A Treasure Worth Keeping (18 page)

Sam was already turning away but Evie hesitated. “Pastor, could we ask a favor? Sam’s niece, Faith, is in the car. Is it all right if she stays here for an hour or so?”

The man’s eyes lit with understanding. “Of course. My daughter, Samantha, would love the company. She’s been complaining since school let out that there’s nothing to do around here.”

“She must be a teenager.” Sam’s guess brought a smile to the minister’s face.

“She’s thirteen.”

“I’ll get Faith,” Evie said quickly. “And Rocky.”

“That’s right. We have one of Sophie’s puppies with us.” Sam winced.

“Not a problem. Samantha loves dogs. Bring them both in. I’ll tell my two favorite girls we have company.”

Faith was hesitant to stay with the Wallis family until Samantha Wallis ran outside, a soccer ball tucked under her arm.

Within minutes Faith waved a cheerful goodbye and the two girls disappeared around the corner of the house.

“That was a good idea until we know everything is okay with Sophie,” Sam said. “I didn’t even think about what we might be getting Faith into.”

Evie tried to ignore the warm glow his words stoked in her heart. “I remembered they have a daughter close to Faith’s age. Do you think Seth Lansky was the one with Tyson?” Evie murmured as they hurried back to the car. “Sophie will recognize his name if Tyson introduces them.”

“I hope it wasn’t him.” Sam paused to open the car door for her before moving around to the driver’s side. “I changed my mind about needing you to come with me. Do you mind if I drop you off at your house before I go to Sophie’s?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I’ll—”

“Yes, I mind, not yes, you can drop me off. I’m going along.”

Sam’s lips flat-lined but he didn’t argue. Until they got to Sophie’s house. He stopped the car before the turn in the driveway and cut the engine.

“Do you mind waiting here for a minute?”

“Yes.”

He flashed an impatient look at her. “Is that yes, you’ll wait here or yes, you
mind
waiting here?”

“Yes, I mind waiting.”

Sam’s eyes narrowed. “Evie, I know what I’m doing and I won’t be able to concentrate if you’re with me. Please stay here while I evaluate the situation.”

And let me do my job.

The words he didn’t say hung in the air between them. Of course. Sam wasn’t planning to walk up to the door and ring the bell.

Evie hesitated, not wanting him to go alone but not wanting to distract him, either. “I’ll stay here.” And pray.

Now he smiled at her grudging tone. “I’ll be right back.”

She watched as he melted into the trees instead of walking up the driveway.

As the minutes ticked by, Evie grew more concerned.

Why wasn’t he back yet?

Sam, where are you?

Lord, please let him be all right.

The two thoughts collided as Evie slipped out of the car and followed the path he’d taken into the woods until the house came into view.

No sign of Sam. Or Sophie.

Evie’s heart picked up speed as she stepped out into the open and crossed the bright green patch of yard. Should she knock? Or just go in?

As she hesitated on the porch, a hand grasped her arm. “Sam? Thank goodness. I was starting to get—”

Her voice died in her throat as she saw the bruised and bloody face of the man holding on to her.

“D
ad!”
Evie’s knees turned to water.

“Hi, sweetheart.” Patrick smiled wanly and then swayed on his feet.

Evie instinctively caught her dad before he fell over, and her frantic gaze skittered over him. Blood congealed over one eye and angry red scratches crisscrossed his cheek. His muddy clothing hung loosely on his frame and she noticed his glasses were missing. “What happened? Where’s Sam? Who did—”

The door flew open.

“Evie.” Tyson stepped to the side and motioned for them to come inside. “Come and join the party.”

She found her voice and turned on Tyson, anger over Patrick’s condition overriding her fear of Sophie’s son. “What did you do to him?”

Tyson ignored the question. “Let’s go into the kitchen.”

Where he kept the knives? Not a chance.

Evie balked and Tyson made an impatient sound. Without ceremony, he nudged her away from her father and wrapped his arm around Patrick’s waist.

“Let go of him.” She glared at Tyson.

“It’s okay, Evie,” Patrick murmured.

Evie would have chosen a better word to describe the situation but because she couldn’t exactly play tug-of-war with Tyson—with her dad in the middle—she gave in and followed him into the kitchen.

She took a silent inventory of the contents of her purse. If she could get to the travel-size can of hair spray in her bag, she could aim it in Tyson’s face and get Patrick safely to the car. And then she could double back to find Sam…

“Oh, good, you found her, Patrick. Hello, Evie.”

Evie blinked. Like watching a movie playing in slow motion, she tried to process the scene in front of her. Sophie stood near the kitchen table, calmly dabbing a washcloth against a jagged cut on Jacob Cutter’s forehead while Sam knelt on the floor, holding a bag of frozen peas against his father’s swollen ankle.

Sam glanced up and gave her a wry look. “I knew you wouldn’t stay put.”

Evie’s face whitened alarmingly and Sam rose to his feet. His dad’s sprained ankle could wait.

“Hey. It’s okay.” Sam drew Evie into his arms and she buried her face in his neck.

“I think we can take him,” she whispered in his ear.

Sam choked back a laugh and felt Evie stiffen. “We don’t have to take him,” he murmured. “He’s on our side.”

“He’s right, Evangeline,” Patrick chimed in, wincing as Sophie turned her gentle ministrations to the scratches marking his face.

“But Tyson and Seth Lansky—”

Tyson hooked his foot around a chair, yanked it away from the table and dropped into it. “I can see I’m going to have to go over this one more time.”

Sophie gave her son an affectionate smile. “I don’t mind hearing it again.”

Sam would have steered Evie toward a chair, too, but she took a protective stance near her father.

He didn’t blame her. When he’d walked into the house and heard his dad and Sophie arguing over whether or not he needed stitches, he’d been ready to take Tyson apart, too.

And Tyson must have known it because he’d put the table between them while Sophie had intervened and explained the situation.

“It seems Tyson has a gambling problem,” Jacob said, a little too jovially in Sam’s opinion. “And he made some stupid mistakes. Go ahead and tell her, Ty.”

Tyson didn’t refute the accusation as he looked at Evie. “He’s right. I needed money to pay off a loan from my friend, Gil. I heard Mom and Patrick talking about a sunken ship and I didn’t pay much attention at first because I figured it was part of the boring genealogy stuff she’s been researching. But when Mom said something about a ring, I got to thinking maybe there was something valuable on board.

“I was at the tavern one night and Gil started hassling me. Anyway, I’d had too much to drink and told him to be patient—that I was going to score some big money. But when I told him about the ship, he laughed and called me a stupid drunk. But the next day a guy called. Said he was a diver and maybe we could help each other out if I could tell him where the
Noble
went down. I did some snooping around here but couldn’t find anything. I listened in on Mom’s phone conversation and that’s when I knew Mom had given Patrick the stuff about the ship.” He drummed his fingers against the table and slanted a look at Evie. “I didn’t think
she’d
be hard to get past. Seth was supposed to get the information off Patrick’s computer without her knowing about it.”

“But Sam came to her rescue.” Jacob winked at Evie and her eyes widened. “That’s part of his job, you know. Rescuing damsels in distress.”

Sam groaned inwardly.

Dad, you are so not helping me here.

“Oh, I think Seth found out that Evie’s pretty resourceful,” Sam mused. “She’s good at creating distractions.”

There was a moment of silence as everyone in the room looked at Evie. But none of them looked the least bit surprised at his announcement. That seemed to fluster Evie more than anything else, and Sam smiled in satisfaction.

It was obvious from the expression on Tyson’s face that he knew about it, too. With an encouraging nod from Patrick, Tyson continued. “When Seth didn’t have any luck getting the stuff from Evie, he kept pushing me to find out if Mom had it. But I stalled, thinking Jacob and Patrick would get back and he’d leave her alone and focus on them.”

“Tyson is sure Seth is the one who broke in.” Sophie picked up the thread of the story calmly, as if she’d already forgotten the trauma of finding her den torn apart and months of precious research missing.

Sam couldn’t quite understand that level of forgiveness but he was pretty certain it had something to do with a mother’s unconditional love. And maybe her unshakeable faith.

“But I didn’t have anything to do with that. I didn’t know you’d locked the records in your desk. Seth took a chance and ended up finding them.” Tyson looked quickly at Sophie, who smiled reassuringly at him. “I confronted him about it and he threatened me. Said he paid Gil off and now I owed
him.
He’d been watching Evie and was pretty sure she knew about the ship. When she got on the boat with Cutter yesterday, he thought they were going to the wreck site. So we followed you,” he added, looking at Evie.

“And almost capsized the boat,” Evie reminded him.

Tyson squirmed in the chair but didn’t look away. “Yeah. But I didn’t know he was going to do that. The guy’s crazy, man.”

“When Tyson got here, he found Jacob and I camped out in the driveway,” Patrick said. “I wanted Sophie to patch me up before I came home, but Tyson told us you were on the boat. Jacob and Tyson picked up Sophie at the Wallis’s and brought her home.”

“Then we all sat down and had a little talk.” Jacob leveled a mock scowl at Tyson.

“I don’t care what Lansky does to me,” Tyson said in a low voice. “I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”

“It looks like two people got hurt.” Evie’s fingers closed over her father’s shoulder.

“Oh, Seth Lansky didn’t do this, sweetheart.” Patrick patted her hand. “It was Bruce Mullins.”

Sam pulled out a chair and Evie slid bonelessly into it. Without a word, he poured her a cup of coffee and pushed it in front of her. He’d heard the hasty summary of Tyson’s involvement with Seth, but he hadn’t heard this part of the story yet.

“This is where things get interesting.” Jacob looked smug. “Mullins double-crossed us. We figured it out after we got to the lodge—that’s why Patty called Sam and told him to look out for Evie. We asked Bruce questions about how to go about filing for permits and organizing the dive, but he started pumping us for information about where she’d gone down. Got kind of cranky when we wouldn’t tell him, too, right, Patrick?”

“Yup. Cranky.” Patrick’s split lip curved into a smile.

“He wanted to find the
Noble
and file for salvage permits before we had a chance to?” Sophie asked.

“Permits?” Patrick sighed. “We can’t prove it, but we doubt they were going to bother waiting around for permits. I think the plan was to salvage the ship before
we
filed for them. We would have followed the rules and come up with a big empty nothing because they’d have gotten to it first.”

“But I thought you and Bruce were friends,” Evie said in confusion.

Jacob snorted. “So did I. But when you say the word
treasure,
men can get greedy.”

“Seth mentioned Bruce Mullins’s name once when he was talking about a dive he’d gone on near Whitefish Bay,” Tyson said. “It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, though.”

“When Tyson told us about Lansky, we figured Bruce had sent him to nose around here,” Patrick added. “Seth got lucky when Tyson’s friend started making fun of him and his so-called treasure. We think Bruce’s plan was to stall us until Seth had a chance to find out where the
Noble
went down, but he probably started to get impatient, thinking Sam and Evie would team up and go ahead with the search. We think he told Lansky to apply a little pressure.”

“On Friday night, we waited until Bruce fell asleep and then we left. We spent the weekend trying to dodge him while we hiked back to the lodge. No tents. No food. Just the clothes on our backs, hey, Patrick?” Jacob reached out and cuffed Patrick’s shoulder. “We were starting to worry about what was happening on the home front. Thought maybe you’d need our help.”

The two men grinned at each other.

Sam saw Evie’s expression.
Uh-oh.

“Do you mean to tell me…” Evie said in a deceptively pleasant voice “…that you were lost in the woods for two days?”

“Not lost, Evangeline. We had the miniature compass you pinned to the pocket of my shirt,” Patrick said.

It didn’t look like Evie cared about the compass.

“No food. No tent. Just the clothes on your backs,” Evie repeated.

“And we had a great time.” Jacob lifted his coffee cup and bumped it against Patrick’s.

“A great time,” Patrick echoed. “I’d say all in all, the fishing trip was successful.”

“What are you talking about?” Evie asked, exasperated. “We all know you didn’t go fishing.”

“Oh, your dad went fishing, all right,” Jacob said wryly. “Fishing for men as the Good Book says. If it hadn’t been for Mullins’s double cross, I would have thought Patty planned the whole thing.”

Sam tensed.
The Good Book?

“Never underestimate what God will use to get a man’s attention.” A glint of humor brightened Patrick’s eyes. “All He had to do was get us alone in the wilderness with no food or water…and a sprained ankle…and Mullins hot on our trail…to get this stubborn guy to listen.”

“Well, I listened, didn’t I?” Jacob said irritably. “Some of us take more convincing than others.”

“It has a lot to do with the thickness of the skull.” Patrick tapped his index finger against his temple.

“Dad, what are you saying?” Because it couldn’t possibly mean what Sam thought it meant.

“I accepted Jesus as my savior. Got my life right with God out there in the woods.” He looked at Patrick. “Is that how you say it, Patty?”

Patrick’s eyes misted. “That’ll do.”

Jacob looked at Sam and laughed. “You look a little befuddled, son. I’ll tell you all about it. And then, I’d like you and Faith to go back to Chicago with me.’ Cause your brother needs to hear it, too.”

“I’m sorry I got you involved in this, Evie.”

Evie stiffened when she heard her father’s voice behind her. Under protest, he’d agreed to rest for a few hours at home before they met everyone again at Sophie’s later. But when they got back to the house, Patrick hadn’t rested. Instead, he’d printed out copies of Sophie’s documents—something Evie had planned to do before Sam kidnapped her.

“I don’t understand why
you
got involved.” Evie still winced every time she saw the scratches on his face. Sophie had bandaged the cut over his eye but he still looked like a prize fighter who’d made it to the last round. “You promised—”

She caught herself. She hadn’t meant to bring it up now that Patrick was home safe and sound. But she intended to make sure he stayed that way!

Patrick sighed. “The promise I made. I’m sorry—”

“It’s okay, Dad. I forgive you.”

Patrick gave her a gentle smile. “I’m not sorry I broke it, sweetheart. I’m sorry I made it in the first place.”

“What?” Evie choked.

“I shouldn’t have made a promise I couldn’t keep, but you were young and we’d just lost your mother. I would have done anything to give you the security you needed. I said I’d never do anything that might take me away from you—even though I know our times are in God’s hands—and that was wrong. Not only for you, but for me. I gave up things I loved because I didn’t want to upset you…but I got restless after I retired. Your mother’s been gone a long time but I found myself missing her more than ever. I needed some excitement. Something to make me feel alive again.

“When I met Sophie and she told me about her family genealogy and the scandal with Matthew Graham after the
Noble
sank, it gave me an opportunity to do something that mattered. Instead of selling people bits of the past, I could actually help Sophie connect with hers. She might have told you the search for her family history gave her a reason to live, but it gave me one, too.”

Evie was speechless. She hadn’t meant the promise to prevent her dad from enjoying life…or to make him give up things he loved, even if they were a little risky. She’d given them up, too. But she hadn’t felt the void until she’d spent the day on the
Natalie
and relived the sweet memories of taking camping trips with her family.

She’d never known her father hadn’t been as successful as her at forgetting those times. Or that he’d felt as though something were missing.

“Dad, I—”

Patrick held up his hand. “Just hear me out for a minute. Your mother was an amazing woman and I was blessed to have the years together that we did. Laura had a way of turning the most ordinary moments into adventures. She lived fearlessly and generously and she loved us the same way. I wouldn’t have changed anything about her. Not even her choice of a career.” Patrick gave Evie a tender smile. “You may think you and I are alike, Evangeline, but out of you three girls,
you
remind me the most of your mother. You’re smart and curious and you care about people. Laura was that way, too.”