Trouble & Treasure by Dave Moyer (learn to read activity book txt) 📖

was trying to unwind a coat-hanger, I plunged into the woods by my side, as far away from the shouting and gunfire as I could get.

I ran, ran, and ran. Whereas before I hadn’t noticed the pain in my feet and the tears streaking down my cheeks, I noticed nothing; my attention was inexorably focused on getting the hell away.

As the sounds of the gunfight were swallowed up by the woods, I found myself facing yet another incline.

For the freaking third time, I slipped right down it. The only difference was, this one led straight to the road. In an uncontrollable, desperate descent, I rolled right off the hill and straight onto the bitumen below.

There was a sudden and violent screech of tires, and a massive wave of air broke against me as something large and fast dodged closely by my side.

Before I could process what had happened, or more likely, what hadn't, I heard a car door slam.

“Amanda? Amanda?” It was Sebastian, and in another second he was right by my side, lifting me up off the road.

His face was still with shock, a tender and overwhelmed expression muddling his features, one at odds with the character I was so sure he had.

He shook his head several times and led me to the car. “Get in the car, get in the car,” he needlessly repeated as he opened the passenger door for me and gently but surely led me towards it.

Behind us the sound of gunfire stopped. Sebastian twisted his head in a snap towards it and let out an even quicker swearword as he slammed my door closed and pelted to his open driver’s-side door. He jumped in, slammed his own door and didn’t bother to put his seat belt on as he slammed his foot on the accelerator and the car sped off down the road.

I was shaking in my seat, clutching my hands tightly as I rocked back and forth.

I was aware that Sebastian was looking at me, slicing his head back to the road as he took another corner at full speed, then looking back at me. Not caring how I looked, I sat there, knuckles perfectly white against my pink flesh as I continued to rock back and forth, back and forth.

He reached out a hand to me, hesitated and patted me on the shoulder. “You're okay, you're okay, because you’re here now, you're safe,” his voice was quiet, at odds with his usual arrogant gusto.

I shook.

“What happened? Was it Maratova? Did he find you?” Sebastian didn’t slow the car down, and it sounded as if he gunned it even harder at the mention of Maratova's name, the engine revving wildly.

I was able to nod my head, and kept nodding for some reason, as if I was one of those dolls with a bouncing head that sat on the car's dashboard.

“Fuck,” he said, the word bitter and drawn out, “That fucking bastard.”

I felt cold, frigid, my limbs seizing up. I wanted to huddle into a ball and try and keep what warmth I still had left in me inside.

Sebastian wound up his window, which had been down when he had rescued me, and turned the heat on to full bore, directing each of the vents towards me. “I wish I had some water in this car,” he mumbled.

I didn't respond.

“Oh, shit, you're covered in scratches and cuts,” Sebastian said, voice quick, “Jesus Christ, I should not have left you alone. I'm so sorry. I'll take you somewhere safe, I will take you somewhere safe,” Sebastian kept repeating, as if he thought that saying something comforting twice would somehow make it twice as comforting.

“I'm okay,” I managed to speak, but my words were so quiet and so gentle that they couldn't have convinced anyone.

Sebastian gently shushed me, repeating that I was okay.

“I am okay,” I said, voice getting a touch firmer. I was even able to let my hands go, the knuckles stiff but relaxing somewhat.

“What happened? How did they find you?” Sebastian asked, facing me as much as he could as he kept driving way too fast along such a narrow road.

“They came not too long after you left,” I said, voice quiet, but thankfully even, “And, well...” I trailed off.

He raised a hand. “It's okay, I get it. Those bastards.”

Yes, but were they? As I sat there, warming up from the heaters that blasted warm air my way, I was starting to do some serious questioning. Yes, I’d been chased, and yes, by soldiers of all people. Yet they'd protected me from that thick-necked goon and promised they were only here to help.

I was confused.

I leaned forward, sucking my lips in tightly, and putting a hand on my stomach; I felt sick. A powerful wave of nausea was ricocheting through my stomach, just as those bullets had ricocheted through the woods.

“Oh shit, are you okay? Did they hurt you? You didn't get shot, did you?” Sebastian fired off his questions just as quickly as the soldiers had fired off their guns at the thick-necked man.

I wasn’t sick; I was overcome, drowned by the situation. I didn’t know what to believe, and I didn’t know what to do next. Despite my fear of Maratova, and the fresh memory of being chased last night, I was starting to question why I was running from the army at all. They were meant to be the good guys. Yet I had convinced myself, mostly through the words of Sebastian, that I had to get away from them.

Was it the right thing to do?

“We need to keep moving, get out of the country as quick as we can,” Sebastian said.

Well, that made me freak right out. I gave a startled, choked bluster. “Get out of the country? What? We can't come back ever again? What do you mean? What have we done?” my words all came out at once, as if my silence had been a great dam that had been broken by Sebastian's suggestion.

“I don't mean out of the country, I mean out of the countryside,” he clarified. “You haven't done anything wrong, Amanda.”

I wished I could believe that, but the thing about having so many people, including the army, chasing after me, was it made me feel as if I was a criminal. Innocent people hadn’t anything to run from.

Silence stretched between us for several minutes, and while I was aware that Sebastian kept turning to me to check how I was, I couldn't think of anything more to say to him. I was thankful that he hadn’t run me over, and forever thankful that he had gotten me away from the bullets and shouting. But I didn't know what to do from here. Something was telling me that if I chose not to go to the authorities, then it would be too late.

The thrill of having solved my great-uncle’s clue and having found the scales had been wiped from my mind. The reality of this desperate adventure, and more specifically running from criminals and soldiers, had overshadowed any illusion I may have had that I was somehow a budding treasure hunter. I wasn’t built for this, because I was pretty sure that this should not exist; the rules of law didn’t make room for people to dash around the countryside shooting at each other on the hunt for treasure.

As the day wound on, and the sky became overcast, I began to realize that despite the fact I didn’t know what to do next, we were still heading somewhere new. Sebastian obviously knew where to go from here, even if I was too frightened and overcome to give it a single thought. We had left the countryside some time ago, and while we’d not joined onto a highway heading into the city, we were still heading out along a far larger, far wider main road.

With clouds overhead pressing in, threatening rain in an hour or two, I realized that I could hardly sit there and stay quiet forever. “Where are we going?” I asked, voice croaking.

Sebastian played with his collar, as if it were bothering him. “We have to keep moving, our advantage is the only thing that is keeping us ahead.”

I didn’t understand his words, and he didn’t pause to elucidate them. Despite the fact I was still getting over the shock of my tumbles in the woods, I began to realize what he meant. “You're going after the other clue, aren't you?”

He nodded.

He was going after the other clue. I had almost been kidnapped by two different sets of people, and I had given myself a harsh beating trying to get away from them, and Sebastian was going after the next clue.

I'd thought he was going to get us somewhere safe, somewhere where I could have a shower, somewhere where I could change out of my torn tights. Oh no, we were headed to the next clue.

I was distinctly aware of the irony of it all. I’d seen my fair share of ridiculous adventure movies, and read perhaps more than my fair share of even more ridiculous airport novels, and I knew that the golden rule in both genres was to never stop. Once the action started, the character would never be allowed to pause until it was all over. They would be chased to the point of exhaustion, but somehow they would push through. It was all in the name of adventure. Audiences didn’t want to see the protagonist go back home and have a kip after a lengthy and powerful car chase. They didn’t want to see their hero stretch out and have a siesta and a snack after having escaped from the pirates or mercenaries. The entire point was that from the moment the action began, it didn’t end until the story ended.

This wasn’t a book and this wasn’t a movie. Normal people, real people, needed time to process events, especially stressful, traumatic ones. I was being given no time. I was being pushed from one frantic experience to another. While from the outside, it might have made this damn entertaining, from the inside it felt like it would turn me insane.

“Look, there will be an end to this,” Sebastian assured me.

An end? When? What would it look like? Would the end be when I handed myself over to Maratova and his men and they gently pulled me aside and informed me that they were the good guys, whereupon they would take out all the bad guys and I would be able to resume my normal life? Or would the end look more like me being shot to pieces by some heavy-leather-jacket-wearing goon? Or would I end up in prison?

“I don't want to do this anymore,” I surprised myself with my own words, but they were genuine and they were honest. I just didn’t want to do this anymore. It might have been wild to begin with, and I may have been briefly excited at the prospect of finding treasure in the church, but I was over it. This had to stop.

Sebastian gave an awkward and light chuckle. Perhaps he thought I was joking. His eyelids descended, stare dead. “I wish I could make it stop. The reality is, as long as everyone else out there thinks you know where the globes are, there isn’t going to be an end. Not until we find those globes.”

“We have to find a way to tell them. There must be some way,” I said, voice desperate as it peaked and pitched loudly. “I made a mistake in selling that globe at auction,” I kept swallowing between my words, throat horrendously dry and sore, “But surely there is some way to get away from this.”

Sebastian winced. If it was because of my desperate and pathetic plea, I wasn’t sure; it was hard to get a read on Sebastian Shaw, and even harder to tell whether he was showing genuine compassion or putting on an act to ensure I played along.

“Look, Amanda, I promised that I