Whisper In The Dark (The McKinnon Legends-- The American Men Book One) (38 page)

“Right about what?” Kate asked looking back and forth between the two men. There was a secret there between them.

“Oh, only how to break a stubborn filly,” Robert replied.

Crawling up inside the ambulance, Robert reached over to give Kate one last kiss before the ambulance made its way to the hospital.

“Robert?” she asked on the way.

“Yes, love,” he pulled her fingers to his lips.

“I hope you will look back years from now and never be sorry you married me. I will try to soften the edges.”

“Not on my account,” he kissed her forehead.

“I love you.”

Her soft confession meant more to Robert than any king’s ransom could ever be worth.

Eighteen months had passed since Robert rescued Katherine from the likes of Tony Booth and Razor. The months had flown by and he had never been more content. Now, he was secure in the fact she was his and going nowhere anytime soon.

It was time he came clean.

“Robert, where are you taking me?” Kate asked wondering where her husband was dragging her off to at this hour of the morning. It was yet dark, the sun still an hour from rising.

It soon became evident. They were going to the edge of the property line. He had given her two hundred acres of his ranch that was part of the original Brandenburg homestead. He also gave her a small strip of the Golden Circle joining it. It had been his wedding present to her. His willingness to give back a little of her heritage had touched her. She loved him deeply for that gesture.

She had already picked out the building site where they were going to build a new home come spring. George’s house was the first to be built and already completed as well as the new bunk houses, new barn, and stables.

There was also a new addition to their family. Sherry, the woman so badly tortured, was staying with them. She was fully recovered, but so scarred she refused to ever leave the ranch. They did not force her knowing she would in her own time.

Kate was using the money from the insurance settlement, putting it to good use. She was rebuilding from the ashes just as the prophecy had said, and her new ranch was now called
The Golden Phoenix
.

However, what she did not allow was Robert forgiving her debt.

It had been an argument he had lost. Yet, he had not put the land up for sale as she had asked him to do. The McKinnon Trust became partners with him in ownership, and the development of one hundred acres was well under way. Her share of the transfer and royalties from the wind farm he had established were generous. He had, with the stroke of the pen, given her a comfortable self-sufficiency. She had options now. Using her sharp mind and innate abilities, she had invested well in securities and real estate, giving her high returns and leaving her independent of the McKinnon’s wealth all together.

She still served coffee, but it was to her family and those she loved.

He was now very secure she was choosing to stay not because she had no other options. She had chosen to stay because she loved him, she loved the land, and she loved her life.

“Kate, I love you more than life itself. You have to know this by now.” He pulled her close.

“Yes and I love you. What are you up to?” she said narrowing her eyes suspiciously, playfully at him.

“I’ve not been totally honest with you, but before you get mad at me and threaten to put a nail in my temple while I sleep, let me explain.”

“Okay,” she said wondering what he was up to.

“I had to know, Kate. I had to be sure you would stay with me whatever the outcome of the hunt. I was afraid I was going to lose you, and I knew you were just stubborn enough to try and make the ranch work and go it alone.”

“Robert, what are you talking about? I’m not going anywhere. I love you and we have a growing family,” she said caressing the ever growing bump on her stomach.

The sonogram she had the day before was positive proof this woman truly was carrying his child. He had even heard the heart beat. And if he had not loved her and his child before he heard that beat, he was totally lost to them now.

“I’ve known for months what the oil cloth and cash box actually represented,” he confessed letting out a long sigh of relief. He had carried this secret around for a lot longer than he wanted to.

She was puzzled. “I know. You said so that morning in the woods. We both got the clue. We found what we were looking for.”

He shook his head. “No, we found what Lyles was looking for.”

It had just been coincidence that morning in the woods when Kate intervened taking them to the Bunkhouse instead. That twist of fate had nearly cost her life and him his freedom.

When the highway came through in 1921, Thaddeus’s son, Gideon, was forced to reroute the main entry of the property, shifting it further east and south on Brandenburg lands to the spot where it currently stood. However, when her grandfather moved the entryway, he transferred only the wrought iron archway to new support columns. Gideon left the old columns in place. They were still in existence and way off the beaten path, and after eighty years they were almost completely covered in pasture growth. Because the plows and mowers could never get close to the old rock columns, wild trees surrounded them now completely obscuring them from the unsuspecting eye. He knew they were there simply because he and Kyle would meet there as kids and hide amongst the trees doing the things young boys do, things best not discussed in polite company.

If what he suspected were true, then the hunt was just about over. The mystery of the Brandenburg buried treasure was about to be solved in earnest and for good.

However, when all this began there was just one small problem that he did not know how to resolve, so he felt it was in everyone’s best interest to just hold pat with his hand and see how the game progressed.

The old entrance split the new property line between the Golden Circle and the two thousand acres purchased from Kyle. Robert had intentionally given two hundred acres of that land back to Kate for a very specific reason.

The treasure was hers. Not his.

It was never supposed to belong to him. He did not need the money. He needed her.

Yet, he knew she would have compelled him to hold fast their agreement.

Here was his dilemma.

If the treasure were in the west entry post, then there would not have been gold on Brandenburg land. It would have belonged to him by all legal rights. It was part of the two thousand acres Kyle has sold to him. If that treasure were on his land, it would have deflated her even more, pushing her further away from him. No amount of money was worth losing her and their child

Contrastingly, if the gold were in the east post it would be on Brandenburg land. She would have forced him to take the gold in return for the Golden Circle per their agreement. It was a lose-lose proposition for the both of them.

He had withheld the knowledge for good reason. She would have given him the treasure, never realizing he had all the treasure he wanted and it was never about the gold.

Treasure is not always currency
, Mr. Lyles had said.

He was holding her tightly, loving the way she fit in his arms and in his life. “I’m the captain. I can claim my treasure. We both agreed.”

“Yes, that was the agreement, Captain Blood,” she smiled.

“Then I claim my treasure, Kate,” he kissed her softly, touching her and feeling his child move within her. “You are all the treasure I’ll ever want and all the treasure I’ll ever need. That is why I put the Golden Circle into trust for our children and why I gave you this land.”

It was a beautiful gesture and she appreciated it. However, there was more here than he was telling.

“That was not what you dragged me out here to tell me, was it?”

She knew her husband well.

“No,” he shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. Kate, when Mr. Lyles left that day in the bunkhouse, I saw him hand you a scrap of paper.”

“Yeah, so?” She was wondering why after all this time he was finally getting around to asking.

Picking up the twenty-pound sledge and handing her safety glasses, he asked her to put them on and stand back.

“I knew it was of significance otherwise you never would have burned it. What did it say exactly?” he asked just before hitting the west pillar several times until it gave way. He was shining the light into the gaping hole. Nothing was there. He finished knocking it to the ground just for good measure to ensure he was not missing anything.

“It was a receipt made payable to Thaddeus for a patent he had sold to Andrew Carnegie. Mr. Lyles told me Thaddeus may have been a mean son-of-a-bitch, but he was not a crook no matter what history said about him.”

Striking the east pillar with the sledgehammer, it held, refusing to crumble as the west pillar did so effortlessly. Its construction was different. He struck it again before enough rock was loosened. Removing several of the stones from the old support post, he bent down and shone the flashlight deep into the hole the sledgehammer created. “What was that patent for exactly? Did it say?”

“Yes, it was for a device quite revolutionary at the time. It was for a special steel rivet he had developed.”

“And tell me, love,” Robert asked reaching around inside the hollow post. “What was the payment for that little gadget making modern steel high rises and steamships possible?”

“Two million dollars, payable in gold,. Her excitement was rising.

Could it be?

“Then may I present to you the payment for brilliance?”

Just then the sun peaked up over the horizon catching the radiance of one heavy gold bar lying in the palm of his hands.

Sometimes treasure is gold.

Prologue

     “Mama, Mama!” Ten-year-old Jesse sobbed helplessly over the slain body of her mother. “Someone help us, please!” she yelled over the waves of the blue Pacific Ocean. The grisly scene was not congruent with the peaceful, tropical setting of the Panamanian coastline.

Emilio Del Torres, Panama’s most feared drug and crime boss discovered his mistress thanks to Jesse’s cries for help. Jacqueline Bassett-Vozarosa lay sprawled face down in the sand, her body in the surf line just past the secluded private cove of Del Torres’ beachfront villa on the Pacific side of the mainland.

Emilio pulled his lips tightly past perfect teeth. “There would be hell to pay for this,” he reasoned. Jacqueline was an American citizen with a small child. She was his girlfriend. Even more importantly, she was the wife of his enemy. “Diego, take the boat out and let her body go past the reef near the wall. No mistakes, understand?” Emilio pointed at his second in command. It pained him to do this yet, he saw no other alternative.

“No!” Jesse screamed as Del Torres pulled her away from the lifeless body of his girlfriend. “No, you can’t just dump her! I thought you loved her,” she sobbed.

“I do, but not enough to go to jail for a murder I did not commit. Diego, go! And you, come with me.” He jerked Jesse up by the elbow and dragged her screaming away from the beach, all the way back to the villa where he locked her away in her room.

Jesse kicked him in the shin earning her a back handed slap sending her to the floor of her room.

Jesse glared up at him from the floor. “You bastardo. Just you wait until my family comes for me. You will be sorry,” the little girl vowed.

“Shut up before you go join your mother.” He needed to think. This was not going to end well unless he planned very carefully.

She seethed at the man who would dare dishonor her Mamma. She was a McKinnon and family meant everything. Her father and Cousin Mason would save her. There was never a question in her mind. She pulled out her cell the minute the door of her new prison slammed shut, and called her father.

“Daddy?” Jesse whispered as she crawled under the massive canopy bed, using the dust ruffle as a shield from prying eyes, and muffling any conversation.

“Baby, what’s wrong?” Josh McKinnon, Sheriff of Martin County Texas, felt his insides twist. His paternal instincts were in hyper drive. There was something terribly wrong.

“I need you to come get me,” she softly begged.

Josh heard the tiny sniff on the other end of the phone. He knew his daughter. She was a trooper. If she was crying there was something definitely the matter. Physically or emotionally his child was not on even footing, and he was certain his ex-wife was fully to blame.

“Of course. Where are you, and where is your mother?” Josh wondered.

“I’m in Panama, Daddy. Puerto Escondido.”

Holy Shit, Josh thought.

“All right.” He took in a calming breath. He did not want Jesse to think he was angry with her. ”Go get your mother right now, baby. I want to speak to her,” he demanded softly. He was seething, but would never let her see it. If he ever got his hands around his ex-wife’s throat, he just might killer her, he thought.

“Mamma is dead. Julio shot her and left her on the beach,” Jesse confessed in a single rush of breath.

“Oh, jeez, Jess.” That stopped him short. He may not love Jacqueline or even like her, but she was his daughter's mother and he had loved her at one point. “You sure? How do you know?”

“I saw it happen.” Her voice was distant, flat, and totally detached. Her mind had taken hold to shield her heart purely out of self-preservation.

Josh closed his eyes. He fully understood the emotional ramifications this day would hold for both of them. “How?” He almost hated to ask her to relive it. However, he needed answers if he was to get her safely home.

“Julio shot her for kissing Emilio Del Torres. Please, Daddy, please come get me.”

His ex-wife had defied a direct court order by taking his child out of the country. Look where it had gotten them. Her husband had shot and killed her right in front of Jesse’s eyes, leaving her captive to one of Central America’s most dangerous criminals. The child would never be the same. If he managed to get her home alive, he would hire the best doctors his money could buy to try and straighten this out emotionally for her.