Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Out of the frying pan, into the fire.
Or boat, ocean, as it were. Val surfaced as soon as he could no longer hear the boat engines. He needed to conserve his oxygen.
He spat out his regulator again and used some of the precious oxygen to partially inflate his vest so he could float and rest as he thought through his options.
He was a good swimmer, but he couldn’t swim back to the marina. And frankly, he didn’t want to. He was pissed. That shit had taken all of his research, his fucking map. And for what? A few hundred bucks in his wallet and a couple of credit cards. And his phone. Shit! That was going to be a pain in his ass.
He pictured his map. Now that he knew Dimitri couldn’t be trusted, he had to get to that reef. And, he reasoned, the reef was a popular diving spot, he’d be more likely to run into someone there, get a ride.
Val righted himself and checked the compass on the diving watch on his wrist. A few quick calculations told him he could be at the reef in thirty minutes. Better get moving. He struck out with strong strokes, his anger fueling him.
12
JAMI WAS still looking over her notes when Illeana joined her, setting a platter of sandwiches down on the table in front of her.
“So, this does not look like a pleasure trip, yes?” Jami looked at the papers, notes, and maps spread out all over the table.
“That obvious, huh?”
Illeana nodded. “Yes, you look like you’re studying for a test, actually.”
She pushed the platter toward Jami. “Here, have a sandwich and tell me what we’re looking for.”
Jami munched on a ham sandwich while she explained.
“I almost don’t know where to start. I’ll jump in, but not without warning you, this is all going to sound a little crazy.” Illeana was undeterred and chose her own sandwich while she gestured for Jami to begin.
Jami watched Illeana’s face. “OK, let me see. My sister and her friends have discovered that my father was killed because he was looking for a dagger. This dagger was supposedly cursed by a Spanish princess in the sixteenth century. Apparently, she also cursed a chalice and a pendant at the same time. Now, I can tell from the look on your face what you’re about to say, and let me tell you, I completely agree. It’s crazy! But what I can tell you for sure is that my sister and her friend, Hart, spent three days in Spain trying to find this dagger. What they found was a monk who was being poisoned, some sort of crazy Indiana Jones chick working for some guy out there, whose name we don’t know but with plenty of money, who threatened me and our friends to convince Remi to give him the dagger. And, to make sure she understood he wasn’t messing, he had someone hurt our friend Aubrie. They ran him off the road and broke his leg.
“Then, once they were back in Colorado, safe and sound, we heard a similar story from another couple, someone who knows our friend, an FBI agent, David. They, Cam and Sebastian, had a similar experience, only in Mexico and with the chalice. But I mean, people were killed. This guy is not screwing around. Anyway, the pendant is the only piece left. So, I’m going to find it.”
“And why are you searching alone? Wouldn’t your friends help you? Your sister?”
“Oh, they definitely would’ve helped. They would’ve helped so much they wouldn’t have let me come.”
“But you are, surely you are in charge of what you do?”
“Well, I never felt like I was, I guess that was the problem. There was a situation when I was younger. I don’t want to get into it now, but my sister is very overprotective of me. I love her, don’t get me wrong, but I need to do something on my own…something to prove that I could do this, and I didn’t need anyone’s help or coddling or protection.
“So, I was thinking about it and I think I figured out what happened to the pendant. The story here—” she pointed to a photocopy of a newspaper article “—mentions a hurricane that swept through this area, and this one here specifically mentions an airplane that was flying from Madrid to Athens that never arrived. A search was conducted but was cut short due to another storm that came in and the rescue efforts that had to be set up because of the hurricane.”
“So, here—” she indicated a line on the map “—is the route the plane was supposed be taking, and here—” she indicated a star with a circle around it on the same map “—is the last known location of the airplane.”
“But this is what I’m really proud of.” Jami pulled forward another piece of paper, and slid it in front of Illeana, who raised a questioning eyebrow. “This is a letter from a history professor who had friends visiting him when they discovered a painting in a monastery featuring a woman wearing a pendant that looked exactly like the one his friend was wearing. The woman in the painting was a Spanish princess. His friends left to continue their vacation to Athens.”
Illeana appeared thoughtful for a few minutes, finished the last bite of her sandwich, and started brushing the crumbs off her lap. “OK. I don’t know about all that other stuff, but I believe that necklace could be on that plane. We’re about twenty minutes out, by the way. Ready for a dive?”
Jami flushed with pleasure. “Yes!”
Illeana smiled and turned when Jami cleared her throat. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For believing me. You don’t even know me.”
Illeana flashed her smile again. “I don’t have any reason not to believe you. Now, let’s get you ready.”
Thirty minutes later, Illeana had run though everything again, and Jami thought she even remembered what almost everything was called. She was sitting on the edge of the boat, getting ready to start putting on the diving equipment when something caught her eye. She removed her sunglasses and cupped her hand over her eyes for shade; was that…a person?
Jami shouted for Illeana, who turned swiftly from the pile of equipment.
She stood, that was definitely a person! No boat in sight, and they looked like they were floating.
Oh God, what if they were dead?
Jami looked at Illeana, who was next to her at the railing now. “I’m going in, keep an eye on us.”
“Wait, I’ll go.”
Jami had already kicked off her flip-flops. She adjusted the strap of her one piece and stepped over the rail, balancing on the lip of the boat and holding on to the rail with one hand.
“Nope, I can do this.”
No way could she let someone drown. And she could definitely do this.
Before Illeana could protest again Jami had executed a perfect dive, and was now knifing though the water with strong, sure strokes.
As Jami got closer, she realized it was a man, based on size. His hair was obscuring his face but at least his was on his back, maybe he was alive.
Treading water next to him she said, “Hello?”
The man started, then submerged, immediately popping back up, spluttering.
“Jesus, you scared the fuck out of me.”
“I scared you? Were you sleeping? Out here in—wait, Val?”
He swept his hair off his face and grinned at her. “Well, aren’t you a sight? What the hell are you doing out here?”
“I tell you what. Let’s catch up once we have you in the boat, hmmm? Can you swim?”
“Yep, not dead yet.”
She gestured for him to go first, and he didn’t argue. Illeana helped haul him up, and he dove on the sandwiches and bottled water on the table before he even finished taking off his gear.
Illeana and Jami gave him a few minutes, and Jami was asking Illeana about taking him back to the marina when Val interrupted them.
He was seated at the table, the copy of the Spaniard’s letter in his hand. “Oh, no fucking way. You’re stuck with me now, gorgeous.”
Jami had been about to ask him how he was, and what had happened, but she instantly felt her hackles rise at his words. What was it about this guy? Normally she would have shrugged and gone with the flow. But Val? He made her want to push back, argue. Fi
ght.
She bit her tongue for a moment then chose her words carefully.
“Look, I don’t know what the hell your problem is, but I chartered this boat for a reason, I have things to do.”
“I had plans too, and they didn’t include being left to drown in the middle of the Aegean Sea. The fact that I was, tells me I’m on to something. And this—” he waved the letter as he stood from the table “—tells me you and I might be looking for the same thing.”
Jami had had her mouth open to protest but that last comment stopped her cold.
“How in the world is that possible?”
“I have no idea, but you and I should sit down and talk about this. If we are looking for the same thing, we could help each other out.”
“You mean I could help you out. I wasn’t stranded. What happened to you, anyway? How long were you out here?”
Val waved his other hand dismissively. “Just about an hour or so, no big deal.” He stepped forward.
Illeana was standing next to Jami, her arms crossed, brow furrowed. Stefano was still up front somewhere. Jami narrowed her eyes and backed up a step.
Val stopped moving and opened his empty hand, holding it up as if to settle her.
“What is a big deal, is that I’m out here looking for a plane that crashed in 1936.” He waved the letter again. “This fucking plane.”
She didn’t want to spend two days on a boat with Val. That was asking for trouble, she knew it. Besides, if they were looking for the same thing, how would they decide who actually got it if they found it?
Her thoughts must have shown on her face, because Val’s expression changed as well.
Illeana chimed in, “How about you two eat, I’ll get more food, and you figure out what you want to do.” She moved towards the galley, but Jami followed her, stopping at the doorway that led down the steps.
“Wait. Don’t leave me alone with him!” she hissed, trying to keep her voice down.
Illeana’s dark brows waggled meaningfully. “Why not? He is H-O-T hot, and he nearly drowned and doesn’t seem to care, so this must be important to him. Besides, if we take you back, we waste a whole day. Someone else has this boat chartered after you. And if he’s right and someone stole the other boat, we’re going to need it. We have insurance, but do you know how long it takes to replace a boat out here? Anyway, what harm can lunch and a chat do?”
Jami frowned at the mischievous grin on the other woman’s face as she moved down the stairs. Turning, she found Val seated at the table again, poring over her map. What the heck was she going to do now?
“Don’t hover. Come here, tell me what this is.” He looked up at her, saw her frown. “Please.”
She was still hesitating. She had come so far on her own. She was torn, she wanted to do this by herself, but she also wanted to know what he was doing here, if he was here for the same thing.
He pushed his chair back a bit. “Let me tell you a story.”
He’d removed the rest of his diving gear and was sitting there in his swim trunks, dry now in the heat of the day. The tattoo on his left arm a set of swirling symbols, nothing she recognized, but it was striking. She’d never thought tattoos were sexy, but on him…it made her want to know what it meant, what it meant to him. His eyes were sincere, silver and grey, with a dark grey edge that made them pop. He was tan, barefoot, and mostly naked. He looked delicious.
She startled herself at that thought. She needed a distraction.
“OK. Tell me a story.” She held up a hand. “Now don’t get all excited, I’m not agreeing to anything else. We’ll talk, then I’ll decide.”
Suddenly very aware that she was only wearing a one-piece swimsuit, Jami pull a towel off the top of the stack by the door and wrapped it around her waist.
Val gulped down the rest of his bottle of water, screwed the cap back on and set it aside.
Jami took a seat on the opposite side of the table. The awning was providing soothing shade and there was a gorgeous breeze off the water. If her stomach hadn’t been a bundle of nerves, she would’ve thought she was on vacation.
“A few days ago, I was cleaning out my mother’s desk, making sure the lawyer had everything he needed.” At the question on Jami’s face his eyes clouded for a moment. “She passed away in a car accident. Recently.”
She opened her mouth to say something sympathetic, but he continued before she had a chance.
“I found something she’d been working on. She was an actress when I was younger, but she stopped a long time ago and began writing screenplays. She even had a couple of them made into movies, but mostly she fixed other people’s screenplays. Made decent money. Anyway, at first, I thought it was research for something she was writing but once I sat down to look at it all, I realized that all of this research had to do with my family. There were notes about a Spanish princess in the sixteenth century and some kind of curse. The newspaper article that had been printed when this plane crashed. Some of my mother’s personal notes where she had written down remembering her mother wearing a necklace. She didn’t have any pictures of her wearing it, but she did sketch a few drawings of it.”
“At the bottom of one of the drawings she had written a note, it took me a little while to figure it out, she had really bad handwriting.” He laughed, but it sounded more wistful than joyous to her. Her hand twitched with the instinct to rest it on his, comfort him. “Anyway, it said find the necklace, break the curse.”
He had kept his gaze on her face as he spoke, watching her. She alternated between meeting his eyes and staring out at the water. Something about the way he looked at her felt, well, deep. As though he wasn’t just seeing the expression on her face, as though he was reading her mind.
“So, curse or no curse, I plan to find that necklace. It was the last thing she was working on; it was important to her. I don’t—” He broke off, moving his eyes to the gentle swell of turquoise water. “Anyway, that’s why I’m here.”
“But it doesn’t explain why someone dumped me off my boat and took off.” He turned those eyes back to hers. “Your turn.”
Jami nodded to Illeana as she set down more sandwiches and tall glasses of iced tea. The young woman smiled at them, and when she moved behind Val to head back down the smile turned naughty as she pointed to his bare back and mouthed a ‘wow’.
Pressing her lips together to keep from snickering at her antics, Jami shook her head at her and looked away. Geez. It was hard enough to concentrate without all that. Besides, she’d already noticed.
Well, what did she have to lose, really? They couldn’t go back without wasting an entire day. And he did know how to dive.
What on earth was she going to tell him?
13
VAL WATCHED as Jami pulled in a deep breath, she seemed to be fortifying herself. Damned if he was having a hard time figuring her out, one minute she was defiant and in his face, and the other she seemed afraid to meet his eyes.
“Well, as you can see here, I have a lot of the same information that you have, at least it sounds like it. Crazy Spanish princess, jealous of her big sister, cursed a chalice, a dagger, and a pendant to get rid of her so she could marry prince of France instead and take over the Spanish throne.
“There was a huge gap in the information that we had, between the prince stealing the pendant and sending it somewhere, and now. The other two items, the chalice and the dagger,” she rested her hand on the stack of papers to her left, “were actually turning up in newspaper articles and things like that, weird stories about the items being somehow involved in people getting hurt or dying. Like you said, believing that the curse is real would be crazy, after what we’ve learned, I have to tell you—some very smart people are convinced.”
“And you? What do you think?”
Jami paused. “I don’t want to believe, it feels, I don’t know…” She turned away from him, aimed the rest of her sentence the sea. “Almost like it makes other things possible, opens too many doors.”
“I get that. And who is this ‘we’ you referred to?”
Jami frowned. “My sister and a few others have most of the research right now. My dad was actually looking for the dagger when he was killed in a car accident. Only now—” she pushed away from the table, getting agitated and feeling as though she needed to pace “—now it looks like he was killed for his research on the dagger. Just in the last two weeks my sister and a friend of mine have almost died. She actually ended up finding the dagger but had to give it up to save Hart.”
She waved away his curious look at this time. “I’ll explain all the people in the places later, right now what’s important is that a lot of people I consider really smart believe in this curse. And some wacko out there who seems to have unlimited resources also believes in, and is willing to kill to get all three artefacts. So, now he has the dagger and the chalice—”
“Wait, he has the chalice too?”
“Yes, that’s a whole separate story, but a friend of the family is an FBI agent and another agent he knows recently went through a whole situation of her own with the chalice in Mexico.”
“So, what does this crazy guy want these things for, anyway? Is he trying to sell them?”
Jami was still pacing, and the towel around her waist loosened. Absentmindedly, she adjusted it, never slowing down.
As crazy as all the stuff was that she was saying, he found himself staring at the corner of the towel that she had tucked into the portion that was wrapped around her waist. If it slipped a little bit more, he’d get to see those amazing legs again.
Dammit, pay attention!
“—so based on that, we’re pretty sure he’s crazy. Whether or not the curse is real, he believes that he can do some kind of ritual with these items and I don’t know what, channel their power somehow? Anyway, we don’t know what the ritual is for, but we do know that he thinks he needs to sacrifice someone.”
Whoa, wait a minute.
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