The Pirate & The Adventurer & The Cowboy

away.

    Sarah hesitated for an instant, wanting him in the shot with her. But that was impossible. She scooped up the old strongbox and held it in front of her. Laughing with delight at her trophy, she stood posing for the shot. Gideon raised the camera to his eye, smiled again and pressed the shutter release.

    "Now all we have to do is figure out how to open this strongbox," Sarah said, examining the rusty container.

    "It will take a little time but we'll find a way," Gideon said, putting down the camera and picking up the shovel. "I've had some experience with that kind of thing."

    "Somehow that doesn't surprise me." Sarah glanced up from the locked box. "What are you doing?" she asked as she saw him lift a spadeful of dirt and toss it back into the hole he had just finished digging.

    "Filling in the hole."

    "Why?"

    He gave her an odd glance. "I don't see any point in advertising the fact that we've been here and dug up something valuable."

    Sarah smiled with sudden appreciation. "Good idea. Why leave tracks for someone who might want to steal our treasure from us? I told you that you were smarter than Jed Mclntyre."

    "As long as I'm a little smarter than Jake Savage, we'll be okay," Gideon muttered.

    "What did you say?" Sarah asked, uncertain she'd heard him correctly.

    "I said, it's going to be a long drive back to the coast this afternoon."

    "We could stay here or in Seattle tonight," she suggested.

    "No," said Gideon. "We'll go back to my place. I didn't have a chance to ask my neighbor to take care of the cats."

    "We'd better get back there, then. Poor things. They'll be starving."

    "Not likely. Machu can still hunt when he has to, although he doesn't much care for the effort involved. He'll see that Ellora eats if it's necessary but he'd much prefer someone opened a can for both of them."

    Sarah grinned. "He's a lot like you, isn't he?"

    Gideon cocked a brow. "Because he doesn't mind eating canned food?"

    "No, because he can still hunt if it becomes necessary."

    S HORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT Machu Picchu landed on Gideon's bare back with a heavy, near-silent thud. Gideon stifled a soft groan. The cat stepped off his back and sat on the edge of the bed, tail moving restlessly as he waited for a response.

    Gideon rolled over slowly so that he wouldn't waken Sarah who was curled up beside him. He eyed Machu's implacable face for a few seconds and then he slid carefully out of bed.

    Machu leaped soundlessly down onto the floor and started toward the bedroom door. Gideon paused long enough to collect the revolver he always kept in a shoe-box under the bed and quickly put on his jeans. Barefoot, he went down the stairs as silently as Machu had.

    At the bottom of the staircase, Gideon turned right and went down the hall to his study. He stopped outside the open door and peered into the shadows. He was not unduly surprised to see the figure of a man hunched over the locked file cabinet where the strongbox had been stored earlier. Keeping the revolver hidden behind the half-open door, Gideon reached just inside the room and flicked on the light switch.

    The intruder jumped and whirled around to face him, his mouth open in shock and alarm.

    "Forget it, Jake," Gideon said calmly. "Even if you managed to get the file open, you'd only find an empty, rusted out strongbox with nothing in it. The Fleetwood Flowers are long gone. Somebody got to them years ago."

    Jake's hands fell away from the file cabinet. "Damn it, Gid, you always did have a way of sneaking up on people."

    "Sarah kept saying she was afraid you'd get close to the earrings. I guess this was what she anticipated, wasn't it? That you'd break in and find the old strongbox. Looks like I've got to start paying more attention to that woman's intuition."

    Jake hesitated, relaxing slightly when Gideon didn't move or say anything else. Then his brashness returned in a rush. With a cocky grin he stalked across the room and threw himself down in Gideon's desk chair. Legs stuck out in front of him, hands behind his head, Jake continued to smile the rakish smile that had never failed to charm.

    "Tell me the truth, Gid. This is your old partner here so you can be honest with me. I know you went back into the mountains this morning. I followed you. And I know you did some digging. I saw where you'd filled in the hole. You really didn't find the earrings?"

    "Just an old strongbox. The earrings might have been stored in it at one time, but the box is