Sunflower Lane Read Online Free Page B

Crazies.
    The Harper cabin might have a leaky roof and a few broken windows but it would be shelter in the storm. His mother and grandmother would have a fit tomorrow if they found out he’d slept in his truck.
    There was no damn way he could take being fussed over and worried about more than two weeks. He’d rather face a gang of human traffickers. He’d be long gone by the Fourthof July parade, but for tonight, he’d bed down in the Harper cabin.
    Unless Annabelle Harper said no.
    But from what he’d heard of her back in high school, that wasn’t likely to happen. According to his old friend Clay, Annabelle was the girl who didn’t say no.

Chapter Two

    As a storm blue darkness stole over the mountains, Annabelle sat on the front steps of the house she’d grown up in and sipped her coffee.
    The front door stood open behind her, and only sweet, calm quiet came from inside.
    She’d hear clearly through the screen door if Megan or Michelle called out for her.
    Her ten-year-old nephew, Ethan, was no doubt still poring over his book. The title made her smile.
Lost Loot: The Untold Riches Hidden in the American West
.
    Ethan was such a
boy.
Fascinated by a book crammed full of information on supposedly buried or hidden treasure, just waiting for him and his friend Jimmy to discover it in their own backyards.
    Right.
    The author, Peter Lamont, had passed through town on a book tour that took him through Montana, Wyoming,Colorado, and Utah. He’d spoken to a packed crowd at the Lonesome Way Community Center two weeks ago. Lamont had done extensive research and had determined that a good deal of gold, cash, and jewels stolen from stagecoach holdups and bank robberies in the late 1800s were still buried where the outlaws who stole them had hidden them. The outlaws, he’d theorized, had always intended to come back when it was safe to retrieve the treasure, but most times, they’d been killed or arrested before they could do that.
    Ethan and his best friend, Jimmy Collier, had listened with rapt attention—no doubt partly because both of their great-great-grandpas had belonged to the notorious Henry Barnum gang. They’d been two out of five outlaws who’d all killed one another off in Montana within months after their successful gold heist.
    And with their deaths had gone the secret of what became of that massive chest of gold bars they’d snatched from a Kansas bank in 1878.
    Annabelle’s great-grandfather Big Jed had been found dead—gut-shot on a rocky ledge on Storm Mountain—less than twenty miles from his cabin on Sunflower Lane. Rumor had it he’d been headed either toward or away from the hiding place of the gang’s buried gold when he was murdered.
    But no trace of the gold was ever found.
    Ethan and Jimmy were completely fascinated by the lore of this treasure.
    Or perhaps obsessed is more like it,
Annabelle thought, taking another sip of her coffee as a breeze flitted through the trees that flanked the house, and sent her long blond curls flying.
    The treasure was all the two boys talked about. After hearing Peter Lamont speak, the boys had pooled their allowance money to buy his book, and pored over it together for hours at a time. They’d made a friendship pact to search for the loot together and split it fifty-fifty when it was found.
    This was Ethan’s week to keep the book, and he’d been plopped on his bed practically memorizing every map and clue and anecdote each night before going to sleep.
    No doubt dreaming all night long about finding lost gold,
she thought ruefully. But anything that took his mind off losing his parents was a good thing. When she’d first moved home after Trish and Ron died, Ethan and the girls had asked her every day when their parents were coming back.
    Much better to think about treasure than loss,
she thought, her own heart aching. She missed her sister so much. Tears momentarily stung her eyes. She knew Trish’s kids were suffering even more.
    Annabelle had