Free DumbAtHeart.epub by Amarinda Jones

Australia.
    From the kitchen, she progressed down the hall, a cold shiver racing up her spine.
    “Are you here, Jack?” No answer. “Tell me where you hid the gold and we’ll use it to
    make the house come back to life.” This was met by only by the sounds of creaking
    boards under her feet.
    She pushed open a door to what appeared to Cass to be the main bedroom. There
    was an old bed, just the springs and four sturdy iron uprights that kept it together. Did
    the three of them sleep there? Did the women take it in turns?
    “No way in hell I would’ve accepted that,” Cass mumbled to herself as she
    looked over to a massive wooden chest. It looked like something someone may have
    taken off an old ship, possibly containing the worldly goods of a traveler coming to a
    vast, new land where nothing existed. She ran her hands over the solid wood. At a
    guess, it looked like oak to her. It was bound with steel strapping that held it tight and
    protected. A flip latch, with an old padlock, still with a rusted key, hanging from it,
    would have secured whatever treasure was inside.
    “This is beautiful. How can they let this rot?” She pulled the padlock off and
    placed it on the ground so she could lever the lid open using the latch. It was heavy
    and took some effort to lift up. Inside the interior was spacious but empty. “No
    Throcker gold lurking in here.” Not that she expected it to be. Cass peered down at
    the base of the trunk. The wood looked different. “And flimsy. What’s that about?”
    Cass leaned in, her ass up in the air and her hand curled into a fist. She knocked
    on the base. It was soft pine. She knocked on the sides. Two different sounds. One
    solid. One not so. She knocked on them again. “Yep, they’re not the same. I wonder
    why?” Cass turned as she heard a noise suddenly break the silence. It sounded like
    something moving within the house. “Or, maybe not. Maybe it’s just a creepy, old
    house and you have an active imagination.”
    Her attention went back to the trunk. Cass ran her fingers around the pine base
    and into the corners and over the joins. There was a small gap that didn’t seem to look
    natural. A weird feeling rushed over her. “Could the Throcker gold be in there? Was it
    a case of hiding something in plain sight? If so, it wasn’t going to be the legendary
    haul people expected. She stood up and looked around the room to find something to
    wedge into the gap and pry up the pine. An old shoe horn made of what looked like
    actual horn lay discarded on the floor.
    Cass picked it up and went back to the trunk. She shoved the shoe horn into the
    gap and jiggled it around, trying to pry up the plank. After a couple of minutes and a
    lot of sweating, the board popped up with a groan. Cass worked her fingertips underneath and yanked the board up. What she saw made her blink twice. There was
    an old folded piece of paper, a compass and a key.
    “Holy crap! Is that a map? I don’t believe it!” Cass reached down inside for the
    paper. “Is this clue to the Throcker gold?” And then she blacked out.

Chapter nine
    “Cassie! Can you hear me!” Evan was frantic. He had returned to the house after
    an hour to look for Cass. She was nowhere to be seen. The door to the home was open
    and there were footsteps in the thick dust on the floor. A cold sense of fear raced
    through him. This was a very old house. She could have fallen through the floor and
    been crying out for help without anyone to hear. He looked around frantically but all
    boards were intact. Phil joined in the search when he heard Evan shouting Cass’s
    name. They went from room to room.
    “Are you sure she went in here?” Phil asked.
    “She said she wanted to look around.” If anything happened to her, Evan knew it
    would kill him, such was the hold she had taken on his heart. “Cassie!”
    “You love her.” Phil smiled.
    “Yeah, I do.”
    “That’s nice, man.”
    “We have to find her.”
    Cass woke up