The Treasure Seeker Read online

  Kate followed. “I dropped my phone.” She was clearly angry. “Why didn’t you let me pick it up?”

  “Because, we both would probably be dead now,” Ry’s voice came out in choppy spurts. She knew this wasn’t a safe location for them, but she needed to see what was going on. She couldn’t remember if the outer house covering was wood or aluminum siding. Not that it mattered much, since neither would offer much protection from a high-powered rifle.

  Ry sat up slowly. To her left, beams of sunlight streamed through the bullet holes in the door. “What have we stumbled into?”

  Kate started to sit up just as another shot smashed through the window to their right, showering glass around them.

  Ry threw herself over Kate. When a second shot didn’t follow, she sat up and motioned for Kate to move. “Get behind that couch.” Without waiting to see if Kate moved, Ry carefully peeked through the window. She saw a blur of blue as someone disappeared behind a tree.

  “Watch that glass,” Kate warned.

  Ry turned back to her. “I told you to get behind the couch.” She instantly regretted the sharpness of her voice. “It’s a miracle he hasn’t hit one of us already.”

  “You’re bleeding.” Kate reached to touch Ry’s face.

  “It’s nothing but splinters from the post.” Ry gently moved Kate’s hand away.

  Another bullet smashed through the wall on the other side of the door. “He’s not sure where we are. He’s hoping for a lucky shot,” Ry said. “We need to move.” She knew their best bet was getting back to the car and getting the hell away from there. To do so, they would have to cross the open yard. Suddenly she remembered the sunken den. She had nearly tripped on the stairs yesterday when she was looking around the house. She grabbed Kate’s hand. “Follow me, but stay as close to the floor as you can.”

  Afraid the shooter would continue to pump random shots into the front of the house, Ry made her way to the middle of the room where the couch sat. From there she could see the doorway to the den. They would have to cover about twelve feet of open space before they reached the sunken den. She’d noticed yesterday that the sunken area of the room was actually below ground level. The dried water stains along the wall indicated how impractical the design had been, but right now Ry could have kissed the architect. She pointed toward the den. “We’ve got to get in there as quickly as possible.” She looked at Kate. “We’re going to belly crawl as fast as we can.”

  Kate nodded. Her brown eyes looked large against her ashen face.

  “Are you ready?”

  Again, Kate nodded.

  Ry clung to the metal file box as she began to crawl.

  Another single shot entered the house and struck the floor beside the couch. The noise brought them both to their feet. Ry threw herself over the edge into the two-and-a-half-foot deep hole. She almost cried with joy when she saw the behemoth old sleeper sofa that sat against the front wall of the room.

  “Help me,” she said as she bent low and made her way to the sofa.

  “What are we doing?” Kate asked.

  “Turn the sofa over so it’s sitting on its arms.” She started tugging on the piece. “This thing is old and it weighs a ton.” She grunted as she tugged. Cowering behind the sofa didn’t give her any real sense of safety, but at least it would help protect them from the flying debris and hopefully any stray ricochets.

  It took them three more tries before they finally managed to tip the beast forward.

  “Get underneath there,” Ry said, pointing to the cave-like opening the overturned sofa created.

  Kate opened her mouth but whatever she had intended to say was interrupted by an explosive sound that caused the floor beneath them to vibrate. They both scrambled into the cubbyhole beneath the sofa.

  Ry held Kate closely as the walls of the living room disintegrated beneath the hammering of the rapid fire. The shooter had obviously grown tired of peppering the house with a single shot or two. He was now literally tearing the house apart with an automatic weapon of some sort. After what seemed like an eternity, the noise stopped. The silence that filled the room caused Ry’s ears to ache. They continued to cling to each other.

  When the silence held, Ry prayed that he had run out of ammo. She started to move away from Kate, but another round of destruction stopped her. This time the madness was directed at the wall mere inches above where they huddled. As long as he was outside all he could do was fire into the house at ground level. The only thing they had to fear was a ricochet, which was still very much a danger considering the number of bullets flying around the room.

  Ry didn’t know much about assault weapons—her family had never owned any, only rifles or an occasional shotgun to hunt and pistols for target practice—but judging by the length of time he was able to maintain a constant onslaught, she guessed the shooter was using something with at least a one-hundred-round drum.

  As the room continued to disintegrate around them, they flattened themselves against the floor. Ry kept her body between Kate and the wall, praying she was right in remembering that the sunken area was completely below ground level. She watched with a strange sense of detachment as pieces of glass, aluminum from the miniblinds and tattered fragments of cloth from the curtains danced in the air. Shards of wood flew across the room. The wooden spindles that ran alongside the steps leading down into the room exploded into a shower of splinters, some of which embedded themselves into the opposite wall from where she and Kate lay. She was vaguely aware of Kate’s screams or maybe they were her own. At this point, she could no longer be sure of anything. She tried to whisper words of comfort into Kate’s ear, but she felt certain that nothing she said could penetrate the deafening roar around them. She realized that he wasn’t going to stop until they were dead. “Stop screaming,” she shouted in Kate’s ear. “He won’t stop unless he thinks we’re dead.” Her words must have reached Kate because she stopped. Ry tried to determine how much time had passed since Kate’s nine-one-one call.

  Silence.

  Ry held Kate closer and silently counted the seconds.

  “The sheriff should be here any moment,” Kate said. “If you’d let me grab my phone, I could have called again. Why don’t you ever carry your phone? If you’d paid attention to what you were doing yesterday, we wouldn’t be in this mess.” Kate seemed on the verge of hysteria. Her body was trembling, her teeth clattering together. “This is entirely your fault.”

  Ry ignored the accusations and held her tighter. She didn’t want to scare Kate more by reminding her that the county sheriff’s office was responsible for the safety of the entire county. There was no way to know how long it would be before they arrived. She kept counting. Would the shooter reload and continue firing? How many drums did he have? She remembered the double-sided drums as being rather large. They certainly weren’t something he could slip into his pocket. If he ran out of ammo would he leave, or would he come after them? She counted to fifty-three before the third round of destruction started pouring into the house. Everywhere she looked, there was damage. Nothing had managed to escape the havoc created by the hail of gunfire.

  A thunderous crash at the front of the house startled Ry. When she flinched, her elbow struck something solid and sharp. She glanced back and saw the metal file box. It took some maneuvering, but she finally managed to get it pulled from behind her.

  “What are you doing?” Kate demanded.

  Ry opened the box and removed the revolver. Her hands trembled as she grabbed the clips she had unloaded from it the previous night. “He’s not going to stop until he kills us,” she said. Her voice sounded flat, even to her own ears. What was she planning on doing with six bullets? She prayed the bullets weren’t as old as the revolver. The last thing she needed was for this thing to explode in her hand when she squeezed the trigger.

  “The sheriff will be here any minute,” Kate insisted.

  Another burst of bullets ripped through the interior walls sending out a billowing cloud of d
rywall dust. From the sound of the destruction, it seemed he was now simply sweeping the weapon’s aim back and forth across the front of the house.

  “Are you willing to bet our lives on that?” Ry asked, recovering her voice. “I’m sure he figures we called the police. There’s bound to be other people living nearby, they’ll hear the shots.” She pressed the cylinder release latch, inserted the two clips and carefully closed the cylinder. She wondered if he still had ammunition for the rifle. Or maybe he had other weapons. If he simply intended to drive away, why hadn’t he done so already? A shiver ran down her back. He didn’t intend to leave anyone alive here. “He’s going to get tired of standing out there and eventually he’s going to come in after us.”

  “Ry, please.” Kate must have seen something in her face, because she stopped in midsentence.

  This time when the pause in gunfire occurred, Ry was ready. She rolled from beneath the sofa and poked her head above the edge. The destruction that greeted her was beyond comprehension. She stood slowly as she took in the damage. Enormous holes had been blown through the outer wall. The siding, framing timbers and Sheetrock looked as if some maniacal beast had chewed them up and spat them out. A large section of the interior wall between the den and living room no longer existed. Her legs nearly buckled when she realized that had the den not been partially below ground level, she and Kate wouldn’t have had a chance of escaping. Mindful of the debris, she moved closer to the battered wall and peered over. The shooter stood less than fifteen feet away. He was loading a bolt-action rifle. She didn’t recognize the make or model but she knew enough about guns to know that the rifle he was holding was not the weapon that had created all this damage. It took her a moment to notice the discarded assault rifle lying on the ground several feet behind him. Next to it were three double round drums.

  Even as her brain fought to make reason of all this, Ry couldn’t help but notice that in his white shirt and black dress pants he looked more like a man heading off to church than a mad gunman.

  Sun glinted off one of the bullets he was feeding into the rifle and snapped her out of her reverie. She aimed the pistol at him. “Drop the rifle,” she yelled.

  He jumped back at the sound of her voice. Several shells fell from his hand.

  She saw his eyes settle on the pistol. Startling him had given Ry an odd sense of satisfaction. It quickly disappeared when he failed to drop the rifle. “I said drop the rifle.”

  Time slowed for Ry as the rifle started to swing upward and at the same moment, his right hand worked the bolt to inject a shell. Without conscious thought, she widened her stance, took a deep breath, pulled back the hammer and squeezed the trigger. Her first shot struck the inner side of his left shirt pocket, shots two and three quickly followed and were exactly one inch on either side of the first. She watched the red stain spread across his white shirt. His body seemed to deflate. He fell to his knees. The rifle slipped to the ground as if the impact of his falling had jarred it from his grip. Then slowly he fell forward and landed facedown in the yard.

  Chapter Three

  Ry didn’t know how much time passed before Kate’s voice cut through the fog that had engulfed her.

  “I should go out there and see if there’s anything I can do for him,” Kate said. Her voice sounded hollow.

  “There’s no need,” Ry said. She knew where her shots had gone and she knew the damage they had caused. “He’s beyond help.”

  Kate made a small choking sound. “Dear God, you killed him.”

  Ry started to turn to comfort Kate, but a sense of unease still nagged at her. She scanned the yard again, double-checking any area that looked large enough to hide another person.

  “Did you have to kill him?” Kate’s voice was starting to sound panicky. “I’m sure he would have left had he known you were armed.”

  Ry glanced at her in disbelief. Had she lost her mind? “Kate, look around you. Does it look like he was just trying to scare us off?” Her throat was parched. She licked her dry lips. “Besides, I told him to drop the rifle. He saw I was armed.”

  Kate began to bounce her fists against her thighs.

  Ry recognized the gesture as something Kate did when she was highly stressed. The almost paralyzing sense that she had missed something kept her gaze glued to the yard. What was she not seeing? She continued to the scan the area.

  “You didn’t have to kill him?” Kate asked again. “You’re a good shot. You could have shot him in the leg or something?”

  Ry shook her head. “Kate, I did what was necessary. Look around you. He wouldn’t have stopped until he killed us both.” Her eyes continued to search the area. She didn’t bother to mention that had the floor not been below ground level, it would be the two of them lying there bleeding out. The sofa could not have protected them from direct fire. But then, Kate lived in the medical world where they saved lives, not took them. Still not seeing anything that caused alarm, she turned to her thoughts back to the nine-one-one call. How long had it been? Thoughts of the sheriff made her realize what was about to occur.

  “I’m going to go get your phone from the porch where you dropped it.” Ry had left her own phone in Kate’s car. She gave the yard one last scrutiny before starting toward the living room. The den stairs were splintered and too dangerous to step on. She climbed out of the sunken den and carefully made her way toward the porch. She was shocked to find that the large crash they had heard earlier had been the small porch collapsing. The bullets had eaten through the two thin support posts.

  Amazingly enough, Kate’s phone was undamaged. Ry picked it up and dusted it off, while still holding the pistol in her other hand.

  “Will you please throw that thing away,” Kate said and nodded toward the pistol. “Who are you calling?” she asked as she took the phone from Ry.

  Suppressing a spark of anger at having the phone snatched from her hand, Ry took a deep breath before replying. “I was going to call my dad. I’m going to need a lawyer.”

  “It was self-defense,” Kate said, her eyes wide.

  “Yes, but there’s two dead bodies here and we’re going to have to explain them.”

  Kate began to dial. “In that case, let’s call my dad. Your dad’s lawyer probably knows more about business law than criminal. As a former state senator, I’m sure my dad knows a few criminal lawyers.” She stepped back into the house as she placed the phone to her ear. Kate’s willingness to get her father involved so quickly frightened Ry more than the thought of having to face hours of police questioning. Kate had one hard-and-fast rule and that was never to ask her father for anything.

  Ry looked at the pistol she was still holding. She considered laying it down, but somehow she felt safer holding it. She followed Kate back into the living room. In the six years that she and Kate had been together, Ry had never known the former Republican State Senator Edwin Prescott Elliott and his daughter to agree on a single thing. Both were hardheaded and set in their stubborn ways.

  Mindful of the splintered wood and glass shards, Ry resumed her study of the yard. As she listened to Kate quietly talking on the phone, she fought against the cold knot of panic that was trying to form deep within her. She was sickened by what had happened, but she knew without a doubt that he would have killed them both. He created the situation that led to his death by shooting at us, she told herself. It’s not as if I shot him without warning. He clearly saw the pistol. Why had he taken the risk of shooting at them?

  Kate returned to stand by her. “He said not to answer any questions until we get to the station and have a lawyer present. He’s sending his lawyer to the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office. We’re outside the city limits, so that’s where they’ll take us.”

  “Won’t not answering their questions make us look like we’re hiding something?” Ry asked.

  Kate shrugged.

  Neither of them spoke again until nearly ten minutes later when a county sheriff’s car finally arrived. There was no room in the short driveway
for his car. He drove his car up into the yard.

  Ry could see the look of surprise turn to shock on the young officer’s face when he spotted the dead man in the yard and then eyed the damaged house.

  “What do we do?” Kate asked, her voice trembling.

  “We probably should go out,” Ry said. She shook her head after giving it some thought. “Maybe we should wait until he tells us to come out.” Ry continued to study the young officer. He looked as though he should still be in high school. She watched as he picked up the radio mike and spoke into it.

  “How do we explain all this?” Kate waved her arms at the destruction around them.

  “We tell the truth.” The pistol felt heavy in her hand. She had never fired a weapon at a living thing until today. She turned her attention back to the cop as he continued to sit in the car.

  “Why isn’t he getting out?” Kate asked.

  “I think he called for backup. From the looks of him, he probably hasn’t been at this long,” Ry said. Suddenly exhausted, she staggered slightly. How had things gotten so horribly out of hand? Maybe she was dreaming. Hoping to wake herself from this terrible dream, she rubbed her free hand over her face harshly and winced. She had forgotten about her face full of splinters. The burning pain in her cheek ruled out the possibility of all this being a dream.

  “I guess we’ll just stay here. He’s bound to tell us to come out eventually.” Ry turned to study the living room. It looked much worse than she had first noticed. The large double front window was now nothing more than thousands of glittering shards scattered across the floor. The fragmented remains of the front door dangled at an odd angle from the twisted top hinge. Tiny particles of the cotton stuffing and floral fabric on the old couch still drifted aimlessly through the air.