by Rob Jones
Jodie kicked back in her chair and stared up at the screen. Beside her, Lewis was already taking out his phone ready to take notes. Blanco was slipping on his glasses. When he snapped the case shut, Quinn jumped. “Must you make so much noise?”
Jodie sniffed and cracked open a can of Coke. “Must you whine so much?”
She shared a high five with Blanco and they laughed, but the room grew deathly silent when they saw Gates’s first slide.
“Am I seeing what I think I’m seeing?” Hunter said.
“Yes, and I don’t need to tell you anything you see in here is highly classified.”
“Just as well,” Quinn mumbled. “Because that shit right there’s going to scare the hell out of millions of people. Stock up on toilet paper, right?”
“Thanks for your contribution, Agent Mosley.”
“More than welcome, chief.”
Hunter was rubbing his temples. “I know I’m not on the team, but is this for real?”
“It’s for real, Dr Hunter,” Gates said. “I only ever do real.”
“Yeah, I’m starting to get that.”
*
Later that afternoon, Hunter wandered out onto the balcony of Amy’s Georgetown apartment. Like most buildings in the nation’s capital, its height was governed by a legal restriction put in place in 1910, designed to preserve the city’s unique layout.
Still shocked by what he had seen earlier back in HARPA headquarters, Hunter sipped from a cold bottle of beer and watched the sun sink down in the southwest. As its fading rays shone on the copper-blue surface of the Potomac, a cool breeze blew up off the street and rippled softly through the potted ferns and boxwoods on the balcony.
Amy joined him, setting her phone down on the iron balcony table by the sliding doors.
“That was Sal.”
“Yeah?”
“He’s taking the others out for pizza. He raves about this new place on Pennsylvania Avenue.”
“Sounds good.”
“I think so. Even Quinn’s looking forward to it, apparently. You want to go?”
He shrugged. “Hey, it’s your apartment, your town and your country and that puts me well and truly in your hands.”
“I’m paying.”
He smiled. “I don’t care what they say about you, Amy. I think you’re all right.”
She gave him a play slap and laughed.
“What?”
“You’ve been in my hands since the day we met, Max.”
“Maybe,” he said. “And I can take some handling, I know.”
“Tell me about it. It feels like a hell of a lot longer ago than one week that we met.”
Hunter sipped his drink and leaned on the balcony. He was relaxing for the first time since Juliette had told him to fly out to Rorschach’s private complex in the Swiss Alps, and it felt good. Realizing how easy it felt to be in her company, he turned and gave her a cautious smile.
“We got the when sorted out, but I still need to clarify the where.”
“Sorry?”
“Where did we meet?” Hunter said.
She leaned on the balcony beside him and gave him a confused look. “I’m not following you.”
“Did we meet in Switzerland or Cuba?” he asked.
“I met you in Switzerland,” she said without hesitation.
“But I met Dr Kirsten Anderson in Switzerland,” he said. “I never met Special Agent Amy Fox until she introduced herself to me on a plane in Cuban airspace.”
She smiled sweetly. “O, what a tangled web we weave when we first practise to deceive.”
“Ah, I know this one – Shakespeare!”
“Sorry, but wrong. Walter Scott.”
“Damn, they really need to widen the syllabus at Sandhurst. But seriously – where did we meet, Switzerland or Cuba?”
“You choose.” She leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “But whichever one you pick, I’m just glad we met at all.”
“Me too.”
After a long pause, she sighed. “And?”
“And what?”
“What’s it to be? Are you joining the team and coming with HARPA on Jim’s next mission, or do I have to find another archaeologist as stupid as you?”
“And as brave,” he said. “I’m stupid and brave, and I still don’t know what Amy stands for.”
A long silence. “It stands for Amadea,” she said reluctantly. “Dad was a big fan of Mozart, so after realizing there was no female version of Wolfgang, he had the idea of using the female form of Amadeus…Yeah, I know.”
“It’s better than Maximilian.”
She looked up at him, glad the moment of revealing her name was over. “That’s what Max is short for? I presumed Maxwell.”
“Everyone does.”
“Any reason?”
“Not that she ever told me, but knowing Mum, it was after some old king somewhere.”
“I like it. And by the way, I’m still waiting for an answer to my question. Are you joining HARPA or not?”
Hunter took a long, slow sip of the beer and looked out across the twilight at the rushing river. “I think you already know the answer to that.” Raising his bottle to her, he grinned mischievously. “Here’s to HARPA.”
“To HARPA,” she said, and they chinked their bottles and toasted the new team as the sun slid down into the water. “Something tells me the time of our lives has only just begun.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
This brand new series starring the Hunter crew was a lot of fun to write, especially getting to know some fresh and very different characters. I hope it will be able to deliver some first-class archaeological and historical action stories to run alongside my other series. Certainly, there are one or two surprises regarding the Hunter Files that should provide some excellent adventure for us all in the near future, so stay tuned!
The next release will likely be The Doomsday Cipher (Avalon Adventure 3), and this is slated for February 2020. Following that, Joe Hawke is scheduled to return in March 2020 in his fifteenth adventure, Shadow of the Apocalypse. This novel will bring to a dramatic close the current arc in the Joe Hawke world and launch them on another epic adventure with some great new ideas I can’t wait to share with you.
If you enjoyed the first Hunter File and want to see more, as with any of my other books, please take a few seconds to leave a short review. They are the lifeblood of indie authors and if you want to support me and my writing, and see more of it, then please smash that review out!
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rob Jones has published twenty-one Kindle bestsellers, including the Joe Hawke series, the Avalon Adventures, the Cairo Sloane series, the Raiders series and the Harry Bane Thriller series. He has also recently published The Fifth Grave, a romantic suspense thriller starring DCI Tom Jacob, set in England’s beautiful Wiltshire Downs. The Atlantis Covenant is the first novel in The Hunter Files, a brand-new series of fast-paced archaeological adventure thrillers.
If you would like to stay up to date with new releases and other information from Rob Jones, simply click on the following link to his website and join his newsletter.
Other Books by Rob Jones:
The Hunter Files
The Atlantis Covenant (Hunter Files #1)
The Joe Hawke Series
The Vault of Poseidon (Joe Hawke #1)
Thunder God (Joe Hawke #2)
The Tomb of Eternity (Joe Hawke #3)
The Curse of Medusa (Joe Hawke #4)
Valhalla Gold (Joe Hawke #5)
The Aztec Prophecy (Joe Hawke #6)
The Secret of Atlantis (Joe Hawke #7)
The Lost City (Joe Hawke #8)
The Sword of Fire (Joe Hawke #9)
The King’s Tomb (Joe Hawke #10)
Land of the Gods (Joe Hawke #11)
The Orpheus Legacy (Joe Hawke #12)
Hell’s Inferno (Joe Hawke #13)
Day of the Dead (Joe Hawke #14)
The Cairo Sloane Series
/> Plagues of the Seven Angels (Cairo Sloane #1)
The Avalon Adventures
The Hunt for Shambhala (An Avalon Adventure #1)
Treasure of Babylon (An Avalon Adventure #2)
The Raiders Series
The Raiders (The Raiders #1)
The Harry Bane Thriller Series
The Armageddon Protocol (A Harry Bane Thriller #1)
The DCI Jacob Mystery Series
The Fifth Grave (A DCI Jacob Mystery)
COMING SOON
The Doomsday Cipher (Avalon Adventure #3)
Visit Rob on the links below for all the latest news and information:
Email: [email protected]
Twitter: @AuthorRobJones
Facebook: www.facebook.com/RobJonesNovels
Website: www.robjonesnovels.com
Copyright © 2019 by Rob Jones
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THE ATLANTIS COVENANT is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places and occurrences are entirely fictional products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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