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Chapters (32)
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright Page
  3. Epigraph
  4. ONE
  5. TWO
  6. THREE
  7. FOUR
  8. FIVE
  9. SIX
  10. SEVEN
  11. EIGHT
  12. NINE
  13. TEN
  14. ELEVEN
  15. TWELVE
  16. THIRTEEN
  17. FOURTEEN
  18. FIFTEEN
  19. SIXTEEN
  20. SEVENTEEN
  21. EIGHTEEN
  22. NINETEEN
  23. TWENTY
  24. TWENTY-ONE
  25. TWENTY-TWO
  26. TWENTY-THREE
  27. TWENTY-FOUR
  28. TWENTY-FIVE
  29. TWENTY-SIX
  30. TWENTY-SEVEN
  31. TWENTY-EIGHT
  32. TWENTY-NINE

Juan felt the beginnings of a headache and rubbed his temples absently. Of course there was the other problem that he had no idea how to tackle. He’d already run his idea by Kevin Nixon, but the special-effects master said any fakes he made would be spotted in a second. It was the real deal or nothing. For their plan to work so the Argentines never suspected a thing, Cabrillo needed to find eighteen human skeletons.

The headache was morphing into a migraine.

TWENTY-SIX

TWENTY-SIX

WHO DO YOU LOVE MORE THAN ME?” LINDA ROSS ASKED when she strode into the op center fifteen quiet minutes later. She carried a slim manila folder and a wide grin.

“Megan Fox,” Mark said at once.

“Beyoncé,” the duty tech at damage control called out.

“Katie Holmes,” Hali said.

“I’ve always had a thing for Julia Roberts,” Eric added.

“Chairman,” Linda asked, “care to be a sexist pig, too?”

“The only woman I love more than you is my mom.”

The other men jeered him softly.

Linda smiled. “Touché.”

“Remind me again why I love you so.”

“Because I’ve found that less than a hundred miles south of here is a Norwegian whaling station abandoned back in the 1930s.”

“We don’t need whale bones.”

“It has been preserved as a World Heritage Site—wait for it—because it has a chapel with a graveyard that is the final resting place for twenty-seven whalers who’d died in these waters. You told me to find you some bones, I give you bones.”

Juan was on his feet in an instant and at her side in two strides. He had to bend way over to lay a kiss on her velvety cheek. The migraine suddenly vanished, and the pall that had formed over him lifted. What had him so down was the fact that if they hadn’t found a bunch of skeletons, he would have had no choice but to leave the hostages to their fate. He doubted they were going to be an Argentine priority once things heated up, so to leave them behind meant to let them die.

“Chairman, I’m picking up a transmission from the Chinese workboat,” Hali said, turning back to his bank of computers.

“Jam it!”

He worked his keyboard for a second. “I’ve isolated the frequency. They’re dead. The computer will automatically keep following them as they search for a signal up and down the dial.”

“Okay. Good. If they have any news to report, they’ll have to go back to base. That’s two problems down in under a minute. Well done, everybody.”

Max and Tamara strolled into the op center, their hands so close together that Juan suspected they’d been holding them just seconds earlier. The bullfrog and the princess, he thought, but was happy for them both.

“Perfect timing, my friend.”