Necessary Evil (35 page)

Not now, Maddie.

“What then?” I demanded. “So you bought
more time. So what? That would run out eventually.”

“True. Eventually.”

He stopped and pulled the pistol out of
his back pocket. It glinted dully in the moonlight and I froze, terrified.

He studied it, frowning and stroking the
barrel. His grip tightened and he stood, silhouetted in moonlight, one hand
twisting at the barrel, the other keeping firm grip of the handle. It was as
though he was wrestling with the weapon, one hand trying to wrench it out of
the other’s grip.

I had backed away as far as I could in the
foundation, pressing against the rock wall, watching in fear-fueled
fascination.

Then, as quietly and suddenly as the
wrestling match had begun, it was over. He let go of the barrel and whipped
around to face me - but it was not the end, as I assumed it was. Instead, he
crouched down at the side of the hole and continued as though he’d never
paused.

“I knew that time would run out,” he said
as I stared. “But for the moment I was safe, and things were working for me in
California. I decided that the treasure would keep. Besides, extracting it
after going through all that trouble with the Beaumont letter would be
difficult, even though I’d built in safeguards. I’d made sure that none of the
supplies were traceable to me and when I presented the letter to Maddox, I made
sure that he and everyone knew that I was doing this for an old family friend.”

He chuckled. “Maddox was starting to slow
down, but most of the world didn’t know just how far he had slipped into senility.
Refuting his find later would be a breeze, provided I kept far enough distance.
I just had to wait until Maddox either broke down completely or died. When he
finally did, I was free to act.

“The next step was to drive you out.”

His face was hooded in darkness; but the
pistol, held loosely in his hand, was easy enough to make out.

My throat was constricted, so dry that I
could hardly rasp out my question. “Drive me out?”

 “Yes,” he said. “It was a simple
idea. California was becoming… Unfriendly, shall we say? So when the job opened
up here, I moved back, established contact with you, and then hired a man to
dig the holes for me. He got scared off when Randall and that kid chased him
into the woods, but the plan was for him to do the digging while I stayed just
close enough to ride to your ‘rescue’, so to speak.”

Flames of humiliation competed with my icy
fear. I gaped at this man, who’d understood me so completely – so well, that he
knew just where my weak spot was.

Before you go and make this declaration
public, Maddie…

Oh, God!

I found enough spine to glare at him.

“I hope I wasn’t too predictable, Joe,” I
practically spat.

He chuckled. “Actually, you were a much
tougher nut to crack than I expected. I had to keep upping the stakes.”

My mind was whirling with the
implications. The last sentence made me gasp.

“Lindsay!” I snapped. “You
arranged
that,
didn’t you?”

There was a long pause. Then he shook his
head.

“That,” he said, “was a… fortunate
accident.”

Flashes of memory swept over me. The panic
in Ellen’s voice as she ran to get me. The pale form that was Lindsay on the
ground, the terror on her parents’ faces when I told them what happened, the
grim summation by the paramedics. Greg looking up at me, after examining the
hole.

There’s something wrong about all of this,
Warwick. There’s something very wrong about this.

Joe’s voice cut through my reverie.

“That should have done the trick,” he
said, and his voice grew taut with annoyance. “If anything could break you that
should have done it. But just when I thought you were going to crack, a writer
moved in and messed everything up. So I had to up the charm.”

 “You
used
me,” I hissed. It
burst out of me, startling both of us; but once it was out, I pressed further.
“You knew I was attracted to you, and you
used
me.”

His laughter rolled out, deep and hearty,
and it drove the point home with callous precision.

“Attracted to me?” he laughed. “You
practically salivated every time I walked into the room. You were so
desperate
and so
easy
to play, it wasn’t even fun. Yes, I used you, Maddie. But
you played into my hands so easily, it was as though you were working with me
the whole time.”

And just when I was about to commit
suicide by rushing him in pure anger, he went on.

“Although you did have me worried for a
while. Once I realized that your writer was Randall, I panicked. He has his
drawbacks, but he is – was - clever, and I thought you might get distracted. I
didn’t want him upsetting everything, so I arranged for our little play date.”
He shook his head. “I was surprised at how long it took before you would admit
that he was here. You’d grown more attached to Randall than I’d thought, but it
didn’t take much to bring you back in line. All I had to do was threaten to walk,
and you fell apart.”

Joe paused, grinning at me. “The kiss was
entirely for his benefit,” he said. “A massive ego like his needs the
occasional kick.”

I saw that his hands were caressing the
pistol again. He was shaking his head too, looking for all the world like a man
mulling over the fickle nature of fate.

“If I’d known from the first that it was
Gregory Randall who was staying here,” he said softly, almost tenderly, “I
would have arranged for this accident a little sooner.”

If I was chilled before, that made me feel
as though I’d just stepped under an ice-cold waterfall.

Keep him talking.

With a great effort, I kept my voice
steady, my fear and anger under control. “So what happens now?” I asked.

He looked at me sharply. “I was going to
move Allison before that dog of yours came back and scented me, and then I was
going to oust Randall and discover the treasure. But you’re here and that…
Changes things.”

I took a step back.

“It’ll never work,” I said desperately.
“How are you going to explain away three bodies?”

It was as if he hadn’t heard me.

“When they find you,” he said, looking
around as though for inspiration, “it’ll break your aunt. She’ll fold up.
You’re her last link to the property. With you and Randall gone, she’ll be ripe
for the picking. She won’t think twice about selling to me after you’re gone.”

While I was still reeling from that stark
declaration, I saw that he was looking behind me. I turned, but all I could see
was the shovel, standing erect and ready.

I looked back at Joe. He was fixated on
the shovel, moving towards it while shoving the pistol back into his waistband.

He was muttering, “A shot will be heard.”

Joe was halfway to it when I realized what
this meant. Panic and adrenaline surged through me. I ran to the opposite end
of the pit, and threw myself at the wall, my hands scrambling for a hold. I
couldn’t find a grip. The rocks had fallen out of the wall there, leaving
nothing but smooth dirt with thin roots jutting out. I was trapped.

I glanced over my shoulder. Joe had
reached the shovel and pulled it out of the dirt with one fluid motion, his
eyes fixed on me. And then he jumped.

He was in the hole with me.

He’d already killed Greg.

Rage wrestled with fear. There was a rock in
my hand and I threw it. I’m no athlete, but this shot went straight to its mark
and his head whipped around with the impact.

He hesitated. I launched myself at him.

Joe caught me by the shoulder and shoved
me aside like a rag doll. I landed on my hands and knees, but I didn’t have
time to recover before his shovel caught me in the ribcage.

Some instinct kicked in, and I rolled with
the blow. The shovel missed my head by inches, hitting the wall behind me with
a heavy thud, and he brought it around for another go. I rolled again, and this
one glanced off my shoulder.

Joe was over me almost before I stopped
moving, swinging the shovel. I had just enough presence of mind to kick
upwards.

My feet made contact, and he grunted,
staggering backwards as the blade whooshed by my face. I rolled onto my feet
and fled across the uneven ground towards the other wall. This one wasn’t as
tall - if I could just jump high enough to catch the top…

I heard Joe’s breathing, practically felt
him on my back, but I ran. I had to reach the wall, had to… Then my foot
plunged through a gap in the bedding. I fell with another shout.

The impact knocked the breath out of me. I
forced myself to roll onto my back.

Joe loomed over me, his shovel raised to
strike.

When they find me tomorrow, they’ll think
I ran into one of those trespassers
.

The shovel never landed. Something,
someone, jumped down from the wall, landing just inches away from my attacker.
There was a flash of movement, then a ringing thud.

Joe roared, staggered back, and I saw
Gregory, holding the flashlight he’d just cracked Joe across the head with.

On the face of it, it was not an even
match. Gregory was muscular but slim built, a scholar who, having already met
that shovel, was supposed to be dead. Joe Tremonti was taller and wider, a man
who liked to work out and spar. More than that, he had two weapons and he
wasn’t afraid to kill.

But Joe never stood a chance.

Even as he attempted to change direction,
to bring the shovel down on Gregory instead of me, Greg ducked under his swing
and drove his knee straight into Joe’s gut. Joe grunted, then cried out when
his arm was caught in a hold that seemed about to break his elbow. Greg pressed
harder, and the shovel clattered to the ground. Gregory let go of the arm hold.

I saw Joe’s hand move and I screamed,
“Gregory, the
gun
!”

But he had only released Joe’s arm in
order to set up a haymaker. I heard the
crack
as fist met jaw.

Joe went up and back, and fell like a
crumbling brick wall. He landed on his side, his head bouncing off the ground.
The handle of his pistol glinted in the moonlight.

Greg reached down, wobbling a little as he
picked the gun up. Joe made a feeble movement as though to grab Greg, and his
punishment was swift: two rapid-fire kicks in his gut.

“Sit and
stay
, Tremonti, or I’ll be
the one using the shovel,” Greg muttered through gritted teeth.

Stunned, Joe subsided.

Gregory stepped backwards, then aimed and
fired three shots - but at a mound of soft earth and not Joe, as I’d
immediately thought.

Gregory turned. “International distress
signal,” he muttered weakly.

He staggered over towards me.

The light shifted, and moonlight poured
through the trees, flooding the pit in eerie silver light. I could see the
pistol, held limply in his hand, and there was a dark stain growing on his
shirt.

My heart clutched painfully.

“Are you all right, Madeleine?” he asked.
His voice was hoarse. He swayed, but did not fall. “Did he hurt you?”

I was frozen, watching the surreal sight,
still in disbelief. Gregory was here – but he was dead. Or I thought he was…
But he’d come back for me, just as he’d promised he would. I gaped up at him.

“Are you hurt?” he asked again. His
glasses were gone and he squinted, peering through the dark at me.

I found my voice.

“No,” I whispered. “I’m all right.”

There was a long pause. Then he sighed,
and smiled at me.

“Excellent,” he said.

Through the suddenly still air, I could
hear the voices of people running towards us. Thanks to the gunfire, help was
already on the way. Gregory heard it, too, lifting his head painfully towards
the sound.

“Excellent,” he repeated.

Then he collapsed again. Only this time, I
was there to catch him.

Life can change in the blink of an eye.

I know this to be true, because it
happened to me twice: once when I watched my uncle die on the trails, and once
again, when I held the man I loved in my arms and willed him back to life.

Written by Alexander Chase, found inside
the McInnis Trunk

To whomever may find this,

If you are reading this, then you’ve found
it necessary to remove this trunk in my absence. If I am not here, then it is
very likely that I have fallen in battle. If so, I hope I died honorably, but I
regret that my passing may have caused my mother and another pain.

No doubt this secrecy has caused you to
doubt my motives. After all, an honest man has no need to hide what he has
earned. But the contents of this trunk are not mine – they are merely in my
custody.

While working in Charleston, I became
attached to a lady and I am engaged. It has been kept a secret because, in
these troubled times, the lady worries that her father, a southern gentleman,
would not take kindly to a northern son-in-law. She has considerable wealth and
worries that the coming conflict will ruin her father, whom she loves above all
else. She begged me, therefore, to leave her behind, to take a stock of her
goods and preserve them for her family until after the war. They say it won’t
last long, but much damage can be done, and so I agreed, although it nearly
killed me to leave her side. When I arrived here, I was disturbed by the
vehement war fervor. Fearing that others would seize these goods in false
patriotism, I have hidden them here, on the land I have contracted to buy from
my neighbor.

I intend to join the army, to serve
honorably until the war’s end. Then, God willing, I shall return this to its
rightful owner and claim her as my own. But I beg you, my reader, that should I
not return, fulfill my charge and restore this in my stead. It belongs, in
whole, to Miss McInnis, and her father, Jasper McInnis, of Charleston. Please
assure Miss McInnis that to the last, I remained her faithful and devoted
servant,

Alexander Chase