Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 173392 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 867(@200wpm)___ 694(@250wpm)___ 578(@300wpm)
I gape. “Are you serious?”
She shrugs, picking up a baseball bat and flipping onto her side to look around the corner.
I slip on the knuckles in case I have to poke someone, but I’m not interested in making anyone bleed.
“You know, Macon wouldn’t approve of this,” I tell her.
She flashes me a dirty look. “The only thing I need a man to protect me from is a life sentence. He can clean up the evidence when I’m done.”
Heh. I’m actually fine with that. As long as we can get rid of them before he and his brothers show up. Iron doesn’t need company in jail.
Flashlights bob a hundred yards away, moving around graves, searching.
“How would they even know what grave to dig up?” I ask Aracely.
She sits up on one knee and zips up her fitted jacket. “When you’re not stupid, and you have an endless amount of resources available to you, anything is possible.” She wipes her muddy hands on her jeans and pulls a beanie over her head. “You inventory the graves, find the conquistadors, and then you discover one had a mistress, and the love letters between them are sitting in the St. Carmen Museum today. When a woman in those days bears you three sons and shares your bed for twenty-eight years, you trust her, even in death.”
Oh my God. “You think the treasure is real?” I ask her.
“He didn’t tell you it wasn’t.” She pins me with a look. “Did he?”
My face falls. Jesus.
Have they always had it? Or did they just recently find it? Does everyone over here know it’s real? Has she actually seen it? I have so many questions.
She pulls the hat down, and I realize it’s a mask that covers everything except for her eyes. Her friends follow suit, everyone getting their feet underneath them. I hop up onto mine, ready to follow.
I glance at Aracely. “You’re not slashing their tires, are you?”
“No, I want them to leave.”
Wise.
“So, what are we doing, then?” I ask.
She looks at me, grins, and then …
She leaps to her feet, the others following, all of them holding their hands in the air, howling from the top of their lungs.
What the hell? I crane my neck to see them sprint at top speed across the burial grounds. Toward the invaders.
The beams from the flashlights jerk in our direction, and I catch site of a blond ponytail whipping as some girl runs.
I shoot off, racing after Aracely and sucking in breath after breath. This is dumb. Someone’s going to get hurt. Or arrested.
We charge through the rain, Aracely throwing her arms behind her head, getting ready to smash someone’s face in.
Some teenager—I think he still goes to Marymount, actually—scurries backward, holding out his hands. “No, no, no, no!”
Aracely swings the bat down, and I watch in horror as she smashes down on the hood of the dude’s Tesla. A dent sits like a crater in the middle.
“Oh my God!” Emaline Truax drops a shovel, coated in the dirt they disturbed. She swings the sledgehammer they brought with them, but I’m on her before she attacks. I shove her, the hammer dropping into a puddle, but then I hear someone growl and spin around. A guy is behind Aracely, trying to pry the bat out of her hands. I race over, leaping onto his back.
“Ah!” he growls.
I wrap my body around him, putting him in a headlock, which is pretty much all I know from wrestling with my siblings.
He throws me off, and I crash to the ground, the spikes of my knuckles sinking into the mud.
Car doors slam, headlights glow bright, and tires spin as the intruders escape. A truck, and then another one, speeds in as they peel off.
Aracely looks over at me. I smile, watching them turn tail and run. She grins, too. Liv and Clay would be proud of me.
Trace jumps out of his truck. “You got rid of them?” he asks Aracely.
I rise to my feet, about to walk over, but Aracely pulls me out of the way. “Careful.”
I look down, seeing the pathetic start of a hole they tried to dig. I read the headstone. El … des … a … fio? El desafio. Challenge? Dare? Duel? I should ask Paisleigh. She knows more Spanish than me now.
“Thanks,” I tell Aracely.
But someone takes my shoulders and twists me forward. “Are you okay?”
I look up, meeting Army’s eyes.
But Aracely speaks up. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she tells him, starting to walk away. “In case you ever wonder. Ever.”
I watch her pick up her bat and start to leave the cemetery, the spark of pain on her face clear as day. He didn’t see it, though. The twitch in her eyes when he brushed past her like she wasn’t here.
I don’t have a chance to go after her. Macon strolls up, his jaw clenched and his eyes hard on me. “I told you to stay at Mariette’s. What did you think you would accomplish?”