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“I did try to follow you guys,” Kinimaka moaned.

“You four!” Hayden’s voice rasped through the quieting day. “Did you really think sliding down the hillside on top of your enemies was a great idea?”

Dahl blinked. “I didn’t really think. Besides, Drake made me do it.”

Hayden huffed in exasperation, before getting over it and reviewing the ship’s deck. “And the best way in is…?”

Alicia pointed toward the stern. “There’s a ladder. It’s one person at a time but the mercs haven’t found it.”

“Good. They clearly located this one first and decided to blast it open.” Hayden seemed pleased.

Smyth kept his gun leveled at the shattered trapdoor until more soldiers joined him. Then a deal was offered to those mercenaries still inside. Drake thought it was a pretty sweet deal; after all most of their buddies were already roasting in Hades by now and their boss had betrayed them. Who even knew where Tyler Webb was? To a man, the mercenaries climbed out of the hole, hands above their heads, and cowed. Soldiers rounded them up. Even then, Hayden reminded the team that booby traps and even snipers could have been left behind. The next few minutes weren’t going to be easy.

“Let me go first.” Kinimaka headed for the hole. “You guys did it last time.”

Hayden backed him up, then Drake and Dahl, Alicia and Smyth. Yorgi stayed on the ship’s deck, eyeing the slope above as though he wished he’d ridden it as hard as the SPEAR team rebels.

Drake kept his handgun handy as the team slipped through the hole in the galleon’s deck. As far as he could make out — and exhausting his limited knowledge of old galleons — they were somewhere around where the mizzenmast would have been, in front of the captain’s cabin and officer’s quarters. Most of the stern was still buried in the steep dune’s sandy face and below him he assumed would be the gun deck, supplies and stores and the ballast deck. The opening that he lowered himself through was tight though he heard no complaint from the big Hawaiian, probably because Hayden followed so close. The wooden steps descended at a thirty degree angle and were quite sturdy, though treacherous with sand. Alicia slipped behind him and grabbed his jacket for support, cursing.

“Steady,” Drake said. “I already lost a tooth today.”

“You did? Oh, sweetie. I hope you properly punished the nasty person who did it.”

“Later,” Drake promised. “Later.”

Wide wooden planks formed the floor of the gun deck. Kinimaka and Hayden were the first to break out flashlights, swinging the beams around. Progress was slow due to them having to constantly check for traps, but Drake soon found himself immersed in this lost, long-buried world. Here was a dusty cannon with dull scrapes along its sides and runnels beneath its wheeled undercarriage, sand-filled now but once in deadly, perfect order. Rectangular crates stood in several corners, some destroyed but others intact and awaiting discovery. Drake spied some wooden slats running across a far wall that reminded him of bars and imagined that might be the ship’s brig. Absolute silence filled the area like a spectral shroud as the group stopped and took stock.

“One more level,” Kinimaka said. “Down to the hold, I think. That’s where all the stores are, the biscuit and salted meat, the water, beer, gunpowder, cannonballs and spare sails. It’s also where pirates kept their treasure during a voyage.”

Drake urged him ahead, spinning as a slight sigh reached his ears. Alicia was nowhere near him but he was sure it had been a woman’s sigh. Dahl shot him a testy look.

“What now? Hearing things? One too many knocks on the head?”

Drake frowned. “Just thought I—”

His flashlight beam illuminated a bleached skull that lay on the floor. Eyeless sockets stared back at him. So the dead were watching after all. He shivered. “C’mon.”

Dahl grunted. Alicia moved past both of them. Smyth, bringing up the rear, swore as he stepped on a pile of bones. “Sorry,” he said quietly. “I do have respect for the dead.”

Drake stepped after Hayden, then abruptly ran into her back. Kinimaka’s voice drifted from several steps ahead. “Um, guys. There’s a funny noise down here.”

Drake listened. The Hawaiian stood poised to descend another set of steps down to the next level. With no noise either above or to their sides, the team couldn’t shake a feeling of isolation, of otherworldliness, but set their senses to listen. For a long moment there was nothing.

“You imagined it,” Hayden said.

Then a low whine broke the silence, ascending to a wail as it rose up the stairs. The pitch of the cry set Drake’s nerves on edge and made the hairs on the backs of his arms rise.

“What the hell is that?” Smyth asked.

“Dunno,” Alicia said. “But I ain’t wearing the right kinda protective vest for it.”

“The wind,” Hayden said. “It’s just the wind.”

“Are you sure?” Drake asked. “There are no windows down there.”

“Well what else could it be? You believe in ghosts now?”

“Only when I’m investigating a ghost ship that’s been lost for hundreds of years and still holds the bones of its crew below deck. Maybe the galleon wants a new crew.”

Hayden nodded to the bulging wall that ran to their right. “And see there? Gun ports and countless imperfections in the ship, all leading to the two-hundred-foot deep valley.”

Drake shrugged. “Mano,” he said. “After you.”

The Hawaiian gulped a little, but to his credit barely hesitated. The rest of the new ship’s crew filed after. Slowly, they descended into a deeper darkness. Drake felt the breeze immediately blowing in from the right. The wail became a shriek for several seconds before dying away to a desperate moan. Something tapped him on the shoulder.

“Fuck!” he yelled, making Kinimaka jump in the process.

Dahl coughed innocently. “You okay?”

Smyth also coughed, but in an intentionally grumpy manner. “Hurry it up down there. We just fought and beat hundreds of stone-cold killers and you pussies are scared of a couple of ghosts. Ain’t this the hold?”

Drake swung his flashlight around, seeing that it was. Toward the far end the team’s joined beams illuminated eight sturdy crates, all banded around with heavy metal and constructed of thick planks of wood.

“The treasure of Santa Ana.” Hayden sighed. “We found it. We stopped Webb and hindered the Pythians again. It will be the end for them.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Dahl said.

“Oh, I will,” Hayden returned. “Because now we have Nicholas Bell too and I’m so fucking sick of being stalked and watched in my own bedroom that I’m gonna spend however long it takes to bring Webb to heel. My heel. That’s what I’m gonna do.”

“I’m not even sure they have any members left,” Drake said lightly as they strolled toward the treasure chests. “Maybe Beauregard would know.”

Alicia stopped in her tracks. “Good point. We don’t even know where he is.”

“Don’t worry, we’ll find him,” Hayden managed a smile. “Missing anything in particular?”

Alicia tried desperately not to throw a guilty look toward Drake and succeeded… mostly. “Umm, nah. I’m over that stage now.”

Hayden regarded her closely. “You do look a little different.”

“I do?”

“Maybe. Lighter somehow. Maybe it’s the gloom.”

“Why, thanks.”

Before the eight chests they stopped, questers eyeing well-earned prizes. More skulls and other bone fragments lay scattered about between the chests and Drake even saw what looked like the head of a tomahawk.

“From one battle to another,” he said. “It never ends.”

Kinimaka sat cross-legged before one of the chests. “Well, they ain’t going anywhere,” he said. “And we can’t open them easily. I think it’s time to take a break.”