Shadow of a Life (37 page)

“
Stand back, I’m going to
see if I can pry a board up,” Peter said. I obeyed and turned to
see him holding an old pitchfork.

He wedged the tines under a board and
started prying. I helped push back on the pitchfork’s handle with
him, but nothing budged. I stood in front of the pitchfork and we
kept pushing, putting all our weight into it, until the handle
snapped and we both flew backward. I hit my head on one of the old
stalls and immediately felt a trickle of blood run down my
forehead. I pulled my hood tighter around my face in hopes that
Peter wouldn’t notice.

“
You okay?”

“
Yeah. I’m fine,” I
lied.

I crawled back to the board we’d been
working on. “Peter, we got it loose.” I yanked and pulled on the
board until it broke off with a thunderous cracking sound. Peter
moved quickly to my side and shined his flashlight at the dirt
below the board I’d just removed. There was nothing but empty
space.

“
Pull up another board.” Now
that we had a way to get at the boards we could pry them up fairly
easy with our hands and the little shovels we’d brought. My bare
hands were full of slivers and started to bleed. I should have put
my gloves back on, but I didn’t even care.

Underneath the seventh board sat the
old, brown, leather pouch. The burning sensation in my chest
deepened and I again felt lightheaded.

“
We found it,” I whispered
in amazement.

“
You do the honors,” Peter
said as he shone the light at the pouch.

I reached down and lifted it from the
hole. It was covered in dust, but not wet—which was a good thing
considering where it was found. I sat on the floor, cross-legged,
and unwound the string holding it closed. Peter sat next to me, his
head close to mine.

The papers inside were brittle and I
touched them gingerly, afraid they would fall apart in my hands. I
slowly turned each sheet over. Most of them seemed to be financial
records—contracts, and things like that. Finally, near the bottom
of the pile was a page with squiggles, symbols and weird markings.
At the top of the page was a large ‘H’ written just the same as the
signature on the letter to the mysterious Catherine we’d found back
home in my attic.

Peter and I looked at each
other.
This is it. This is what we came
all this way to find.
Suddenly we both
laughed.

Peter reached over, put his hands on
my shoulders, and kissed me right on the lips. I felt the familiar
tingle run through my spine and up through my body, warming me all
over. Again, he pulled away after just a few seconds. Our moment
was interrupted by the ringing of my phone. The sound of such a
modern device in that cave of antiquity was horribly out of place
as the noise bounced from wall to wall.

“
It’s Sophia,” I whispered
before putting the phone to my ear and saying, “Hello?”

“
Jam . . . I . . . sorry . .
. Goodwins . . .”

“
Sophia, you’re breaking up.
I can’t tell what you’re saying.”

“
Goodwi . . . gone . . .
can’t . . . find . . . hide . . .” The phone beeped, alerting me
that the call had been dropped.

“
Crap, Peter, I think she
said they lost the Goodwins. We’ve got to get out of here. I’m sure
their old home site is one of the first places they’ll
go.”

We scrambled to put the remaining
pages back in the pouch and Peter slipped it inside his jacket. I
carefully folded the map and tucked it down inside my shirt. Going
back out the way we came in would be difficult and it would take a
long time. We decided to try the front entrance to the barn
instead. We wouldn’t have to climb, but we’d have to move some of
the boards apart. It probably wasn’t the safest idea, but we were
left with no other choice. I wanted to get as far from there as we
could get—and fast.

“
Pull on that board,” Peter
commanded as he pushed on another. He used the broken pitchfork as
a wedge to make an opening just big enough for me to crawl through
to the cold air outside.

The rain had completely stopped by
that point and the earth smelled musty in the darkness. I held the
boards I’d just slipped between as Peter tried to climb out after
me. Since he was bigger, the opening had to be pried open even
farther. I pulled as hard as I could, but just as I managed to open
up a space big enough for him to slip through, the boards above
shifted and the barn began to groan as boards snapped and pieces
fell.

“
Peter
,” I screamed as the wall he was climbing through completely
collapsed. Flying debris knocked me to the ground, but I quickly
jumped back up on my hands and knees and crawled to where I’d last
seen Peter.

“
Jamie. Jamie!” he yelled
from somewhere under the rubble.

“
I’m here,
Peter.”

“
Are you okay?”

“
I’m fine, but what about
you?” A sob escaped my throat as I pulled at the boards holding him
down.

“
I’m okay. They mostly fell
around me. My foot is stuck, though. I can’t get it
out.”

I continued to pull on the boards, but
every time I did the pile shifted. I was terrified that if I pulled
on the wrong board the entire structure would collapse, crushing
Peter beneath it.

“
Peter, I can’t do this
without help.” I fumbled for the phone in my pocket, grateful that
Camille had stayed back at the hotel—she could get Sophia and Nick
to come help. I turned it on and began to dial before I realized
that I still didn’t have any reception.

“
Peter?”

“
I’m still here.”

“
Are you sure you’re
okay?”

“
I think so.”

“
I can’t get any reception
on my phone. I’m going to go find a place where I can call Camille.
Will you be all right until I get back?”

From under the pile of wood
I heard him laugh. “I’ll be fine, Jamie. It’s not like I’m going
anywhere anytime soon.
Please
be careful.”

“
I will.” I stood to leave
and turned around.

“
I can help.”

I screamed again, breaking the silence
of the still night air. Birds in the nearby trees fluttered away,
rattling the leaves as they went. And there, right in front of me,
appeared Jeremiah Goodwin.

“
What’re ya doing in the old
barn?” he asked in a mocking tone.

I didn’t say anything.

“
You wouldn’t be looking for
something would you?”

I remained silent.

He snickered. “After we talked to you
the last time, it occurred to us that we’d been tracking the wrong
person all these years. Sophia was too dumb to steal the map. She
couldn’t possibly have come up with the idea on her own. And then
it hit us like a ton of bricks—I killed Nicholas Trenton the same
time Sophia died. He knew where I kept things in my house, and he
wasn’t as stupid as Sophia had been. We decided to confront him
about it and guess what? He was nowhere to be found.”

I involuntarily shuddered as his tone
became angrier and he took a step toward me. I took a step
back.

“
Don’t worry. Our friendly
little librarian here paid a visit to your father to find out where
you were and why you hadn’t returned your overdue books.” Elsa
appeared out of the shadows behind him. “Imagine our surprise when
he told her that you’d gone to Virginia of all places.”

They’ve been to my house?
They talked to my dad?
My mind raced. I had
to get out of there, but how? I didn’t want to leave Peter, but
there was no way I could pull him from his trap by myself. I didn’t
know where Sophia and Nick were and I had no way of contacting
Camille. I bit my lip to keep myself from crying. I had to stay
strong if I was going to get out of the situation.

Jeremiah was done pretending
to be nice. “
Give me the
map
,” he bellowed as he lunged toward
me.

“
Jamie,
run
.” Peter broke his silence and
yelled from beneath the rubble.

I didn’t hesitate, but turned on my
heel and bolted down the path we’d come in on, back toward the old
well. I stumbled, but caught myself and continued in a full-on
sprint, hoping there was nothing on the dark path ahead of me. At
first I heard the yells and footfalls of the Goodwins behind me,
but I soon realized they’d stopped.

I dared to sneak a peek behind me, but
I couldn’t see anything. My eyes darted in every direction. They
had to have vanished. I knew that I couldn’t outrun a ghost and at
any moment they might reappear in front of me and I would be
caught.

I made it all the way to the well and
stopped, my chest heaving from the run I’d just made. I gripped the
edge of the well as I tried to catch my breath.

The lights of the new house were still
turned off. I thought about screaming in an attempt to alert the
owners, but I was afraid the Goodwins would just harm them right
along with the rest of us. They had no respect for human
life.

I was still searching the shadows,
waiting for the Goodwins to reappear when I realized my mistake.
I’d left Peter alone. That had to have been why my pursuers
stopped.

I didn’t know what to
do.
Should I go back for him?
Should I try to call Sophia or Nick again? Should
I pray?
Sophia had told me that the only
way to beat Jeremiah and Elsa was to con them, but I didn’t know
how to do that.

I didn’t have long to think about it
because only a moment later I heard them coming up the path I’d
just run in on. I could tell by the noises being made that the
Goodwins had Peter with them, and he was fighting to be
free.

“
Get your hands off me,” he
yelled.

I heard a thump and Peter moaned.
Jeremiah had definitely done something to him. I stepped out from
behind the well.

“
Let him go,” I yelled
boldly.

“
Give me what I want first,”
Jeremiah answered. He held up a battered Peter with one hand as the
other hand held a gun to Peter’s head.

I’d come so close to getting what I
thought was the key to Sophia and Nick’s extrication, yet I was so
far. I hesitated for a minute and then reached down inside my shirt
and pulled out the sheet of paper.

“
Is this what you want?” I
held up the paper, not yet ready to give it up.

“
It’s the map,” Elsa
squeaked. I could feel the evil of the people around me as thick as
the mist that was gathering after the rain.

“
Give it to me,” Elsa
snapped.

“
Not until you let him go.”
I held the paper up with both hands as if I was going to tear it in
half.

“
Well I guess we have a
problem then—because we’re not letting him go until I have that map
in my hand,” she hissed back.

I had to stall until I could think of
a plan. “If I give you the map, you’ll just shoot him anyway. In
fact, you’ll probably just shoot me, too.”

Jeremiah laughed. “That sounds like a
great idea. No one can pin anything on us—since we’re dead—and I
haven’t killed anyone for a while. I was kind of starting to miss
it. I wonder if we can make it look like a tragic murder-suicide of
two teenage lovers.”

Tears again threatened to spill from
my eyes to my cheeks. That time they weren’t so much tears of
sadness or fear as they were tears of anger. Anger for the lives
the Goodwins had ruined in the past, and anger at myself for
getting Peter involved in the stupid affair. I stuck my hand in my
pocket. I thought if I could feel the right buttons, I could dial
Camille’s number on my phone—if I had reception. She might not be
able to do anything to save us, but maybe she could at least hear
what happened to us so she wouldn’t have to live with the mystery
of how her best friends were killed.

When I reached into my pocket, my hand
brushed against something small and square next to my phone. I felt
it again. Even though every part of me was still damp from all the
rain, that thing was miraculously still dry. My heart thumped. I
knew I had to do it. It might mean that I was sacrificing my life
and Peters, but I was compelled to do it to save the souls of Nick
and Sophia.

“
Enough games, hand it
over,” Jeremiah growled.

A split-second of hesitation was all I
still needed before I yanked the hotel matchbook out of my pocket
and tore a little cardboard match from the row. I rubbed it along
the coarse back of the wrapper, praying that it would light. It
started immediately, a little orange glow breaking up the darkness
of the night.

“
What’re you doing?” Elsa
demanded.

“
I’m getting revenge. For
Sophia . . . for Nick . . . and for everyone that was on the
Mary Celeste
,” I said. I
lifted the brittle paper to the match and it began to burn,
engulfing the aged paper immediately.

“
Noooooo. You
witch
!” Elsa screamed and
lunged for the burning paper.