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Chapters (86)
  1. Cover
  2. Praise
  3. Booklist
  4. Dedication
  5. 1
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  84. 80
  85. 81
  86. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

“You’re going to call her and ask if she’s talked to her husband. Very clever way around that email block. She’s on the East Coast?”

“Right. Three hours later. I want to know what she knows about the situation on the Arcturus and if she can get a message to Daniel for me.”

“What if she won’t tell you or won’t convey a message to him?”

She smiled at him. “She owes me.”

He put his hand on her neck and leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I guess that’s worth waking up in emergency mode. As soon as my heartbeat calms, I’ll make us some breakfast.”

“Good. Thanks.” She started dialing. “After that, if you’ll take me up to Madame Rune’s, I’ll get it ready for another busy day. Maybe I’ll open early. I enjoy talking to people, and I love showing Rune a good day’s receipts.”

He couldn’t figure her out. “I thought you’d want to take the ATV.”

“I do. It’s so much fun to drive. But it uses a parking spot, and those are in tight supply—” She swung away from him and said, “Hello, Bev? This is Elladora Varela... Yes... Really? That is exactly what I called about.”

66

DANIEL HAD FINISHED HIS daily run around the shipboard track and slowed to a walk when DeAnna hurried up behind him. “Got a minute?”

“Sure, I’m cooling down. What’s up?”

“I found out something about Elladora Varela.”

He glanced around. “We agreed to be discreet.”

“I didn’t have to be discreet or indiscreet. I was just down in the lounge, talking to Ryan, and without me asking a thing, he told me—” she glanced around and lowered her voice “—do you know what Elladora Varela was using the remote crawler for?”

“It was a such big secret, I figured it was some government-conspiracy-related thing.”

“Not even close.” In triumph, DeAnna said, “She was searching for sunken treasure!”

“Oh, bullshit.” Knee-jerk reaction, but definitely bullshit.

“That’s what I said. I mean, really. Why would Stephen Penderghast okay that?”

“I had to jump through hoops to prove my study was worthy.”

“Me, too. But Ryan showed me on his phone. In 1958, a boat carrying South American artifacts sank not far from here.”

“You’re shitting me! Elladora Varela has been wasting precious crawl time looking for...gold?” Daniel scratched his head. “Why would Ryan know anything about this?”

“Because she told him what she was doing. She wasn’t getting to the right location, and she needed help reconstructing where the boat would have gone down.”

“Did he help?”

“He doesn’t know. After she disappeared, he looked, but her crawler films are encrypted. All he knows is that after he talked to her, when she got done, she sent for Stephen Penderghast.”

“She’s the one who got Penderghast here that night he was almost killed?”

“Apparently.”