“I’m going out,” I told Sophie. “I think I know where the diamond is.”
“Oh, like you’re going to go get it alone,” Sophie replied. “I’m coming with you.”
We drove to the Bay View trailhead and parked in the little twenty-car dirt parking lot by the entrance. With it being September and the low tourist season in the middle of the week, we were the only car parked in the lot. I’d explained my reasoning to Sophie on the way, who agreed that this was definitely worth a look. Suddenly, I remembered what Betty had said at the Café.
“Wait, isn’t this trail supposed to be closed?” I asked Sophie.
“I think I heard it was going to re-open this morning,” she replied. There were no signs indicating the trail was closed, but the deep tire tracks in the mud showed that there had been heavy machinery here recently. I was pleased; it meant we wouldn’t need any magic to get past anybody working on a closed trail.
The Bay View trail was only a mile long, a single-track dirt path meandering through the forest, surrounded by beautiful Pacific coast forest trees, ferns and wildlife. A rabbit hopped off the trail as we made our way past, and the shrill cry of Stellar’s Jays rose through the trees above us along with the chirps of robins preparing for either a migration south for the winter or braving the upcoming winter. I let myself take a deep breath of the fresh forest air. The crisp, clean air and the connection with nature was one of my favorite things about Willow Bay. Sophie and I walked in silence. I knew I was a bundle of nervous energy right now, and idle conversation wasn’t exactly going to help, and I figured Sophie was probably in the same situation herself.
The mile-long walk toward the Bay View lookout point seemed to take hours, even though it was more like fifteen minutes. I was horrendously out of shape, but the desire to know whether or not the diamond was where I thought it might be overpowered my complete inability to do anything remotely resembling cardio.
When we hit the lookout point I was breathing somewhat heavily. “I swear,” I told Sophie as I made my way toward Old Oakie, “I say this every single time I do anything remotely strenuous, but I really need to start going to the gym more.”
“I’m so glad you said that and it’s not just me,” Sophie replied. “You were walking so fast I was wondering if I was literally the least fit person on the planet.”
I laughed as we both made our way toward Old Oakie. “You reach in,” Sophie told me. “You’re taller, and this was your idea.”
I looked at the hole in the middle of Old Oakie. “If there’s anything in there that could possibly bite my hand,” I told the tree, “please don’t. I’m just checking for something lost.” What? You could never be 100% sure in the outdoors. I tried to quell my excitement by telling myself the diamond almost certainly wasn’t in there as I reached my hand into the hole. I didn’t even know how deep the hole was; for all I knew it was going to be impossible to get anything out of there.
But, a second later, my hand landed on something hard, but made of fabric. My eyes widened and Sophie noticed, her face breaking into an excited smile as her eyes widened.
“Is it in there?” she asked. I wrapped my fingers around the object and pulled it out of the tree. I unwrapped my fingers, exposing a piece of blue velvet wrapped around an object the size of a large walnut. My fingers trembled as I grabbed the edge of the velvet cover and slowly began to expose the most incredible diamond I’d ever seen in my life.
The round gem had a light pink hue to it; it wasn’t perfectly clear like most diamonds. The late morning sun shining down on the rock made it sparkle in the light in a way I’d never seen before; it was as though the light of the day danced lightly on the surface of the rock. I was breathless, completely taken away.
“Oh my God,” Sophie whispered. “It’s amazing.”
“I know,” was all I could reply. We both stared at it, mesmerized, for at least a full minute. No wonder this diamond was worth so much money. “We have to put this away,” I said suddenly. After all, this diamond was worth over fifty million dollars, and there were four thieves who had already stolen it somewhere in this town.
“Yeah,” Sophie replied. “We have to take it straight to Chief Gary.”
“Definitely,” I replied, carefully putting the velvet cover back over the diamond. It felt rather unceremonious, but I hadn’t brought anything with me to carry the diamond in, so I simply slipped it into the zippered pocket of the light jacket I was wearing.
“Thanks, I’ll take that off your hands,” a familiar voice said suddenly. I heard Sophie inhale sharply next to me. I turned around, facing the path, and found Andrew Fischer coming out of the woods toward us, holding a gun. This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all.
19
“What?” I asked innocently. I didn’t exactly have a lot of options here.
“I saw you took the diamond. Give it back to me, and maybe I let you leave here with your lives.”
“Yeah right,” Sophie replied. “You’re going to kill us either way, aren’t you?”
Andrew shrugged. “Well, since you’ve figured it out, I might as well admit it. Yes. You can either give me the diamond the easy way, or the hard way.”
Bile rose in my throat. I didn’t want to die. I had to find a way to stall him.
“You killed Jeremy Wallace,” I said. I couldn’t really think of anything else.
“Yes. And if only he hadn’t died, like some kind of moron, all of this could have been avoided. I could have been out of this hole of a town days ago with my diamond.”
“Why kill him, then?” Sophie asked, and Andrew rolled his eyes.
“Well it’s not like I did it on purpose. I got this gun from a guy I know in Portland. The night Jeremy went out, I knew he was going to hide the diamond. I tried to follow him, but the guy was too sneaky. I lost him pretty quickly, and I knew that if I didn’t do something fast, the others were going to get to him. So I drove to Portland and got a gun from a guy I knew. The next day, I threatened Jeremy. I told him to take me to the diamond. He took me on this random path, and I realized about halfway through that we weren’t anywhere near where he’d hidden the thing.”
The whole time he was telling this story, Andrew was waving the gun around, like it was nothing. I could barely listen to his story; all my focus was on that gun and how we were possibly going to be able to get it away from him. I knew I wasn’t allowed to use magic, since Andrew would obviously know about it. Although, if it came down to it, I figured I would probably use a spell. There was nothing the Witches Council could do to me that was worse than death, after all, was there?
“Eventually I confronted him about it. I told him I knew we were nowhere near where the diamond was, and then he grinned at me. He grinned! The arrogant son-of-a…” Andrew shook his head. “That was when I lost it. I shoved him, hard, and his head hit the tree. I checked for a pulse, but he was gone. I couldn’t believe it. The one man on the planet who knew where that damned diamond was, and now he was dead.”
“So why did you decide to make it look like a bear attack?” I asked.
“I couldn’t have anyone looking too seriously into who Jeremy Wallace was,” Andrew replied. “I needed time to figure out where he stashed that diamond, and I needed that time without anyone bothering me.”
“When did you figure it out?” I asked.
“Two days ago. Jack told me; he had told all of us he thought he knew where the diamond was hidden, but he told me before the others because he wanted to know if I could do something with my computer abilities to confirm. I tried to come out here before, but there were too many people around with the closed trail. Too suspicious. I heard an hour ago that the trail had re-opened.”