by Cherry Adair
Kall and his sister also got to their feet. “Yes, that would be most agreeable. I am sorry to see you go, I’m sure we’ll meet again very soon. And if you don’t mind, I will accompany my sister to see what you discover at a more convenient time.”
“Sure. Both of you will be welcome when we have something to show off.”
“And I will give you my personal number and you may call here anytime.” Spanos handed Jonah a thick, cream business card. “I will be interested in knowing what progress you make with the sunken ship.”
“I’ll walk you out,” Anndra offered, tucking her hand into the crook of Jonah’s arm and effectively pressing her breast against his biceps. The heated scent of her spicy perfume drifted to him from her velvety cleavage, and her long hair brushed his chin.
“Perhaps I can do more than dinner,” she whispered once they were out of the line of sight of her brother. “Perhaps you would let me stay the night, no?”
God only knew, she was exactly the diversion he needed to keep his eyes, hands, and everything else away from Callie, but instead of feeling even a mild attraction, Jonah was slightly repulsed by her. Go figure.
Just when a man thought he’d have to search far and wide for a chance to relieve his pent-up frustration, an opportunity placed herself squarely in his lap. Odd then that his sudden windfall made him uncomfortable as hell.
He didn’t want the woman offering herself to him like a deli sandwich, and he couldn’t have the woman he wanted.
He was well and truly fucked.
Eight
Brody lugged over another tub filled with the muriatic solution to wash the coins they’d brought to the surface earlier. Callie, Leslie, and Brody had tagged and assigned ID numbers to this morning’s artifacts. They’d logged the DGPS coordinates, as well as bottom terrain and depth, then entered everything into the Cutter Salvage database. The squared centers were lined up to be photographed in individual, labeled clear-plastic bags before they packed them to ship.
Brody came up behind her, resting his hand on Callie’s shoulder. “Hungry?”
He smelled strongly of beer and mouthwash. She shifted out of reach, concentrating on the task at hand. Washing the silver and gold pieces from the junk’s storeroom was a mindless task. But there were a lot of them, and they’d be the first thing transported back to Cutter Cay in the morning. The rest of the artifacts would need days, if not weeks more processing so she could actually see what she had. The artifact with the gear was her top priority. She couldn’t wait to dig into it and uncover what centuries had hidden. “The sandwiches will hold me until dinner,” she said absently. Her hands moved independently from her mind, which was on what the object could possibly be.
Ji Li.
“I thought Jonah wanted you to work exclusively on Atlantis.” Brody leaned his hip on the table beside where Callie worked, watching her fill individual cups with the muriatic-acid-and-water solution to begin dissolving the concretion around the next batch of coins.
The room suddenly darkened as if someone had pulled a blind over the sunlight streaming through the window. She didn’t care for Brody, no matter how hard she tried to push aside old prejudices. “I get paid either way, and we don’t know what city that is. Not yet. And I enjoy exploring a shipwreck just as much as you guys do.”
She’d spent several hours diving the Ji Li with Leslie, and in turn Les had joined her nearby as she searched for artifacts from the city.
Callie found nothing nearly as exciting as the statue head and the gear—lump—but Leslie had handed her a shard of pottery she found, and Callie had it propped up on her worktable to admire the still-fresh colors. Now it was safely photographed and documented and out so she could enjoy it as she worked. The blue swirls and images of birds on the creamy background were a fragment of a vase, she thought. Part of some ancient someone’s daily life.
Now that she’d found some real, datable artifacts, she felt as though she was earning the exorbitant amount Jonah was paying her.
It was possible that the coins came from spillage from the Ji Li, but as encrusted as they were it was impossible to tell yet. The junk, for now, was far more orderly and concrete than some amorphous city that may or may not be the fabled Atlantis. Callie knew she’d go kicking and screaming until she had absolutely undeniable proof that the city was Atlantis.
Until she cleaned the rest of her artifacts, the coins and the broken piece of vase were precious finds and she was going to enjoy every moment she had with them.
“No city?” Brody raised a brow. “Roads, sewage systems, and courtyards? Even to my untrained eye that makes up, if not a city, a civilized town.”
“I didn’t say it isn’t a city. I’m still not convinced it’s Atlantis,” Callie pointed out, her gaze out the window at the unexplainable dusk. “Is that fog?” She rubbed her arms, suddenly chilled. It had been eighty degrees a few hours ago when they’d come back on board.
Brody twisted his mouth in disbelief, then turned to the window before looking back at her. “Yeah, it is. Thick, too.” He leaned his elbow on the sill, peering through the glass. “Holy crap, did you see that?”
“No. Was that lightning?” The crack of lightning snapped and she mentally counted, waiting for a clap of thunder, but it never came.
Looking concerned, Leslie joined him at the window. “Weird. Unusual for this time of year, isn’t it?”
“Unusual for the time of year, the time of day, and the temperature, sure.” Callie settled a coin in each container. “Brody, will you go ask the captain if there’s a weather front coming in? Maybe we should lock things down.” Suddenly the fog lit up with a bluish glow; this time, she did see it.
“Well, that answers the question. Electrical storm.” She carefully rinsed a silver coin with a worn edge.
Leslie stepped back from the window. “What if we get hit?”
Callie watched the jagged blue streaks light up the clouds crowding against the window. “Salt water is an excellent ground. I wouldn’t go on the top deck holding aloft a golf club, however,” she told the other two drily. “If you stay clear of the window you’ll be fine. It’s actually quite lovely.”
“I hope the guys get back soon.” Leslie perched on one of the long tables nearby. “I want to show them the lava tube cave and get Jonah’s take on those steps.”
Callie pulled off her gloves, tossing them near the plastic container. In her experience, storms like this one never lasted long. Beautiful, deadly if people lacked common sense—something Jonah Cutter had in spades. She wasn’t worried about them. Not really. Not a lot. Hardly at all.
She wished Jonah would get back; she didn’t like thinking of the guys out in a storm in the relatively small Riva. She slid off her stool. “Why don’t we talk to the captain—see on the weather station how big this thing is.”
“I like a good plan,” Brody said with alacrity. “Let’s all go and see what she has to tell us.”
In the few minutes it took to get to the wheelhouse, the white fog grew so thick Callie could see neither the stern nor prow of the ship. The flashes of light in the clouds grew more frequent and spectacular.
“Wow. Hi, Captain, ever see anything like this?” Callie asked as they walked in to see Maura and Gayle talking. It wasn’t a romantic chat if their posture was any indication.
The captain and first mate might be married, but Callie hadn’t seen Maura and Gayle display any overt romantic gestures beyond a look.
Maura frowned, pulled away from their discussion. “The only time I’ve seen fog like this was in San Francisco a couple of years ago, remember, Gay? It shouldn’t be here.”
“That was fog and low-lying stratus clouds,” Gayle pointed out, tapping the instruments as one would kick a car tire. “Lightning storms at sea are really rare,” she told Callie and the others. “Except when you’re in coastal water twenty or so miles from shore. This is a first for me, too. Let’s get Thanos up here to run some diagnostics when this is over. Hopefull
y all systems will return to full functionality. If things are wonky afterward, someone will have to go and get parts.”
“We have the backup generator if we need it,” Maura reminded her. “But let’s see how the storm plays out. This might only last an hour or three. Thanos is with Jonah and the guys, remember? Let me call Dell up here to see if he can figure out what’s wrong.” Dell Quist was both deckhand and second engineer.
The captain called him, then turned to lean against the table. “Wonky?” she repeated, a smile in her voice. “Is that your professional opinion as my first officer?” Maura’s pinkie brushed her wife’s for a second as their hands lay side by side on the mahogany table edge.
It was a sweet gesture that spoke volumes about the two women’s relationship.
“Look how dense it is. It’s as if we dropped off the end of the world,” Gayle observed.
“I’m more worried about the electrical component. It seems to be impacting our instruments,” Maura muttered. The fog pressed against the windows, obliterating everything beyond the glass. Streaks of condensation trailed rivulets down the windows, and blue bolts of light streaked like veins through the white outside.
Even though it was warm inside, Callie shivered, the small hairs raising up on her skin in reaction to the electrical energy circulating in the air. “It’s very horror movie, isn’t it?”
“Oh, please!” Leslie shuddered. “That just freaks me out more than I am already. My God, is it hot in here?”
Callie smiled. “Don’t lose it, this isn’t the Twilight Zone. It’s water vapor, not cement—Holy crap!” She jolted as electric blue light filled the room. The wheelhouse was plunged into semi-darkness as every light went out. Her ears buzzed.
“Hell, there go our instruments! The Carnegie curve?” Maura asked Gayle.
“Wrong time and place, but certainly seems like it.”
“What’s a curve?” Brody asked.
Maura tried to get the control panels back online, but the screen remained dark. She cursed under her breath then turned to face the others. “It’s the rhythm of the electrical heartbeat linked with the earth’s rotation, and the way thunderstorms build. But it usually occurs at around seven p.m. GMT when the earth’s atmosphere crescendos to an electrical peak across the globe. Right now it’s not damn well anywhere close to seven p.m., we are not twenty miles off the coast of California, and this fog shouldn’t be here. I have absolutely no explanation for this. I don’t like not knowing things.”
“As Callie said, we aren’t in some weird paranormal warp,” Gayle added. “It’s an electrical storm that will pass. Once it’s done, we’ll see where we are. Switch to auxiliary power, Captain?”
Maura shot her a smile. “Sure, go ahead.”
A second later the lights flickered on. But the instrument panels remained dark. Callie didn’t like the look of that.
“Have you heard from the guys?” she asked. The captain and first mate were cool, calm, and collected, but she had her doubts about Leslie. And Brody also looked spooked. She kept her voice calm, but knowing Jonah and the others were out there, in the relatively small Riva, worried her. A lot. “They have instruments on board, but can they return to Stormchaser blind, with only their instruments to guide them?” Callie wondered what would happen to the much smaller craft if their instruments went wonky, too.
“All four of them are excellent sailors,” the captain assured her. “And I’d trust my life to Jonah to get me out of any tight jam at sea. They’ll be fine.”
“It’ll blow over pretty fast, right?” Brody leaned over the controls to peer outside, as if his vision would part the fog and they’d see blue sky any minute.
“It came in fast,” Maura said. “Hopefully it’ll dissipate just as quickly.”
* * *
Day three. Everyone was restless, eager for the weather to get its shit together. Wasn’t happening. There didn’t look to be any break in the dense fog, or any abatement in the electrical storm, and they were stuck inside with no AC, no lights other than those hooked up to the generator, and no communications.
Jonah had hoped the fog would dissipate within hours of their return to Stormchaser three days ago. It had been no fun running blind. They’d hit the fog four miles off the coast of Fire Island. One moment it had been hot and sunny, not a cloud in the sky, the next they had zero visibility.
Far from dispersing within hours, it was just as thick and mystifying three days later.
Worse, the electrical storm shorted out all their instruments, leaving them functionally useless. Stormchaser was a literal sitting duck at sea. Without GPS and electronics to help them map the city or the wreck waiting down below, or to refill the tanks and gauge depth, all they could do was sit and wait. Riding out this oppressive pea-souper was like floating on the ocean inside a cotton-filled shoe box.
Jonah didn’t share with the others the captain and first officer’s concern that their instruments might not come back online when the storm did finally blow over. Someone was going to have to navigate through the fog, and communicate with the outside world.
He picked himself. The entire dive team had spent the day before processing coins, tagging and assigning identifications numbers in Callie’s lab while she soaked and chipped away a large clump of something mystifying. It was painstaking work weighing, measuring, documenting, and cleaning, but everyone participated despite the thin tempers.
They all wanted to get back under the water; there were things to see and be discovered. Jonah was intrigued by the description of the lava tube and stairs, and was just as eager as everyone else to go down and explore. But he didn’t want anyone outdoors or in the water until the weather changed.
Once the coins spent ten minutes in the acid bath, they were rinsed in water and ready for three or four days in the electrolysis tank, which required a low-voltage current provided by the generator.
Among them, and with Callie looking over shoulders, they processed all the coins they’d found while he was gone. There were several more steps in the process, but that wouldn’t come for days. The crew was restless now.
He strolled across the room, where Callie stood, hair piled in a neat, braided coil on top of her head, up off her neck, he supposed, in deference to the heat. As he came up behind her, Jonah was tempted to run his teeth along the delicate tendons of her nape, and taste the lightly tanned skin on her shoulders, which looked soft and silky. The smell of her damp, coconut-scented skin was like a drug. He shoved his fists in the front pockets of his shorts instead.
“Spanos has an extensive library of ancient documents,” he said quietly as he stepped up beside her. “I need to get somewhere out of this s—”
“Yes!”
Jonah smiled. Because just looking at her flushed cheeks, glowing with the heat, and the way her water-cool eyes lit up was enough to make a rock smile. “You don’t even know what I was going to suggest.” But whatever he suggested he knew yes would always be the correct answer.
“We’re going to Fire Island?”
“We’ll try there first,” he cautioned, not wanting to get her hopes up. The island was more than likely socked in just as they were. “If this weather extends that far, we might have to travel all the way to Crete.”
“I’m game.” She glanced behind him, where the coin cleaning was winding down. “What about the others?”
“They’re better off here. I have no idea what we’re going to encounter out there.” Not that he wanted to go back three days after being on the island, but the second he mentioned the ancient documents he suspected were in that dusty library back on Fire Island, Callie was going to be like a dog with a bone.
And damn it, it was an opportunity to be alone with her. No funny business, just … alone. So sue him.
Pulling off her gloves, she wiped her hands on a towel. “When do you want to go? Now?”
“Too late. The weather might clear tomorrow, which will be safer. Either way, we’ll go in the morning.”
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“Perfect. Then while we’re hanging around here with idle hands, start attaching these electrodes to those coins over there.”
Kallistrate Spanos had given Jonah his phone number. But the freakish electrical static in the air put paid to using the phones, and the radio didn’t work. Still, seeing as how Spanos had offered them hospitality to come and get their fresh food from the island, he wasn’t going to wait for an engraved invitation.
Hopefully when he and Callie showed up unannounced, he’d be just as generous with offering the use of his library.
* * *
“Callie and I are going to Fire Island to see if we can get some outside communications, and get some parts the captain thinks she’ll need when this blows over,” Jonah told the others the next morning after breakfast. They were sprawled on the deep sofas in the salon about to watch a movie on the giant screen thanks to the generator. That’s how bored they were.
Callie pushed to her feet. “Now?”
Watching her eat a slice of jam and toast for breakfast earlier had given Jonah a low-down ache that wasn’t going away. If watching a woman eating breakfast turned him on, his mind boggled at seeing any more of Callie than what her T-shirt and shorts exposed. Her hair was braided and hung in a bumpy, glossy rope down her back, neat and no-nonsense, except that the paintbrush tip of said braid almost reached her narrow waist, and seeing it made him think of crumpled sheets, hot sweaty skin, and a mile of silky dark hair wrapped around his body. He was almost tempted to take Anndra up on her offer. Almost.
“It’s as good a time as any,” he told the object of his fantasies. Diving would help. A huge ocean between them would help, physical activity would help, a fucking frontal lobotomy would help. Being on the ship blind and incapacitated did not help.