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His lips twitch upward. "Aye, lass, I'd love the help. You know what's involved. Are ye sure ye want to do this with me?"
"Yes. I'm with you, always."
He finds his backpack and brings out the satellite phone, then we head outside to make our call in private. That means we march across the box canyon and squeeze through the crevice to reach the rocky beach where we had left our raft. I see Frisk's raft too, but it's mostly deflated thanks to what Errol did to it. We stop halfway across the beach.
Errol raises his phone and dials a number.
I resist the urge to chew on my lip. We're about to lie to government officials, but it's for a good reason. Protecting the Grand Canyon treasure requires doing a few things that aren't strictly legal or strictly ethical. If we don't skirt the line, Frisk and his men might steal all those amazing artifacts that have lain hidden inside the caverns for a very long time. We're doing the wrong thing for the right reason.
Nothing we're about to do will make me or Errol rich. We won't become celebrities either. But Frisk and his men will, I'm sure, once their nefarious activities become public knowledge. Being infamous will become their legacy.
"Hello," Errol says into his phone, and he sounds quite casual and relaxed. "I need to report a crime in progress in the Grand Canyon."
I watch Errol's face while he listens to whatever authorities he had contacted.
"Yes, that's right," he says. "I want to report a crime. Antiquities theft. There are some blokes inside a cavern who are trying to run away with ancient artifacts. My wife and I donnae know what to do. They tried to take us hostage, but we managed to run away. Donnae know how long we can hide from them since they slashed our raft." He pauses as he listens to the person on the other end of the call. "Aye, we have a river guide. But he's not a commando. The poor bloke seems to be in shock and unable to speak."
Munro in shock? Yeah, right. Errol is spinning a yarn, for sure. His acting skills impress me, and I have no doubts he can pull off this con. Oddly, his ability to obfuscate the truth makes me want to have sex with him right now.
I've always been a good girl, following every rule, never even violating the speed limit by one mile per hour. What has that gotten me? Nowhere. I told Errol before this expedition started that I will do anything to prove my father had been right about the Grand Canyon treasure, and I've done exactly what I said. I've found the proof. Now, Errol and I need to convince the authorities that Frisk and his men stumbled onto the catacombs, giving them credit only so we won't go to prison.
"Aye, we'll wait here," Errol says into his phone. He nods. "On the beach, aye. We'll hide as best we can, but our river guide has been captured by those lunatics." Errol rattles off a list of numbers that must be coordinates for our location. "Thank you. We'll be watching for you."
Following a bit more listening, he says goodbye and shoves the satellite phone into his hip pocket.
"Who's coming to rescue us?" I ask.
"Law enforcement rangers. It might take a while for them to get here, but we need the time to harass Frisk and his men until they won't be able to cobble together a coherent timeline of what happened."
"You want to brainwash them?"
"No. I want to annoy Frisk. His men are already convinced Munro is a demon. We can leverage that to keep them in line, and we can harass Frisk until he's so enraged that when the rangers get here, they'll believe he's a bampot of the first order." Errol smirks. "They won't doubt he's gone mental. I see a padded cell in his future."
"Frisk deserves it, after what he's done."
"Aye, he does."
We walk back into the entrance cavern hand in hand.
Munro still stands there glaring at Frisk and his men. None of them have moved even an inch, as far as I can tell. They avoid looking at Munro, preferring to study the floor or rest their arms on their knees to brace their foreheads on them. One guy hugs his knees and rocks back and forth while keeping his eyes shut.
Frisk himself glowers at Munro with his lips slanted downward and his nostrils flaring with every breath. "Whatever plan you've dreamed up will fail."
"Donnae think so," Errol says. Then he claps a hand on his cousin's shoulder. "Why don't you show Christian how his men feel about you?"
Munro's mouth kinks up slightly at one corner. "Happy to demonstrate."
He sprints toward the pool and leaps in feet first. Seconds tick by, bleeding into minutes.
Errol moves to stand before the cowering lackeys. He crosses his arms over his chest and nods toward the pool. "Munro is a selkie, ye know. In the Celtic world, selkies are seal-people who can shed their skins to sneak onto the land and seduce humans. The males are known to be incredibly seductive and virile, stronger than any human man. A selkie can sniff out a woman from a continent away, which means Munro could find your wives and girlfriends and have his way with them. Once a woman has enjoyed a selkie's affection, she willnae want a human man ever again."
Damn, Errol really can lie like nobody's business. The stuff he said about selkies doesn't mesh with what I know about the folklore, but I realize he's weaving a whopper of a story for these men, to keep them off guard. No doubt he hopes to neutralize them with fear rather than weapons or brute force. Their fear of Munro, enhanced by the claptrap Errol just spouted, ought to do the trick. That will leave Frisk to fend for himself.
Munro still hasn't emerged from the water.
"Where'd that guy go?" Milliken asks.
Frisk smacks the back of Milliken's head. "He's outside, you moron. The Scottish jackass is sitting outside sunning himself while you're in here quivering like a scared mouse."
