The FBI Thrillers Collection Books 6-10 - Catherine Coulter [570]
Dix and the boys stood back, Dix still holding a straining Brewster, who, oddly, wasn’t barking wildly anymore, just seemed anxious to join all the hugging.
The big man, Dillon Savich, let Ruth down, but still held her against him as he turned to say, “Forgive us, Sheriff, but we were very worried when we heard Ruth hadn’t checked in.”
“Checked in with whom?” Dix asked.
Ruth said, “Oh, Luther Hitchcock called you, right, Dillon? He’s a major-league worrier, for which I am profoundly grateful, this time,” Ruth said, grinning like a loon at all of them impartially. “He couldn’t come with me because he had that gallbladder attack and—” She broke off, her face suddenly slack and pale.
“What, Ruth? What happened?”
“Dillon, someone’s trying to kill me and it must be because of the treasure in Winkel’s Cave.”
“Winkel’s Cave?” Dix asked. “What treasure? Who are you, Ruth?”
Sherlock smiled at the tough-as-nails-looking man holding a little white ball of fluff under his right arm who was trying hard to jump at them, a teenage boy on either side of him, standing real close. “We’re all FBI, Sheriff.”
Ruth stuck out her hand. “Special Agent Ruth Warnecki, Sheriff Noble. A pleasure to meet you.”
Dix took her hand, Brewster licked it. She shook his hand up and down, she was that excited. He said, “So that’s why you shoot a SIG.”
“I also have a Glock seventeen.”
“You’re really an FBI agent, Madonna?” Rafe asked. “I mean, Ms. Warnecki, er, Special Agent Warnecki? A real FBI agent like they have on TV? Boy, it must have burned your butt when Dad told you to hide behind the dresser.”
She laughed. “Not really, at least at the time. I’m sure he wouldn’t ask me to do that now, he’s not like that idiot sheriff in North Carolina. Come on, you guys, call me Ruth.” Brewster started barking frantically. Ruth plucked him from Dix’s arms and hugged him. “It’s so good to be me again,” she said, “as in back in my own brain. Much better than being Madonna.”
Brewster licked her face, barking wildly between licks as he peed on Rob’s sweatshirt.
CHAPTER 10
RUTH SAT BETWEEN Savich and Sherlock. She didn’t want to let go of their hands.
“Tell us what you can,” Savich said, “we’ll help you fill in all the blanks, don’t worry.”
“The last thing I remember clearly is crawling through that low arch in the cave wall and into that chamber. Then everything starts to get confused and, well—black. I remember the feel of that blackness; it was exactly like in the dream I had last night—so maybe the dream reflects what happened to me.”
“Then tell us about the dream,” Sherlock said as she lightly squeezed Ruth’s hand.
“You’d think it would have gone all blurry by now, but it hasn’t. It’s still as clear to me as when I was in the middle of it. Okay, in the dream I was standing in this dark pit of a place, alone, I couldn’t even see my own hand, but I wasn’t scared about that. I was waiting for a man to bring me a million dollars in gold bars. I know now I was dreaming about the treasure I was looking for in Winkel’s Cave. I heard him coming but then I realized it wasn’t his footsteps I was hearing, and I jerked awake. I’d heard those two guys outside my window. That was all the dream was, nothing more than that.”
Dix was shaking his head. “I still can’t believe there’s a treasure hidden in Winkel’s Cave. I’ve never heard anything like that.” He looked up to see Rob and Rafe standing in the living room doorway, all bundled up and ready to take off for Breaker’s Hill, their eyes focused on Ruth.
Rob said, “You know about a treasure in Winkel’s Cave, Ruth? Is it pirate’s gold? Doubloons?”
She smiled at both boys, shook her head. “Nope, it’s better—a stolen gold shipment intended for General Lee in Richmond.”
“Wow,” Rafe said, taking three steps into the living room. “A treasure, here, nearly