Trouble and Treasure (#1, Trouble and Treasure Series) Read Online Free Page A

loose stones of the turning circle. Hair
whipping back across his face from the still-dying rotors, he
reached down, pulled up his balaclava, and fixed it in place.
“We've got this, Shaw, you can go back to your books.”
    I ignored him. Maratova liked to think a
real man was judged by the length of his rifle. I didn't give a
shit how long his gun was. All I wanted was to find those antiques
before one of the other teams got their hands on them. Oh, and
there was the fact I'd turned my back on her for one second and the
girl had done a runner with my gun and keys.
    Shit, tonight couldn't get any worse.
    Maratova cracked his neck, adjusted the
sight on his rifle, then slapped me on the back as he walked past.
He tapped his ear piece with one hand, cleared his nose, spat on
the ground, and grumbled a “Got it.”
    The only thing he had was an ego the size of
Mars. To hell with it if I was going to let this idiot ruin my
find.
    Shit, if I'd known they were going to bring
Maratova along, I would have called the boys in blue instead.
    Rather than fight him on it, I shrugged,
shot Garry a look, and walked off around the side of the
chopper.
    I had real intel on the targets inside, but
Maratova wasn't the kind of gunslinger to stop and get his
bearings. Shoot first and let someone else clean up was more his
style.
    Garry shrugged, and the rest of the unit
jumped out of the chopper to follow their leader.
    It wasn't as if they were going to face any
resistance: I'd taken down Romeo's boys in the drawing room.
    “ Fuck,” I hissed as I remembered one tiny
fact: I'd given the girl my gun. The same girl was now holed up in
her house somewhere. Granted, I hadn't been dumb enough to leave it
loaded, but Maratova wouldn't know that. I could see the woman,
frightened out of her wits, doing the first thing she could think
of with the gun and point it at the heavily-armed men smashing
through her house.
    She'd been attacked by a unit of
mercenaries. In her current state I doubted she could tell the
difference between the good balaclava-wearing, gun-toting guys and
the bad ones.
    So I turned on my foot, scattering stones as
I went, and bolted towards the front door.
    If she was smart (and I doubted that,
considering how she'd announced to a room full of mercenaries,
antiques dealers, shady Government agents, and plain old crooks
that she had a set of the rarest treasure maps out there) she would
have taken my keys and headed for my car.
    Amanda didn't strike me as smart. Amanda
seemed ditsy, unkempt, and unlikely to be able to deal with a
full-scale incursion into her country manor.
    She'd be hiding under her bed – I'd bet a
tenner on it.
     
    Amanda Stanton
    I squeezed my eyes shut and tried the back
door again. I offered a silent swearword as I realized it was
locked. The click it gave as it resisted my desperate attempt to
open it sounded like a gunshot.
    I heard the front door open.
    My heart in my throat, my hand shaking as I
clutched the door handle, I stared around wildly.
    I’d made it to the kitchen. It was right at
the back of the first floor, and it had a door that led out onto
the back of the property. There was a garden path outside that led
into the woods, with a shortcut down to the laneway beyond. There
was an old bicycle tied up to a tree on that laneway; a quaint
vestige of my great-uncle's estate.
    The guy – Sebastian Shaw, the extremely
good-looking lawyer who’d turned out to be an extremely-good
looking mercenary/spy/criminal – had offered me the keys to his
car. I wasn't stupid. There was no way I was going to get in his
car. It was probably stuffed full of weapons, dead guys, and stolen
goods. I was going to take the bike, stick to the old country road,
and cycle like a woman possessed, still in my pajamas, until I
reached the local town.
    But the door meant to lead me to my brilliant escape was the
door that wouldn’t open for me. It was locked, the key all the way
back near my front door in one of the