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

chin and dribbling down her neck.

She shivered, drawing her shoulders in and shuddering, because hell it had gotten cold.

Blinking hard and trying to hide under my eyebrows as I attempted to stare through the driving rain, I turned back towards the object still embedded in the rock. That would be when Amanda thrust a hand in front of my face, a small metal chain dangling there. Brow clicking down, lips pulling apart, I grabbed it from her, somewhat like an excited child grabbing a cookie from the cookie jar.

Even through the storm whipping around us, I managed to bring the chain right up to my face, brushing a finger over the surface of the pendant at the end. I couldn't make out any writing on it, not in this light.

I looked up to see Amanda walking down the stairs.

“Amanda?” I had no idea whether she could hear me over the driving force of the gale and the thunderous sound of the rain as it drove into the metal gangway we walked on.

She didn't stop; she kept walking down the stairs, head held at a curious angle.

“Amanda?” Pocketing the trinket, I went after her.

The clouds above were so damn gray it was getting almost pitch black out here. The crashing wild waves below as they roared up and broke against the side of the lighthouse and the cliff didn't help things at all. They gave this situation more of a dangerous feel, and I didn't need any more danger today. I was damn certain that Amanda didn't either. Several weeks ago she would have been an ordinary girl, and ordinary girls do not spend their days being shot at by criminals outside of libraries, being chased through forests by soldiers, and spending their evenings trying to get into lighthouses in raging storms.

So I picked up my pace, and I had to admit it wasn't the thought of how cold my neck had become from the river of water rushing down my back, over my head, down my arms, and soaking my body in a chill, frigid wash. Though I was pretty sure I was still a bastard, I couldn't help but want to get out of the rain for Amanda's sake. Ordinary girls like her couldn't hack situations like this; they weren't made for it. She was probably the kind of girl who spent all of her nights at home with a cat on her lap, some inane romance novel in hand, with a plate of home-baked cookies beside her. She was definitely not the kind of girl who was used to guns, treasure, wild weather, and wall-to-wall danger. So yeah, it was my prerogative and my duty to get her out of here. Even if it was to stave off the screaming and whining I knew would happen later.

As I rushed down to get to Amanda before the crazy girl could slip on the steps and tumble into the raging sea below, I bloody well saw something. Out in the surf, not too far from the lighthouse, was a light, and it obviously belonged to some ship. We weren’t talking an oil tanker here, or a fishing ship, or even a yacht too damn stupid not to berth before a storm. No, because where this thing was, it was moving fast, damn fast towards the lighthouse.

I swore, and I swore hard and loud, but not loud enough to make it over the cacophony of the waves and wind.

I ran towards her, keeping a hand hovering over the rail, not wanting to slip, collect into her back, and push the both of us into the sea below. I caught up to her, grabbed her arm unceremoniously, and pulled her back.

“Hey, what are you doing?” she screamed at me, but she didn't look that angry, she was obviously trying to be heard over the gale, the rain, and the waves.

“We need to get back to the car,” I shouted back, never letting go of her arm.

“There's a light out there.” She pointed towards the light narrowing in on the lighthouse.

When I glanced in the direction she was pointing, to confirm it was still there, it wasn't.

Fuck.

Amanda whipped her head around too, apparently searching this way and that for the light, and she sucked in a surprised breath that even I could make out over the gale as she clapped a hand over her mouth. “Oh my god, I think there was a ship out there, god, has it sunk? We have to call the authorities.”

Oh no we didn't. I was 100% sure that while there’d been a ship out there it hadn’t sunk, and it hadn’t been an ordinary ship at that. I tugged on her arm and tried to pull her back. “We have to get back to the car, Amanda, we have to move.”

“Shouldn't we go and check—”

“Amanda. Trust me, there's no one out there who's in trouble,” I screamed back, “Except for us.”

She obviously didn't understand, and with the acute trouble I was having trying to be heard over the storm, I didn't have the ability to tell her. It was pretty simple: the light she'd seen hadn’t belonged to some simple fishing ship or some brave and stupid pleasure cruiser. It had been fast and it had been brave enough to head straight towards a rocky coast in a wild storm, apparently unaffected by the chop of the waves. Yeah, I’d been in this business long enough to know an experimental vessel when I saw one. I had damn well been in this business long enough to know that with the Stargazer Globes on the line, every army, every mercenary unit, every crime lord would try everything they could to get their hands on them. Yes, that meant cracking out the highly-sophisticated boats, helicopters, spy satellites, weapons; we weren't playing with boy scouts here.

“But,” Amanda began to protest.

I kept scanning the horizon as I latched my hand onto her wrist and started to pull her up the gangway. It wasn't as if there was any chance of me seeing anything considering how dark it was and how driving and complete the rain was around me, but I kept trying anyway. I knew they were out there, somewhere, probably crawling up the freaking cliff beside us. Who they were, well I didn't know. I did know one thing – they would be after Amanda, and through her, the Stargazers.

Not for the first time, and not for the last, I started to berate myself over how much of a bastard I was for not dropping her off at the authorities when I’d had the chance. While she’d been extremely useful, and I didn’t want to give up on her, the longer she was with me and the longer she wasn’t in the protective custody of Maratova, the more danger she was in.

Amanda pulled back on her arm. “Where are we going? What's going on?” she kept asking.

“Anywhere but here.” I answered as loudly as I could.

Though she resisted for another moment, she slackened her arm, but rather than let me pull her along, she began to run in her own right, despite the fact she was in heels and despite the fact the gangway was wet and slippery.

Perhaps I'd underestimated her. As that treacherous thought wound its way around my cerebellum, a fucking bullet ricocheted off the step above me, slamming to the side and lodging itself into the cliff on my left, flakes of rock exploding from the impact.

Amanda tensed, pulling back automatically, grabbing with both hands at the rails and crumpling down until she was on her haunches. I threw myself down on the steps, as another bullet zinged past me.

God dammit, we were obviously too late. I didn't have my gun on me, for some stupid reason I'd left it in the back of my car, erroneously assuming that nobody was following us. Well wasn't that about the stupidest idea I had ever had, because clearly someone was following us.

I felt the metal stairs shake as the weight strain on them changed. Somewhere, whether it was above or below, someone had stepped onto the gangway. Gritting my teeth, I raised my head. The one thing I could be thankful about was how damn hard it was to see through the driving rain and dark, and that was probably the only reason I hadn't been shot yet.

I had zero idea of who was out there and how many of them there were, but sure as hell I knew they were armed and they weren't frightened to start a fight.

We had two options: try to make it back to the car or head back towards the lighthouse. I didn’t need to turn around to be able to tell that the waves were so wild and violent that they were crashing up and over the railing that ran all the way round the bottom of the lighthouse and led to the single door below. Hell, and it would be locked. In other words, heading to the lighthouse was suicide.

As I decided to make a run for the car, I felt more shakes through the stairs, and they were coming from above me. There was no doubt there was somebody on the gangway and that they were walking down towards us. Well, I say walking, I mean stalking; that peculiar quick, tensed movement that you get when you're tracking a prey.

I didn't think. I stood up, whirled around, grabbed Amanda as she still sat huddled against the railing, and pulled her downstairs. This time she didn’t resist at all, and I felt my grip on her slacken as she matched pace beside me. If there was one thing Amanda could do, it was run away.

She wasn’t screaming either, which was another thing I had to admit about her; apart from the occasional lungful of air she'd given me last night at her great-uncle’s manor, Amanda couldn't be classed as the damsel in distress from a B-grade '50s flick. While she was obviously out of her depth here, and had never faced a situation as dangerous and perilous as this before, she was hardly hanging off my arm and waiting for me to protect her from all the bad guys.

I wasn’t sure how I felt about that, but now wasn't the time to reflect upon it.

The wind took that opportunity to blow even harder, and I was forced off my feet as a gust slammed into me. As I swayed on my feet, Amanda turned her side to the brunt of the wind, ducked down, grabbed the railing, and kept running. Seriously, it didn't seem as if there was anything on this green earth that could stop Amanda from trying to get away when she wanted to.

The closer we neared the end of the stairs, the more the intense spray of the waves lashed us. While neither of us were dry, the seawater as it raged and broke against the cliff and rock below wasn’t like the rain; the salt water ran over my face, forcing my eyes to blink in pain, and collecting at my tersely closed lips with a horrible salty tang.

It was suicide. I could see the door below, but our chances of making it there were pretty damn slim. While we might be able to force our way there through the water, what we would do once we got there, I didn’t know. It wasn't as if I had a crowbar on me or some awesome explosives. And what did I think I would do once I was in the lighthouse? I doubted there was a fine selection of automatic weapons stashed in the kitchen, or a nice thick blast door we could hide behind until the mercenaries got bored and too cold and went home.

The only thing the lighthouse could offer us was the fact it wasn’t out here; there would be less rain, waves, and mercenaries in there. While the rain and waves could be kept