“Can’t change your family,” he said. “You should know that better than any of us.”
I glared at him.
He chuckled darkly. “Yeah, Big Burg says your old man used to run with him now and then, back in the day. By the way, is Hound Dog Lee still spending your dead mama’s fortune? He had the right idea—didn’t run around town, digging up old graves to hunt for treasure. He just married the treasure.”
My face heated. I hadn’t heard anyone call my father “Hound Dog Lee” since I was a kid. “Keep my mother’s name out of your mouth,” I warned him.
“Right. Well, how ’bout this. You tell me where the lock is that these rings unlock, and I’ll never speak of old Hound Dog or your old lady again. RIP.”
“We don’t know, shit stain. Wedon’t know,” Benny shouted.
Paul cocked a brow. “All right, already. Calm your ass down, Benito. I believe you. Treasure hunting is hard. That’s why we’re letting you do the legwork. Here’s what I’m going to do. Lulu and I are going to hold on to these rings for safekeeping. Meantime, your little Nathan Drake gang will do whatever it is you do and figure out where these gold bands go. You can’t open a lock without the keys, so now we need one another.”
“Absolutely not,” Seb said. “Give us back the rings and we’ll cut you in.”
Paul laughed. It almost made him look like a normal human being. “Nice try, bruh, but I’m not falling for the biggest liar in town.Wekeep the rings.Youfind the lock. If we don’t hear back from you in, say, a week, I might be forced to take more extreme measures. That beach cottage looks awfully flammable, wouldn’t you say? Or maybe the Moraleses’ mansion. Or—wait, inspiration is hitting. How about Neely’s Marina... ?”
“Not funny,” Jazmine gritted out.
He looked at her, and something like hurt crossed his eyes. He blinked it away and told her in a softer voice, “Not laughing.”
“If you think you can threaten my friends and family like this and walk away, you areso much dumberthan I ever imagined,” Jaz said, sounding fierce but vaguely heartbroken. “That was a hard line you just crossed. Can’t uncross it. So I guess we are really and truly over.”
“You and I? We never started,” Paul told her bluntly. “So there’snothing to be over. We’re just back to being enemies now, like the good old days.”
Fucking hell.I tried to quickly think of some other way to bargain with Paul, but he was already whistling for Lulu to head back into the woods with him. “One week,” he said, pointing his gun at us while he backed up. “Be seeing you.”
Then he turned around, stuck his gun in the back of his waistband, and disappeared into the trees with Lulu.
Chapter 25
The Wags were all in various states of shock after Pretty Paul left us standing around the dug-up grave, empty-handed and depressed. Seb blamed himself for befriending Paul all those years ago. Jazmine was trying to hide it, but she was clearly wounded by Paul’s betrayal and swore to us that she never once mentioned the treasure hunt to him.
“I talked about treasure hunting back in the day, when we were kids,” she told us. “But I never said a word about this hunt.”
She didn’t have to, not when Lulu was doing all the work. I knew Jaz was reeling over Paul’s betrayal, but she wasn’t the only one. Benny let a stranger into his life, and she manipulated, lied, and tricked him at every turn. He wasn’t some gregarious, open guy who dated on the regular. He must’ve really liked her.
“How could I have been so blind?” he said as we tried to console him. I couldn’t imagine how it felt to be in his shoes, all I knew was that I was furious on his behalf.
Furious for all of us.
Treasure or no treasure, those rings belonged to me. My family.Myhistory. And I would get them back by any means necessary. Easiest would be to track Paul and Lulu and surprise them before they left the area, get the gun away from him without getting anyone hurt. I briefly tried to follow their tracks into the woods,to see where they’d come from. No nearby roads, so they must’ve hiked for a good bit.
“How did they even find us out here?” I asked, stunned.
No one said anything, then Benny groaned, fishing out his phone. His fingers quickly flashed over the screen, then he squeezed his eyes shut. “Fuck. She must’ve flipped on location-sharing on my phone.”
“Can you still see her location?” Seb asked.
He showed us. The blip on the map was moving at a pretty good clip away from the war encampment. She wasn’t walking anymore, she was inside a vehicle. Seb and I hiked a little farther in their general direction with Punkin and found an unmarked dirt road with fresh tire tracks.
“Son of bitch,” he said under his breath. “These are motorcycle tires. Skinny ones. Maybe motocross.”
I blinked at him. Where had I recently heard about a pair of motorcycles... ?
Oh God.“Paul and Lulu,” I said. “They were the ones who broke into the cottage and trashed it!”
Seb lifted his head to the tree canopy and let out a frustrated yowl. “When is he going to stop fucking me over?”
