Page 39

“We’ll know in a minute.”
They walked along at a leisurely pace, waiting for the sedan to materialize, but it never did. At the end of the long block Sam shrugged. “Maybe I’m a little paranoid.”
“A little?”
“Comes from being shot at and run off the road.”
“No question. Thankfully, this time you’re wrong.”
They stopped at the intersection and Sam looked back. Only a few slow-moving pedestrians were shuffling down the sidewalk, moving from shady spot to shady spot in an effort to stave off the worst of the sun’s effects. No questionable sedans were prowling the street, no furtive figures with earbuds were spinning suddenly to shield their faces from view.
When they returned to the hotel, Leonid met them in the lobby and they went to the pool bar overlooking the ocean. He walked like an old man and grumbled the entire way about the scuba school killing him slowly with their demands.
“They had me swimming laps—twenty of them, with no break—as my endurance testing. I was winded after two and thought I was hemorrhaging after ten,” he griped.
“But you made it,” Remi said brightly.
“What happened to your face?” Leonid asked, finally noticing something other than his own misery. “It’s swollen.”
“Oh, didn’t we mention it? Someone pushed our car off a cliff and shot at us,” Sam said with a nonchalant wave of the hand. “Remi bumped her head when we were swimming the rapids, trying to escape.”
Leonid regarded them as if they were mad. “No, really. What happened?”
Remi smiled. “I mouthed off and Sam let me have it.”
The Russian shook his head. “I don’t know what to make of you two.”
Sam leaned forward. “We really did get run off the road, Leonid. We don’t know by whom, or why, but it’s what happened. This morning.”
Leonid held his gaze, eyes searching for some sign of mockery, and, when he saw none, his face grew even more somber than usual. “I can’t believe it.”
“I know. We just finished up at the hospital and the police. To say it’s worrisome is the understatement of the year,” Sam admitted. “But we have some good news, too. Or, at least, some interesting news. There may be a treasure somewhere in the ruins.”
“What are you talking about? How do you know?”
Sam gave him the rundown. When he finished, Leonid looked even more upset than before. “Wait. So this is the king’s compound and, in addition to a curse, there’s a buried treasure?”
“You’re acting like that’s bad news.”
“It complicates matters. And it makes me wonder if that’s why you were attacked. Maybe the medicine man wasn’t the only one who knew about the treasure. It’s possible that word’s spread and someone else wants a chance at it. The divers could have talked, or the captains, and anyone who knew the legend would have gone into high gear.”
Remi glanced at Sam. “He’s right. Most people here are barely surviving. The prospect of unimagined wealth can do strange things.”
“Right. But we don’t actually know whether there’s even a treasure, much less where it might be. And let’s not forget it’s in eighty feet of water. In a cursed bay teeming with sharks and crocodiles. Wouldn’t it make more sense to wait until we located it before trying to knock us out of the picture?” Sam said.
Remi shook her head. “You’re assuming whoever did it is rational and logical. And we’re also assuming this has to do with treasure. It could be that we intruded on something we weren’t meant to see, even if we have no idea what it was, and they took action. It could be smuggling, drugs, anything. We shouldn’t assume we have all the puzzle pieces because after only a few days here the odds say we don’t.”
Sam nodded. “She’s right, as usual.”
Leonid grunted. “So where does that leave us? What should we do now?”
Sam’s brow furrowed. “I’m not sure we do anything different except keep our eyes open. We can’t really dive the ruins properly until the boat arrives anyway, so it’s a moot point.”
“I don’t like unknowns. Particularly when they shoot at you,” Leonid said.
“Agreed, my friend. But that’s all we have. I think a better question than trying to figure out the unknowable is how we treat our new knowledge of a possible treasure,” Sam said. “If we’re going to do anything more than catalog the site, we may want to consider bringing in some specialized talent. Because if we’re going to conduct a more thorough search, the ship’s divers aren’t going to do the trick—we’ll want a large pro team with related experience.”
Leonid nodded. “I gather you have someone in mind?”