Corey nodded.
“Good. We’ll head to the hospital and we can talk about it more while we wait.”
“I’m telling you right now,” Bones said, “I want another crack at that tunnel.”
Everyone gave him a quizzical look.
“I got a look inside just before the stone fell. I don’t know what it is, but something is back there.”
There it was again. A flicker of shadow, like someone moving past the back window. Rodney muted the television, rose slowly from his chair, and headed to the back window. Squinting against the afternoon sunlight, he scanned the back patio, but saw nothing. Weird. He was working later, so he’d had only one beer. Must be his imagination.
He returned to his chair, a cracked leather number he’d bought cheap at a garage sale, and reached for the remote.
“Do not move.” The voice was cold and hard, but carried a hint of a pansy British accent.
Still pissed about being jumped by that Maddock guy and his friends, Rodney sprang to his feet, whirled about, and flung the remote in the direction he’d heard the voice. It flew through empty space and shattered against the wall.
He saw a blur at the corner of his eye and something struck him a hard blow in the temple, followed by a flurry of kicks and punches so lightning-fast he hardly knew what was happening. The next thing he knew, he was flat on the ground, knee buckled, head ringing, ribs screaming, and fighting for breath. Someone bound his wrists and ankles with cable ties. He twisted his head around and caught sight of his captor.
They guy was not what he expected. He looked like a banker, clean shaven and dressed in a coat and tie. The only odd thing about his appearance was the pair of latex gloves he wore.
And the razor he drew from his breast pocket.
Rodney gasped, the relief of the sudden intake of breath failing to overcome his abject terror.
“What do you want?” He hated the way his voice squeaked and the hot, damp feeling in his crotch as his bladder released. “I’m broke, man, but take what you want.”
“What I want,” the man said in a voice like a schoolteacher in an old movie, “is information.”
“I don’t have any information. Ask anybody.”
“On the contrary, you do indeed.” The man knelt and pressed the flat edge of the razor against Rodney’s cheek. “Tell me what you know about Captain Kidd’s sea chests.”
“What?” How did the guy know about that? “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The man flicked his wrist and a line of hot fire blossomed on Rodney’s cheek. He was too shocked to cry out.
“This will go much easier for both of us if we do not lie to one another. To encourage you to be truthful, I will cut something off each time you lie, or attempt to hide something from me: ears, fingers, toes eyelids, lips.”
Rodney whimpered and tried to squirm away, but the touch of cold metal on his eye socket froze him in his tracks.
“In the interest of fairness, I shall, of course, be truthful with you. You posted a query on a message board last night, asking about the legend of the Kidd chests. You also indicated that a researcher gave you this information. Now, tell me what you know.”
“I heard that Captain Kidd hid treasure maps in his sea chests.”
“Good. That wasn’t so hard, was it? What else do you know?”
The man’s friendly tone chilled him almost as much as the razor. It was like the guy did this every day. He racked his brain, trying to remember exactly what he’d overheard.
“There’s one in a museum.”
“Which one?” The man’s voice was sharp as the crack of a whip.
“I don’t know which one. Aren’t they all the same?”
“Not which chest, which museum, you imbecile.”
“The New England Pirate Museum, or something like that.” He didn’t mention Avery’s connection to the chest. She might hate his guts, but he still felt like he ought to protect her. It was the closest thing to a brave act he could manage in what might be the rest of his very short life.
“Excellent. You’re doing very well. Now, do you know the locations of any other chests?”
“No. Only the one.”
“Anything at all? Rumors, legends?”
“No. I swear.” he pleaded. He wanted desperately for the man to believe him. Maybe if he realized just how little Rodney knew, he’d let him live. “That’s everything.”
“Very well. Now, I need to know from whom you learned this information.”
He couldn’t give the man Avery’s name. He just couldn’t.
“I heard somebody talking in a bar.”
The man sucked his teeth and gave his head a disapproving shake. With a deft movement, he sliced Rodney’s ear and held the bloody gob of flesh, his earlobe, out for Rodney to see.
“I told you to hide nothing from me. You might have been given this information in a pub, or bar, as you put it, but you know the person who told it to you. What is he or she called?”
“Maddock!” Rodney blurted the first name that came to mind. “Dane Maddock. That’s all I know about him.”
“Very good. I appreciate your honesty.”
Rodney relaxed. Whether the man killed him or let him live, at least it was over.
“I now have the unfortunate duty of confirming your honesty. That requires a more severe test of your veracity. We shall start with your thumb, I think.”
The man stuffed something into Rodney’s mouth, which made it very hard to scream.
Chapter 8
“All right! Let’s dam this baby up!” Charlie rubbed his hands together and grinned, the lines on his face crinkling. He paced to and fro along the rocky bluff overlooking tunnel seventeen, his exuberance lending a youthful bounce to his step. The prospect of solving the mystery seemed to have taken twenty years off of him.
Dane had to smile at the old man’s excitement. Matt’s arm was broken in several places but, given time, he’d heal. Once his recovery was assured, Matt had maintained his insistence that Dane and the crew finish what they’d started. He further vowed to be back on the job the minute he was released from the hospital.
After spending much of the night at the hospital, Dane, Bones, and Willis gone back to work. They returned to the passageway and made a failed attempt at opening the trap, after which they used GPS to chart the twists and turns of the tunnel, though their signal crapped out before they got to the area behind the wall. Charlie’s plan was to block up the passageway, pump the water out, if possible, and drill down directly into the chamber. It was far from the craziest thing the man had tried in his lifetime.
“I’m telling you, Charlie, I don’t know what I saw back there,” Bones said. “Not trying to shoot you down, or anything, but it might not be anything big.”
“You’re full of crap, boy.” Charlie dismissed Bones’ words with a gesture like shooing a fly. “Why would anyone put a booby trap in front of a chamber unless they had something they wanted to protect?”
“To be a douche?” Bones volunteered
“Bah! All the evidence says that tunnel’s important. They didn’t carve a Templar cross at the chamber entrance for no reason. And, you said yourselves, it looks like someone dammed it up.”
“How did searchers manage to miss it all these years?” Angel asked. “There have been, what, thousands of people looking for the treasure. You’d think someone would have found it by now.”
“They’ve all been focusing on the Money Pit,” Dane said. “There probably haven’t been too many skilled divers experienced in marine archaeology who’ve explored these channels.” He looked out across Smith’s Cove, where a single boat plied the waters, a white dot on the gray horizon. “Those who did could easily have missed this particular passage, or found it, but were fooled by the debris blocking the way. Matt and I almost missed it.”