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

force.

I gave a strangled, puffed scream before the same hand managed to clamp around my mouth.

Terror engulfed me. It started in the back of my head, and like a powerful blizzard, burst forth and froze every inch of me.

This was it, I realized. This was it.

The light flickered on.

The three mercenaries were on the other side of the room; one picking himself up from the toppled mound of papers, another nursing his leg near the edge of the massive table, and the last one – the leader – by the light switch.

If all three were before me... that meant....

The mercenaries raised their guns, and my captor raised his.

“This is our find,” the mercenary leader said, voice toneless.

This was my house, I wanted to shout back. Well, technically my dead great-uncle's house, but whatever.

The guy with his hand over my mouth didn't reply. He kept the heavy-looking gun in his other hand steady and pointed it at the mercenaries.

“Who sent you?” the mercenary leader asked. “Shaw? Romeo? The Americans? The Brits?”

I didn't follow a word. Why would the Americans and British – or this Shaw and Romeo, for that matter – send bad guys to my house? For these mysterious artifacts? Or did this select group (including entire freaking countries, apparently) have it in for me?

The guy who held me didn't respond – just kept his grip and his gun steady.

The mercenary leader shook his head. “Kill them; we can find it ourselves.”

Ah....

My captor shot first.

With movements quicker than I could follow, he shot both pile-o-magazine-tripping mercenary and table-knocking mercenary right in their firing shoulders. He hauled me to the side, shot out the light above us, and narrowly missed a volley from the mercenary leader.

Just like that. It all happened in the blink of an eye, I swear.

I had a second to process it all before I tumbled head-first into a pile of soft magazines.

I heard another shot ring out.

There was a thud.

Then there was another thud as I slipped off the magazines and ended up as a puddle of worn-out fear and dusty bathrobe on the floor.

I waited there, lying face-first on the musty carpet. I was spent.

There was quick footfall beside me. I flinched, not knowing what to expect.

I wasn't wrenched to my feet, choked, and told to “Go and get the collector's items.”

Instead the man offered two short words: “Stay here.”

He moved off into the dark room to check the rival bad guys were down.

Stay here. The words echoed in my mind with an eerie hollowness.

It took me a moment – in which I heard my captor shove the prone bodies of the mercenaries – then I decided 'staying here' wasn’t something I wanted to do. Here was too full of bad guys, guns, and dust to be healthy.

I scrambled to my feet. Though I still felt the fear, the realization I had to get out of this place pumped through my body along with every last drop of adrenaline I had left.

Despite the shock, my eyes were adjusting to the darkness. Plus, over the weeks I'd memorized all the box-filled death traps in this house.

Still on my hands and knees, I crawled under the table. From there I could crawl to the opposite side of the room and through a different door that led back to the hallway. Once there I'd run like crazy and get the hell out of here.

A plan.

Now for action. I scampered with a fiendish frenzy. Though the room was still dark, my eyes were adjusting and there was a silvery light filtering through the moth holes in the curtains. It had a dappling effect on the darkened room, offering the barest illumination to guess where I was headed and nothing more.

I crawled, the pound of my heart beating violently in my throat. Though my nerves were still fraught, I was glad of the action.

I made it under the table as I heard a soft grunt from the other side of the room. Through a streak of light I made out the rough, scuffed surface of a boot. It belonged to my most recent captor; the man whose hands smelt of fine coffee and expensive French cologne. That, or it belonged to yet another new-comer intent on illegally and violently extracting the location of the 'historical products' or 'items of interest' out of me.

I continued to crawl underneath the table. I headed to the far right corner.

When I'd first come into this room, this giant oak table had sat roughly in the middle with a most excellent view of the windows beyond. This also made it a most excellent tripping hazard considering the boxes that lined every wall and the magazines strewn across every centimeter of the floor.

I'd pushed the table to the side, right against the wall. Right on that wall was a second door to the room. At the time I’d figured it hadn't mattered whether I partially blocked off one door; now it could save me. If I’d left enough room to open the door and squeeze through the gap, I'd be out of this room (hopefully) before Mr Coffee-and-Cologne-Hands noticed. I would run like the wind in any direction (probably the nearby road, on the off chance that some passing car wasn't filled with hoons and goons on their way to threaten and rob me).

I made it to the space between the door and the table, and managed to stand up in the gap. I lightly turned the door handle.

There was the softest of squeaks as the aged mechanism rolled in my hand. I agonized over the sound with a throbbing, chest-aching fear. It didn't stop me from squeezing through the gap and out into the cold corridor beyond.

The moment my bare feet hit the once-plush Persian runner, a shot of sharp, bitter fear rushed over me. It pushed me forward.

I reached the front door and wrenched it open.

“Don't,” a deep, resounding voice rumbled from behind.

It lit the final powder leading to my keg of panic, and I bolted. My feet hit the uneven cobblestones outside the door with a frantic slap, slap, slap.

My naked feet reached the rough stones of the turning circle. I didn’t care about the sharp, jagged edges lacerating my tender flesh. I ran. I ran; I was being chased.

I could hear him behind me, hear the measured pant of his breath, hear the measured beat of his footfall.

The panic rose to a level I’d never ever experienced. Opening the door to a leather-clad burglar was one thing; having an evil SWAT team burst out of my library was another; and having a hand scented with coffee and cologne clamp around my mouth in a darkened drawing room was something again. Yet being chased so silently and efficiently from behind was so much more.

I screamed as he caught up to me. That old mammalian part of me that didn't want to die gave one last, gut-wrenching, lung-punching cry before it was all over.

“Jesus Christ, calm down,” came the barely-puffed voice of the man. He was right behind me.

Calm down? Why? It was easier to steal antiques from people who were stoic and silent?

I put on another burst of speed and managed to peel away from the guy.

I promptly fell into a hole.

I fell heavily. Maybe I sprained something, maybe I even broke something.

It didn’t matter.

The scent of damp grass filled my nostrils and the sound of someone leaning right next to me rang through my ears.

“Listen to me,” he said, voice quick but clear, “I'm not here to hurt you. I saved you.”

Like hell he did; he broke into my drawing room and shot out my light.

“If you don't believe me, then here, take this.”

Something metal was pressed into my upturned left palm.

It felt like the butt of a gun. It was heavy and had a weight that offered unbelievable reassurance.

Had the guy handed me a gun?

I let my grip stiffen around it, and I pushed off the ground. There was a dull pain in my right ankle, but I managed to look past it. Instead I looked right at the guy standing a respectable almost non-threatening distance from me.

He had his hands up and his fingers spread in classic I'm-not-armed fashion.

Through the pale moonlight I could see his expression. It wasn’t leering; I couldn't see the glint of his teeth as his lips puckered to reveal a criminal sneer. It looked calm and aware.

I sat on the grass, gun held awkwardly but nevertheless tensely in one hand. I stared at him. I stared at the dark shadows that obscured most of his face and the even darker shadow his tall, broad form cast against the grass.

The guy had handed me his gun. Mr Coffee-and-Cologne-Hands had armed me.

Was it a gesture of trust or some bad-guy game? Would he wait for me to say something brave, then giggle, pull out his own bigger gun, shoot me, and shout “Puuuuuuunked” in a drawn out, nasal tone?

He didn't move his hands. He kept them up, still, and where I could see them.

“Are we going to do this all night?” he asked. “It's just I can't guarantee no one else is coming.”

“What do you mean? There are more? Who were they? Who are you? What's going on here? Why did you give me your gun?”

As I asked my questions, the man brought one finger down for each. Though in an ordinary, non-bad-guy-filled scenario such a move would have seemed innocent, the moving fingers reminded me of a countdown.

“Don't do that. What are you doing?” I asked, tension pulsing through my voice as my hands trembled around the gun.

“Keeping track of your questions,” he answered easily. “Now what do I mean? I mean that you aren't safe here. I can't guarantee there aren't more guys out there. Indeed, it’s a safe bet there are. What was the next question? Who are they? That depends: some of them are petty criminals hired on a whim by people who either can't afford or are too stingy and stupid to hire real mercenaries. The rest range from ex-servicemen with debts to pay to bankrolled killers.”

The term bankrolled killers sent such a shiver down my spine I almost dropped the gun.

It didn't help that a wind was picking up, shaking the branches of the nearby oak trees and pressing through my sodden pant legs making the flesh underneath prickle and quiver.

“What was next?” the guy continued in a quick tone, keen to finish all the questions as soon as he could. “Oh yeah – who am I? We've met before. Sebastian Shaw.”

A tremble of recognition passed through me. I recognized the voice and that subtle mix of coffee and cologne. It was the man from the auction house; that persistent, dogged, hunkasaurus who seemed unusually interested in my spotting globe.

Now he was here, standing on my lawn, handing me guns, and shoving me to the side as he shot so-called bankrolled killers.

“You remember me?” he asked carefully, possibly realizing that a single name to a frazzled woman might not get him far. “We met at the—”

“Auction house,” I supplied in a quiet monotone.

“Yeah,” he said, and forgive me if it sounded almost caring. “Two more questions, right?” he continued. “I'll start with the last one first.” He still had his hands in the air, and he still wasn't moving a muscle in my direction. “I gave you my gun so you could trust me; it's one thing asking a panicked woman to trust you when you're holding the gun, but it's something else if you give the gun to her, right?”

He seemed to want my confirmation, but I was stuck on the term panicked woman. Despite the fact I clearly fit that category it rallied my pride. “Hurry up and get to the bit where you tell me what's going on.”

“I'm afraid we don't have time for a full version,” he said, cautiously looking over his shoulder at the long driveway that circled down to the road below.

There was a low thumping