Total pages in book: 56
Estimated words: 53081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 53081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 265(@200wpm)___ 212(@250wpm)___ 177(@300wpm)
About a half-hour into the search, Isla pinged her bolt against her tank.
Caesar turned toward her and watched as she pointed to the ocean floor. He made his way closer with the others while Isla reached down to gently disturb the sand with her hand. A few seconds later, she discovered what looked like a brass candlestick.
Even through her mask, Caesar could see her eyes widen with excitement. He had to admit, a candlestick was a good sign. It wasn’t the sort of thing they would expect from random garbage.
All five of them spread out and sifted through the sand, trying not to disturb it so much that it limited their visibility. It took almost another hour before Hawking alerted everyone that he had found another artifact. His was a goblet.
Caesar’s heart was racing. This was exciting. There would never be any way to know for sure if any treasure found in this area specifically correlated with the map Isla had inherited from her grandfather, but that didn’t matter so much as finding evidence that it was possible.
In Caesar’s mind, if all they ever found were these two items, he would call this exploration a success. As it was, they didn’t need to look any further. It was time to turn the quest over to the government and let them handle it from there.
As soon as Hawking marked the artifact's location, Caesar gave the sign that it was time to return to the boat. Just as he tipped his head back to orient himself with the location of the bottom of the boat above them, something splashed into the water from near the cave entrance.
One second later, another similar splash occurred. He froze when he saw the two black shadows, his mind filling with flashbacks of the time he’d been out with Mindy.
Someone grabbed his arm, and he glanced to the right to see Isla staring at him.
The whistle sounded in the water a moment before the two men descended. When Caesar saw both holding spearguns, his heart nearly stopped. For a moment, he was paralyzed, dragged into the past, but then his brain kicked into gear. He grabbed Isla’s arm and angled her behind him.
A glance to one side indicated Phoenix was blocking Zara from the quickly approaching divers. Where was Hawking? Caesar couldn’t see him anywhere.
The two men descended so fast that there was no way to avoid them. The water wasn’t very deep. In seconds, they were both holding out the spearguns, aiming them toward Caesar and Phoenix.
Caesar wished he could have gotten Isla to safety, but there hadn’t been time. She was holding on to the gear at his back. Even if he could communicate with her and tell her to swim toward the surface, that would just leave her vulnerable. He couldn’t take that risk.
Heart racing, he removed his knife from his belt, but he and Phoenix would never be able to face off with two men with spearguns while protecting Isla and Zara. Where the hell was Hawking?
Caesar couldn’t take his gaze off the men coming toward them, and he had no way to communicate with anyone above water. Kestrel and Rocco were probably losing their minds since they had no way to descend. They would have seen these two divers jump in from somewhere near the cave, and now, they were stuck above with no idea what was happening.
Caesar felt foolish for not thinking about the fact that divers didn’t have to approach by boat. Why hadn’t he considered the possibility that they could enter from land? They could have been hiding there for hours, waiting for the opportunity to leap. There were many elevations along the shoreline. These men could have jumped in from only a few feet above the water, situated their masks, and then slid underwater so fast that Rocco and Kestrel wouldn’t have had much of a chance to react.
Movement in Caesar’s limited peripheral vision indicated someone was coming up behind one of the two divers. Holy shit. Kestrel. He’d palmed a weighted belt to help him descend, but he was holding his breath.
Caesar kept his gaze locked on the two men coming directly toward him and Phoenix, but he noticed Hawking coming from behind the second man. Thank fuck. Those two had no idea what was coming.
With nearly synchronized precision, Hawking and Kestrel attacked both men from behind, causing them to fling around as panic seized them both.
The man who’d been aiming at Caesar dropped his speargun, and Caesar lurched forward to grab it, barely snagging the strap before it hit the ocean floor. His jerky motions caused Isla to let go of him, but he used his fins and thanked God for all the time he’d spent working out to get back between her and the skirmish.
There was blood in the water now. It was hard to see. Phoenix was wrestling the speargun from the second man. Kestrel held an arm tightly around the first man’s neck.