“Then we had better make sure it happens.” He turned to Mateo. “What’s the atmosphere like in the village? They lost a number of men yesterday. The ones who didn’t die were arrested and hauled away, probably never to be seen again.”

“They went against Ramón Velásquez. The villagers just pray the families will not be murdered.”

“You think they will be?”

“I hope not.”

“So do I, though Arturo deserves to pay a hard price for what he did to King.”

“Probably it will not happen,” Mateo said.

Gage made no reply. Arturo’s failure to retrieve the gold and the loss of his men weren’t nearly punishment enough. The deteriorated state of his hacienda showed how close he was to complete financial ruin, and there was no gold to save him. That was something at least.

They packed up their gear and headed back to the dig site, Gage and Trace loading King on a pallet in the back of the Hummer. Abby climbed in beside him while Zuma sat up front with Gage. Carlos rode in the second vehicle with Mateo.

When the Jeep carrying Edge, Trace, and Skye arrived at the hacienda, they set up perimeter surveillance, but everything seemed quiet. There was nothing left to remind them of the carnage yesterday except an occasional dark spot in the soil where blood had soaked into the ground.

Fortunately, the area King pointed them toward was away from the field where the shooting had taken place. Using a litter that Edge and Trace had fashioned from stripped tree branches, they carried the old man to the chamber where Gage had originally been digging.

Abby walked up to him. “King says we were right in the first place. What we found under the house was a room off the main corridor. The gold’s stored in another room off to one side.”

Gage nodded, feeling a sense of satisfaction at the work they had already done. “We’d have found it sooner or later.”

“Unless Velásquez’s men had killed us first,” Abby said.

Gage looked down at her, fighting an overwhelming urge to pull her into his arms. “A definite possibility,” he agreed. She was different today, already backing away from him, distancing herself. He didn’t like it.

From his litter beside the chamber, King could look into the hole where they’d been digging, the place where Abby had saved his life. A chill crawled over Gage’s skin. The place where she could have drowned.

It was exactly the reason they couldn’t be together. He couldn’t survive a loss like that again.

He studied the muddy hole in the ground. The bad news was it no longer looked the same. The storm waters had caved in one side, and though the water had receded, mounds of dirt, timbers, and flooring had been left behind.

King raised himself up on the litter. “Bring me my . . . notes.”