I shot him an incredulous look, but my eyes kept darting back to the numbers again. Did I want to help him? I was curious about it (a bit) but I didn’t know the first thing about treasure hunting—just what I’d seen in movies or read in adventure books when I was a child. I was good at puzzles, and I loved math. I looked at the numbers again, willing a pattern to emerge. My mind was far from John Nash’s, but I couldn’t help but recognize that this all sounded like fun. Plus I was stuck here with nothing better to do; it could be a good distraction from the painful thoughts about Bambi, my parents and my failed trip. I could help Hunter figure out the meaning behind the digits—if there was one—while we were fixing the darn boat.
I could hear Tina in my head, cheering me on, saying this was a unique, exciting, andspellbindingadventure on a tropical island with a good-looking man. For the first time, I was glad she wasn’t on this trip with me, as she probably would have tried to sabotage our chances to repair the boat and return home. And I needed to get back. My new beginning I’d been working on, that exciting new life awaited me in bustling Miami, complete with a hot shower, an air-conditioned house, and a well-paid dream job.
“Fine,” I said, motioning to the maps. “I’ll try to help you figure out these numbers, but we’re also working on getting your boat out of the water and fixing it. Once we return to Rarotonga, you’re on your own. I’ll be rooting for you from the sidelines and hoping one day to see you on the news announcing the discovery of the great lost treasure.” I placed my hand on my chest. “And rest assured your secret is safe with me.”
Hunter’s face saddened for a split second, but he quickly masked it with a brilliant smile. “Maybe this can change your mind.” He tapped his knuckles on the sheet. “Read this.”
The record listed multiple chests containing gold cloth with canopies, monstrances, chalices all coated with gemstones, a gold relic with topaz, carnelians, emeralds, rubies, diamonds, thousands of gold doubloons, silver, Spanish swords, daggers, crowns of Mexican Gold, thousands of cut and uncut stones, and twenty-two candelabra in gold and silver. The list went on for two pages, but the last item made me gasp.
“A 780 pound, seven-foot solid gold statue of the Virgin Mary with Baby Jesus, rolled on her gold chasuble adorned with 1,684 jewels including four-inch emeralds, six-inch topazes, and seven crosses made of diamonds. Holy shit.” I gawked at Hunter. “What is this treasure worth?”
“Over two hundred million dollars,” he said, finishing his juice. “Of course, when we find it, we wouldn’t be able to keep it, but should get at least ten percent as the finder’s fee. Edward had a list of firms to contact.”
I liked how he said ‘when’ and not ‘if’. His determination was admirable and maybe alarming. Was he willing to sacrifice his life like his uncle and grandpa over what could be just a rumor, some big historical joke? I unrolled the map again and reviewed the penciled-in lines crisscrossing the canvas. Hunter pressed his elbows on the table, bumping my shoulder with his, and held the end of the map.
After a minute, he got up and said, “Come inside and look at the map there.”
Taking the knife (just in case) with me, I abandoned the table and followed him to the hut, where Hunter walked to thelow bookshelf and, with a pencil, he pointed at the pricks on the map near the foot of the mountain, not far from the waterfall. “This is where I’d placed pins to mark where I had thought the hidden treasure could be, but I removed them when I found you.”
“Why?”
“To eliminate additional questions.”
“And you think a bunch of holes in the map didn’t raise any?”
He wrinkled his nose in an adorable way. “I hoped you wouldn’t notice them.”
“I saw them the first day.” I returned my focus to the map and studied the elevation contour lines showing the height and shape of the island’s surface. Did a similar topographic map exist in the early 1800s? The creation of a coordinate system dated back to Eratosthenes, so the cryptic message on the compass could be a combination of elevations with latitude and longitude. “Want to put the pins back and tell me how you came up with these locations?”
“Want to put down your weapon?” He gave me a sideways glance. “You make me a little nervous.”
I snorted. “A five-foot-five woman makes a six-foot-something large man nervous?”
“I saw you running today. Who knows what else you’re good at. You might be a Mr. Miyagi in disguise.”
That made me laugh, and my tense muscles relaxed. I stepped back and lowered the knife onto the nightstand.
Hunter placed multi-colored pins back in position, we backed away and studied the map again as he gave me a short reason why he thought each place had treasure, and then he said, “Why don’t we walk?”
This was going to be a lot of walking, but if I was going to help him figure out where the treasure was, it was best to familiarize myself with the island. Only where to start first? Teaku wasn’t exactly a small patch of land.
“Okay.”
“Do you want to see the skeleton?”
Not really.“Why the hell not?” I shrugged as if checking out skeletons was something I regularly did. I’ve seen a mummy at the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine, so what if there wasn’t a two-inch glass case this time?
ChapterTen
Ten yards before the break in the stone barrier that led to the lake—aka the cold-ass nature shower—we took a right turn and walked deeper into the jungle. No more than a hundred feet from there, we stopped at a gap about eight-by-eight feet in the ground.
“This is John.” Hunter squatted at the hole’s edge, resting his arms on his knees.
“You gave him a name?”
I dropped to all fours and peered over to look inside. At the bottom, roughly twenty feet down, rested a grayish skeleton dressed in torn brown pants, a dirt-covered what-once-was-white shirt, a belt with a buckle, a sword, and a leather tricorn at its feet. The skull was turned skywards, its hollow eyes staring at me. Instead of raising horrified emotions, pity enveloped me. He looked sad and disappointed, like someone whose last thought was,What the fuck was I thinking coming here?
“Edward and I didn’t want to say ‘a dead guy’ or ‘a skeleton’ when we discussed him in public places. So Edward named him after William Thompson’s friend, John Keating. Before Captain William Thompson died, he left the treasure’s location and instructions with Keating. And since we found him here with the compass, Edward thought it was John.”
