Trouble and Treasure (#1, Trouble and Treasure Series) (19 page)

Even through the storm whipping around us, I
managed to bring the chain right up to my face, brushing a finger
over the surface of the pendant at the end. I couldn't make out any
writing on it, not in this light.

I looked up to see Amanda walking down the
stairs.

“
Amanda?” I had no idea whether she could
hear me over the driving force of the gale and the thunderous sound
of the rain as it drove into the metal gangway we walked
on.

She didn't stop; she kept walking down the
stairs, head held at a curious angle.

“
Amanda?” Pocketing the trinket, I went
after her.

The clouds above were so damn gray it was
getting almost pitch black out here. The crashing wild waves below
as they roared up and broke against the side of the lighthouse and
the cliff didn't help things at all. They gave this situation more
of a dangerous feel, and I didn't need any more danger today. I was
damn certain that Amanda didn't either. Several weeks ago she would
have been an ordinary girl, and ordinary girls do not spend their
days being shot at by criminals outside of libraries, being chased
through forests by soldiers, and spending their evenings trying to
get into lighthouses in raging storms.

So I picked up my pace, and I had to admit
it wasn't the thought of how cold my neck had become from the river
of water rushing down my back, over my head, down my arms, and
soaking my body in a chill, frigid wash. Though I was pretty sure I
was still a bastard, I couldn't help but want to get out of the
rain for Amanda's sake. Ordinary girls like her couldn't hack
situations like this; they weren't made for it. She was probably
the kind of girl who spent all of her nights at home with a cat on
her lap, some inane romance novel in hand, with a plate of
home-baked cookies beside her. She was definitely not the kind of
girl who was used to guns, treasure, wild weather, and wall-to-wall
danger. So yeah, it was my prerogative and my duty to get her out
of here. Even if it was to stave off the screaming and whining I
knew would happen later.

As I rushed down to get to Amanda before the
crazy girl could slip on the steps and tumble into the raging sea
below, I bloody well saw something. Out in the surf, not too far
from the lighthouse, was a light, and it obviously belonged to some
ship. We weren’t talking an oil tanker here, or a fishing ship, or
even a yacht too damn stupid not to berth before a storm. No,
because where this thing was, it was moving fast, damn fast towards
the lighthouse.

I swore, and I swore hard and loud, but not
loud enough to make it over the cacophony of the waves and
wind.

I ran towards her, keeping a hand hovering
over the rail, not wanting to slip, collect into her back, and push
the both of us into the sea below. I caught up to her, grabbed her
arm unceremoniously, and pulled her back.

“
Hey, what are you doing?” she screamed at
me, but she didn't look that angry, she was obviously trying to be
heard over the gale, the rain, and the waves.

“
We need to get back to the car,” I shouted
back, never letting go of her arm.

“
There's a light out there.” She pointed
towards the light narrowing in on the lighthouse.

When I glanced in the direction she was
pointing, to confirm it was still there, it wasn't.

Fuck.

Amanda whipped her head around too,
apparently searching this way and that for the light, and she
sucked in a surprised breath that even I could make out over the
gale as she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my god, I think
there was a ship out there, god, has it sunk? We have to call the
authorities.”

Oh no we didn't. I was 100% sure that
while there’d been a ship out there it hadn’t sunk, and it hadn’t
been an ordinary ship at that. I tugged on her arm and tried to
pull her back. “We have to get back to the car, Amanda, we have to
move.”

“
Shouldn't we go and check—”

“
Amanda. Trust me, there's no one out there
who's in trouble,” I screamed back, “Except for us.”

She obviously didn't understand, and with
the acute trouble I was having trying to be heard over the storm, I
didn't have the ability to tell her. It was pretty simple: the
light she'd seen hadn’t belonged to some simple fishing ship or
some brave and stupid pleasure cruiser. It had been fast and it had
been brave enough to head straight towards a rocky coast in a wild
storm, apparently unaffected by the chop of the waves. Yeah, I’d
been in this business long enough to know an experimental vessel
when I saw one. I had damn well been in this business long enough
to know that with the Stargazer Globes on the line, every army,
every mercenary unit, every crime lord would try everything they
could to get their hands on them. Yes, that meant cracking out the
highly-sophisticated boats, helicopters, spy satellites, weapons;
we weren't playing with boy scouts here.

“
But,” Amanda began to protest.

I kept scanning the horizon as I latched my
hand onto her wrist and started to pull her up the gangway. It
wasn't as if there was any chance of me seeing anything considering
how dark it was and how driving and complete the rain was around
me, but I kept trying anyway. I knew they were out there,
somewhere, probably crawling up the freaking cliff beside us. Who
they were, well I didn't know. I did know one thing – they would be
after Amanda, and through her, the Stargazers.

Not for the first time, and not for the
last, I started to berate myself over how much of a bastard I was
for not dropping her off at the authorities when I’d had the
chance. While she’d been extremely useful, and I didn’t want to
give up on her, the longer she was with me and the longer she
wasn’t in the protective custody of Maratova, the more danger she
was in.

Amanda pulled back on her arm. “Where are
we going? What's going on?” she kept asking.

“
Anywhere but here.” I answered as loudly
as I could.

Though she resisted for another moment, she
slackened her arm, but rather than let me pull her along, she began
to run in her own right, despite the fact she was in heels and
despite the fact the gangway was wet and slippery.

Perhaps I'd underestimated her. As that
treacherous thought wound its way around my cerebellum, a fucking
bullet ricocheted off the step above me, slamming to the side and
lodging itself into the cliff on my left, flakes of rock exploding
from the impact.

Amanda tensed, pulling back automatically,
grabbing with both hands at the rails and crumpling down until she
was on her haunches. I threw myself down on the steps, as another
bullet zinged past me.

God dammit, we were obviously too late. I
didn't have my gun on me, for some stupid reason I'd left it in the
back of my car, erroneously assuming that nobody was following us.
Well wasn't that about the stupidest idea I had ever had, because
clearly someone was following us.

I felt the metal stairs shake as the weight
strain on them changed. Somewhere, whether it was above or below,
someone had stepped onto the gangway. Gritting my teeth, I raised
my head. The one thing I could be thankful about was how damn hard
it was to see through the driving rain and dark, and that was
probably the only reason I hadn't been shot yet.

I had zero idea of who was out there and how
many of them there were, but sure as hell I knew they were armed
and they weren't frightened to start a fight.

We had two options: try to make it back to
the car or head back towards the lighthouse. I didn’t need to turn
around to be able to tell that the waves were so wild and violent
that they were crashing up and over the railing that ran all the
way round the bottom of the lighthouse and led to the single door
below. Hell, and it would be locked. In other words, heading to the
lighthouse was suicide.

As I decided to make a run for the car, I
felt more shakes through the stairs, and they were coming from
above me. There was no doubt there was somebody on the gangway and
that they were walking down towards us. Well, I say walking, I mean
stalking; that peculiar quick, tensed movement that you get when
you're tracking a prey.

I didn't think. I stood up, whirled around,
grabbed Amanda as she still sat huddled against the railing, and
pulled her downstairs. This time she didn’t resist at all, and I
felt my grip on her slacken as she matched pace beside me. If there
was one thing Amanda could do, it was run away.

She wasn’t screaming either, which was
another thing I had to admit about her; apart from the occasional
lungful of air she'd given me last night at her great-uncle’s
manor, Amanda couldn't be classed as the damsel in distress from a
B-grade '50s flick. While she was obviously out of her depth here,
and had never faced a situation as dangerous and perilous as this
before, she was hardly hanging off my arm and waiting for me to
protect her from all the bad guys.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but now
wasn't the time to reflect upon it.

The wind took that opportunity to blow even
harder, and I was forced off my feet as a gust slammed into me. As
I swayed on my feet, Amanda turned her side to the brunt of the
wind, ducked down, grabbed the railing, and kept running.
Seriously, it didn't seem as if there was anything on this green
earth that could stop Amanda from trying to get away when she
wanted to.

The closer we neared the end of the stairs,
the more the intense spray of the waves lashed us. While neither of
us were dry, the seawater as it raged and broke against the cliff
and rock below wasn’t like the rain; the salt water ran over my
face, forcing my eyes to blink in pain, and collecting at my
tersely closed lips with a horrible salty tang.

It was suicide. I could see the door below,
but our chances of making it there were pretty damn slim. While we
might be able to force our way there through the water, what we
would do once we got there, I didn’t know. It wasn't as if I had a
crowbar on me or some awesome explosives. And what did I think I
would do once I was in the lighthouse? I doubted there was a fine
selection of automatic weapons stashed in the kitchen, or a nice
thick blast door we could hide behind until the mercenaries got
bored and too cold and went home.

The only thing the lighthouse could offer
us was the fact it wasn’t out here; there would be less rain,
waves, and mercenaries in there. While the rain and waves could be
kept at bay, the mercenaries would find a way to get in.

The funny thing about danger was it rarely
offered you a safe alternative.

Amanda Stanton

Oh god, it was happening again. I'd heard
those two bullets, I’d seen the look of frigid surprise and fear on
Sebastian’s face.

Dear god, could my life get any worse?

I took that exact moment to slip down, the
ridiculous heels Sebastian had given me losing their grip along the
slicked and treacherous metal. Thankfully I had a hand on the rail,
but that didn’t stop me from slipping down several steps, knees
grating against the rough metal. Before I could swear and check for
blood, Sebastian pulled me to my feet, one hand clutched over my
arm.

The wind and storm had whipped the waves
into such a frenzy they were pounding against the heavy wall that
ran around the path leading up to the lighthouse. They were so high
and so violent that the tops of the waves managed to make it past
the wall, inundating the path. All it would take was for one of
those waves to make it far enough past that wall to wash us both
off our feet, and we'd end up very much drowned at the bottom of
the sea.

We reached the end of the stairs, and the
storm and the waves were so violent that even standing on the last
step we were still chased by the tips of the waves that managed to
spike over the wall and rocks below. If I could have thought of
anything useful to shout at Sebastian, other than a heartfelt
expletive, there would be no way to make him hear me. I could grab
the guy’s neck, pull his head right up to my mouth, and shout right
in his ear, but the storm would still drown my voice out. It
reduced our ability to communicate down to simple touch itself.

Sebastian hesitated on the last step, his
head turned towards the raging waves below. He watched them, his
shoulders and neck moving back rhythmically in time with each wave
as if he was trying to get a feel for their pattern. Then he
moved.

That would be when a bullet whizzed past me,
smashing into the wall beyond. I might have screamed, I might not
have; I couldn't hear myself above the waves and the gale. I jumped
at Sebastian.

Another bullet whistled through the air,
lodging into the wall opposite. I ducked instinctively, noting that
Sebastian did the same. Despite the force of the water around us, I
headed forward towards the protection of the other wall. When I
reached it, I could have bloody done a song and dance; there was a
sturdy rail running the full length of the wall, presumably leading
right up to the door beyond. Obviously the people who'd designed
this lighthouse realized that if anyone was stupid enough to be
trying to walk towards it or away from it during a full-blown
storm, they would appreciate a handhold.

I latched my hand onto it just in time as a
huge wave broke over the wall, sending a mass of water along the
path.

In the darkness and confusion Sebastian
lost his footing. I grabbed him and I kept hold of that rail; I’d
never been so desperate in all my life not to lose my grip, and yet
I’d never faced such force either. Water came at me from every
angle, covering my face, getting in my mouth, rushing over my
back.