Maroon Rising by John H. Cunningham Page B

here?” My voice sounded like I’d just reached puberty. “You shot at me again , you son of a bitch.”
    Gunner stood over me. There were two men behind him—big men—and both of them were holding shotguns.
    He laughed that hyena-pitched cackle I’d learned to loathe, his small square teeth and his blue mirrored sunglasses catching the light.
    “Not yet we haven’t.”
    “Are you following us?”
    “We’re just hunting, Reilly.” He paused, his double entendre floating in the air. “Hogs. You seen any?”
    He reached down and yanked the sketch out of my hand.
    “Hey!” I rolled onto my knee and stood up.
    “You okay, Buck?” Nanny’s voice came from behind them.
    “What the hell kind of drawing’s this?”
    “How come you’re not out in Port Royal, Gunner? You run out of brewer’s vats?”
    He ignored me, the sketch still held up to his face. Then he lowered it.
    “The question is, Reilly, what are you doing out here—with her?”
    Nanny had walked around them and now stood next to me. Her face was hard. Stephen was nowhere in sight. I focused on one of Gunner’s associates—Cuffee, the enraged Maroon from Moore Town.
    “You!” I said. “Did you beat up Colonel Stanley?”
    Gunner cackled again. “You know Cuffee? Small island, ain’t it?”
    “It’s actually a pretty big island, Gunner, so I’ll ask you again, what the hell are you doing here? What do you want?”
    Gunner was not above having us shot and leaving us here for animals to devour. Armed or not, he was too big for me to overpower alone, and with three of them?
    “We won the rights to salvage Morgan’s treasure,” he said. “Sure feels like you’re trespassing on our claim.”
    I nearly laughed. Gunner sounded like he was in an old Western.
    “You were awarded the right to dig in a specific location at Port Royal.”
    “Maybe you need to update yourself on our rights.”
    That caught me off guard. Had they somehow obtained broader rights related to Morgan? I’d never heard of anything other than a specific location being protected—
    “And what’s this little honey doing with you, anyway?” He nodded toward Nanny.
    “Not that it’s any of your business, but she and Stephen are my guides. I hired them to take me up to see the sunrise from Blue Mountain, but you already know that, since you’ve obviously been following us.”
    “Sunrise, my ass.” His mouth tightened to a thin line. “Miss Nanny Adou here, Professor Nanny Adou, from the Archaeology Department at the University of West Indies, was on the review and award committee that gave me and Dodson the contract for Port Royal.”
    My breathing stopped.
    “So I’ll ask you again, what the hell are you two doing out here together?”
    My head spun toward Nanny so hard my neck cracked.
    “You were on the award committee?”
    She looked away.
    Gunner’s cackle broke the silence again.
    “Looks like she’s playing both sides against the middle, Reilly.” He laughed again. “Your luck with women ain’t too good here in Jamaica, is it? Must of been a kick in the balls, seeing your ex-wife and Dodson—”
    I flung myself at Gunner, catching him off guard and driving him hard into the bushes. We fell, me on top of him.
    He squealed, dug his hands into my ribcage—instant pain—and flung me aside.
    All the wind whooshed out of my lungs. I rolled to my right and stood up. Gunner’s goons—Cuffee and the other one—held their guns on me, but I didn’t care.
    “Son of a bitch, Reilly!” Gunner rolled over and I saw he’d landed on a large rock. He held his back and got slowly to his feet, his sunglasses knocked askew, his eyes black and livid. “You’ll pay for that!”
    “Stop it!” Nanny stepped between us. “A lot of people know we’re here, and Stephen has already informed the authorities.”
    All eyes followed the finger she pointed to where Stephen held up his phone.
    Gunner swung back to face us, his jaw trembling and his square teeth