Treasure

by Helen Brenna

  “Don’t,” Jake said, thrusting out his hand, “bring Sam into this.” At the mention of his younger brother, the pain in his foot turned to all out throbbing.

  Now it was Harold’s turn to sigh. “I miss him as much as you, Jake, but you’d better hose down the fire in your belly, or it’s going to burn right through you and everybody else in its path.” He picked up his phone, dialed an internal extension and said, “Come on in here and bring your stuff.”

  “You’ve already hired somebody?” Jake asked.

  “Three days ago.”

  “Great.” Jake ran his hands over the stubble on his cheeks. “Just great.”

  If Sam were here, he’d have old Harold sweet-talked out of this archaeologist nonsense in the time it took to form a simple hitch knot. Sam had been the charmer in the family. Charismatic and easygoing, men, women, young and old, had followed him around like puppies eager for a scratch behind the ears. He’d been the star, the risk-taker and, although it had been unspoken, the one expected to find the Concha.

  Jake, on the other hand, had always been OEI’s backbone. A responsible, if not boring, workaholic by most people’s standards, he was known for his calculated precision and clocking long, hard hours. And that was before the accident. Since then, no one seemed to understand the forces driving him. He worked hard…so what? The way he saw it, he merely did what he said he was going to do, and said what was on his mind, straight up, no embellishments, no sugarcoating.

  With Jake, you always knew where you stood. With Sam, you’d have liked standing where he put you.

  Sam. Oh, Sam.

  A soft tapping sounded on the door, yanking Jake back from his thoughts. The archaeologist in question walked into the office, carrying an armload of oversized charts and other documents.

  “Annie, come on in.” Harold stood and smiled in a fatherly kind of way, surprising Jake. Harold never smiled at anyone. Except Jake’s mother and occasionally Claire, Sam’s widow. “Jake Rawlings, meet Dr. Annie Miller.” The old man’s gruff voice mellowed a notch.

  “Hello, Jake.” She reshuffled her load and extended a hand.

  Jake considered ignoring her. There was no point in making nicey-nice. OEI couldn’t afford her salary let alone the time she’d cost them. But then base-level manners took over, and he shook her hand.

  When she turned to Harold, Jake took the opportunity to size her up. Mousy-brown, shoulder-length hair. Tortoiseshell reading glasses perched on the end of her nose. Short-sleeved white linen shirt and black pants. No earrings, no necklace. Only a barely noticeable silver bracelet on her right wrist and a serviceable watch on her left.

  Annie Miller, hell. Annie Hall was more like it. Except for those lips. They belonged on a Victoria’s Secret model. As for the rest of her, he couldn’t tell exactly what form hid beneath the baggy clothing, but with the way she moved, the way the fabric slipped over her skin, he had the distinct impression she’d be a killer in a bikini. With all those hormones in such close quarters, no doubt she’d wreak havoc aboard his boat.

  Harold cleared his throat and said, “While Annie was a curator at the Field Museum in Chicago—”

  “The Field Museum?” Jake snapped his head back toward Harold. “What do they have to do with marine exploration?”

  “I know it isn’t the typical route—”

  “Not typical? That place’s about as far away from marine life as an archaeologist can get.” The last thing Jake needed was an inexperienced woman on his boat during hurricane season. “Harold, we need to talk about this. In private.”

  “Anything you need to say can be said in front of Annie.”

  Jake hesitated. “Find someone else.”

  “Dr. Miller’s perfect for your crew. She has degrees in both marine archaeology and Spanish history.”

  “I don’t care if she can hold her breath under water for ten minutes a shot,” Jake said. “Give me a week and I’ll find an experienced archaeologist.”

  “No, you won’t. Not with this kind of research.”

  Annie dropped her armload onto Harold’s desk. “Can I say something?”

  “No!” They both turned on her in unison.

  “Look!” She faced Jake. “I have no problem with making my employment provisional. Give me two weeks. If I don’t succeed in enhancing your operations within that time frame, you can deliver me to the nearest island, and I’ll secure my own way home.”

  Damn. She not only looked the stuffy museum curator part, she talked it. In spite of himself, he gave her credit for standing her ground.

  “That’s reasonable, isn’t it?” she asked.

  Whoever said he was reasonable?

  “Jake…” Harold prompted.

  “Fine, Harold. You want to throw Annie Hall here into the shark’s den, I’m not saving her. Just remember it was your idea.”

  “Annie,” Harold said. “Show Jake what you showed me the other day.”

  She spread maps and charts on top of Harold’s desk. “There were six ships in the Concha’s flotilla, and all except the Concha have been found within this vicinity.” She leaned over and pointed at a spot near the Florida coast. “You’ve been performing magnetometric surveys in a ten-mile radius surrounding this area. Correct?”

  He walked to the desk and stood next to her, close enough to feel the heat emanating from her pale skin. At this very moment Jake’s four crews sat idle in the harbor, waiting for him. “If you got a point, make it.”

  Turning toward him, she rested her hands on her hips, as femininely defiant a gesture as he’d ever seen. “You haven’t located the Concha because it didn’t sink with the rest of the flotilla. You’re off the mark in excess of a hundred miles—”

  “Impossible,” he interrupted. “Historical eyewitness accounts state that all six ships, including the Concha, went down in 1622 in a hurricane off the coast of Florida.”

  “If you’d give me a minute, I could explain.”

  Jake closed his eyes for a moment and used every ounce of his badly worn patience to speak calmly. “The combined experience involved in laying out this search adds up to more than one hundred and fifty years. Harold here was in the treasure-hunting business before Jacques Cousteau invented scuba equipment. What makes you think you know better?”

  “Research.”

  Dang, but she riled him. “That the thing ya’ll do with books and them things called computers?”

  “Jake…” Harold cautioned.

  Jake folded his arms across his chest. “Look, Dr. Annie, research only goes so far, then you’re forced to rely on actual diving experience. Quirky stuff about past wrecks you’ve found. Ocean currents and past storms. The fact the Concha carried a significantly heavier load accounts for why we haven’t found it closer to the other five ships. That alone wouldn’t take it out of this search area.”

  “What if the eyewitnesses were wrong?” Her calm green eyes turned animated. Cute little dimples carved excitement onto her cheeks.

  She’d gone from frumpy Annie Hall to energized beauty in seconds. He flashed a look at Harold to see if the old man noticed the change. No reaction. Jake had to have imagined it.

  “It was a hurricane,” she continued. “They couldn’t see clearly. They saw masses of wood and sails floundering in high winds. In order to appease the Spanish salvage officials, the eyewitnesses told them exactly what they wanted to hear. That the six ships from Veracruz were still together when the hurricane hit.”

  “Your archaeologist is jumping to conclusions, Harold. Time-consuming, expensive ones.”

  “She has her doctorate in Spanish history.” Harold rested his chin in his hands. “Hear her out.”

  “The Concha’s captain was a man named Molinero,” Annie continued. “By all accounts he was a maverick. A man with his own agenda. And a man in dire financial straits. I have copies of letters he sent to his wife back in Spain, explaining he had plans to rectify everything.

  “He knows he’ll be traveling during hurricane
season. He knows his ship is carrying more treasure than any in Spanish history. He also knows if he makes it back to Spain when no one else in the flotilla does, he gets rewarded. Handsomely. Then again, maybe he planned on hijacking the ship himself. I don’t really know. But if that isn’t enough,” she said, her refined features turning suddenly serious, all trace of her earlier enthusiasm immediately dissipating, “there’s always the curse of the Santidad Cross.”

  Jake had never considered himself superstitious. Still, more than once he’d wondered if their inability to find the Concha had anything to do with that cross. Since the day the ship had left the port of Veracruz hundreds of years ago, supposedly with the Santidad Cross aboard, it’d been rumored a curse would forever follow the cross, the Concha and its entire flotilla. Some natives had even claimed the entire country of Spain would go down with that curse.

  “You don’t honestly believe that crap?” he said, frowning.

  “Whether I believe or not is immaterial.” Her eyes remained carefully shuttered. “What matters is what Molinero thought. If he gave any credence at all to the curse, it may have affected his course of action. He could easily have broken from the flotilla and taken cover from the high winds on the leeward side of any of these islands.” She pointed to the Bahamas.

  “None of these islands would have afforded much cover from a hurricane.”

  “I have research substantiating the possibility.” She pointed at the stack of papers she’d set on Harold’s desk. “I have copies of documents claiming the Concha sunk with its entire flotilla. They’re sketchy and ambiguous. I also have copies of eyewitness accounts claiming a ship the approximate size and design of the Concha was seen near Andros Island in the Bahamas.”

  Jake glanced at the pile of papers and wondered what a Chicago Field Museum curator was doing with this level of maritime research. It didn’t make sense. He reached for the top paper.

  In an oddly protective gesture, she put her hand over it. “Don’t worry. It’s all here.”

  “Mighty big stack of research. You didn’t put that together in the last three days.”

  She shrugged. “I’ve been contemplating this for some time.”

  “How long?”

  “Long enough.”

  Man, she didn’t give much away. “Okay. Let’s assume you’re right. Andros is still the biggest island in the Bahamas. We could spend years surveying the outlying areas. And if the Concha fell off the reef on the east side, into the Tongue of the Ocean, forget it. There’s no point in looking. We’d never find it.”

  “Based on historical accounts, I believe the ship stayed on the island’s north side and away from the Tongue. I’ve narrowed our search to the most probable wreck spots. Harold had one of your pilots fly out there and take aerial surveys. I think we should check out these sites, starting with this one.” She pointed at a spot on the photographs.

  Jake eyed the location. Even if he had time to pour over her research in order to argue her logic, he couldn’t dispute the possibility in the aerials. “You’ve looked at all of this, Harold? Read all of her research?”

  “Only some of it. It would take me weeks to go through all this. Besides, what she says makes sense.”

  “It’s already August,” Jake argued. “If this turns out to be a wild-goose chase, I’ll never have time to finish our surveys. Another year goes by without finding the Concha.”

  “You check out Andros,” Harold said. “I’ll send out the other three survey ships to pick up where you left off.” Sighing heavily, he leaned way back in his chair. “I can’t help thinking this is a gamble worth taking.”

  Jake could almost hear Sam’s deep, lazy voice urging him on. Go for it, man. What have you got to lose?

  Dr. Annie turned toward him. “How about you, Jake?”

  He stuffed his hands into his shorts’ pockets and fiddled with the seventeenth-century gold coin he carried everywhere. His first real find, the coin had always seemed to help him center and refocus his priorities. Turning the coin over and over between his fingers, he contemplated the aerials and the stack of research she’d accumulated. The idea of a landlocked museum curator putting together pieces of a puzzle that had stumped hundreds of men for hundreds of years was absurd.

  She had a secret. He glanced at her face. Eyes that sparkled with mischief. Features that grew prettier every time he looked at them. Most likely, she was another amateur treasure hunter with big dreams who’d somehow managed to tow old Harold along in her wake.

  A stranger, an archaeologist, a woman. And those lips… With her fair skin they stood out like fire coral against white Aruba sand. He’d be crazy to bring her onto his boat. Then again, for a chance at the Concha, he’d be crazy not to.

  The coin warmed in his hand. This one was for Dad. And Sam. “When can you be ready to head out?”

  CHAPTER TWO

  ANNIE MET Jake’s gaze, scraping together as much nerve as she could muster. False bravado was better than no bravado at all. “I’m ready now. Everything I need is in my car.”

  The atmosphere in Harold’s office charged with the static of Jake’s unspoken questions. Mistrust churned in those dark brown eyes of his like a summer storm brewing across a calm lagoon. He knew she was keeping something from him. Too bad.

  She needed OEI, the most respected treasure-hunting firm in the industry, and Jake was their main man. If she told him the whole truth, he’d never take her to Andros Island. She wouldn’t be able to face her fears, squash those puny little buggers once and for all, and put the past to rest so she could go back to Chicago, back where she belonged, where everything would finally be right with her life. A real life. Not some immature, treasure-hunting, thrill-seeking, travel-the-high-seas kind of life.

  Besides, Jake Rawlings would get what he wanted. He’d find his precious Concha. What was left of it.

  “Like that. You’re all ready to go.” He narrowed his eyes. “A little on the anxious side, aren’t we?”

  He had no idea.

  “Jake, don’t you think you and the crew could use a break?” Harold cut in. “Maybe a few nights of shore leave?”

  “We don’t have time. If the Concha’s at Andros, I want at it before we get too deep into hurricane season.” Jake turned back to Annie. “You’ll be allowed one bag for personal belongings. You got any kitty cats or boyfriends slinking around, you better have already made arrangements.”

  Boyfriends. Yeah, right. “No problem. Anything else, Captain Ahab?”

  “As a matter of fact, there is. Anyone else know about your theory on the Concha?”

  “No.”

  “Not back in Chicago?” Harold asked. “You’re sure?”

  “Positive.”

  There was no one back in Chicago, not since Aaron had died. There was no one of significance anywhere. Even when she’d made the monumental decision to take a sabbatical from work, she’d had no one to tell except a couple of coworkers. She had no close friends. She leased anything she didn’t have to buy. She couldn’t bring herself to settle into a house and had moved to a different apartment almost every year for the past ten years. She still didn’t have a regular dentist, for Pete’s sake.

  All these years she’d been able to convince herself she simply appreciated variety. Until that box of Aztec artifacts came across her desk, until Aaron had been killed, and the truth hit her square in the face. Now that she knew what she had to do, everything would be different. She’d begun to crave a sense of permanence as if her body had been long deprived of an essential nutrient. And she was going to get that stability, by golly. Come hell or high tide.

  “Except for telling my sister-in-law, Claire,” Jake continued, “this information doesn’t leave this room.” He pointed to the stack of documents on Harold’s desk. “Do you need these to find the Concha?”

  “No—”

  “They stay here with Harold.”

  That definitely wasn’t a good idea. What if Harold decided to take a more serious look a
t them? Although some of it was legitimate, the majority was gobbledygook. She’d had to bring something to make it appear as if she’d spent years compiling her theory. “I’d prefer leaving them in my car on the way out. I did, after all, expend a great deal of effort—”

  “Look, Dr. Annie. There are modern-day pirates all over Miami. Spies. Bugs and phone taps. Sabotage. You name it, it’s out there. Last month Mitch Westburne stole the Anémona practically right out from under my nose. A loose mouth on anyone involved in this and, with stakes as high as the Concha, we’ll have every treasure hunter from here to China, including Westburne, descending on the Bahamas.”

  “I’ll keep them in my office safe,” Harold offered.

  “Fine,” she agreed. Arguing would only draw further attention to the papers.

  Jake grabbed the aerials off Harold’s desk. “I’ll keep these with me.”

  She nodded.

  “Let’s transfer your stuff to my truck. I’ll take you to the pier.” Jake headed for the door. “I’m giving this two weeks, Harold. If we find it, I’ll radio in to have you send out the salvage vessel. If we don’t, I’ll be rejoining the other survey ships.”

  “Deal. And Jake…” Harold stood, looking almost as though he might come out from behind his desk. “If the tropical storm intensifies, your mother and I will feel a lot better if you and Claire are back here long before it hits.”

  Jake said over his shoulder, “Tell her we’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t push it. The Concha’s waited four hundred years. It can wait another season.”

  “OEI can’t.” Jake took off down the hall.

  “Thanks for giving me a shot at this.” She beamed at Harold.

  “I don’t know if you should be thanking me yet. You might want my head in another few weeks.” He laughed. “Better get a move on. I wouldn’t put it past him to leave without you.”

  With that, she practically ran to keep up with Jake and his long, determined strides as he bolted down four flights of steps. That was when she noticed his slight limp and the scar running from below the hemline of his khaki shorts down the length of his calf, only to disappear beneath his socks. For a man with that kind of injury, he sure covered a lot of ground.