Abandon

“We’ve got grenades.”

“Wanna bring the whole wing down?”

He pulled open the doors, climbed inside, Abigail listening as he banged around. After a moment, she heard “Aha.”

Isaiah smiled. “What I like to hear. What you got, baby?”

Lawrence’s voice came back muffled. “Entire back panel”—he struggled with something—“slides out.” A panel of wood flew out of the wardrobe and crashed onto the floor.

Isaiah was peering in now. “Would you look at that,” he said. “You’re a genius, Larry.” Isaiah pointed at Abigail. “Come here. We may need you. It’s a tight fit.”

Abigail got up, crossed the floor. She stood beside Isaiah and looked into the wardrobe. With the panel removed, a black steel-hinged door was visible, three feet by two feet.

“Looks like some serious shit,” Isaiah said. “Hope for your sake you can open it.”

“Well, the bad news is this locking mechanism. Dates back to the 1860s. There are four locks, requiring three different keys.” He touched the various keyholes. “Here’s the pin tumbler lock. Here’s the barrel lock. These two are bit styles.”

“Ah f**k. We are gonna have to toss a couple grenades in here.”

“Won’t do anything. If this is the kind of door I suspect it is”—he rapped his knuckles on it—“it’s made of ten layered one-eighth-inch steel sheets. But there’s some good news, too.”

“Pins and needles, Lar.”

“See here? Three of the locks are already open. Only thing standing in our way is this bit lock, which has a turned bolt sealing the door.”

“So what do we do?”

Lawrence faced Isaiah. “I’ll be needing a guarantee.”

“A guarantee.”

“I spent the last ten years trying to find what’s in here. Now, I’m willing to let it go—”

“That’s a relief.”

“—if I have your assurance none of us will be harmed. Give me that, I’ll get you inside.”

“That’ll put your little heart at ease?”

“It will.”

“Yeah, all right, Larry. You get me in there, you’ll all walk out of these mountains.”

“That’s the truth?”

“You questioning the word of a marine?”

Lawrence let his pack drop to the floor. He unzipped the outer pocket, scrounged inside. After a moment, he withdrew something, held it up in the light of his headlamp.

Isaiah grinned through his mask at the long, toothed key. “Where’d you get that?”

“Found it in a safe in Bart’s office last summer. I don’t know for certain that this will open that bit lock, but it is the right type of key for it.”

“And what do we think is in there?” Abigail asked.

“Summer of 1871, Bart Packer was broke and prospecting alone in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. One afternoon, he got stuck above timberline in a thunderstorm. Found an overhang high on the mountain, took shelter there. He was waiting for the storm to pass when he felt an icy draft coming from behind. He turned around, noticed an opening in the rock, and crawled through it. When he got his candle lit, he found himself in a large chamber, and not ten feet away sat a headless skeleton clad in Spanish armor. Bart correctly deduced that he was looking at a conquistador, who’d most likely been in that cave since the 1500s. What lay beside the bones of this ancient conqueror was a pyramid of gold bars, ninety-one in all, twenty-two pounds apiece. That’s about a ton of pure gold.

“When Abandon was in its heyday, it would’ve been worth six-hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Today, with gold trading at eight hundred and two dollars an ounce, Bart’s ninety-one bars are worth over twenty-five million. Now, there may not be ninety-one bars in here. But even if he spent half of that, twelve and a half mil’s a good payday.”

“And you were just using this expedition as an excuse to find this gold?” Abigail said. “What were you planning to do? Sneak off with it without telling anyone?”

“No, of course not. Scott and I—”

“Scott knew?” Suddenly, that look between Scott and her father at the trailhead made perfect sense.

“—couldn’t haul it all out ourselves. That’s seventeen miles, and even if everyone carried as much weight as they possibly could, it’d take at least two or three trips. Besides, it’s not just about the dollar value. Abigail, this was going to be a huge historical—”

“You son of a bitch. You selfish son—”

“Time to open that motherfucker, Lar.”

Lawrence sighed, turned away from his daughter.

He took his time, delicately working the key into the lock.

The key turned and the mechanism clicked.

“It worked,” Lawrence whispered. He grabbed the handle, and when he’d heaved open the steel door, Isaiah shoved him aside and climbed into the wardrobe, his headlamp shining into a secret room the size of Packer’s walk-in closet—walls, floor, and ceiling made of stone.

“You’re f**kin kidding me.”

TWENTY-SIX

Larry, where are my gold bars?”

“I don’t understand. They should be in there.”

Isaiah shoved Lawrence out of the wardrobe. “Sit down!” he yelled at Abigail. “Not you, Larry.” Isaiah backed Lawrence up against one of the giant windows.

“I’m telling you. They should be there. Maybe someone else—”

“You holding out on me?” Isaiah unsnapped the ankle sheath under his trousers.

“I swear,” Lawrence said. “They should’ve been in there. I don’t know—”

“Maybe that’s the case,” Isaiah said, then suddenly pressed the sharp, thin bone of his forearm into Lawrence’s neck. “But how do I know? Really. Know. You aren’t lying?”

“I swear to you I’m not. Please—”

“Words don’t convince me, Larry, but you know what does? Pain. For instance.” Isaiah gently removed Lawrence’s glasses, dropped them on the floor, crushed them under his boot heel. “I’m gonna cut out your right eye—”

Abigail’s stomach turned. Not happening.

“No, please—”

Isaiah leaned harder into Lawrence’s windpipe, briefly cutting off his air supply.

“—and give you thirty seconds to rethink your answer. If you’re still maintaining you don’t know where they are, I may be more inclined to believe you. Know why?” Lawrence shook his head, eyes bulging. “Because right now you don’t understand what real pain is. You think you do. You don’t. But when I’m holding your warm eyeball in the palm of my hand, you’re gonna have a much better idea. You’ll know that I’m willing and fully capable of taking you apart piece by piece. This is not about torture. It’s about me knowing in my heart that you’re telling the truth.”