Unfathomed Page 8

  With a curse, Morgan appeared by his side, crouching next to him. The light flicked on in the cabin, and he blinked. Her hands went to his neck, pushing his away.

  “Let me take a look.” Her touch was gentle. “Shit.” She was wearing a loose shirt over her tank top, and she pulled it off. She wadded up the material, and pressed it against his neck. “God, Zach.” Her voice trembled.

  His gaze sharpened on her, vision clearing. There was a storm of emotion on her face. She looked like she was about to lose it.

  A jumble of voices rumbled in the corridor.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “My God, Zach.”

  Morgan raised her voice. “Somebody get the first aid kit.” Her words rang with authority. “And someone find Declan.”

  Zach heard people moving and talking, but he didn’t pay any attention. He worked on not emptying his stomach on the floor.

  “The rest of you get back to your cabins,” Morgan said. “Stay there until someone from my team comes to talk to you. Don’t open the door to a stranger.”

  Zach liked listening to Morgan’s voice, even when it held an edge. His vision blurred again. He was really afraid he was going to pass out.

  “Come on, Zach.” Cool fingers touched his face. “Look at me.”

  He did, staring into her aqua-blue eyes. His chest loosened a little. “I finally got you to call me Zach.”

  Her fingers stroked his cheek and she rolled her eyes. “That’s really all you can think about right now?”

  “Yes. Apparently, all I needed was for someone to choke me half to death.”

  Her face darkened. “Don’t joke about it.”

  “Help me up. I’d prefer to not be sitting on my ass when Declan arrives.”

  She slid an arm around his shoulders, and helped him sit on the edge of his bunk. Moments later, Declan arrived, first aid kit in hand.

  “What happened?” he demanded.

  “Someone attacked Zach.” Morgan lifted her shirt off his neck.

  Declan winced and then muttered a creative curse.

  “They attacked me in my sleep,” he told them. “They were demanding to know the exact location of the shipwreck.”

  Declan crossed his arms over his chest, watching as Morgan started cleaning Zach’s wound. “No one got aboard. We’ve tightened up the patrols day and night. Morgan, you see any sign that someone came aboard the ship?”

  She shook her head.

  “I’ve got Coop and Hale looking around,” Declan added. “I am getting tired of feeling two steps behind.”

  Morgan passed a wipe across Zach’s wound. “It’s not too bad.” She let out a shaky breath.

  “It feels bad,” he complained. “Maybe you should kiss it better?”

  She snorted. “Keep dreaming.” But despite her words, he felt her fingers gently brushing the back of his neck.

  “Anything else you can tell us?” Declan asked. “What they looked like?”

  Zach shook his head. “No. They stayed behind me and whispered. They were smaller than me, dressed in black. Couldn’t even tell if it was a man or a woman.”

  “They were wearing a balaclava,” Morgan added. “And once I find them, they’re dead.”

  Morgan’s deadly tone made Zach freeze.

  Declan drew in a long breath. “Stand down, Morgan.”

  “They were trying to kill him, Dec.” Anger sizzled in her tone.

  Zach reached up, grabbed her hand and squeezed. Her aqua eyes met his, then she dropped her gaze and rubbed something on his neck. He hissed at the sting. “They also asked about an amulet.”

  Morgan’s hands stilled. Her gaze came back to his face. “An amulet? What amulet?”

  “I’m not sure. There was no specific jewelry on the ship’s manifest—”

  “That’s not an answer,” she said. “This is what you’ve been keeping to yourself, isn’t it?”

  “It’s a legend,” Zach bit out. “Nothing else. There’s no proof that some pendant with a magical power existed, let alone that it was on the Soleil d’Orient.”

  A muscle ticked in Declan’s jaw. “What amulet?”

  Morgan’s gaze narrowed. “Magical power?”

  Zach lifted his chin. “I’m an archeologist. I deal in fact. I deal in the artifacts and evidence I dig out of the ground or rescue from the sea.”

  Declan nodded. “Fine. Then I think it’s time you talked to us about myths and legends.” His gray gaze moved to Morgan. “Clean up the wound, and then both of you meet me in the galley. I’m going to check in with the archeologists and students.”

  Morgan finished with his neck, pressing a bandage over the long wound. She snapped the lid of the first aid box closed.

  “Morgan—”

  “I asked you if there was anything that might interest Silk Road.”

  “There isn’t. There is no record this amulet ever existed, let alone that it was on the ship. If I truly believed it was there, I would have said something.” He shook his head. “Without something concrete in your hand, you have nothing.” He knew that better than anyone. A hard truth he’d learned growing up.

  “They almost killed you!” The words burst out of her. “You would have died right here. A bloody, senseless murder.”

  Silence filled the cabin. A bloody, senseless murder…like what had happened to her father. “Morgan—”

  With a violent shake of her head, she shot to her feet. “Come on, we need to get to the galley.”

  Zach didn’t push her, but he felt the tension pumping off her as they headed out of his cabin. The galley was all lit up, the THS team sitting around a table with Diego. Feeling very tired, Zach dropped into a chair.

  “We’ve searched the ship and there is no sign of your attacker,” Declan said. “No sign anyone came aboard. If I’m going to work out what the hell is going on, I need something to work with.”

  Moments later, Morgan brought Zach a coffee. He smiled his thanks, and he curled his hands around the mug. It had a chip on the edge, and he worried it with his finger. “Shit, where do I start?” His voice was raw, and he carefully cleared his throat.

  “At the beginning,” Declan suggested.

  “I told you about Constantine Phaulkon, and his meteoric rise to power in Siam. He influenced everyone around him. Whatever he said, people listened, agreed, and believed. Before he reached Siam, he worked for the British East India Company in Java.”

  He looked up, and saw them all watching him steadily.

  “Go on,” Declan said.

  “One of my specialties is underwater archeology, but I have another.”

  “Prehistoric cultures,” Morgan said.

  “So, the really old stuff,” Declan added.

  Zach nodded. “My research over the last year has focused on submerged megalithic structures.”

  “Sunken cities?” Hale asked.

  “Yes.”

  Now Declan’s eyebrows rose. “Atlantis.”

  “No.” Zach looked at all of them. “The legends and stories about Atlantis are mostly exaggerated, bogus crap. But the sunken structures I’ve dived are real.”

  “A seed of truth is in every myth,” Declan murmured. “That’s what Layne is always telling me.”

  Zach nodded. “It’s possible the Atlantis myths are a remembrance of something else, long ago.”

  “Civilization before what current history tells us?” Morgan said.

  “Perhaps. But I meant what I said earlier. I deal in facts and proof.” He took a sip of the coffee, letting it warm him. “For an archeologist to throw out unsubstantiated theories is a death blow for your career. My colleagues are not quick to embrace anything untested.”

  “But you believe advanced cultures existed before the last Ice Age,” Morgan prompted. “And were wiped out by a flood.”

  “Wiped out by rapidly rising sea levels at the end of the Ice Age. I’ve already told Morgan, but la
st year I dived what looked like a man-made structure off the southern coast of India. It is possibly nine thousand years old.”

  “That’s far older than Egypt,” Declan said.

  “And Sumer,” Hale added.

  “There are other alleged sunken cities off the coast of India. Tamil literature in southern India is rife with legends of Kumari Kundan.”

  “Which is what?” Morgan asked.

  “A lost continent in the Indian Ocean that was destroyed by the waves. It was said to have stretched from Indonesia up to India, and down to…Madagascar.”

  “Hell,” Hale said. “There would be geological evidence of something like that.”

  “There is. Many scientists believe that there were at least land bridges linking Madagascar up with India. Not everyone agrees on how large those bridges were, but there was likely land in the Indian Ocean thousands of years ago.”

  Coop cleared his throat. “I’ve heard of a lost continent in the Indian Ocean. Lemuria.”

  Zach nodded. “Named after Madagascar’s famous lemurs. A zoologist in the 1800s coined the name of a lost continent in the Indian Ocean. He’d discovered lemur fossils in Madagascar and India, and proposed they’d once been part of a continent that is now submerged. This was before the theory of continental drift. Madagascar split away from Africa first, then India, which would also account for the fossils.”

  “So, no Lemuria, but possibly some land bridges,” Morgan said.

  “Madagascar was settled by a group of Indonesians, likely over two thousand years ago. The belief is they managed to cross the ocean to get here, then over time mixed with African settlers to give us the Malagasy of today. But back to Lemuria, there is no scientific evidence, and what stories exist are too polluted by New Age-mystical beliefs to gain any facts from them, but—”

  “There’s a seed of truth,” Morgan finished.

  Again, Zach nodded.

  “Okay, that is all fascinating stuff, but how does this link to Phaulkon and the Soleil d’Orient?” Morgan asked.

  “In Indonesia, there is evidence of a sunken continent known as Sundaland. Strangely enough, the original location of the Madagascan settlers. While Phaulkon was stationed in Java, he visited Gunung Padang.”

  Morgan frowned. “Which is what?”

  Declan sat back in his chair. “It’s a pyramid.”

  Coop leaned forward, his brow furrowed. “Pyramids in Indonesia?”

  Zach nodded. “Yes. There is still a lot of argument about whether it’s natural or man-made. But there is evidence of megalithic structures built on the mound.”

  “So, Phaulkon visited it,” Declan prompted.

  “Yes. And from a letter he sent back home to Greece, he found something there. He mentioned an amulet.” Zach pulled out his tablet. “This is a well-known portrait of Constantine Phaulkon.” He held the tablet out so they could all see the image. Zach pointed to the pendant around the man’s neck. “This shows a pendant that he apparently rarely took off. Within a year of finding this artifact, he went from a nobody merchant for the British East India Company to the highest advisor of the King of Siam.”

  Chapter Ten

  Morgan paced the deck, a tight ball of emotion centered in her chest.

  She pulled her knife out of its sheath on her belt, flicking the hilt around her hand. She was pissed. At everything and everyone.

  But most of all, she wanted to find out who the hell had attacked Zach.

  She sucked in a long breath of sea air. The image of seeing him down on the floor, a garrote wire digging into his throat, wouldn’t fade in a hurry. When the attacker had rammed into her, she’d been so tempted to follow.

  But she’d had to make sure Zach was okay. Seeing him on his hands and knees, struggling to breathe and bleeding had terrified her.

  Shit. She shook her head. She’d been doing a patrol of the ship, when she’d heard the faintest sound coming from the cabins. She’d almost talked herself out of checking, worried about running into him all rumpled from sleep.

  If she hadn’t gone down there…

  Quiet footsteps behind her. “Morgan?”

  Now the angry emotions in her changed target. She spun and speared him with a look. “Go to bed, Dr. James.”

  “You called me Zach before.” He stood with his hands in his pockets. “You can’t take it back now.”

  “Fine. Go to bed, Zach.”

  “You’re angry with me. I get it. I’m sorry I didn’t mention the amulet sooner. But look, I don’t even think it’s real.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest, ensuring her knife was in full view.

  He glanced at the blade and ignored it. “Even if it does exist, it’s just a piece of jewelry. It doesn’t have magical powers of persuasion.”

  “Silk Road must believe it. They don’t just go after any old artifact. They must believe it has value.”

  “We don’t even know if it is Silk Road who’s involved.”

  Her mouth tightened. She knew it was Silk Road. It had the group’s dirty fingerprints all over it. “You don’t think this amulet has some sort of powers?”

  He shook his head. “No. Of course not.”

  That made her smile. “You don’t believe in magic, Zach?”

  “No. But…”

  As his voice trailed off, she turned away from the railing, her brows drawing together. “But what?”

  “I do believe that it’s possible that these cultures wiped out by rising sea levels may have had advanced technology we don’t know about.”

  Hell. “You can’t be serious.”

  “It’s just a theory.”

  “What kind of tech?”

  He huffed out a breath, setting his hands on his hips. “Again. It’s just theories. Have you heard of the Baghdad Battery?”

  She nodded. “Some artifact that some people theorize was an ancient battery.”

  “It’s Mesopotamian. No one knows what it was, and no one has proved that it was actually a battery. But there are lots of out-of-place artifacts that spawn lots of theories of possible advanced technology from long-ago cultures. The Antikythera Mechanism, the Quimbaya artifacts, the Dendera light, just to name a few. And there are lots of myths, from Egypt to Tibet, about so-called vibration technology that could levitate large stones and carve out tunnels.”

  Now Morgan slumped back against the rail. “On this job, I’ve seen everything from shards of pots to golden statues dug up out of the earth. I’ve seen a giant jewel said to grant wishes and an Amazonian salve that can heal wounds in minutes, but I’ve never seen anything like what you’re talking about.”

  “I haven’t, either. But sometimes I wonder if the broken fragments and shards we dig up are remnants of something we don’t understand. Imagine if there was a catastrophe today, and people of the future were digging up our technology. Shattered electronics would give no clue to what a computer was capable of. What would those people think they were?”

  Morgan ran a hand over her hair. Hell, he had a point.

  “If the amulet does exist,” Zach said, “there’s a chance it has some sort of tech in it. But look, it’s unlikely. Possible, but unlikely.”

  She watched the way the moonlight cast shadows across his handsome face. “Any other secrets you’re hiding, Doc?”

  He stepped closer, trapping her against the railing. She felt the warmth pouring off his hard body.

  “No. I’m thirty-five years old, employed, and single. I own a two-bedroom condo in downtown Denver. It’s in a nice building, but my decorating is pretty sad—white walls, no art, and not much furniture. I haven’t had a long-term relationship in…well, ever. I’m too busy with my work, which I love. I also love to travel, be out on field digs and dives. I love history and adventure. I’m not closed-minded, I will look at any and all theories, but I want proof. Oh, and I’m insanely attracted to a deadly, stubborn, fascinating woman.”

  She stared at him, u
nable to find any words. She was starting to realize that Zachariah James wasn’t just the carefree, Indiana Jones-type she’d pegged him to be. He was far more dangerous.

  “You were hurt,” she said, her voice hitching. “You should get some sleep. I have a few more hours of work left, yet.”

  “Morgan, if you want to know anything about me, you just have to ask.” He held his arms out to the sides. “For you, I’m an open book.”

  A reluctant smile tugged at her lips. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  He reached out, touching her hair. “Stay safe out here.”

  She lifted her knife and then pointed to her holstered SIG.

  He nodded. “Have I told you how sexy I find it that you’re armed?”

  She shook her head with a smile. “Go to bed, or you might end up with another wound.”

  He gave her a sloppy salute that made her wince, then slipped down the stairs to the cabins.

  Her smile faded. Who had attacked him? It was time to find out what the hell had happened here tonight.

  Morgan finished another patrol of the deck, searching for any sign that someone had climbed aboard the Storm Nymph. Nothing. She passed the arm of the crane and the storage rack holding all the dive gear. Then she heard the faintest scuff of sound.

  Her muscles tensed and she lifted her knife, gripping the hilt. When she heard a sound from the deeper shadows beside the dive gear rack, she spun and tossed the knife.

  There was a faint curse. One she recognized.

  She let out a breath and straightened. “Really bad idea to sneak up on me, Coop.”

  Ronin came out of the shadows, eyeing the knife still stuck into the metal. “So you thought you’d throw a knife, first?”

  “I’m a bit twitchy.” And burning with the need to find out who the hell had tried to kill Zach.

  “It nearly hit me.”

  Footsteps sounded, and a second later, Dec appeared, Hale right behind him. “We searched the entire ship. No sign that anyone came aboard.”

  Morgan frowned looking around. “We would’ve seen them.”

  Dec nodded. “So…”

  “So, it looks like it was someone who is already on board.” Damn, she didn’t like this.