Dane watched her as she returned to the cottage. All the anger had melted from her stride, and she moved with her usual, catlike grace, her braid swinging and her hips…
Dane closed his eyes and gave his head a shake. “Get a grip,” he muttered to himself. “You already have enough problems with women. Don’t go creating another one.” Cursing inwardly, he followed Jade inside, wondering how he could avoid screwing things up.
Chapter 22
"Who's first?" Bones sat perched on the rail, ready to take the plunge into the sparkling, blue water.
"You two lead the way. I'll bring up the rear." Dane knew his friend was eager to dive, having missed out on the Cuban excursion.
"Excuse me. My boat, my expedition." Jade threw a challenging look in his direction. At least she was finally speaking to him. "Bones first. Me second. Maddock third." Spotting Dane's perplexed smile, she added, "I know sense when I hear it. Now, let's go."
"Wish I was coming with you." Professor had a wistful look in his eyes.
"Do you usually dive alone?" Dane asked Jade.
"We haven't dived since I brought Professor in." She adjusted her SCUBA tank. "I have grad students who could have held down the fort, but I didn't want to bring more people into the circle than necessary."
Dane nodded. He doubted any of the students was a Dominion plant, but word of this mission didn't need to get out.
"Speaking of Professor, how'd you come to hire him?"
"He had the qualifications I was looking for and his name rang a bell. You two always spoke well of him."
"I'm surprised my recommendation carries any weight with you," Dane said.
"It does in some areas. I wouldn't take relationship advice from you." Jade paused, cocked her head to the side, and smiled. "Are you jealous, Maddock? Or maybe you thought I hired him to get back at you in some twisted way?"
"The thought never occurred to me," he lied. "Just wondered. I haven't kept in touch with him, so I was surprised to see him, that's all."
"You have a habit of discarding the people you used to care about." Jade turned her back on him and clapped her hands twice. "Let's do this."
"As you wish." Bones checked his mask one last time, winked, and flipped backward into the water, Jade a few moments behind.
A feeling of comfort enveloped Dane the moment he plunged into the water. He’d loved diving for as long as he could remember, and the prospect of adventure was icing on the cake.
Dane knew the monument lay just below the surface, but he was unprepared for it to fill his vision the moment he hit the water. He gazed at a pair of columns that almost reached the surface and marveled that so remarkable a place had lain forgotten until modern times. The staircases, passages, and multiple levels put him in mind of a step pyramid.
“Dude, this place is wicked.” Bones’ voice sounded in Dane’s ear. “Too bad we can’t stay all day.”
“Maybe we’ll come back some day and bring the crew,” Dane said.
“I’ll bring the beer.”
“If you two can focus, we need to look for the first clue.” Jade’s voice cracked like a whip.
“Remind me what it is again?” Bones asked.
“Behind the watcher’s starry eye. There’s a sphinx-like sculpture, called the totem, somewhere in the complex, but I couldn’t find anything online that pinpoints its location.”
“Do we want to spread out?” Bones asked.
“We’ll stay together for now. Let’s start at the bottom and work our way up.” Jade pointed to the base of a steep staircase.
They circled the base of the monument, inspecting its smooth walls and sharp angles. They made three circuits, rising as they went. The stairs and terraces were bare, and they reached the top without spotting anything that could be called a watcher. At the top, they swam through narrow passageways, past walls constructed at perfect right angles, and around octagonal stone pillars, but still no watcher.
“No way this place is a natural formation,” Bones said. “It reminds me of ruins I’ve seen in South America. Saksaywaman?”
“It definitely reminds me of the sunken city in Cuba, but there’s one big difference. There aren’t any ruins here. It looks like it was all carved out of one solid block.”
“It’s assumed that what we see here is the foundation upon which temples and the like were constructed. Look there.” Jade indicated a row of perfectly round holes bored in the stone.
“Postholes,” Bones said.
“That’s the assumption. Whatever was here must have been washed away in whatever deluged submerged this place.”
Something moved in the corner of Dane’s vision and his hand went to the small spear gun he wore at his hip. “What’s that?”
The three divers stared as a half-dozen shadows approached. Dane tensed, on the verge of sending Jade back to the boat while he and Bones attacked. The shapes grew larger and more alien as they drew closer. Long, thick bodies, wide flat heads with bulbous eyes on the sides emerged from the distance.
“Hammerheads,” Dane breathed.
“I forgot to tell you,” Jade said, “this place is teeming with them.”
Dane relaxed. Like most creatures, the hammerhead was more than happy to leave you alone provided you extended it the same courtesy. In fact, they were his favorite sharks. While some people found their appearance frightening, he considered them ugly ducklings, and always looked upon them with a degree of affection and something like sympathy.
“They are awesome,” Bones said, reaching out to almost touch one as it passed him by. “Weird that people are so afraid of them.”
“That could work to our advantage,” Dane said. “If the Dominion sends divers in, maybe the sharks will put a scare into them.”
“We can hope. Let’s keep looking.” Jade didn’t wait for them, but kicked hard and swam over the edge of the monument and down toward the smaller structures.
Dane couldn’t help but fondly remember all the dives he and Jade had made together. She’d always taken the lead, trusting he’d always be right behind her. For the briefest moment, he fought down the urge to chase her down and catch her up in a rough embrace, just like the old days.
“Did you find something?”
Bone’s voice yanked him back to reality.
“No, just taking a last look around,” Dane lied. “Let’s catch up with her before she does something reckless.”
“Wouldn’t want that to happen,” Bones said. “Reckless is my domain.”
When they caught up with Jade, she was hovering over an odd-shaped rock formation.
“The turtle.” Jade indicated the five-pointed, hump-backed formation atop a stone platform. “It’s one of the features mentioned in the codex.” She took out an underwater camera and snapped a few pictures before continuing on.
They searched for nearly an hour, working in a grid pattern around the monument. They passed through more channels beneath archways and around blocks of stone that might have been remnants of old structures, and discovered hieroglyph-like carvings of which Jade made a thorough photographic record, but no totem. It was a shallow dive, and the three of them were experienced divers, so none of them had expended much more than half her or his supply of air, but they decided to surface for fresh cylinders, not knowing what they’d encounter once they located the totem. After fending off Professor’s attempt to switch places with Bones, even trying to bribe him with beer, they returned to the water.
Their search of the final quadrant bore fruit almost immediately. They passed through a deep stone channel and exited to find a stone face staring back at them, and they swam in for a closer inspection. The currents had eroded its sharper features, but the long face, sunken eyes, and protruding forehead were easy to make out.