by Cherry Adair
“Sometimes sex is sex. Sometimes sex is making love,” he murmured, stroking a hand lazily down her rib cage. “And sometimes it’s heat and flash and absolute perfection.”
“You did all the work, and I reaped all the rewards.”
“As I said. Perfection.”
She smiled. “Did you guys get the door open?” she asked, lazily combing her fingers through his hair as his head lay against her breast. She was going to be wearing the marks of these damn stone stairs all the way down her back for weeks to come. She didn’t care, and she curved her hand around his prickly jaw to hold him against her.
Jonah shook his head. “Almost. We left all the crap up there. Wanna see if we can do it?”
“Three of you gave it your best shot, with God only knows how much equipment. Are you saying it’s like handing someone a jar to open after you’ve done most of the work?”
“Exactly. Come on.” He shifted to turn on the lantern, making her squint into the light. Naked, he held out his hand. “Let’s give it our best shot.”
Sitting up, she glanced around for her swimsuit. “If the door’s been there for thousands of years unopened, what makes you think we have a snowball’s chance in hell of opening it now? You’d better get dressed. Who knows what’s up there.” Picking up her swimsuit, she turned it right-side out and put her feet through the leg openings.
“Won’t know until we try it, will we? Damn, I hate to see that go.”
Callie stood so she could yank the suit up all the way, covering her breasts. Not that it made much difference to Jonah, who knelt several steps down. He just leaned in and closed his teeth gently over her nipple. Callie put her hand to his forehead and gave a little push. “Behave.”
Jonah smiled wickedly. “Come on, pretend it’s an adventure.”
“It is an adventure.” Callie couldn’t help laughing. “Are you referring to that”—she pointed to his still-erect penis—“or trying to open the door?”
“Let’s go tackle the door.”
“What’s with you being naked?”
“I like being naked.”
“You’re an exhibitionist. I like being naked only when I’m behind a closed, locked door.” She pulled the straps over her shoulders. No easy task with Jonah “helping” her. Batting his hands away, she gave him a stern look. “Come on, Cutter, get dressed. You don’t want to get that snagged when we open the door, do you?”
“No, ma’am.” He pulled on his shorts, then spread his hands for her approval.
With a rueful shake of her head, Callie applauded. She approved the dark hair running down the center of his impressive six-pack. She approved the still-hard bulge behind the black fabric, and she approved the feel of his satiny skin beneath her fingers. She pulled her hands away. “Are we doing this or going back?”
“Don’t you want to see if we can get inside?”
“I suppose,” she told him unenthusiastically. “But I’m imagining a lot of thousand-year-old bones, or giant spiders, so don’t be surprised if I scream like a girl if we do somehow manage to get in.” She had her doubts about subterranean spiders, but the ancient bones were a real possibility. She struggled into her wet suit and zipped up the front.
“Don’t worry.” Jonah mimicked her actions, making her grin as he struggled to tuck a rock-hard erection into the neoprene. “I’ll be manly and protect you. Shit, this is uncomfortable.”
“It will go back to normal soon. Be brave.” Callie hesitated as they climbed to the top of the short flight. “Wait. It’s pitch dark in there, we won’t be able to see anything. Why don’t we come back another time?” she asked hopefully.
“We left our equipment close by. There are several more lanterns and a couple of flashlights.”
“Let’s try ‘Open Sesame,’” Callie suggested as they got up to the promontory ledge overlooking the water. Grateful they’d worn water shoes under their fins, she nevertheless eased her way cautiously over the rough lava rock.
Jonah took her hand, his warm fingers closing over hers, making her realize she was spooked for no scientific reason. “We tried everything short of a blasting cap the other day.” His voice echoed slightly inside the tube as they moved through the darkness preceded by a stream of golden light from the lantern.
“Well, I have no intention of being inside this mountain when an explosion goes off! So let’s act accordingl—Look!” Callie lowered her voice to a whisper. “The door’s open!”
Eighteen
It wasn’t open open, but it was about a quarter inch ajar. Jonah immediately turned off the light, plunging them into darkness. Callie suppressed the aforementioned girlie shriek. There weren’t any old bones or bodies to be seen. Not yet anyway.
She didn’t have a wild imagination. She thought like a scientist. But an ancient door that shouldn’t be there, in an inaccessible place, that none of them had opened? Yeah, she gave a second and fifth thought to three-thousand-year-old ghosts and long-lived magicians. Nonsense. But she rubbed the goose bumps on her upper arms that even the wet suit couldn’t keep at bay.
No light penetrated the darkness, but whatever was beyond the door was a lighter shade of dark than where they stood. Jonah bent to take something out of the pack, leaning against the rock wall. The rustling sounded loud as he rummaged around inside.
Callie’s eyes opened wide, and her whisper barely carried to Jonah who only stood two feet away. “A gun?”
“We didn’t crack this,” he whispered back, his voice barely reaching her ears. “Someone opened it.”
She clutched his strong, steely forearm. “I don’t want to see inside that badly.”
“Then wait for me outside.”
“Are you insane, Cutter? You’re not going in there alone!” Callie’s heart raced, and her eyes felt dry and gritty from straining to see in the darkness.
This was a monumentally bad freaking idea. Really bad.
“Scared? Seriously, go back, I’ll check out what’s inside and come get you. Five minutes tops.”
“What else do you have in there that I can use as a weapon?” Not that she’d shoot at a giant spider, or a ghost, but she’d feel a hell of a lot better with a weapon, or at least a very solid spider-killing shoe.
“Know how to shoot?”
“Probably. Not terribly accurately,” she told him grimly. “But enough to point and squeeze the trigger.”
“Take this. Safety’s off.” He closed her fingers around the butt of the gun, warm from his hand. Then bent down. “I have another one. And for God’s sake, don’t shoot either yourself or me. Stay behind me, and don’t turn the flashlight on until I tell you.”
Callie gripped the gun so tightly she felt the ridges on the grip bite into her palm. “Hurry up, the suspense is killing me.”
* * *
Hoping she didn’t accidentally shoot him in the back, Jonah used his foot to ease open the heavy door.
No creaking, no grinding. The door opened inward, quiet despite its size and weight. He felt Callie behind him, and to the right. Heart pounding in anticipation, he stepped inside where the temperature was significantly warmer than the lava tube at their backs. The air smelled a little stale, but not dangerous. Nothing to indicate the place hadn’t been used in centuries.
Fascinating.
He turned on the flashlight, staffing the beam of light around the room.
What the fuck?
The room was about eighty feet deep by fifty wide, and filled with machinery. Big machines. A shitload of institutional, green-painted control boards and electronic panels. Two long rows of them. The place looked like the cockpit of the Starship Enterprise circa 1960, complete with hokey pull levers, round dials, and little blinking arrays of lights.
In the corner a hulking machine looked like an industrial-sized generator. The beam lit several flat control panels—antiques from the 1950s or ’60s, but nothing over a century old and certainly not thousands of years.
The large, currently dark, flat-sc
reen monitors above the multidial control panels were the only thing that looked this decade.
Callie crowded against his side and stage-whispered, “What is this place?”
“Control room of some kind.” Jonah scanned the area with the flashlight, searching for a light switch. “Let’s see if we can get a better look. Ah. There.” One across the room, next to a closed door; another close to where they stood. Callie flipped the switch. For a moment the fluorescent overheads flickered, popped, sizzled, then bathed the area in brilliant white light.
Callie grabbed his upper arm, “Holy crap!”
“You can say that again.” They walked farther inside what appeared to be a well-ordered, well-maintained mechanical control room.
Callie ran a finger over a metal surface with hundreds of buttons and dials. She held up the digit for his inspection. “No dust.”
“Yeah, got that. This place is getting regular use—Let’s see what this puppy controls.” He started flicking switches.
“You’re such a guy.”
“What can I say?” The monitors lit up like the Fourth of July. Pop. Pop. Pop.
Callie stepped forward to look at a live-feed underwater shot of a broken wall, the pillars indicating it had been some sort of temple. She stared narrow-eyed at the fifty-inch monitor. “I don’t recognize this area, do you?”
“No.”
“What do you think the light indicates?” She pointed to a small, blinking red light on the ground. It appeared to indicate something in, on, or near one of the mosaic carpets.
Jonah shrugged. “There’s a light on this one as well.” This time the tiny, blinking red dot looked as if it was embedded in a crumbling wall.
Together, they moved down the row. There were twenty-five of the fifty-inch monitors in all, each showing a live feed. It was going to take a while.
“Shit!” The shot of Stormchaser was clearly from the air. He turned a few dials and the view zoomed out, so his ship was a white pinpoint in the vast deep blue of the Mediterranean. He tuned the dial the opposite direction. The zoom-in was so clear he saw Maura and Gayle on the bridge. Close enough to see Gayle’s mouth move as she talked. Creepy as hell.
“And double holy shit.” Callie came to stand beside him. “This is a satellite view.”
As with the other views, the image of Stormchaser was a live feed. “Yeah,” he muttered, tone and thoughts fucking grim. He toggled a switch and the voices of the two women filled the room as they discussed the day’s business.
“Dear God.” Callie’s voice was appalled. “Not only are they watching us, they can hear what we’re saying? Who are these people?”
Jonah frowned. “Hell if I know. At a guess I’d say Spanos. But this equipment has been here for at least forty or fifty years, which predates him.”
“He could’ve taken over from someone?” Callie’s expression grew angry as she patted the equipment. “Who, I have no idea. The monitors and some of the electronics look new, and recent, so he could’ve taken over and added to it all.”
Jonah glared at the screens. “Possible. But what is it they’re monitoring? Ships probably don’t anchor at exactly that spot every day. They didn’t know we were coming, so how did they know to put a satellite in the air to watch us? That’s not something you do quickly or without preparation.”
“Ji Li.” Callie pointed to the activity on the next monitor. Vaughn and Leslie loading the basket with coins ready to take on board. They used sign language to communicate.
So they’d known about the ancient junk all along. “This place is why our comms don’t work,” Jonah said furiously. “They’re blocking our transmissions. Fucking hell.”
“Jonah—take a look at this.” She indicated a flat, four-inch silver dial with words inscribed on it in Greek. “This says seismos.”
He gave the dial a dubious look. “Are you sure those aren’t scratches?”
“It’s Greek. Seismos. Quake. I’m positive.”
“These sons of bitches are responsible for the quake we had on the first dive day.”
Leaning over the console, Jonah toggled the aspect on the screen above it to a view of an area he was familiar with. It was a long way from where his divers worked. Once he zeroed in on a line of broken pillars, he slowly turned the dial. The image shimmied. Sand whipped around the pillars to swirl in the surrounding water.
She grabbed his wrist. “Stop!”
Callie’s admonishment came seconds too late. The pillars toppled in slow motion like dominoes, dropping to the ocean floor in clouds of sand to obscure their view. With a curse, Jonah turned the dial back to neutral.
“Dear God. This makes absolutely no sense at all. Earthquakes, and elaborate surveillance—to what purpose?”
Jonah cupped the back of his head. “It makes crazy sense if your friend Dr. Ebert is right, and the men of Fire Island are the Guardians the ancient text talked about.”
“Maybe. It explains the stairs, anyway. But I can’t see those old guys in scuba gear swimming in here to man all this, can you?” Callie waved a hand at the monitors.
“Hard to imagine anyone lugging tons and tons of equipment up those stairs.”
“Which means—”
“There must be another way in and out,” Jonah finished for her.
“I’m sure there is.” She glanced around. “It’s not obvious, though.”
“There must be one—ah, shit. Check this out.” He indicated the area they’d left half an hour ago, the place where Saul had encountered the quicksand. A tiny red light blinked on a tiled floor nearby. “They manipulated the sand when Saul walked over this area.”
“I don’t think you can manipulate—What am I saying?” Callie threw up her free hand. “Of course they could do any damn weird thing they like. What do you think this is?”
A monitor showed a grid, similar to the ones used by treasure hunters to mark underwater locations. This grid was filled with hundreds of winking red dots. “Whatever these represent, there are hundreds of them. And see these three?”
Callie leaned in closer. “They’re on board Stormchaser! Something Anndra left behind? Or are they somehow monitoring the artifacts we have on board? Okay, as weird and disturbing as that is, I get it. But we have hundreds of artifacts on board now. Why just three blinking lights?”
“The lights mark something specific.”
“Sure, but what?”
“Particular artifacts? Locations of … who knows.” He inspected a reel-to-reel recording device he’d only seen in old movies. When he turned it on, nothing happened. “Broken.”
“Here’s one that looks like it’s out of a sci-fi movie,” Callie pointed with the gun she still held. “See if this works.”
“Is the safety on?”
She raised a brow. “Of course. Doesn’t mean I’m putting it down. Who knows who or what will show up any minute?”
Same shit Jonah was thinking, which was why he, too, carried his gun as they explored. He inspected the recording device. Dates, in chronological order, were written in tiny, spidery script on pieces of tape affixed to the metal background of the main panel beside the recorder. He ran a finger down the list until he got to the day Stormchaser dropped anchor.
“Your first day.” He smiled as he saw the next date. “God, you were a hard-ass.”
“Past tense?”
He slid his hand down the sweet curve of her butt, felt the flex of toned muscles beneath the neoprene. It was warmer in the control room than it had been out near the water, but her nipples were still hard peaks beneath the thin black material. It wouldn’t take but a second to peel it off her again, hoist her shapely ass up onto the console, and plunge into her wet heat. He smiled as he crowded her against the edge of the console. “I’m very fond of your hard as—”
“Are you on board?” an unfamiliar man asked.
“Just got here.” Callie’s voice. A brief hesitation. “Are you okay, you sound … strained.”
“Who were you tal
king to?” Jonah withdrew his stroking fingers from Callie’s ass.
“Just a shitty connection,” the man responded before Callie answered Jonah’s question. “I’m good, honey. Are you going to be all right doing this?”
“I told you I would.” She sounded smug as hell, making Jonah’s ire rise to throb behind his eyeballs. “I don’t know how you figured it out it, Ry. But you were right to send me. Jonah Cutter claims he’s found the Lost City of Atlantis. If it’s true, I’ll tie it up in a bow and deliver it to you on a silver platter.”
* * *
“Ry?” Her friend’s name dripped like an icicle from Jonah’s lips. “You work for Rydell Case.”
Not a question. The bitter tone coupled with his grim expression made Callie’s heart ache and her throat swell shut. The immediate retreat of his heated hand from her bottom left her colder and emptier than she’d thought possible. But deep down she knew the hand wasn’t the only thing Jonah had already instantly withdrawn from her.
“He’s my brother-in-law.”
His skin pulled tightly over his cheekbones. “That wasn’t the question. But I suppose that is an answer. So your brother-in-law sent you to spy on me. What’s his plan? To stake his own claim on my city, with your insider knowledge?”
She met the intense blue of Jonah’s eyes. The anger and hurt she saw there were cold enough to slice straight through to her heart. There was no point in prevaricating. “Yes.”
“What was the plan? Throw it in my face? Walk away?”
She lifted her chin. Even that small movement was painful, and Callie felt as though she’d shatter any minute. She swallowed painfully. “Walk away.”
“So finding Atlantis takes second place to the loyalty you have for your brother-in-law? And fuck-all loyalty to me, is that it?”
“Things have changed.”
“Really?” The look of contempt in Jonah’s eyes almost brought Callie to her knees as he said coldly, “I’m dying to hear how. Changed because now you’re convinced that is Atlantis out there, and the stakes are considerably higher than if it was just some ancient city we’d found? I wouldn’t know about your betrayal until after the fact, would I? No fucking clue what you’d done. I would’ve lain in bed at night wondering how what we had could have gone so drastically wrong. Why my treasure and my city were ripped off right under my fucking nose, and how I lost the girl as well. A pretty shitty triple whammy, wouldn’t you say?”