“Probably just an old beer can,” Jayden said as he helped to dig, clearing dirt out of the hole after Hunt excavated.
“Ever the optimist, aren’t you?” Hunt said.
“Realist.”
“Who would drink beer in this thorny bush like this?”
“You probably would. But I don’t know, maybe this hedge is new, or—”
“Whoa, hold up! Here it is.” Hunt moved his shovel away from the now two-foot deep pit they’d dug. “What have we here?”
Something solid lay in the dry dirt. A pointed object, protruding up from below. Hunt reached into the hole and brushed some of the dirt away, revealing a glint of gold-colored metal, roughly in the shape of a finger. Around them they could hear the wild dogs shuffling around but they continued to work on extricating the item from the earth.
“There’s more to it than just this,” Hunt said, excitement creeping into his voice. At the same time as Hunt worked, Jayden began digging carefully with a hand trowel a couple of feet away from the golden finger, looking to see how far whatever the object was might extend.
“Got something here, too,” he said, dropping the trowel to hand-wipe dirt away from whatever it was he’d uncovered. “Same color.” They continued to sweep away the dirt, digging carefully with hand trowels where necessary. As they worked, more and more of the golden object was uncovered, as well as some black color.
“Seems pretty solid, whatever it is,” Hunt said. After continuing their efforts for several more minutes, Hunt was finally able to lift the find out of the hole.
“Wow!” Jayden exclaimed as Hunt cradled the object like a baby.
“Look familiar?” Hunt asked.
Jayden appeared confused. “Wait a minute, we’re not in Egypt anymore, right? We’re in the Azores?”
“Last I checked,” Hunt joked, looking around. The dogs still lurked nearby but he saw no signs of people. “So do you recognize this thing?”
It was a statuette of a man with a dog’s head. Around his neck, but affixed to the statuette itself, was an ahnk made of black onyx.
“It’s Anubis,” Jayden said. “The Egyptian god of the dead, right?”
Hunt nodded as he turned the work of art over in his hands. “Yeah. Some called him 'The Guardian of the Scales,’ and claim that his main function was to watch over the dead. It has to do with the belief that after death, a person meets the gods who would place his or her heart on a scale. Ceremonial acts of weighing the heart from the Book of the Dead depict Anubis judging whether the person deserved to live an eternal life.”
“So basically, this guy right here decided every soul’s fate.”
“Correct. But I wonder is….what’s he doing here, an Egyptian god, in the Azores, a Portuguese island chain?”
“It wasn’t always Portuguese.”
Hunt thought about this for a moment while he eyed the statuette of Anubis. “True. It was the Portuguese who took the statue of the horse and rider, though, so whoever put that there — maybe the Egyptians — left the Anubis here.”
“The Egyptians do seem connected to Atlantis.”
Hunt stood again and readied his metal detector. “Let’s see if there are any other finds around here.” With the golden statuette tucked under one arm, Hunt passed the detector’s circular disc over the same hole the Anubis piece had come out of, but it gave no more signals. Then he and Jayden proceeded to cover more of the surrounding area, including deep into the thorny cyan bush, but again, the detectors were silent.
“Looks like Anubis is it for this site,” Hunt concluded, hefting the golden statuette.
“Wonder if it’s really gold, you think so?” Jayden wondered.
Hunt hefted the find in one hand, testing its weight. “Feels heavy enough, but we’ll have to have it tested to say for sure. The black rock looks like onyx.”
Jayden nodded as he eyed the decorative ahnk. “I wish Maddy could see this.”
At the mention of their friend, Hunt became somber. “Me too. We need to find her. I really wonder where she is now.”
Jayden looked up from the statuette. “I wish there was some way to find out.”
Hunt held up the statuette. “I have a feeling this might lead us to her.”
Chapter 12
The room was dark and cold. That’s all Dr. Madison Chambers knew. She had no idea where she was. Groggy and with a lingering headache, she found herself tied to a chair that seemed to be bolted to a concrete floor. She supposed she was in a cell of some sort, but she couldn’t be sure, so complete was the darkness.
Although her hands were bound behind the chair, and her legs were tied to the chair’s legs, she was not blindfolded, so she knew the room must really be dark. She had no idea what time — or even what day — it was. Everything after being in the research tent with Carter and Jayden was a frenetic blur to her. She remembered being dragged out of the tent by Daedalus’ thugs at gunpoint. She recalled a couple of her colleagues on site approaching her to ask if she was all right before being turned away with warning shots fired into the dirt near their feet.
And then she was roughly shoved into the back of a Suburban, the two thugs climbing in on either side of her, while a driver of Arab descent she’d never seen before raced away from her dig site onto a lonely desert highway.
But that was how long ago? A few hours? A few days? She tried moving her body to the extent her bonds would allow. She didn’t seem to be physically injured. No major wounds or any broken bones as far as she could tell. That was something, but overall she felt dehydrated, fatigued and had a headache. She needed water, Tylenol, information…These needs overwhelmed her and she called out in the darkness.
“Hello? Hello, is anyone here, please? I need help!”
No voice came in response. She did her best to calm her breathing while listening for any sounds at all, but she heard only the repetitive buzz of what she thought might be a ceiling fan or some kind of electrical hum. She cried out again for help, even louder this time, as loud as she could. She’d seen television shows about kidnapped people who were kept in suburban neighborhoods in close proximity to other people for years, and had they only called more attention to themselves….She tried not to let dark thoughts like these invade her mind but trapped in the darkness alone, after the terrible events that had unfolded at her dig site — at a place that for her had always represented normalcy and a sense of professional advancement — she began to tremble with fear.
Suddenly she heard a click and a bank of ceiling-mounted fluorescent light bars flickered to life. The brightness was blinding after the time in the dark and she looked down with half-closed eyes to try and preserve her sight in order to assess whatever threat might be coming her way next.
But she heard the voice before she saw the man from who it came. “Dr. Chambers, I have something to show you.”
Daedalus.
She would never forget that voice as long as she lived. She wanted to, though, Oh, how she wanted to. She looked up at her kidnapper.
“What do you want from me?”
“Nothing a world-class archaeologist such as yourself should have any trouble giving me. A lost city. Atlantis.”
In spite of herself and the horrid situation in which she found herself, Maddy threw her head back and laughed aloud, long and hard. Daedalus closed the door to the room and stood a few feet away from her, his arms crossed. “I’ll wait. I know this must be an emotional experience for you. I find it regrettable, but unfortunately I see no other way. So please, whenever you are ready…”
Maddy laughed some more until she started sniffling. Then she leveled her head and fully opened her eyes. She stared directly at Daedalus, who still wore the same outfit she had seen him in at the dig site. She hoped this meant that not that much time had passed. She knew that the more time that went by after a kidnapping the less likely it became the victim would be found unharmed. Then the anger set in and she glared at the Treasure, Inc. leader.