Born of Treasure (Treasure Chronicles Book 2) (12 page)

A hand seized her arm. She turned with the pistol raised, but another hand grabbed her wrist. Her father’s face shoved against hers.

“This way,” he hissed in her ear.

Still clutching the pistol, she ran with him, her boot heels sinking into the muck. Her skirts had never felt so cumbersome. Why did manners dictate she wear three petticoats under her brown corduroy overskirt?

The shouts seemed louder although they ran between the stables toward the back fields.

“We won’t be able to outrun them.” Her breath panted from her lungs. A stitch formed in her side and she bit her lower lip; no time to rub the pain loose. Fire shot through her legs as her muscles angered. “What about Clark?”

Her father pulled on her harder. She’d never seen his eyes so wide or glazed, his jaw set. This was the man who’d left the east to start a ranch, the man who’d taken an acre of land and built what some newspapers called a Western Empire. She could trust him to take care of them.

He pulled her into a barn and lifted a hunk of the wooden floor. Rusted hinges squealed and dirt from the air drifted into the space. “Get down.”

“In that?” She would’ve cringed before, proclaimed she’d never go somewhere so dank, but her body already had her descending the ladder. It shook and wobbled, but her mind numbed.

Her feet struck the dirt floor and she gasped a damp breath that tightened in her lungs to make her cough. She stumbled away from her father as he jumped down beside her, pulling her deeper into the underground hideaway.

“Clark…”

Footsteps pounded on the barn floor above, where the sunlight came through the trapdoor. She gripped her father and he held her across the shoulders. Hard muscles in his chest, thick arms… he still had the body of a man thirty years younger. She’d always pictured him as thoughtful and wise. He ran an empire. He didn’t outsmart the enemy or know how to escape.

“Hush.” His voice emerged too calm. He should be panicking, his heart racing like hers.

Georgette scurried off the ladder, followed by Clark. He was safe. The army hadn’t taken him prisoner. Amethyst jerked away from her father to grab Clark as above, Zachariah shut the trapdoor. His boots thumped the ladder.

Clark clasped her head between his hands, his breath against her head.

“I’m sorry. I tried to warn you,” she panted.

“Hush.” Her father’s hiss came louder than before.

Clark held her tighter against his chest—harder than her father’s, more muscular. It had his scent, and his heartbeat matched hers. Everything would be fine so long as Clark was safe. Amethyst squeezed her eyes shut, pressing her face against his neck.

Shouts came from above and people ran past, gunshots echoing through the barn. A horse neighed from outdoors.

She held her breath.

Everything would be fine. The mantra played through Clark’s mind as he held Amethyst tighter. She’d become his rock when he had nothing else. Without his mother, she had become what his life focused on, and she was safe. They would both manage, somehow.

He’d dragged all of the Treasures into his mess.

Clark winced and swore under his breath. “I’m sorry.” The noises above had stopped what had to be hours ago, and they’d taken to sitting on the dirt floor. Amethyst clutched his left hand; he clutched his pistol in his right.

Something shifted in the dark and a light flared. Garth held a mechanical lighter, the minute flame flickering near his face. “No one will find us under here.”

“Why is this here?” Amethyst squeaked. Zachariah moaned from the side. He had to be crumbling inside. His idols had attacked his family.

“When we first came,” her mother whispered, “Bromi attacks were prevalent.”

“Amthyst,” Garth said. “Are you all right? Where did you learn how to shoot like that?”

“Aren’t you glad I did learn?” she snapped. Silence hit the space, as if no one wanted to rile her, as if everyone was too weary to wonder over her or fight.

“Clark.” Garth stepped closer, the firelight giving him an evil gleam. “Tell me what is happening.”

He couldn’t lie or give half the information, not when he’d put them in danger after they’d shown him kindness. “Captain Greenwood’s right. I drank a potion that mixed with hertum. I can bring back the dead.”

“That’s possible?” Georgette asked in a soft voice.

“Apparently so.” Clark laughed, the sound hoarse. “I hate it, but it’s real. They want me for a test subject. I’ve been running. I came here hoping they wouldn’t touch me. I’ll go. I won’t come back. They won’t hurt you if you don’t know where I am.”

“You can’t leave,” Amethyst shrieked.

He squeezed her hand. He’d find a way to be with her. He’d run long enough to know how.

“You’re one of us,” Garth said. “You won’t go alone.”

Clark paused to breathe deep. His heart had to slow; it ached. “I can’t drag you all along.” What would it be like to have them at his side, to not have to worry alone or make every decision?

“This is the government’s doing,” Garth continued. “We’ll all work out a way to fix this. I don’t know how yet, but you won’t be alone, Clark. Where would you run to now?”

The only place they wouldn’t reach him, but it was the place he couldn’t stay long, lest it make things hard on them. “The Bromi.”

Garth nodded. “Then we’ll go there.”

he ground shook as a train approached. Clark stiffened, his hand closing around Amethyst’s. He should release her. Her family would think it odd, but they’d been traveling around Hedlund for a while. He and Amethyst could’ve grown close. Bloody gears, they had. They were married, for the cog’s sake.

The ground vibrated harder and the whistle blew, steam pumping into the hazy sky. Twilight colored the corners with rays of copper and mauve. The metal black speck grew closer as the whistle blew again. To the right of the tracks lay the forest, and to the left, the desert, and them.

Georgette grabbed the back of his shirt. “Should we hide?”

He could’ve asked her where. Dry dirt shifted beneath their feet, a few weeds sprouting up amongst rocks. They could dart across the tracks and crouch amongst the trees, but that would expend too much energy, and it would look suspicious to anyone noticing them through the train windows.

“Only hide if you need to,” Clark said. “Bide your time.” He’d learned his lessons well. Georgette may have braved the west from her soft childhood home in the east, but she’d never been a wanted woman before.

Sweat beaded across her face and kohl smeared around her eyes. Amethyst paused to straighten the pearls nestled along her mother’s collarbone. “Listen to Clark. He knows.”

Georgette nodded. How odd she looked against the endless browns of the desert, wearing her crimson skirt and scoop-necked shirt. Layers of frills danced across her legs and the bustle in back flounced. The corset structure of her shirt had to be painful from all the walking, but at least she’d stripped off her shoes and stockings, abandoning them a few miles back.

“We’re supposed to be safe,” Zachariah muttered. Clark wondered if that made the tenth or fifteenth time he’d said that. Despite the sun that baked them, Zachariah’s teeth chattered and his skin remained pallid.

His heroes had attacked, his dreams gone.

Garth rubbed his son’s shoulder. “We’ll get through this. We’re Treasures. My family told me not to come out west. They said I wouldn’t make it.”

“I always knew you would.” Georgette almost smiled before she sighed.

“Look at what I did.” Garth spread his hands. “If we survived that, we can survive this.”

“The government will take everything from us,” Zachariah growled. “All our lands and our money, all our livestock. I know how the army works. We’re traitors. They own everything now.”

Clark stiffened. Could that be true? After all the Treasures had done, could he have caused them to lose literally everything?

“My heir will get everything,” Garth said. “Jeremiah. It will stay in the Treasure family.”

“Jeremiah won’t denounce Clark,” Amethyst exclaimed. “He won’t tell them where Clark is.”

“Jeremiah won’t know,” Garth whispered. “He can’t tell them something when he’s clueless. We’ll get this straightened and everything will go back to normal.”

The train rushed by, whistling again, steam pouring from the brass stack.

“Wave.” Clark lifted his hand to the passengers. “We’ll look less suspicious that way. People who wave are friendly. You forget people who wave faster than people who act antisocial. A Bromi taught me that.”

“How soon before we reach them?” Amethyst leaned her forehead against his bicep.

Clark glanced at the darkening prairie, the desert, the plains, the mountain ridges in the distance. The Bromi traveled in their tribes to where the food lay, but they knew their surroundings. If they didn’t, they died or they were captured. They’d taught him the calls to prove he was one of them. They would find him when they were ready. “Soon.”

They reached a thicket of pine trees, somehow burrowing their roots into the dust. Only a snippet of light remained to see by, and that light came from the moon and stars. Clark rested his hand over his chest, where the pocket watch that foretold the weather rested.

Mist crept along the trees, thickening; the ground glowed as a shape formed.