The Uncharted Series Omnibus

by Keely Brooke Keith

  “He understands because he was in my class last year.” Connor grinned and set the razor back in the toolbox then looped the bundles of harvested wire into a circle, tucking the spiny ends under. He dropped the wire bundle on a heap of others and brushed his hands together. “Although I don’t recall mentioning solar technology last year.”

  Everett smiled and shook his head. “You didn’t. I may not be in school any more, but Bethany is and she tells me everything.”

  Connor looked at Levi with his eyes widened and pointed at Everett. “Are you going to take that? You gave me grief when you found out I was in love with Lydia. You know this guy is in love with Bethany, right?”

  Levi shrugged. “I can’t be mad at Everett if he’s in love with my sister.”

  Connor lifted a palm with incredulity. “And why not?”

  “Because I’m married to his sister.” Levi grinned.

  Everett squared his shoulders and smirked. “Besides, why fight the inevitable?”

  Connor leaned his elbows onto his knees and looked at Everett. “Don’t get too cocky—half of the guys in Bethany’s class are in love with her, too.”

  Everett’s grin disappeared. “Are they prepared to fight for her?”

  “Bethany knows you are what’s best for her, Everett.” Levi realized he had no real evidence for his assumption, but he did not want Everett riled up. “And if she forgets, I’ll remind her.”

  Connor chuckled. “In my experience, the surest way to get a Colburn to resist you is to say you know what’s best for them.”

  Levi could think of several examples confirming Connor’s observation. Regardless, if his baby sister was going to marry anyone, Levi wanted it to be Everett Foster. “Bethany is different from Lydia and me. She is… naïve. Everett knows how to take care of her.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.” Connor stood to leave. “But I suggest you let her come to that conclusion herself.”

  Levi stepped to the door but kept his head down so as not to make contact with the low ceiling. He gave Everett a hearty smack on the back as he passed. “Let’s go play cards, brother.”

  * * *

  Levi filed behind the two other men as they approached the main house. When his foot crossed the threshold, he felt the cold wind at his back and the warmth from the gray leaf log burning in the fireplace inside. He closed the door and leaned his hand against it while he wiped his boots on the mat. Then he looked at his wife. Mandy dried a dinner plate and handed it to Bethany, who was stacking dishes in the cupboard. The women giggled as they whispered to each other, and he briefly wondered if Bethany was getting a womanly education.

  Levi shrugged out of his coat and hung it on a hook on the wall as he watched Mandy walked to the sink. She glanced at him and curved her lips in a playful smile as she pulled the dishtowel through her fingers. He grabbed the towel out of her hands, tossed it to the sink, and pulled her into a kiss.

  “Whoa—haven’t you two got a house to do that in?” Connor mocked embarrassment at their display of affection as he stepped to the kitchen table and dropped a deck of cards onto its surface.

  Everett feigned a scowl and took a seat at the head of the table. “That’s my sister he is manhandling.” He laid a bag of wooden marbles by the oil lamp in the center of the table. Mandy rolled her eyes at Everett’s comment.

  Lydia grinned as she carried a stack of small bowls to the table. “Let them be. I think it’s sweet—they’ve only been married two months.” She set one bowl on the table in front of each player then sat beside Connor. He put his arm over the back of her chair.

  “Thank you, Lydia.” Levi followed Mandy as she sauntered to the table.

  Bethany sat at the opposite end of the table from Everett and curled her long legs beneath her in the chair. “May I play too?”

  Levi nodded at her then sat at the table. He heard his father speaking to Isabella in the parlor. John came through the doorway into the kitchen. Looking at his father, Levi motioned to the game being spread on table. “Join us for a round, Father.”

  John stopped near the table and surveyed the game. He put both hands on Levi’s shoulders. “Thank you, but I have some reading to do.” He gave Levi’s shoulders a squeeze then went to the sink and filled a glass with water before returning to the parlor.

  Connor picked up the card deck and began to shuffle. As the thick paper cards swished together between his hands, Connor turned to Bethany. “So, you think you’re ready play with the big kids, huh?”

  Isabella—still in the parlor—cleared her throat. “You all play fair with my Bethany.”

  Everyone looked at Bethany and her eyes grew wide. She glanced at their faces then lifted her chin. “It’s just a game of bluff. I play it with my friends all the time. How different could it be to play with you?”

  Mandy leaned close to Bethany. “Connor taught us to play bluff by adding a draw, so it isn’t a simple game of chance any more. You have to know the possible winning hands in the deck and consider your odds. And right when you think you have it figured out—the other players will try to bluff you.”

  “Fine. I’m ready.” Bethany shifted her feet to the floor and sat up straight. She was doing her best to appear mature—even Levi was almost convinced.

  Connor began to deal the cards and glanced at Everett. “All right—she says she’s ready.”

  Bethany made a face at Connor then her eyes moved to Everett. While Connor dealt the cards, Everett and Bethany smiled at each other. Mandy nudged Levi beneath the table and he knew she noticed them, too. Levi enjoyed the new ability to understand Mandy’s steady conveyance of nonverbal messages; he considered it one of the many gifts of marriage.

  One at a time, the cards flew from Connor’s hands into small piles in front of each player. “Full deck with a draw.”

  Levi examined the cards he was dealt then held them close to his body as he studied the other players. Lydia appeared to be doing math in her head. She dropped two cards to the table. Connor dealt her two more and looked at Bethany. Levi almost instructed her to stop smiling at her cards but decided she would have to learn how to conceal her emotions on her own.

  Levi watched Mandy before it was her turn. She had one eyebrow arched a degree and her chin was slightly elevated as she looked at her cards. When Connor turned his attention to her, she dropped her chin and blinked sheepishly. Levi saw her mouth moving as she asked for one card, but her timidity was a ruse. She glanced up at him when it was his turn. Levi left his expression blank and dropped three cards in front of Connor. Connor sifted three new cards from the deck then turned his face toward Everett.

  Everett glanced at the cards in his hand and then grinned at Bethany. His dark hair swooped down over his forehead. He gave his head a small jerk to the side sending the hair away from his face. “I like my cards, thank you.”

  “Great. The dealer takes two.” Connor dealt himself two cards. “Who’s in?”

  “I fold,” Lydia said as she laid her cards on the table. Her empty hand immediately covered her belly.

  Levi controlled his countenance as he studied each player. One at a time, they took the wooden marbles from the bowl in front of them and dropped the pieces into the pot in the center of the table. Bethany bit her lip and said she was in. Mandy expressed no emotion as she added her pieces to the pot. Levi’s cards could easily be beaten, but he stayed in the game anyway. Everett smiled at Bethany as he placed his bet and sent all eyes to her end of the table, taking the focus off himself.

  “The dealer is in.” Connor matched, exuding his usual unflinching confidence.

  Levi watched Bethany. He could tell she believed the outward pretenses, not understanding the true intentions of the players. He wanted to spare her the deception, even though it was only a game. Bethany looked intimidated and folded. After the cards were revealed, she protested the unfairness of the game.

  Levi gathered her discarded play from the table and held up her four queens. “This is proof you must
learn how to discern a man’s bluff and, more importantly, how to control your expressions.”

  Mandy pulled a long curl through her fingertips. “You brother is right, Bethany. If you learn to control your expressions you will have an advantage. In fact, I once heard that reading a man’s bluff requires skill, but—” Mandy turned to Levi and flashed a wicked grin. “—attempting to gauge a woman’s bluff requires clairvoyance.”

  Epilogue

  Justin Mercer glanced up from the technical manual he was reading as Volt moved through the narrow doorway and onto the bridge of the icebreaker. Volt carried a dusty portable disc player in one hand and a cluster of archaic compact discs in the other. He held it all up and grinned. “Look at the treasures I found in one of the cabins.”

  Mercer watched him insert the plug into an electrical outlet behind the chart table. Volt slipped a shiny vintage disc into the player and touched a button. The blaring sound of rock music filled the bridge of the nuclear-powered ship. Volt drew his lips into his mouth and mimed a guitar solo.

  Mercer shook his head, dismissing Volt’s animation, and stood from the plush leather chair where he had spent hours reading about ship operations. He stretched his neck deeply to one side then to the other. The motion produced a pleasurable popping sound in both directions. He stepped to the front window while holding the thick technical manual in the crook of his arm. Looking down at the open sea, he watched the white caps of the waves disappear as the purloined icebreaker plowed through the liquid tundra. The gray of the austral winter sky in the middle of the South Atlantic was only a minute shade lighter than the gray of the endless ocean. The unchanging light outside the icebreaker signified neither morning nor afternoon, but only day. He checked his wristwatch—still set to Falkland Island Time—to confirm his suspicion that he had indeed been reading all day. Soon the long night would begin.

  He looked away from the white caps on the ocean below and glanced at Volt, who was bobbing his head to the beat of the music as he checked the readings on a control panel. After only three days out of port, Mercer knew every instrument on the bridge of the ship and was sure he could handle the operations by himself, but he preferred leaving the work to Volt while he focused on memorizing the rest of the ship’s maintenance procedures.

  Mercer carried the thick book he had finished reading to a stack of technical manuals piled on the floor. He exchanged it for the manual that included electrical engineering specifications, then he reached to the music player on the chart table and touched a knob, decreasing the music’s volume. “I don’t know how you can think with that noise.”

  Volt gave a quick glance back at him and moved to another instrument panel. He drew a notebook from his back pocket and a pencil from behind his ear, then he began writing notes. The ship’s radar display blinked and caught Mercer’s eye. Both men stepped close to the screen to check it.

  Volt pressed a button to reset the display. “It was just a glitch.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah, mate. No one is even looking for us.” Volt went back to his notes. “There’s nothing to worry about.”

  Mercer disagreed—he could think of plenty of things to worry about. He worried they would be chased down by the Royal Navy before he made it to the uncharted land. He worried they would be pirated by some rogue group desperate for supplies. He worried the lack of communications to the Southern Hemisphere only made them believe there was no military activity, lulling them into a false sense of peace, and they could be caught in crossfire. And—considering Volt’s notorious career—he worried there could be an enemy on the high seas bent on revenge.

  He watched Volt scribble instrument readings into the little notebook. The man was adept at smothering every possible concern Mercer voiced, which only made him more inclined to voice them. It had been a long time since Mercer had met anyone who provided him with any kind of reassurance, and he found himself thirsty for verbal comfort regardless of topic. “We may have made it out of Port Stanley without being noticed, but I don’t want to bump into anyone else out here—unless it’s a boat full of beautiful women.”

  Volt tapped on the radar display screen. “Look, nothing but blue from here to Cape Town.”

  “We’re not heading to Cape Town.” Mercer envisioned the uncharted land located at the coordinates they were mere days from approaching. “Anyway, you’re wrong. There is something out there.”

  “Yeah, yeah, your land.” Volt laughed and then lowered his volume as the song on the music player ended. “Right, can’t forget about your land—green trees, limpid blue waterways and all that.”

  The sound of a cough came from one of the crewmen downstairs and echoed in the hallway outside the bridge. Mercer stepped back and closed the wood-paneled door. “I thought we left that plague in Port Stanley.”

  “He’s not sick.” Volt was quick to reply. “At least we better hope he’s not sick—he’s the only electrical engineer we’ve got.”

  Mercer sat back down in one of the two leather chairs on the bridge and held up the technical manual. “That’s why I’m doing my homework.”

  Volt nodded and plunked down in the other chair. He slid his hands along the leather arms of the chair until his fingers curled around their ends. When his hands were still, his leg began to bounce at the knee. He wouldn’t sit for long. Within seconds, Volt shot up and went back to the ship’s navigation system.

  The sound of coughing echoed again outside the bridge’s closed door. Mercer noticed the black of night as it cloaked the windows. He opened the cover of the technical manual and began to read.

  ###

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  Uncharted Inheritance

  Keely Brooke Keith

  Edenbrooke Press

  Uncharted Inheritance

  Copyright 2015 Keely Brooke Keith

  Published by Edenbrooke Press

  Nashville, Tennessee

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form. For inquiries and information, please contact the publisher at: edenbrookepress@gmail.com

  This book is a work of fiction. All characters, places, names, events are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any likeness to any events, locations, or persons, alive or otherwise, is entirely coincidental.

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Cover Designed by Najla Qamber Designs

  Edited by Dena Pruitt

  Interior Design by Edenbrooke Press

  For Rachel… someday

  Chapter One

  Bethany Colburn panted as she ran down the forest path away from the shore. Her heels sank into the loose sand between the fallen gray leaf twigs, and her legs burned from the weight of her boots. Ahead, a wisp of smoke rose from the chimney of her family’s home. She was almost there. The cramp in her side demanded she stop running, but shock compelled her forward.

  As she rounded the medical cottage and rushed toward the Colburn house, Connor stepped out the back door. She nearly ran into him and sucked in a breath. “You won’t believe what I saw at the shore! Come quickly!”

  Connor held up a hand, exuding the calm of a man used to her demonstrative announcements. “Slow down. Take a deep breath. Okay?”

  Bethany hummed an exhalation and hoped that proved the composure he requested. “Okay,” she replied, using his vernacular.

  Connor nodded. “What did you see?”

  “Some big metal thing from the outside world. I think it’s a machine. It
’s not like anything we have in the Land.”

  “A big metal thing? Does it look like the space debris we found last year?”

  “No.” She caught her breath, but her pulse was still pounding in her ears. “It’s old and rusted.”

  “Out here?” Connor pointed east.

  “No. Farther south—below the bluffs.”

  “On the shore?”

  “Yes, well, in the shallow caves below the bluffs. I went down there at low tide because I need potash to make the black glaze for all the orders I have at the pottery yard, and I went farther back into the clefs of the rock than I normally go and that’s where I saw it. It’s buried in the rock.” She bent to rub her aching calf muscle. “It’s in the sediment beneath the bluffs.”

  “An old, rusted machine?”

  “Yes, and it has a window and I think I saw bones inside it. Most of it is buried in the rock, but it’s huge whatever it is.”

  “Keep your voice down.” Connor patted the air as if that would allay her. “Show me where it is, but be cool about it.”

  “Cool?”

  He nodded then glanced at the road when a wagon passed by. After waving at the driver, Connor put his hand on Bethany’s back and shepherded her toward the path to the beach. “Stay calm so you don’t raise suspicion. If it’s been there awhile, we aren’t in any danger. Right?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Right, so be cool.” He looked behind them as they stepped onto the path toward the shore. “How far is it?”

  “About a mile.”

  “A mile? What did you say you were doing down there?”

  “I went at low tide to the caves where Mrs. Vestal and I get the minerals we use in pottery recipes, but the waves must have eroded more of the bluff since last time I was there. I couldn’t find potash in our normal spot, so I went back into the caves a bit and that’s when I saw it—”