Murder of crows, p.15
Murder of Crows, page 15
“Abuela!” I screamed. But the fire ate up my voice just as quickly as it had the wooden beams. I went to try again, but I started choking on the smoke, which was thicker than it had been just a moment ago. We were running out of time.
I stumbled my way to Abuela and dragged her to her feet. We made our way back to Max, but Wyn had disappeared.
“Wyn?!” I cried.
“Tig, she’s okay!” Max grabbed my shoulder. “I boosted her up already. Abuela will need help getting down with her hands still tied.”
I nodded quickly and helped Abuela to the pew and then on top of Max’s shoulders, thanking whatever saint this chapel belonged to for his growth spurt this summer. Abuela swayed, unable to balance herself, but Max held her thighs firmly and rose to his feet.
I watched, my face buried in my elbow, as Wyn’s pale arms appeared on the other side of the high windows and helped ease Abuela from Max’s shoulders to the safety of the hotel grounds.
“Okay, Tig, now you,” Max said before doubling over, his whole body racked with coughs.
“Nope, you.”
“We don’t have time for this!” he cried.
As if to prove his point, a wooden beam from the rafters fell to the floor between us with a crash, engulfing the pews beneath it in flames. On the stone walls, the fire had been somewhat contained. But now, with rows upon rows of hearty wooden benches and old hymnals at its disposal, the fire was free.
And I was blocked off from the last remaining exit.
“Tig!” Max screamed.
“Go!” I called back. “Get out and try to open the door from the outside!”
I knew Max well enough to know that he didn’t want to leave me. But what choice did he have? A literal wall of fire stood between him and me, and there was no way I was getting through it.
“Meet me at the door!” I finally heard Max shout. And I watched until his feet finally disappeared through the high window.
But in the minute it took me to see Max to safety, my exit path had started to close. The fire was completely unchecked now, the whole congregation area in flames. If I didn’t go now, I might not make it to the door, even if Max and Wyn somehow managed to unchain it.
I pulled my shirt up around my nose and mouth and took as deep a breath as possible in the smoke. And then I made a break for it.
The fire nipped at my hair and clothes as I raced down the aisle, dodging the ashes falling from the remaining ceiling beams. Beams that could fall at any moment.
I could barely see—the smoke nearly a solid wall now—but I could hear the chains rattling on the other side of the door. Or perhaps it was wishful thinking. I was getting lightheaded, and every breath was like a knife in my chest.
With just steps to the door, I tripped and fell to my hands and knees, my bones cracking on the stone floor. I choked out a sob. At least I saved Abuela, I thought as spots began to swim in front of my eyes.
Then I felt a rush of air on my face as the doors swung open.
I looked up and saw two figures in the doorway, shrouded by the smoke rushing out into the night sky. I began to crawl forward. I could make it. We might actually all make it home tonight.
And then another beam fell.
I fell backward, on my elbows this time. I turned to shield my face from the flames licking now just inches from me. And that’s when I spotted it, the thing I had tripped over: Franklin’s messenger bag, somehow untouched, sticking out from beneath one of the sole surviving pews.
The sight of it was somehow the jolt I needed. This dumb treasure had nearly killed everyone that I loved tonight. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let it kill me, too.
I flung the bag’s strap across my body and rose to my feet. And then, without thinking, I raced toward the beam, channeling every moment of Olympic hurdling my dad had ever made me watch.
I sailed over the beam, just barely, and flew into Wyn’s and Max’s arms in the doorway. They pulled me from the chapel, practically dragging me out into the rain and across the hill.
I turned to see the chapel fully engulfed behind us and Abuela nowhere in sight.
“Abuela—” but I was cut off by a coughing fit.
“She’s okay, she’s okay,” Wyn reassured me. She rubbed my back, getting me through the worst of the coughing.
“Abuela is over at the hotel,” Max said. “She’s waiting for you.”
I ran the rest of the distance, my smoke-filled lungs be damned.
When I spotted her, sitting behind a sheet of heavy plastic out of the rain, I raced into her arms (now miraculously untied) and gave her the hug I’ve been needing for days.
* * *
Abuela heaved out a long sigh when I finally went to extract myself from her arms. Her next breath was shaky and wet. Max, Wyn, and I kept the stillness of a church as she wept.
“So much pain and death,” she said to herself, and shook her head. “The price of this treasure has been too great.”
“We need to go,” I said gently. “There’s no way people didn’t hear those explosions. We’ve gotta get out of here before we have too many questions to answer. And if we want to find the treasure, we have to do it tonight.”
I lifted up the bag slung across my body, and Wyn and Max, noticing it for the first time, gasped.
Abuela shook her head and wiped her eyes, then suddenly looked at me in concern as if really seeing me for the first time. “That man deserved what happened to him.” She reached out and touched the ring of bruises around my neck. They had probably darkened significantly since Franklin had been in our house. I had nearly forgotten about my previous encounter with Franklin after the events of the last few hours, but if Abuela could still see the marks through the smoke and dirt covering my body, I assumed they didn’t look great.
“It’s okay,” I said, covering her trembling hand with my own. “He’s gone. You don’t have to worry about me.”
Abuela shook her head. “I will always worry about you, Tig. It’s my job,” she said simply.
Abuela took a deep breath and heaved herself up. She stretched her arms up high, then swung them around to loosen the joints, wincing as her stiff muscles pulled at the motion.
“Okay,” she said resolutely. “We have to get going, but first, we’ll need supplies. This is a construction zone, so they should have what we need. We need a small shovel, screwdrivers—Phillips and flathead—protective gloves, a knife or some other kind of prying tool, maybe a hammer if you can find one.”
Abuela continued rattling off items, and Wyn and I scattered, grabbing everything we could find in the dim light of the construction site.
“What do we need all this for?” I asked.
“We never knew what we’d have to do or where a clue or treasure would be, so Noel and I always planned for every scenario,” she said firmly. “You don’t want to be caught without the proper tool—we learned that lesson the hard way in ’68.”
Wyn and I raised our eyebrows at each other, but I decided not to ask.
“I know this isn’t really the most pressing issue,” Max said. “But if someone finds a spare shirt lying around, can you send it my way? This is not the most fashionable look.” He pulled the two smoky and blood-spattered halves of his shirt out demonstratively. They were hanging around his unscathed neckline like some kind of weird collar.
“You’re telling me you’d be willing to wear some smelly old construction worker’s T-shirt?” Wyn asked doubtfully.
“I don’t know. I feel like it would be pretty iconic if we found the treasure while I was cosplaying as a member of the Village People,” he replied, grinning.
“You need more coverage, not less,” Abuela insisted forcefully. She took off her bathrobe and handed it to Max. “Put it on backward. We do not have all night.”
We packed every conceivable thing we might need, from face masks and portable fans to gloves and a power drill. Max tied Abuela’s belt around her backward robe and stood with his arms akimbo. He looked delighted. Wyn had found a large hammer to defend herself, which she was practicing swinging in the corner. Abuela leaned down and picked up a crowbar.
“Torreses have good arms,” Abuela said with a nod. “Use a firm grip, especially if you’re wearing gloves.”
I hefted the crowbar in my hand, and it felt like destiny.
“So where are we going?”
“Hold your horses, mija. Let’s get out of this rain,” Abuela said, leading us into a partially finished section of the Montague Hotel. The plastic was still flapping in the wind against the far wall, but there was a small alcove where moonlight could shine in and it was dry. Rain was pounding forcefully on the roof, and I heard the first sirens wailing far in the distance, the smell of smoke still strong in the air.
“Give me my necklace,” Abuela demanded. I lifted the delicate chain from around my neck—thank god I hadn’t lost it in the fire—and handed it over. But Abuela was busy digging out the map and spyglass from the bag I had rescued from the chapel.
Wyn and Max crowded around her as she spread the map out on the partially finished wood floor, wiping away streaks of sawdust. Then she twisted off the bottom of the spyglass, put her chain against the bottom, and pressed it in hard. Abuela knocked the spyglass against the floor a couple of times to really wedge it inside and then twisted the bottom back on.
“I can’t believe no one knew you had the lens all these years,” I said reverently. “Mr. Green thought it had been lost to time.”
“That’s what I wanted them to think, now wasn’t it?” Abuela grinned, and it made her face look decades younger.
“It works better when you’re looking at the map by candlelight, but one of your phones will have to do,” Abuela said.
Wyn pulled up her flashlight app and shined it on the map. Then Abuela leaned down to put her eye to the spyglass and squinted. A smile spread across her face as she saw exactly what she was looking for.
“Here.” She handed the spyglass to me.
I crouched down closer to the map, took a deep breath, and put the spyglass to my eyes. I was surprised to find that with Abuela’s pendant inserted, the glass was dark, almost like sunglasses. There was writing on the map, but it was incredibly faint. There were two strings of words leading across town, from one riddle location to the next. The first string was in dark brown that was visible without the spyglass, and the second was lighter than the map itself, like it had been sun-bleached onto the paper. The words ran parallel to each other until the final destination; then they split off in two directions. The dark letters led directly to the chapel, where Franklin Baker had met his doom. The light-colored text swerved off and doubled back toward town and ended at … the courthouse. In a tight cramped hand below it, someone had written “earth.”
I handed the spyglass to Wyn so she could take a look.
“We were right …” I said, in wonder. “A Vindication of the Rights of Women. But it’s on a different level than the clues said.”
Abuela looked at me in surprise. “You solved the final riddle?”
I shrugged, and Abuela took a moment to squeeze me tight. “My smart, beautiful girl.” She rose wearily from her knees and looked around at us in turn. “Now let’s go find a treasure.”
The rain had slowed to a soft drizzle by the time we left the Montague Hotel, the sirens growing louder in the distance. We opted to walk rather than be caught driving away from a crime scene in a dead woman’s car. We’d have to talk to the police eventually, but we still had work to do first.
Walking through patches of streetlights beneath the shadows of the trees felt clandestine, even though we’d done it many nights before. The air felt different, charged with anticipation and apprehension in equal measures. It didn’t feel right to talk—to interrupt the silence with chatter that was less important than our mission. In this stillness, my entire body ached—the bumps and bruises left by the violence of Mr. Baker’s hands, the burning in my calves from the unexpected run, and hunger pangs from not having stopped to eat. Adrenaline had fueled me for hours, and it was trickling down to the last drop. But I still felt very awake, my heart was still beating fast, and I could tell I wasn’t alone in that.
The town seemed strange suddenly, on this side of the bridge of information. The cozy houses and well-maintained sidewalks weren’t a backdrop to me anymore. Every residence we passed seemed to burn with secrets, the small-town charm melting away like seeing the edge of a set. Their existence a palimpsest over the real world I now knew existed beyond them. I wondered, for the first time, how many people knew about The Hunt and its bloody history and had just stayed quiet—ignoring the stories as they went to church and mowed their lawns.
I looked at Abuela’s silhouette as she walked in front of us. She was still in the nightgown she’d been wearing when she was kidnapped, but she’d managed to scrape her hair into a tight bun and throw on a pair of old leather boots we’d found in the trunk of Noel’s car, oiled and maintained with care as if she knew they would one day be used again.
I could practically see Noel marching in gray beside her, rope and pistol at the ready, a ghost to the cause of adventure and vengeance. Haunting the steps of her dearest love, who would never be truly alone.
The courthouse loomed ahead of us, old and white, with large pillars and crumbling stone stairs. The windows were dark and promising.
“The courthouse closed at six,” Max said, his voice unnaturally loud in the charged silence. “Are we breaking in?” I looked around the block, but the street was mostly empty. It was a part of town that was busiest during the workday and almost completely abandoned at night by the residents who worked there.
Abuela hummed. “The founder’s treasure was intended to be found by a ‘clever everyman,’ so they aren’t located in places you need wealth or power to access. And now that we know the treasure’s real location, we can focus our search on the first floor of the courthouse, either inside the building or outside it. That’s where all the ‘earth’ clues are located.”
Instead of approaching the front door, Abuela led us around the back of the building and to a small box.
“Phillips screwdriver,” she demanded.
Wyn pulled it from the bag slung over her shoulder and smacked it into Abuela’s palm, like the competent scrub nurse in a hospital drama.
Abuela knelt down with a whoosh of breath and unscrewed the face of the box. Then she jammed the screwdriver underneath, and a metal wire snapped with a twang. She pulled the face down gingerly with her gloved hands, turned a knob, and flipped a switch.
“Tape.”
I dug out a roll of duct tape and handed it to her. Abuela taped the face of the box back on.
“Cut the power, and the alarm system is shut down with the rest of the building. If you cut the wire of the alarm, it still notifies the authorities,” Abuela explained. She paused, then looked up at Wyn. “Do not teach me to regret doing this in front of you.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Wyn said, looking at me and Max in confusion about why she was being singled out for reprimand. Max shrugged.
“You take the outside of the building, and I’ll look inside. If you find anything, come get me,” Abuela said.
“There’s more space to cover inside. What if we just split up? You and me inside and Max and Wyn outside?”
“There is more risk inside,” Abuela said firmly. “We have a half hour before the power needs to be turned back on.”
She put her hands on my shoulders and squeezed. “You don’t need me to be at your side. You can do this.” Then she lumbered to her feet with a small groan of pain and hobbled toward the entrance.
“Where do we even start?” Max said as Abuela disappeared inside.
I dug the small shovel we’d found at the construction site out of my bag. “Well, if it’s supposed to be on ground level somewhere, I’m thinking whatever we need to find is in the foundation or buried under one of the floor tiles inside. It may have shifted a bit since the building is, like, two hundred years old, but it shouldn’t be that much of a downslide. They would have rebuilt this building like the rest of them if the foundation had moved more than a couple feet.”
I hit the shovel against the lowest stonework underneath the circuit. It gave a solid scraping sound. “Yeah, let’s just hit all around the outside of the building and if anything sounds hollow, we try to dig it out. Don’t be too loud, though.”
The courthouse was closely surrounded by dense decorative foliage that shielded us all mostly from view, but a bunch of loud banging would be suspicious regardless if people could see us or not.
Max, Wyn, and I split up—Max checking the rocks with the end of the wrench, Wyn gently hitting them with her hammer, and me continuing with Abuela’s shovel. It wasn’t quiet work at all. But I could tell we were all trying our best. A piece of the facade chipped off after a really enthusiastic whack, but there was nothing underneath it.
Then my phone vibrated in my pocket.
It was a text from Abuela. It only said one word: Inside.
I sprinted around the building, collecting Max and Wyn, and we ducked inside, closing the door tight behind us.
Abuela sat in the center of the lobby, cross-legged with a commandeered air-filtration mask on. In one hand she had what appeared to be a box cutter, and in the other was a small handheld drill. Tossed to the side was a crowbar. One of the courthouse’s granite tiles had been placed gingerly to the side, leaving a large square hole in the floor.
“Masks,” she said, and Wyn, Max, and I quickly put on our masks as well. As we got closer, dust from the tile grout swirled up into the air with every step.
Abuela tapped at the side of the hole.
“You solved the riddle—you do the honors,” she said.
I glanced at Max and Wyn. “We did it together,” I said.
