Read Covington, Cara - Love Under Two Lawmen [The Lost Collection] (Siren Menage Everlasting) for Free Online Page A

stand down and avert their eyes.”
    Adam nodded slowly. “Legend has it the gold is still in the South, buried somewhere in Georgia or South Carolina.”
    “It’s not,” Amanda said softly.
    “Does he tell us where, exactly?”
    “No. His entry soon turns cryptic. But there’s a reason for that.”
    Warren said, “Because his friend tried to turn on him?”
    “How did you guess?” Amanda wanted to know.
    “Because I know men,” Warren said. “We’ve all known some that would do almost anything for money.”
    Warren would never forget what that bastard Tyrone Maddox had done to him and had planned to do to Sarah. Judging by the looks exchanged between them, he suspected that neither of the Benedicts ever would forget it.
    “He only makes one entry during the trip,” Amanda said.
    Adam returned to the journal. He found that entry and read it aloud.
    “ We knew they’d search for us, and for our cargo. So instead of heading south, we went West. Robert left the route up to me, and I fell back on my early days, one of my first postings, before I convinced Father to send me to West Point. It seemed an appropriate choice, poetic justice, if you will. And so we who were, in a way, exiled, walked in the steps of those we ourselves exiled, and our tears, though shed inwardly, were just as real as theirs. Bell’s route seemed the best. And I knew that our precious cargo, that which had been entrusted to us, would be safe amid the ruins of an ancient people.”
    “That is cryptic,” Sarah said.
    “I have to admit that part confused me completely at first. But I’m good at figuring out puzzles.”
    “So what does it mean?” Warren asked.
    “Well, I had to do some investigating. I looked into Colonel Gladstone’s military record, and then I had to do some digging into some events of the last few decades. And when I did that, I figured it out.” She paused, and Warren could see her excitement. She fairly vibrated with it.
    “Bell was John Bell, who led a smaller group of the Cherokee Indians from Georgia to the Indian Territory on a march that has become known as—”
    “The Trail of Tears,” Sarah said softly.
    “Yes,” Amanda confirmed. “The group had a military escort, and a member of that escort was young William Gladstone. According to the information I was able to uncover, while the military escort left them at the border to the Indian Territory, they understood the Indians would continue on until they got to the heart of the new Cherokee Nation.”
    “Tahlequah,” Adam said, nodding. “It makes perfect sense. But that is one hell of a big area to search.”
    “Seems to me there are a lot of places—caves, trails, blinds—a man could get lost in that area if he wasn’t careful,” Caleb said.
    “There’s more. You have to read the rest of it. The last page.” Amanda said that quietly. Warren knew whatever was coming next wouldn’t be pleasant.
    “I don’t know how or why I awakened in the middle of the night. I only know that doing so saved my life. I awakened on my side, blinking my eyes until I could discern the shapes in the night. I recognized my old friend by his profile. Robert Montgomery moved stealthily, and at first I didn’t understand what he was doing as he crouched beside each man in turn. But then I did, and anger such as I have never felt surged through me, giving me almost superhuman control. He meant to see us all dead and to take unto himself that which was given us in trust.
    “I had adopted the habit of falling asleep with my long Bowie knife close to hand after being startled awake by a rattlesnake earlier on the trail. Now I would use it on another kind of snake, just as vile, just as treacherous as that one encountered by Eve in the Garden of Eden.
    “Afterward, I had no shovel with which to dig the graves. It took me two days to place all the bodies of my men in the cave, to tuck them under the overhang with the hidden bullion. Robert’s body I left to the