“Let’s not assume anything,” Callie said drily, but it was evident just how excited she was. She practically vibrated with excitement. Jonah was familiar with those vibrations from the inside.
“The volcano was clearly active at the time of the writings. They say that the people believed it would stay quiet if they made sacrifices and offerings to the gods.”
She picked up a sliced strawberry, then merely held it between her fingers as she spoke. “Ships from all over their world traded goods and services there. The city became corrupt with all the wealth and power. The gods were displeased, and to punish them spewed fire and flaming rain, shearing the city from the island, plunging it into the sea. The people tried to flee. Many did, but most perished in the ‘red tide.’ The epicenter of trade and commerce vanished overnight.”
“It isn’t an epicenter now, if Fire Island is what the texts refer to.” Saul thumbed behind him where Fire Island lay, a vague green-brown smudge in the far distance. “Odd that such a small dot in the Med would be so bustling in ancient times, when Crete is just a hop, skip, and a jump away and much larger.”
“Miguel was emphatic that the island referred to was Fire Island, and that it’s been protected by Guardians for thousands of years. The honor was passed down from father to son for centuries.”
“The old men are descendants of the Guardians?” Jonah mused, not altogether convinced about that part of Callie’s summary. “Maybe centuries ago, maybe. But now? What’s to protect on the island? A herd of sheep, an extinct volcano, and some scrub brush?”
“Flock. And maybe … What if…?” Callie seemed to gather her thoughts. “What if the Ji Li really did land on top of Atlantis? What if those old men are protecting not Fire Island, but the city even now?”
What if I really, really want to take you to bed again? Jonah thought, stunned that getting Callie naked again was of far more immediate importance than a city he’d spent six months researching and documenting. No, maybe not true, but his physical need for her was as addictive as a drug, and he could satisfy the craving for her now. Atlantis would be there in an hour.
Saul raised a brow, then addressed Callie directly. “You’re the authority who stated emphatically that no such place existed, aren’t you? Are you really saying you believe we’ve found Atlantis?”
This was exactly the reason Jonah had snatched her from beneath Rydell Case’s nose. When Case heard about this, as he most assuredly would, Jonah and his brothers would enjoy one-upping their nemesis. Hiring Callie was one of the best business decisions he’d ever made. Case should’ve upped the ante and paid her what she was worth. His loss.
Poker-faced, but far from casual, Callie shrugged. “I’m a scientist. I only believe what I see with my own eyes, and things that are confirmed twenty-seven times from Sunday. All of this new information, plus what we’ve already seen for ourselves, gives it a layer of credibility, yes.
“Fact: There is a city down there. Fact: The buildings and structures look to be from the correct time period; they have the markings and landmarks we’ve read about in various writings through the ages. Fact: The writing Jonah and I found on Fire Island seems to substantiate our findings according to another high-level authority on ancient texts.
“Are they making reference to what we believe is Atlantis? Were they written thousands of years ago?” She shrugged. “I have no idea. And yes, I have convincingly documented my disbelief that a real city called Atlantis ever existed anywhere other than as a myth or parable. But now…? We have fragments of ancient text that talk of circular canals, and enormous temples—”
Her gaze met Saul’s. “Yes, I think we very well might be sitting right over Atlantis, and those old men are here to make sure no one tampers with it.”
“I think you’re all taking these Guardians a little too seriously. They haven’t done anything to prevent us from diving. Don’t you think if something as significant as Atlantis was down there, they’d be doing more to get us out of here?” Leslie pointed out, holding out her mug for a refill. “Thanks, Randy. They can’t be too worried.”
Vaughn grabbed a homemade doughnut, broke it in half, and held it near his mouth as he said, “Maybe they don’t think we’ve gotten close enough.” He took a bite, powdering his T-shirt with white sugar.
“How much closer could we be?” Jonah pointed out, enjoying the hell out of the debate. “We’re anchored right over it. Maybe they don’t perceive us as a threat?”
“You’re not saying that you believe in magic, are you?” Callie’s smile made Jonah realize that she had the power to change the physiology of his every cell until it felt as though he had effervescence in his veins.
“I don’t. But it’s clear, even from the small section of pages we have, that the people on Fire Island did. Or perhaps still do.”
“I’m not exactly worried by a bunch of ancient men who use even more ancient donkeys as their only mode of transportation,” Vaughn said around a mouthful of doughnut. “That island is about as primitive as it can get. Shit. They didn’t come brandishing Uzis when they came on board the other day. How are they capable of protecting anything?”
“Hey, I want to believe that’s Atlantis down there,” Leslie added. “I really do. And maybe it is. But I’m not sure I buy that those old guys are protecting it. Protecting it from what, exactly? Everyone who lived there is long, long, looong gone. The city is already a hundred and fifty feet under the ocean; what else can happen to it?”
“Good point.” Jonah pushed away from the table. “But instead of sitting here debating, why don’t we suit up and go down and see what we can find to prove or disprove the writings?”
Vaughn rose, too. “I’m taking a crack at getting through that door. Anyone want to join me?”
More so now than for the months prior to this salvage, Jonah knew it with every fiber of his being: His city was Atlantis.
* * *
Jonah, Brody, and Vaughn gathered equipment to take with them. A lot of equipment. Men and their toys. Callie and Leslie shared a grin. Acetylene cutting torches, crowbars, and assorted heavy-duty salvage equipment raised the testosterone 150 percent.
Leslie spelled the divers, and Callie partnered Saul. There was no pretense that she gave a damn about Ji Li’s cargo. It was the city, and only the city, that interested her, especially now. And since the city was why Jonah had hired her in the first place, that’s what she focused on.
Her mind spun like a gerbil on a wheel hopped up on energy drinks and training for a triathlon. Sex—amazing sex—with Jonah was enough to short-circuit any red-blooded woman’s brain. Throw in the very real possibility that she was one of a small handful of people to stand on an Atlantean street in three thousand years, and she was giddy with excitement.
Older than the PMG, and older still than the Derveni papyrus, what they had, as little as it was, was sure to be the most important new evidence proving the existence of Atlantis to come to light. And if Miguel was correct, and he always was, they had evidence of Europe’s oldest surviving manuscript as the cherry on the top.
It boggled her mind that those arcane writings were just stuck on a dusty shelf in an old man’s home with full-blown sunlight allowed in the room and who knew how many years of accumulated dust. She had to go back there, the sooner the better, to convince them of the importance of the documents, and request she be allowed to preserve them.
But that was later. Now she focused on what she suspected had once been a large palace or perhaps the home of a very important man. Fully intact to her eyes, but in reality merely a hint of the foundation’s footprint, the ruins indicated a huge and impressive edifice. She could tell the approximate size and grandeur of the building by the rows of pillars and hints of graceful arches. Shattered sheets of marble, half buried by time and tides, fallen from the now gone walls of mud and brick, lay nearby.
Hidden partially beneath the marble sheathing, her flashlight illuminated a portion of an exquisite, ornately pieced mosaic tile floor, depicting people of obvious wealth, which gave her a tantalizing view of life in Atlantis.
“Can you hear me any better now?” she asked Saul, who was wrangling with the blower. While she preferred doing her work in silence, having the full-mask headset made communicating considerably easier than hand gestures. When it worked. But once again it was more static than conversation. Something still interfered with their communications devices as soon as they were underwater.
Since he didn’t answer, she presumed he couldn’t and swam over to tap his shoulder, indicating how she wanted the blower directed.
He gave her a thumbs-up, then dragged the tube where she wanted it. The partial mosaic floor lay inside what must’ve once been the wide front door. As the sand particles swirled and eddied, Callie flagged each item, then took pictures and made notes in her waterproof notebook.
As the blower exposed more, Callie held up a hand for Saul to pause so she could investigate something human-made protruding from the sand. The blower caused too much debris to hang in the water, obscuring her vision before it settled.
The slab revealed tantalizing bits of relief carvings, and the edge of a freestanding sculpture. She dug faster, Saul joining her. Possibly the pediment from above the front door?
From the pieces of various building she’d already uncovered, Callie recognized the style as First Empire Romantic.
She cleared sand with her hands, going as fast as good sense allowed. God, she couldn’t wait to see what it was. The more of the fragment was revealed, the more excited she became. A triangle—not a fragment at all—a huge slab with relievo rilievo, the background chiseled from the stone to reveal a relief sculpture of soldiers on horses. She was touching ancient history.
The tympanum was the triangular area inside the pediment. She’d found an intact, perfect, amazing pediment gable.
Reluctantly she stepped back, her breathing too fast, her heart rate accelerated with excitement. She was sucking up the air in her tank too quickly, shortening the time she could stay down in the water, exploring. Determined to stay as long as possible, she slowed her breath and forced her heart rate down.
She and Saul took photographs from every angle. Callie marked its exact location, then noted it in her book. Even though she knew they’d see it much better once it was aboard Stormchaser, she wanted to dig out the entire thing now. They’d need the crane for this …
She wanted to hurry. To get all the answers. To tell the world.
She also wanted to take her time, damn it. To keep it a secret for a little while longer. From Rydell. From the world.
If this city wasn’t Atlantis, then it was a close sister.
She couldn’t wait to show Jonah.
Jonah.
When had his opinion and excitement become as important to her as her own? When had she lost sight of the fact that Rydell was family?
Very soon she would have to decide which it was going to be.
She had to tell Ry.
And if she told Rydell, sooner than later, she’d have to tell Jonah about the promises she’d made.
He’d hate her.
Even snug in her insulated suit, Callie shivered.
Saul pointed to his watch. Yes, she knew it was time to head up. Callie held up two fingers for more time. He gave her the okay, and started securing the blower to an anchor so they could leave it where it was and not have it drift in the currents.
She got a few more pictures, loath to leave. Stroking her hand over the relief, she wondered whose eyes had last seem this, whose hands had carved the amazing details—
Thus far she’d managed to ignore the crackle in her ear from the malfunctioning headset, but Saul’s sharp cry cut through the static. Callie spun to see what had alarmed him.
Saul was waist-deep in the soft sand and sinking as she watched. His eyes behind his mask were huge, and regulator bubbles tumbled over one another indicating his fear and panic.
Quicksand underwater? Callie had never seen or heard of it. Perhaps he’d stepped over an opening to a building or chamber underneath and his weight had broken whatever barrier there was and he was being sucked down. Regardless, Saul was trapped and sinking fast.
“Arms up!” she instructed. With no way of knowing if he heard her or not, she mimed her words, waited for him to raise his arms before she swam over to the blower. She fought the tie down attached the end, then swam back, dragging the hose with her.
She’d only taken her eyes off him for a minute, ninety seconds at most, but now the sucking sand was chest-deep as he beat the surface with both hands, causing particles to swirl around him and his air bubbles to surge faster and faster as he panicked. She swam over to him and found herself caught in an ocean current she didn’t expect. It took all her strength to hover close enough to try to feed him the end of the blower.
The current swept it just out of reach.
She tapped her headset. “Jonah? Anyone? Can you hear me?” Her voice was calm, but inside she was starting to echo Saul’s panic. “SOS! Repeat SOS!”
Crackle was her only response.
Saul, mouth moving frantically, was now armpit-deep, hands in the air, eyes pleading, clearly terrified.
Callie dropped closer, relying on her buoyancy compensator vest to hold her aloft. She dared not touch the seafloor. The sand surrounding Saul looked the same in every direction. There was no indication how far afield the quicksand extended. Grabbing his hand, she hovered over his head, parallel to the dangerous ground, then closed his fingers around the edge of the blower.
His grip was white-knuckled. Callie gave him the okay sign, then shifted so she could grab his other flailing hand. Securing both hands around the end of the hose, she gripped her hands into fists and nodded, indicating for him to hold on for dear life and not let go. When he mouthed Hurry and she heard nothing through her headset, she indicated that she was going to activate the retract mechanism to have the blower pulled to the surface.
The grinding sound of the blower’s mechanics retracting filled her ears. Staying as close as she dared, Callie watched the sand fight to hold on to Saul.
He was now shoulder-deep.
If the blower didn’t tug him free right now, the strong drag of the sand on his arms could dislocate his shoulders. Worse, it would cause his fingers to release their grip.
Callie wrapped her fingers around his, squeezing as tightly as she could. The fingers on his right hand started to loosen. Tightening her two-handed hold on his, she pulled with all her strength, puny as hell underwater, with nothing to brace herself against for leverage.
For a moment she thought she’d lose him. But after a brief hesitation, the blower started dragging them up.
Her breath gusted out in a silvery stream of bubbles and a blast of fog inside her mask. As soon as half his body was free, Callie wrapped her legs around his waist from behind. Her legs were stronger than her arms, and she needed every bit of strength to counter the pull of the sand. Was the retracting blower strong enough to pull them both up? She was damned if she’d let go of Saul, but she didn’t want to get sucked down with him, either.
Even as they rose with agonizing slowness, Callie fought the dip of his body as the sand tried to reclaim him and suck him back under. What the hell was under there, for God’s sake?
It seemed to take an eternity for them to reach the surface. Behind his mask, Saul’s face was gray. As soon as they reached the surface, Callie yelled for help. Now the damn communications worked just fine.
* * *
The metal door resisted even their most aggressive efforts to open it. Damn. Jonah made a quitting motion with his hand to let the guys know it was time to resurface and regroup. While the intriguing portal through the lava tube was fascinating, they still had the treasures of the Ji Li to salvage, as well as the city to excavate. He hoped Callie and Saul were having better luck.
They were nowhere to be seen as he, Vaughn, and Brody circled the junk before ascending into the heat of midday and climbed onto the dive platform.
Hearing the whop-whop-whop overhead, Jonah looked up with a frown. “Hell, now what?” The chopper wasn’t due to fly out with artifacts until the next morning. The chopper rose above the ship, then headed north.
“Supplies?” Vaughan looked up as he removed his equipment.
Jonah frowned. “Thanos picked up produce from Fire Island yesterday.” And returned with a note from Kallistrate Spanos and his sister requesting an invitation for dinner, and to see what treasures had been found, the next evening. This evening. It had been more of a directive than a polite request. Apparently there was no need to respond as the answer was a given.
“Jonah!” Leslie stood on the first deck. “There’s been an accident—”
His heart leapt into his throat. “¡Dios! Callie?”
“No. Saul. He broke his leg in three places. We got him stabilized. Thanos and Gayle flew him to Heraklion.”
“Where’s Callie?”
“In her lab, I think.”
Dropping his gear as fast as he could remove it, Jonah stripped down to his swim trunks in record time, then bolted up the ladder. Leslie stepped aside as he hauled ass across the deck.
He burst into the lab to find Callie bent over the table with a magnifying glass, a sweating glass of juice nearby. She turned, her expression serious. “You heard?”
Jonah stalked over to her, wrapping her tightly in his arms, burying his nose against her soft, fragrant nape beneath the tightly controlled braid on the back of her head. “Not the details. Were you hurt?”
Turning, she wrapped her arms around his waist and shook her head, breath warm on his chest. “I’m good.”
“Indeed you are.” Jonah held her at arm’s length to search her face. He didn’t see any cuts or abrasions, thank God.
Tilting her chin up, he searched her eyes. Troubled, but no pain. He dropped his head to taste her soft mouth, a soft warm brush of his lips. She tasted of warm orange juice. Sharp and sweet. Jonah ran his thumb along the heated silk of her cheek. Her skin felt as smooth as rose petals.
Callie’s eyes fluttered closed, long lashes black smudges on the high color of her cheeks. Her fingers tightened around his waist, and he urged her more tightly against him with his palm in the small of her back.
Brushing his lips on hers he tasted and nipped, drew the delicate curve of her lower lip with the tip of his tongue, felt her hum of pleasure as he slipped his tongue between her lips to explore her honey sweetness. Jonah kept it slow and soft-focus, but the heat built anyway. He’d been thinking about doing this for hours, days, weeks, hell—his entire life.
He’d stop in a minute. Or three …
He lingered, enjoying the moment as he imagined peeling her out of her shirt and shorts, then taking her on one of the high lab tables behind her.
Reluctantly he broke away, smiling at her moan of disappointment as he held her upper arms to steady her as she swayed.
Blinking him into focus, she gave him a soft look. “You have some powerful kissing mojo, Cutter.”
“If you keep looking at me like that you’ll find yourself spread-eagled on that table back there.”
“How do you know I won’t have you spread-eagled on the floor?”
“Best out of five?”
She laughed. “Impossible man.” Taking his hand, she led him over to the high counter that figured in numerous of his fantasies. He’d have to kick aside the comfortable bar stools that made long hours of late-night reading and research comfortable but restricted them from having wild monkey sex on the flat surface.
“Tell me.”
Callie urged him to sit on the stool next to her, then swiveled to face him so their knees touched. “We found some incredi—” She waved her hand as if erasing the words. “We were leaving when Saul stepped into some sort of weird quicksand.”
“Quicksand?” he asked skeptically, taking her hands because he couldn’t not touch her. He didn’t doubt Callie’s veracity, he trusted her word, but quicksand? Under the ocean?
“I know. Weird. But strong. The only thing I could think of is perhaps he broke through to some chamber or cavern and the equalization of the pressure acted like a giant vacuum. It sucked him down so fast I thought I’d lose him. I managed to hang on and get him out. Then Maura, Gayle, Leslie, and I administered first aid. Boarded and tied up his leg. Thank God by then he was unconscious. I must admit, the whole thing scared the living crap out of me.”
She’d skipped what must’ve been the most harrowing part: getting a semiconscious man with a broken limb on board. Getting him up the ladder … Jonah’s blood chilled. “You’re a hero.”
“Are you kidding me? I was scared spitless!”
“A mark of a true hero.”
“He’s going to be okay, thank God. They’re keeping him overnight and sending him back tomorrow.”
Jonah frowned. “He shouldn’t come back at all.”
“He insisted. Don’t worry, Leslie and I figured where he can sit out of harm’s way. We can’t exclude him now, Jonah. Not when things are so exciting! Saul’s the bad news, turned into almost good news, but the really good news is we found a temple! At first I thought a residence. But it’s way, way too big for that. No. A temple for sure. I documented evidence of eight-by-seventeen columns and got tons of pictures to show you. It’s not a naos—the simplest form of a shrine. It’s a huge temple. Think the size and scope of the Parthenon. Or the size of a soccer field!” Her eyes glowed. “I estimate it was more than twenty yards in height—not including the roo—”
He slid off the stool. “Do you need a nap?”
Callie frowned at the non sequitur. “Of course not. I’m not five.”
He tugged her off her stool. “A cool dark room, a nice soft flat surface … I think you definitely need a long siesta after your traumatic day.”
A glint lit her eyes. “Hmm…” Wrapping a slender arm around his waist, Callie nuzzled his throat. “I do feel a little sleepy.”
“I assure you, you won’t be the least bit sleepy in a few minutes.”