Page 104 of In the Pursuit of Haven
My stomach dipped and dove at the sight. The dirt on those shovels looked fresh. We might’ve missed Hunter here by hours. Would he be coming back soon?
“Where’s the cave?” I asked.
Jessie scraped the bench out of the way and hauled up the crowbar. His phone vibrated seconds before he shoved the metal tool under the makeshift platform. Grunting out with impatience, he fought his phone out from his jeans pocket and tossed the sleek model over to me.
Seeing it was from his sister, I answered it for him. “Abby?”
“Hey!” Her melodious, husky voice rang out on the other end. “Did you find the Relic hiding in The Lady?”
It took me a second to even focus on what she was asking. I ripped my attention from her brother as he wrenched the platform back from the ground inch by inch. The nails screeched at every motion.
“We did,” I managed to say. The wooden shell of the leather-bound Bible weighing down my backpack was a good reminder of what we’d found only a few short hours ago, but how did she know our plans?
She didn’t let me ask. Finn barked behind her and she shouted through the noise. “Is my brother there?”
Ah! Yes, he was her source!For all Jessie’s talk on keeping this under wraps, he was sure bad at it.
I put her on speaker.
His fingers loosened against the crowbar, putting a pause on his work. “What’s going on?”
“You okay?” Her unexpected breathlessness stabbed a shaft of fear through my prickling spine. Abby sounded scared.
Sheneversounded scared.
“Hunter’s not on his way over here, is he?” I asked her.
Jessie’s chin shot up. “Abby?” he raised his voice. “Have you heard anything?”
“Nothing yet, but…” she hesitated before plunging on in her usual reckless way, “I’ve got a tip, and I’m going to check on the House of Seven Gables. See if I can’t stop Hunter from getting to it first.”
With difficulty, Jessie tugged out the crowbar from under the platform. He set it down. “Who gave you the tip?” He sounded suspicious.
“Don’t worry about it,” his sister said. “They’re reliable.”
“That’s not what I asked.”
She hung up on him, cutting him off so that he was groaning in frustration.
I was worried too. “You don’t think it’s really Hunter, do you?” I asked.
Jessie glowered then wedged the crowbar back under the platform. “No, that’s not… possible.” Why? Did his newfound confidence in his sister have to do with that threatening phone call he’d made? “You told Hunter to back off from her,” I said. It felt like the right time to come out with my suspicions. “Didn’t you? You think he’ll actually listen?”
His jaw ground against his teeth and he heaved against the crowbar again. “Yes,” he grunted between his efforts. “And I guess… it’s not the end of the world if she finds something, but…” He let that hang when before my startled eyes, he ripped the platform completely away from the rocks and shoved it aside, revealing a deep hole underneath.
There was a big problem—well a small one… the diameter of that hole was tiny.
Jessie met my eyes over the crowbar. There was a note of apology through his ragged breathing when he said, “Only Divine and Abby could fit in there.”
And me, huh?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
My panic consumed me. “I thought you said I was going to love this?” I cried.
I knelt next to the hole, sliding my hand over the smooth gray Andover granite. The pounding of my heart against my ears overpowered the crash of the waves.
“Uh, I meant you’d like the medical book, so right… everybody hates this part. You should hear what Divine says…”
