This Fearless Girl (St. Clary's University #2) - E. M. Moore Page 0,46
one particularly steep rock face, and I take his help gratefully. He doesn’t meet my gaze after he hauls me up. “You know, Cole’s going to want an update about what we find up here.”
He certainly is. The only way I got him to give us a little space was promising him that very thing.
“We need to think about what we’re going to say.”
“What do you mean?” I ask.
He tilts his chin down, the brim of his hat shielding his eyes from me. Wyatt is in full-on mountain-hiking mode, but it wouldn’t matter what he wore. He’d look good in anything. “I mean, we haven’t talked about it before, but I sure as hell don’t want to give him this treasure when we find it. I don’t think you do either.”
“Hell no,” I practically spit, stomach hardening at the thought. It’s always been as much about the search as it has been the find, but the glory and riches go to the discoverer, not someone waiting in the wings to take all the credit...and the gold. “What’s he want with it, anyway?” I ask, still not able to get my head wrapped around that part. “If it’s about money, can’t he go rob a bank or something?”
Lucas chuckles. “Don’t give him any ideas. He’ll probably do both.” His foot slides in the loose rock, and he rights himself before continuing. “The problem is, no matter what we want, how are we going to fight him on this? He’s already threatened all of us, and he has the background and expertise to pull it off if we don’t give him what he wants.”
Stone is staying shockingly quiet through this whole conversation. He’s been on edge all morning. In fact, I haven’t seen the tension lifted off him since our moment together in the car. My heart aches for him, but he might be our ticket out of this mess. Surely his father and their rich guy group could do something to Cole, right? Something that might take him down in another way?
Wyatt must be following my train of thought because he says as much out loud. Stone scrambles up another steep pitch, loose rocks falling at our feet. When he stands atop the four-foot embankment, he says, “My dad’s working on something. The problem that you all might’ve guessed is that he deals in white collar problems, not”—he sneers—“this. I think he’s still deciding how dirty he wants his hands to get.”
An uncontrollable laugh bursts from my lips. “While he throws us under the bus? Of course. We’ll lure Cole in, the ones who will take the heat if we don’t deliver, while your dad stays nice and secure.”
“He did get shot,” Stone reminds me, reaching down to help Wyatt up, but I step forward first, placing my hand in his. It’s the first time I’ve touched him since we got home the night he buried his face between my legs. A definite wave of electricity passes between us—a jolt reminding us both of our shared chemistry. He yanks me up, his smile turning into a cruel smirk.
“He deserves worse,” I tell him before walking away. How is what Lance is doing to Stone any better than what Wyatt’s mother did to him? Stone’s death will only be slower, more calculated.
Man, we’re just a band of fucked-up families, aren’t we?
“We’ve put too much work into this to let someone else get it,” Wyatt reminds us. “That’s all I’m saying. We don’t have to figure it out now, but we have to eventually. Might as well start the conversation early.”
If only I knew a bunch of fucked-up miscreants who were worse than Cole, but on my side.
Nah. I like books where the heroine saves herself.
Wyatt is right, we have to figure something out. Hell, a few weeks ago, I didn’t even want Stone to find the treasure, I’m certainly not going to let someone who hasn’t set foot on the mountain take all the credit and glory.
And if my father is dead, the least I can do is sign our names into the history books like he wanted. Like all the generations before him wanted.
In front of us, there’s a break in the peak. Jagged rocks follow the steep cliff all the way up. I’ve been here before. Plenty of times. The reason why we keep coming back is because it looks a hell of a lot like the area on my family’s map. But the problem is, scaling the cliffs without