Josh looked over at me. “Are you okay?”
“No,” I said. Blood was dripping off the side of my face onto my sweatshirt, and my ears were ringing.
Devereaux raced toward a car parked half on the sidewalk in front of my house. “Get in the car,” he yelled at Josh.
“Sorry,” Josh said to me. “Ye be a comely lass, but I best do this.”
“Ye be an a-hole,” I yelled after him. “Best you get herpes.”
“Aargh,” he said. And they drove away.
Diesel came up beside me. “What’s going on?”
“Devereaux and Josh just took off with the map and the coin.”
I turned and looked at Diesel. He was naked.
“Holy cow,” I said.
“You got me out of bed.”
A car drove by and beeped. Diesel waved and closed the front door and locked it.
“You have a gash on the side of your head,” Diesel said. “How’d that happen?”
I took my sweatshirt off, pressed it against the cut, and went to the kitchen. “Devereaux hit me with his gun. It stunned me long enough for them to get away.”
“It’s disappointing that Josh threw in with Devereaux. I didn’t see that coming.” He moistened a kitchen towel and cleaned the area around the cut. “It’s not so bad,” he said. “It’s not deep, and the bleeding is stopping.” He got a giant Band-Aid from my kitchen first-aid kit. “Relax while I get dressed.”
Damn. He was going to get dressed. Bummer.
“That’s the sort of thinking that will get you into trouble,” Diesel said.
“You’re reading my mind again!”
“I wasn’t reading your mind,” Diesel said. “You were licking your lips and staring.”
—
Diesel was wearing washed-out jeans, a black T-shirt, and running shoes. His hair was still damp from a shower, and he had a two-day beard. He popped half a bagel into the toaster and helped himself to coffee.
I was rinsing my coffee mug in the sink when I sensed someone at the back door. I looked over and saw Rutherford staring in at us.
Diesel opened the door to him. “How’s it going?” Diesel said.
“Well, the truth is it could be going better,” Rutherford said. “Mr. Ammon is upset that his map is missing. And he would like to have it back.”
“Sorry,” Diesel said. “We don’t have it.”
“Perhaps you might check around just to be sure,” Rutherford said. He was smiling and making patty-cake gestures with his hands.
“Not here,” Diesel said.
Rutherford kept smiling. “Here’s the thing…it isn’t that I doubt your word, but we have video of you taking it.”
“That was yesterday,” Diesel said. “You’re an hour late. Someone just stole it.”
Rutherford gave a short burst of polite laughter. “Ah! Ha-ha. Of course I believe you, but…ha-ha, Mr. Ammon might not believe it. That someone could, ah, just waltz in here and steal it?”
“Everyone waltzes in here,” Diesel said. “It happens all the time.”
“I was hit on the head with a gun,” I said, pointing to my Band-Aid.
“I’m so sorry,” Rutherford said, looking at the Band-Aid, his face a study in agonized concern. “I’ll do my best to explain this to Mr. Ammon. Yes, yes.”
Diesel closed the door after Rutherford left, and topped off his coffee. “You’re getting a lot of traffic in here today.”
I set my mug in the dish drain. “Do you think Devereaux and Josh will be able to find the island?”
“Devereaux probably always knew where the island was located. It was crudely drawn on the bottom of the map, and he had the map long enough to conduct research. Ammon has probably always known where the island is, too. And most likely both of them have searched every square inch of it and found nothing. They were dead-ended without the coin to read the message on the map.”
“What about us? Do we know where the island is?”
“Yep. I took a picture of the map last night and sent it to a guy I know who’s spent a lot of time sailing these waters. The cluster of small islands is in Penobscot Bay. My guy said it wasn’t hard to find the target island because it has a unique shape. It’s called Brimstone Island. And he also knew about Gull Rock.”
“The name Brimstone Island doesn’t exactly conjure up thoughts of a tropical paradise.” I checked the time. “I have to run. I’m going to be late for work.”
“Correction. You’re going to be missing. You need to call in for another ‘save the world’ day. We need to get to Brimstone Island before Devereaux.”
“Can we do that? He has a head start.”
“I’ve mapped it out. It takes about four hours to get to Rockland, Maine. From there it’s a two-hour ferry ride to the Fox Islands. Then it’s necessary to hire a boat to get to Brimstone. It’s about an eight-hour trip total. Fortunately we have resources that probably aren’t available to Devereaux.”
“And that would be?”