Page 58 of In the Pursuit of Haven
If I could just get to my phone without any of these tough guys seeing, I could call for help.Impossible with all their eyes on me. My heart had already run off without me. It was halfway down the street by now. None of this felt real. People just didn’t do this.
“What are you doing here?” Hunter asked me.
“She saw the note,” Divine said with a crooked grin. “She wants to join in the fun.”
“I’m meeting someone here, and if I don’t show up he’ll know something’s wrong.”
Hardly.Luther would’ve answered the siren call of home by now, enjoying a dry documentary on Egyptian tomb excavations from the safety of his own living room, where I would be if I had any sense.
They all laughed at me. Not quite what I was expecting in response to my bravado.
“Sure,” Hunter said. “Did all the movies you watch as a kid tell you to say that?”
Well, yeah…
“Archer!” Jessie’s voice broke through the group of bullies.
Hunter turned with lips that curved in satisfaction. “You came!”
Jessie’s eyes glittered with worry when they found me. “What are you doing? Gideon, you idiot. Don’t touch my wife.” He tried to push through their biggest men, which pretty much yielded the same results as trying to toss aside two boulders. “Hunter!” Jessie’s voice turned dangerous. “Tell them to let Roxy go or you can forget me helping you out.”
“Ha!” Hunter wasn’t having it. “You’ve been digging in your heels since the beginning of this. No, I’ve got a different idea of how this night is going to go.” He pushed through his men and climbed back over the cemetery wall. He motioned for his team to follow. “Bring her with us.”
“No!” Jessie countered. “Not a chance.”
Using me against him was exactly what I wanted to avoid! The big man—I guess Gideon—grabbed my arm, and the other two guys blocked Jessie from getting to me.
“C’mon, it’ll be fun,” Hunter said with a laugh. “You’re going to find us that map. And by the way, if anything goes wrong, we’re pinning it all on you.”
That’s what I was afraid of. His flunky picked me up like he’d throw me over the wall after Hunter. I kicked at him. “I’m going,” I said, “on my own!”
Hunter signaled for his man to put me down, and the instant my feet met the frozen ground, I began plotting other tricks to pave my escape. At least I hadn’t had any time to dress up before heading out to meet Luther, just a coat over my sweater and jeans—everything too dark to be seen by outside witnesses—though I had some good running shoes.
I took my time scaling the wall, which was far too low in my opinion. And yet, why should the City of Salem deprive law-abiding citizens of the view of this beautiful cemetery because of a couple of bad apples?
A lot of bad apples.Where was the museum’s security in all this? It almost felt like Hunter had paid a few people off! If anything, this would get on the cameras. What would Luther say if he saw me now?
Would he? Was someone on his security team in on this and cutting off the footage?
Searching through the chaos, my gaze landed on Jessie. His eyes were locked on me.
Hunter casually made his way to Jessie’s side. “Time for you to spill all the info you’re keeping from us,” he said. “Where’s that locket?”
I was wearing both sides of it, and they clanged loudly together as I walked. With difficulty, I kept myself from reaching up to keep them from making so much noise.
“It fell to the bottom of the ocean about fifty years ago,” Jessie answered back with a scoff. “I hope you know how to dive.”
“Wrong answer,” Hunter said. “Let’s see if your wife knows more.” He glanced back at me, his chiseled face twisting into something very slap-able right now. “Roxy, is it? Have you ever seen the inside of a box tomb before?”
“Stop it!” I stiffened in revulsion. He was a crazy man! “You cannot touch these tombs! Some of them haven’t been opened for hundreds of years. They’re antiques!”
“Nuh uh, this one was opened in the 1890s for repairs,” Hunter retorted. “Only a century ago. We’re good.” He brought us to a box tomb near the edge of the cemetery where the retaining wall kept the coffins from crashing through the tavern walls on the other side of it. “I’ve done my homework.” He swung his crowbar. “I might look like one of those pretty boys who slept through high school, but I was what you might call a bookworm. Ask my uncle… well, you can’t, he’s in prison. His worthless son put him there on some trumped-up excuse, but we’re working on getting him out. In the meantime, we could really use your help to break into the governor’s tomb, sweetheart.”
One look told me the tomb belonged to Governor Bradstreet—the last governor of Massachusetts Bay to be elected by the people before the king’s crackdown on the colonies.
“You’ll never guess who’s buried here,” Hunter said.
Was he being sarcastic? The governor and many members of his family were buried in this crypt, along with the infamous witch hunter, Reverend Nicholas Noyes, and the good and honorable, Reverend Higginson… though his daughter, Ann Dolliver? This definitely wasn’t where she’d been laid to rest.
