She’d rather leave the treasure here to wash away or be found by fishermen than touch it ever again. She glanced at Stephen. His body lay where it had fallen, a dark stain spreading on the sand beneath his shoulder. The price of the treasure was too high.
She had to get him back to Polperro, back to the inn, where a surgeon could see him and treat his wound.
Her eyes lit on the small boat, now dragged sideways by the current. It would be the fastest way back, the only way, as Westman was obviously incapable of making it back on foot. But how would she manage to move him into the boat?
She looked at him again, and her breath hitched. He appeared so still, so lifeless. Unable to resist, she embraced him again and held him tightly.
“Stephen,” she whispered. “Stephen, I swear, if you make it through this, I will never say a cross word to you again. I will never mention treasure or adventure. And I promise never to climb out of another window.” She looked into his face, still as death. “Stephen, please don’t die. If you make it through this, I’ll—I’ll—” She took a deep breath. If she was making promises, they had better mean something.
“It was me who brought you into this,” she whispered. “If you die, it’s my fault. If you’ll just live, I promise I’ll never interfere in your life again. I’ll leave you alone. Forever. Just don’t die.” She hugged him tighter. “You’re all I have.”
His body was heavy and limp, and it was going to hurt him more to drag him down to the edge of the beach, but she had no choice. She glanced at the two dead men, grateful they’d come by boat. If she hadn’t had the boat then . . . well, she didn’t want to think what she would have had to do.
And so with as much care as she could manage and as much tenderness, she got hold of her lover and began dragging his lifeless body away from the treasure.
STEPHEN WOKE WITH A dull ache in his head and a screaming pain in his shoulder.
“Lie still,” a woman’s voice said. He opened his eyes and saw Josie at his bedside. Sitting there, lit only by a fire, she looked small and thin and pale. She leaned over him, her fingers roaming his aching body as though she couldn’t believe he was there.
“Are you well?” he asked, reaching for her hand with the arm that didn’t howl in misery.
“Am I well?” She made a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sob. “You were shot, lost half the blood in your body, had a surgeon slice you open, and you ask how I am?” Tears welled in her eyes, and he pulled her down to cradle her to his chest. “I’ve been sitting here for two days, praying you would wake,” she mumbled against his chest.
“I’m awake now,” he whispered. “You don’t have to worry anymore.”
She wrapped her arms around him and continued to sob. He shushed her and kissed her hair. When she had finally ceased crying and lay spent in his arms, he looked around the room. She’d said he’d been asleep for two days. And somehow in that time she’d gotten him back to the inn and into the bed they’d shared. How had she gotten him back here?
And, more importantly, where the hell was the treasure?
He remembered a little of the night they’d found it. The cave, the glitter of gold, the men with guns.
“I know where I saw that man now.”
Josie sat up, sniffled, and wiped her nose. “What man? One-Eyed Jack?”
“He was at the bank. He was one of the guards in the vault.”
She sniffled again. “That makes sense. The crew didn’t know where our grandfathers hid the treasure.”
Stephen tried to sit up, but she put a hand on his chest, holding him down.
“They may have been given a portion,” he said, resigned to lying still. His damn shoulder hurt too much otherwise. “But Jack must have known that his measure was paltry compared to the true bounty.”
“And so he went to our grandfathers, or your grandfather, at least, confronted him, demanded to know the treasure’s location.”
A shiver ran down Stephen’s back, and something from a dream echoed in his mind. “And when he wouldn’t tell, Jack killed him.”
“You heard his confession, then,” Josie whispered. “I was afraid I was the only one.”
“I don’t know what I heard, but as soon as I realized I recognized Jack from the bank, I put the pieces together. He must have known there was a clue to the treasure in the deposit box. Maybe my grandfather taunted him with the knowledge. Maybe he followed him, saw him go in with the haversack and come out with nothing.”
Josie took a long breath. “And all these years, Jack stood in that vault, day after day, plotting a way to get inside that box.”
“Or waiting for someone like us to open it for him.”
She took his hand again, squeezed it, and the way she looked at him made his heart ache with longing. “How sad to die so close to getting what you’ve always wanted.”
She looked down, new tears in her eyes.
