Hot Ice

dragged a hand through her hair. “He died in sin, so he couldn’t be buried in the church grounds.” She glanced around, hopelessly. “I don’t even know where to look.”
    “They had to bury him somewhere.” He began to pace between the gravestones. “What did they usually do with the ones they wouldn’t let in?”
    She frowned a bit and tried to think. “It would depend, I suppose. If the priest was compassionate, I’d think he’d be buried close by.”
    Doug looked down. “They’re here,” he muttered. “And my palms are still sweating.” Taking her hand, he walked over to the low fence that bordered the cemetery. “We start there.”
    Another hour passed while they walked and searched through the brush. The first snake Whitney saw nearly sent her back to the jeep, but Doug handed her a stick and no sympathy. Straightening her spine, she stuck with it. When Doug tripped, stumbled, and cursed, she paid no attention to him.
    “Holy shit!”
    Whitney lifted her stick, ready to strike. “Snake!”
    “Forget the snakes.” He grabbed her hand and pulled her down on the ground with him. “I found it.”
    The marker was small and plain, nearly buried itself. It read simply GERALD LEBRUN. Whitney laid a hand on it, wondering if there’d been anyone to mourn for him.
    “And bingo.” Doug tore a vine as thick as his thumb, riddled with trumpet-shaped flowers, from another stone. It read only MARIE.
    “Marie,” she murmured. “It could be another suicide.”
    “No.” He took Whitney’s shoulders so that they faced each other across the stones. “He’d guarded the treasure just as he’d promised. He died still guarding it. He must have buried it here before he wrote that last letter. He might have written down a request to be buried in this spot. They couldn’t bury him in there with his family, but there wasn’t any reason not to give him a last wish.”
    “All right, it makes sense.” But her mouth was dry. “What now?”
    “Now, I’m going to go steal a shovel.”
    “Doug—”
    “No time for sensibilities now.”
    She swallowed again. “Okay, but make it fast.”
    “You could hold your breath.” He gave her a quick kiss before he was up and gone.
    Whitney sat between the two stones, her knees drawn up and her heart thudding. Were they really so close, so close to the finish at last? She looked down at the flat, neglected plot of ground beneath her hand. Had Gerald, queen’s confidant, kept the treasure at his side for two centuries?
    And if they found it? Whitney plucked the grass with her fingers. For now she’d only remember that if they found it, Dimitri hadn’t. She’d be satisfied with that for the moment.
    Doug came back without rustling the grass. Whitney heard him only when he murmured her name. She swore and scrambled forward on her knees. “Do you have to do that?”
    “I’d rather not advertise our little afternoon job.” He held a dented, short-handled shovel in his hand. “Best I could do on short notice.”
    For a moment, he just stared down at the dirt under his feet. He wanted to savor the sensation of standing over the gateway to easy street.
    Whitney saw his thoughts in his eyes. Again she felt twin sensations of acceptance and disappointment. Then she put her hand over his on the shovel and gave him a long kiss. “Good luck.”
    He began to dig. For minute after minute, there was no sound but the steady rhythm of metal cutting earth. No breeze blew in from the sea, so that sweat drained off his face like rain. The heat and quiet pressed down on them both. As the hole grew deeper, each remembered the stages of the journey that had brought them this close.
    A mad chase through the streets of Manhattan, a frantic leg race in D.C. A leap from a moving train and an endless hike over barren, rolling hills. The Merina village. Cyndi Lauper along the Canal des Pangalanes. Passion and caviar in a stolen jeep. Death and love, both unexpected.
    Doug felt the tip of the shovel hit something solid. The muffled sound echoed through the brush as his eyes met Whitney’s. On their hands and knees, they began to push the dirt aside with their fingers. Not daring to breathe, they lifted it out.
    “Oh God,” she said in a whisper. “It’s real.”
    It was no more than a foot long, and not quite as wide. The case itself was moldy with dirt and damp. It was as Danielle had described, very plain. Even so, Whitney knew that the small chest would be worth a small