FIFTY-ONE
T
hey came upon June at the base of the steps. She was standing by her husband, one hand on the banister that had run through him, the other caressing his shaved head.
“Just us, June,” Abigail said.
She glanced up at them, void of expression, catatonic.
“Who’s that with you?” she asked.
“This is Quinn. He was being held here by Isaiah and Stu.”
Quinn froze when he saw Emmett, brought his hand to his mouth, whispered, “Oh God. June, is it? I’m so sorry. Is there anything—”
“No, there isn’t. I just need to be alone with him.”
Abigail touched her arm, said, “Maybe you should—”
“No! Go!”
They left June with her husband and sat down nearby on the cascading staircase that flowed toward the large oak doors.
Abigail pulled three water bottles out of Lawrence’s pack and rolled two of them across the floor to Quinn.
“Thank you.” Quinn unscrewed the cap and ravenously downed the entire twelve ounces in one long gulp. Then he leaned back against the steps and gingerly ran his fingers across his face as if reading Braille, trying to picture how the damage had distorted it.
“Isaiah did that?” Abigail asked.
“Quite a violent streak in that man.”
“So what, exactly, happened to you?”
Quinn opened the second bottle of water and took another long drink. “I arrived in Abandon last Wednesday morning. Wednesday night, very late, I woke to the sound of footsteps near my tent. Frightened me pretty bad. I called out, asked who was there. No one answered. Of course, I couldn’t go back to sleep, so I unzipped the tent and crawled outside. There were two men in masks with guns standing there.”
He shivered, as if just speaking about it rekindled the fear. “Isaiah and Stu brought me to this mansion. They kept demanding that I show them where ‘it’ was. I told them I had no idea what they were talking about. They said I was lying. They beat me. Tied me up and left me in one of the rooms on the third floor. Several times a day, they’d come back, ask if I wanted to tell them or if I needed another beating. I would always say the same thing: I didn’t know what it was they wanted.
“Tonight, after working me over for a while, they blindfolded me and slapped a piece of tape on my mouth. Few hours later, I heard a ruckus on the floor below and voices I hadn’t heard before. Suppose that was you guys. I managed to find an edge on the old chair they’d strapped me to, finally cut through the tape around my wrists about an hour ago.”
“You made all that racket up there that caught Stu’s attention?” Abigail asked.
“Yeah. I’d crept downstairs, seen there was only one of them guarding June, and I knew it was my only chance. When Stu came up, he was drunk, and I managed to overpower him.”
Quinn sipped his water. Outside, the wind still made that strange unnerving sound like ghosts humming.
“So why’d you come to Abandon in the first place?” Lawrence asked.
Quinn smiled. “Well, why are you here?”
Abigail sensed something in the current between the two men.
Lawrence said, “I was giving June and her husband a tour of the ghost town. They’re paranormal photographers.”
“That’s all, huh?”
Abigail realized what it was: distrust. These two historians sizing each other up, attempting to gauge how much the other one knew, what to let on, what to keep to themselves.
“What was it again that you were looking for up at the pass? I think I heard Abigail say something about —”
“All right, should we quit jerking each other off here?” Lawrence said. “Anyone who’s studied Abandon in depth knows that a sizable quantity of Packer’s gold has never been accounted for.”
“And you’ve been searching for it.”
It got quiet for a moment. Then Lawrence said, “Yeah. And you?”
Quinn nodded. “You an honest man, Lawrence?”
“Guess that depends.”
“What if I were to tell you that I have something in my jacket that might be able to help us out?”
“I’d be interested.”
“Interested enough for full disclosure?”
“Assuming it cuts both ways.”
Quinn reached into his pocket, handed Lawrence a rusted key attached to a nylon rope.
“Where’d you get this?” Lawrence asked.
