shoulders and turning her to face him. “What? What does it say?”
Her eyes flick past him to me, and I push him out of the way. Thank God he moves willingly or I would have to beat the shit out of him for touching her. I’m still going to beat the shit out of him for bringing her here, but that can wait till we get home still alive.
“It’s a sunstar design, unusual for this area, but . . .”
She goes on, quietly rambling something or other that’s way above my head about the civilization of the area and the development of their written language. I learned the details of the treasure, not the history of the local indigenous tribes. But she obviously did the homework I asked of her.
“Sum it up,” I demand. “What’s that mean?”
She sighs, realizing that no one has understood or even listened to her. “It’s basically like ‘the light within’ or ‘light bursting through’, so I think it means—” She looks around the cave, and I do the same even though her words are basically gibberish to me.
She shines her light around, looking for something, but I don’t see anything other than the same brown rocks we’ve been looking at.
“What do you see?” I whisper, trying to figure out what Emma’s looking for. Caleb’s moved back to the door, and we’re both shocked when she bends down and crawls through a gap I hadn’t seen before, an almost impossibly tight squeeze.
“What are you doing? Don’t go back there!”
My words are harshly whispered so as not to alert the guys outside, but I want to scream them. She’s going deeper into the cave where we can’t see, where Caleb and I can’t reach. There’s no way my body’s fitting through that gap, and Caleb’s a little taller than me, so he’s no help either.
If something goes wrong, we can’t get to her.
She pauses, and I can hear the excitement and the fear in her voice as she says, “It’s okay. I’m going to get this diamond for you.”
She shuffles on, her flashlight beam disappearing while Caleb looks at me worriedly. I know what he’s thinking. It’s the same thing I am. What the fuck do we do if she’s stuck in there?
I watch, shocked, as the crystals we were focusing on start to light up again . . . this time from the other side. I can almost imagine it’s my eyes playing tricks on me.
“What the hell?” Caleb whispers, then chuckles. “Of course. You don’t leave your valuables in your fucking entryway.”
He’s being his usual joking self about a scary situation, but then the crystals darken again like Emma’s moved to a different area of the cave where we can’t even see her light. Even that small sign of her is gone. And the reality of her disappearance hits me like a ton of bricks. I don’t want her to be gone.
I want her by my side.
Always.
Forever.
Shit.
I tried to do the right thing, to get her away from the madness that is my life even though it hurt me. I knew I was becoming the thing I hated most . . . my dad.
But Emma deserves more than this, and I tried to give it to her.
Freedom, the one thing she deserves most of all. Which is why I pushed her away.
But like a puppy that doesn’t know any better, she came back for more.
No, not a puppy.
Like a kitten. A kitty.
A kitty that lets you pet her on her terms, approaches you when she wants, but will scratch the shit out of you if you fuck up. And the definition of fucking up is strictly written on her say-so.
She’s let me play at being in charge of us, at her following orders when it suited the situation, but look at us now. She’s the one making the big steps, and I’m freaking out that I’m going to lose her.
She chased me down to fucking cartel territory in Brazil to help me. And I’m on her hook so damn bad.
I knew it, but I didn’t know it deep down to my core like I do right this instant.
I turn back to Caleb.
I know he can see the realizations blooming like fireworks in my dark eyes, and he sighs.
“You really want to walk this path, man?”
Not helpful. I’m looking for assurance.
Assurance that I didn’t just kill her by bringing her here and letting her go traipsing off alone into an uncharted cave, looking for a diamond.
A