Chapter 17
HER FATHER! WAS HERE?!
This was bad. Really, really bad.
Hollyn began to pace back and forth in the small space. “If he’s here, then he must be desperate. He hasn’t left his lair in years. He just sends out hired goons to bring me back. I don’t like this version of him. It’s unpredictable.”
Now, she’d seen him twice in the span of a week.
“Maybe we should see if we recognize anything on the map in the book,” Kai suggested. “The sooner we find the amulet, the safer you’ll be.”
She nodded in agreement and pulled the book from the pack. She flipped to the map, and calibrated where they possibly were. She traced the likely beach where the captain dropped them. With her best guess in mind, she ran her finger toward the peak and stopped where she figured they were currently.
“According to the map, the amulet is practically underneath us.”
“What? That’s fantastic. So, we just need to dig?”
Hollyn shook her head back and forth. “It’s way, way beneath us. Like, from what the map looks like, we need to go back down and find a way into the interior of the mountain. We don’t need a shovel; we need dynamite.”
Kai grimaced as if he were in pain, and Hollyn felt the same. Then, her stupid brain jumped to the most ridiculous thought as she stared at his handsome face—his kiss. Her lips tingled from it even now. She wondered if he was thinking about it, too, as his gaze kept dropping to her mouth.
She’d done it. She’d had her first kiss. And although she had nothing to compare it to, she thought it must have been pretty good if they were both still thinking about it.
She shook herself back to reality. That would have to wait because her father was no doubt bearing down on them now. They had to make a move, and they had to make it quickly.
“How do we get past my father and get back down the mountain?”
“And how do we blow up the mountain to get to the amulet inside?”
Hollyn went back to pacing, and Kai peeked outside the overhang. He could hear distant shouting, but he didn’t see any actual living beings. Eventually, her father and his men would make their way toward their hiding place. They had to be gone when that happened.
“We might need to make our move now. I don’t see anyone in the near vicinity, but I’m sure they’ll make their way in this direction soon enough.”
With a heavy sigh, Hollyn nodded. “I wish I could just stop running.” She ceased pacing, facing the back of the faux cave, and placed her hands above her head, against the stone of the back wall. Her frustration built to a breaking point, and she lashed out with a series of kicks against the unforgiving rock. It was out of pure anger and fear, but it accomplished nothing except making her toes throb.
Yet, Kai came up behind her and said, “Do that again.”
“What? This.” She struck the rock with her other foot.
“Do you hear that?”
“Oh, ha, ha. Really funny. Now, you hear something?”
Kai began to frantically search the wall with his hands, pressing on cracks and irregularities wherever he saw them.
“I know we’ve been making light of it all day, but I’m not joking when I say that the rocks...um...spoke to me.”
Great! Her first kiss was with a man who heard voices coming from inanimate objects. “What did they say exactly?”
He paused for a brief moment and looked at her over his shoulder before continuing to work his way down the wall. “I know how crazy it sounds, but when you lashed out, it sounded strange at first, but then I understood that this isn’t just an overhang randomly formed on the mountainside.” He finally pressed a bumpy piece of the wall that jutted out from the rest, and it slid in with a click. “It’s a door.”
With a heavy groan, the entire rock wall popped open about five inches, and a cloud of dust puffed into the air.
“Oh, my goodness! You were right!”
