it filled up when the booby traps were set off, because it was full of treasure. Or at least one very important treasure.

  “Where exactly was this cavern? I mean, was the path simple enough that the directions could be written with the few letters on these rocks?” Cal asked.

  Celeste pressed her lips together. “Maybe. From the start of the treasure pit, we went straight down, took a right, then another right, and followed that to the cavern. But even if that route couldn’t be mapped out with the letters on the rocks, it’s possible Constantine accessed it through a different entry point.”

  Cal sighed. “I’m sure you’re right and the relic was in there. We have to check it out either way. Hopefully, we can find it quickly. We don’t know how long it’ll be before Bly’s men realize they’re on the wrong track and come out after us.”

  “Now that you have the missing piece of rock, you can figure out exactly what it says, can’t you?” Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to decode the clue that Constantine left just in case.”

  Cal pursed his lips. “Well, that’s the thing. I could if I knew the cipher code. I’ve tried all the programs I know and even some sophisticated cipher keys that don’t have software programs. I’m beginning to think this is a columnar transposition cipher.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It’s trickier than a regular cipher. The key is three rows of letters that you line up in columns for the decryption. So you figure out what each letter means from those columns. Do you see what I mean?”

  “I think so.” Celeste vaguely remembered Cal explaining how to decrypt complicated codes to her. Maybe she should have paid attention to all his little lessons. She knew they had to look for patterns, and sometimes you could decrypt one message only to find that that was actually an encrypted message that needed another key to decrypt. But she didn’t remember hearing him talk about this column thing before.

  They started walking slowly back toward the cabins as Cal explained further. “In a regular cipher, you might have a number that correlates to a letter, or sometimes the key is hidden in a book or other text. That could still be the case here.”

  “Like that time we had to reference a certain word in a certain paragraph in a book to break the code?” Celeste referred to one of their earlier missions.

  “That’s it exactly. In this case, though, it’s not as simple as referencing a page, paragraph, and word. You need a whole bunch of words.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “That’s what makes it fun. Though, so far, it’s been more frustrating than fun. And, even if we recover the relic, I still want to decrypt it.”

  “I figured you would.” Cal was the kind of guy that never left something half-finished. Celeste knew that once they recovered the relic, he’d still want to figure out the directions and follow them to make sure they were right. But his attention to detail and his dogged determination to see things through to the end was what made him valuable on their missions and one of the things she liked about him the best.

  “Luckily, the message is short, so once I crack it, we’ll be able to figure it out easily,” Cal said.

  “If anyone can do it, you can.” Celeste grabbed Cal’s hand and was rewarded with his charming smile.

  “Thanks. But right now I think we need to get into that cavern and see what was in the box. I don’t have the luxury of working on decrypting it right now. I think Luke is going to need my help.”

  “Why? Seems like a simple-enough dive, and he has plenty of people.”

  Cal glanced back at the ledge uncertainly. “I’m not one to take chances. Like to have all my bases covered, and since it could take a while to recover that box, I think it would be smart to suggest to Luke that we have someone at the exits to warn us if the enemy is coming, which means he’s going to need me to help with the dive.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Five minutes later, they exited the woods to find the others out in front of the cabins with various pieces of scuba gear spread out in front of them. Luke was already in his wetsuit. Jake was hoisting scuba tanks on his back. Gordy handed an underwater metal detector to Cal and clapped him on the shoulder as he brushed past.

  “I’m sending Buzz up to guard the place where Bly’s men went in. Matteo is on his way to guard the treasure pit, and Gordy is down at the cove, guarding the underwater cave exits. If Bly’s men come out, I want to know about it,” Luke said.

  Celeste and Cal exchanged a look then knuckle-tapped. Sending someone to the exits had been exactly what they had just been talking about.

  Luke frowned at them then pointed to a wetsuit. “Suit up, Cal. The three of us will dive in. Hopefully, the metal detector will help speed up the recovery process.”

  “I’ll dive too and show you where I dropped the box,” Celeste said.

  “No way. You girls were in the water too much today. I can’t let you go back in there.” Luke reached around behind his shoulder and tugged up the zipper on his wetsuit.

  “What do you mean?” Anger and indignation simmered in Celeste’s chest. She hated being told what to do, and it was her responsibility to retrieve that box. But then she realized why he didn’t want her to go back in. She’d already screwed up once when she’d dropped the relic, and Luke probably didn’t want to risk her screwing up again. She could hardly blame him. Maybe it was better if she left the retrieval to everyone else.

  Fiona fisted her hands on her hips. “We’re not just going to sit around here and do nothing while you guys dive.”

  “Of course you’re not. You guys can split up. Two of you stay topside while we dive. We’ll need tethers because it could be tricky inside there with the rubble you described. We need someone up above, ready to pull us out, not to mention someone to protect us if those two thugs of Bly’s get past Gordy, Buz
z, or Matteo and end up here. We’re vulnerable down there, so it’s an important job.”

  Luke’s words seemed to mollify Fiona. Jolene not so much.

  “So that’s for two of us. What are the other two going to do?” Jolene asked.

  “The other two can start packing. As soon as we come up with this relic, we are getting out of here. We don’t know how long Bly’s guys are going to be down in those tunnels, and we need to get off the island before they come back for us. In fact, I’ve already put a call in to Jason to come and get us,” Luke said.

  Morgan’s ice-blue eyes turned downright frosty as she glared at Luke. “Oh, so the women have to stay back and pack up the cabins.”

  Luke smiled the charming, boyish smile that Celeste knew enabled him to get his way with most women. Even Morgan—sometimes. He kissed Morgan on the cheek. “Just two of you. The other two are coming with us. I’ll let you guys decide amongst yourselves. Don’t worry. Next time, we’ll let you guys do the diving.” He hefted the scuba gear on and headed toward the cavern, with Cal and Jake following.

  Morgan turned to face her sisters. “Well, doesn’t that beat all. Leaving us here. Who wants to pack, and who wants to go to the cavern?”

  “You guys go. I’ll stay here and pack.” Celeste turned toward her cabin. Packing was probably the most useful thing she could do. At least she wouldn’t have to worry about screwing that up.

  “I’ll stay too.” Jolene got into step beside her.

  “Okay, but next time, we’ll do the packing,” Morgan shot over her shoulder as she and Fiona jogged off toward the others.

  Celeste’s wet clothes from earlier were draped over the porch railing, and she pulled them off and spread them on the picnic table in the sun so they could dry before she had to pack them. Pausing, she glanced out at the ocean, picturing the pirate ships that had sailed toward here with the relic three hundred years ago. Was it really in that jeweled box? She’d been so sure when she was holding it in the cavern, but now she was nervous. What if it wasn’t in there? She’d told them it was in the box, and if they wasted all that time only to find it was something else, it would be worse than not having found it at all. And another screw-up to add to her record.