Mountain Secrets by Elizabeth Goddard (good books to read for teens txt) 📕

“What kind of monster would kill his own wife?” But she knew. She knew what kind of monster. He was a con artist. He’d never loved Meral. Jewel had seen that from the beginning.

Buck had turned desperate and was showing his true self now. What had happened to change his tactics?

He grabbed her hair, sending shards of pain through her head, and shoved her deeper into the woods. Then suddenly he stiffened. He yanked her close and stepped behind a broad cedar tree. Pulling her against his body, he wrapped his free arm around her waist and thrust the gun against the side of her head.

He pressed his lips against her ear and whispered, making her shudder. “One word and you’re dead. Think of Meral.”

He was pure evil in human form. She squeezed her eyes shut, trying to stop the tears. She’d known, felt it all along.

What had he heard? Someone following?

Was it Colin?

Please, God!

A minute, maybe two he waited, and with his proximity those seconds felt like an eternity. She was so close she instantly felt when the tension drained from him. His fear of discovery had gone.

He whispered again. “I’m warning you, Jewel, don’t try your lame self-defense tactics on me. A firearm is the great equalizer. Even if you were a match for me, I’m the one with the gun. I’ve been impressed with your resilience; I’ll give you that. The way you survived that tumble into Dead Man Falls. That alone should have killed you.”

He grabbed her hair and shoved her forward and away from the tree.

Jewel stumbled over a root and fell. He didn’t relinquish his hold on her hair, so she cried out, the pain searing. She was sure he would rip her hair out of her scalp. Her eye burned.

“Get up,” he snapped.

Using her hands to grab his on her head, she stood up, or more likely she was pulled to her feet. She wanted to do her part to make the slow going even slower, to stall as much as she could. Maybe someone would see them. Maybe Colin would finally discover she was gone and catch up to them. But if she delayed his plans, then the monster would do much worse than rip out her hair before it was over. Kill her and then Meral.

They marched deeper through the undergrowth that ended when it banked against the glacier.

“Why kill me? Why not just take what you want?”

Where was he taking her? Why back toward the glacier?

“Because I couldn’t get to it—or thought I couldn’t. Our second day at your B and B, I heard you mention to Meral that you’d willed everything to her years ago after your husband died, your way to connect back to your family. Your death would have meant Meral had access to the diamond. I figured you had it in a safe- deposit box in a bank like most people. One quick shove into Dead Man Falls and it would be mine. But no, you had to survive that. Good thing, too. When I saw you sneak up to the attic I knew why.”

“How? How could you know?” She turned to face him.

“The same way I know you brought the diamond with you on this trip. I’ve made a living reading people who have things to hide.” He smacked her across the face. Her eyes watered again. “That’s for making me work so hard for it.”

Cheek burning, Jewel pressed her palm against her face.

“Keep going.”

She stood her ground. “Where are we going? Why don’t you just ask me what you want to know? Why drag me out here?”

“All in good time. We have to get away from your knight in shining armor first. He’s probably on his way to the yacht to look for you. Good thing I made it more difficult. I underestimated you, Jewel. You know how to hide things. Now I’ve had to go to extreme measures. Things would have been so much easier if you had just died any of the times when you were supposed to.”

He pressed her forward. Jewel shivered, growing tired. Through the forested incline she could see the icy edges of the glacier only a few yards down where it hedged against the mountain on its journey to the channel. Jewel stumbled and fell to her knees again, but this time Buck did not have a hold on her hair.

He grabbed her arm and jerked her up. Jewel cringed from the pain. He ushered her forward and down, then around a crack in the ice and shoved her into an opening—a cold chute into another ice cave, different from the one they’d explored earlier.

“Why are you taking me here?” How did he know about this cave at all?

He forced her ahead of him into the cave without crampons or backpack or gear. Her gloves were stashed in her pack. At least she still wore her jacket. As she climbed over icy boulders and slipped a few times, she was positive this was off the tourist path. Then he shoved her to the ground, where she fell between two boulders and cut her hand on the ice.

“Nobody will find you here.”

“So you mean to succeed in killing me this time.”

“It’s simple, really. If you tell me where the diamond is, you can go back to your police chief and sister. I’ll disappear. When she wakes up, you get to tell her I’m gone. Tell her the truth about why or not. It’s up to you. But either way I’ll disappear with the diamond.”

Jewel didn’t believe him. Why would he let her go? She could then be a witness against him if he was ever caught. No, once she told him where to find it, he would kill her.

Jewel pushed up to sitting, the best she could. Pain jabbed her from new injuries and echoed from her recent ones—all due to Buck’s attacks. If only she could