Haunted Waters by Jerry B. Jenkins, Chris Fabry Page B

put his hand over the mouthpiece so Boo wouldn’t hear his chuckles.
    “Tell whoever wants to know that I’ll be there,” Boo said. “I have to be there anyway.”
    “Oh?” Sam said.
    “Yeah, got a score to settle.”
    A shiver ran down my spine. This wasn’t funny anymore.
    “You know, Aaron, I’ve heard you’ve made it a little difficult on a couple of students at school. If I were you, I’d concentrate on my studies and cut out the extracurricular activities. You get my drift?”
    Boo paused. “Extra what?”
    “The fighting and bullying.”
    “Hey, who is this?”
    “Just a friendly reminder,” Sam said. “Good luck on the CATs Monday.”

Chapter 35

    I burst out laughing, but I could tell Bryce was upset.
    “If Boo is telling the truth about being home, he wasn’t the one outside,” Bryce said.
    Sam paced. “What happened back in Gold Town? Did you two buy anything or pick up anything?”
    “You mean like a souvenir?” I said.
    “Anything.”
    “The only thing we came out of there with that we didn’t walk in with was the miner’s hat you bought Dylan,” Bryce said. “Unless you bought something, Ash.”
    I closed my eyes and tried to remember. “We walked in, got in line—Dylan put on the hat, you took the picture, the guy erased the photos, and then they asked us to leave.”
    “Wait,” Bryce said. He put a hand in his pocket. “When I dropped the camera, the memory stick flew out. A kid handed it to me.” He frowned, then snapped his fingers. “I know where it is. I’ll be right back.”
    “Where are you going?” Sam said.
    “The stick is in the back of the SUV—”
    “But what good will that do?” I said.
    “Pictures. Maybe this has something to do with the pictures. The guy at Gold Town erased the camera but not the stick.”

Chapter 36

    The Land Cruiser was locked. The sun was still high, but the pine trees cast long shadows. I ran back inside, and as soon as I opened the door, Sam tossed me his keys before I could even ask for them. They say great minds think alike.
    Once in the SUV I crawled over the front seat, opened the flap behind it, and found the memory stick. When I locked the door and closed it, I heard something behind me. A car? Someone in the woods?
    “H-hello?” I called.
    Something fluttered overhead, and my heart jumped into my throat. I had the same feeling the summer before on a 3-2 count with the bases loaded in the bottom of the seventh. And the time Ashley and I set up the bike jump in our front yard in Illinois—I had the same feeling just as I was about to go airborne.
    I dashed to the house and didn’t turn around until I was inside.

Chapter 37

    Bryce was out of breath and looked like he had seen a herd of ghosts. He hurried over with the memory stick and put it on the table. “I heard someone out there,” he said.
    Sam peered outside. “A car?”
    Bryce shook his head. “I don’t know.”
    Sam opened the door. “Hey!” His voice echoed off the hillside. Snow fell from a pine tree nearby and whooshed as it slapped branches on the way down. Sam stood watching and finally closed the door. “Go get your camera, Ashley.”
    I looked all over the cabin. When I told Sam I couldn’t find it anywhere, he gritted his teeth. “Must’ve been what they were after.”
    He plugged the memory stick into his computer and brought up the shots on the screen. The first showed Bryce mugging, as usual, tugging his ears and sticking out his tongue. The second was me pulling my hair out to both sides, doing the helicopter. I thought we should go to the thumbnails so we could see all of them, but Sam said he wanted to see them in order.
    When he reached the last picture, we hovered over the computer, studying the shot. The gold nugget was out of focus at the front.
    “Looks like the real thing to me,” Bryce said.
    Sam went back to a shot I had taken outside the trailer before we went inside. “What’s this?” He enlarged it, and I noticed two