And then all hell broke loose.
Suddenly it seemed like the canyon was full of people and IronSteeds. I heard Foley snarl at Agent Wolff, “Get them out of here. Do not let them get away.”
“Mr. Foley? Mr. Mountmorris?” We all turned around to see Dolly Frost below us, making her way up the path toward Zander, Sukey, and M.K. “What’s going on here?” she called up. “Who are these children? Who is the man who was killed back there?”
“Get them out of here before that damned woman gets to them,” Foley hissed. He looked furious, his sharky eyes small in his red face.
“Mr. Foley, Mr. Foley,” Dolly Frost was calling out.
“Get this one out of here, too,” Foley said, nodding to me.
I didn’t have much time. I looked up and saw Zander, the spitting image of Dad, struggling with Agent DeRosa, and M.K., who would have come to my aid with her little knife if she could have gotten away from Agent Wolff. And Sukey. Sukey was trying to get free, calling my name, and I remembered how it had felt to hold her, to keep her safe and warm for just a minute, even though everything had fallen apart.
“What is going on here?” Dolly Frost was asking.
She had almost reached us. I knew this was it. I thought of Dad and I reached up, grabbing Foley’s jacket and pulling him down so he could hear me. Mr. Mountmorris was behind him and I said to them, “Listen to me. Listen hard. There isn’t much time. You know as well as I do that Lazlo Nackley didn’t find that gold. You know as well as I do that we used my dad’s map to find it. Now, we’re willing to let the Nackleys take the credit. But you have to let us go. You and BNDL got what you wanted. The gold. You can use it to buy airships and send Explorers all over the world. So let us go. Sukey Neville, too. Promise me nothing will happen to us and we’ll forget about everything we just saw. If that reporter wasn’t here, you might get away with it. But she is. And I don’t care how much power you have, you might be able to claim you killed Tex in self-defense, but you can’t explain away a dead reporter. There are too many people here.”
I was breathing hard, my head throbbing where I’d hit it on a rock.
“Mr. Foley, I demand an answer,” Dolly Frost was saying.
He stared at me for another long moment and then he looked at Mr. Mountmorris, who nodded, holding my gaze for a minute.
I stood up, my legs shaking. “I’ll talk to you,” I called down to her. “I saw everything.”
“What happened?” she asked. “Who shot that man? Why are you children here?” She wasn’t much older than we were, tall with blond hair, wearing beige Explorer’s leggings and a vest with lots of pockets. The vest looked brand-new. “Mr. Foley, there’s a dead man down there and I demand to know what’s going on.”
Foley turned away and reached out a hand to help her climb up to where we were. “Oh, these children are… they were just camping down here and we had a… a misunderstanding. You know, it’s very important for BNDL to secure any potential find, for the safety of everyone involved, of course. There’s been a lot of concern for their safety and I just wanted to make sure they were quite all right. Very unfortunate, the accident with Mr. Tex. I’m sorry they had to see that. But we’ll make sure they get home safely. I’m going to accompany them myself.”
Dolly Frost still looked skeptical. She looked right at me. “Is that true?” she asked. “Was that man trying to take the gold? Did he shoot at Mr. Foley? Mr. Nackley is claiming that his son is the rightful discoverer of the treasure of Drowned Man’s Canyon. But you seem to have been here first. Did you find the treasure before the Nackleys got there? Did you see the gold?”
“Oh no,” I told her. “Lazlo Nackley’s the one who found it. We were just hiking past. We never saw the gold. And Mr. Foley’s right. That man was working for Mr. Nackley, but he must have wanted the gold for himself. I saw him trying to take it.”
“And who are you? What’s your name?”
She had the notepad out and she was writing down everything I said.
“Christopher West,” I told her. “My father was the great Explorer of the Realm Alexander West.”
I looked up at Mr. Mountmorris. I was so tired, I could barely form the words. “And now, if you don’t mind, we’d like to go home.”