Concrete Evidence (40 page)

T
HE ARTIFACTS WOULD HAVE BEEN
in the casino if she’d done nothing. If she’d stuck with her stupid cell tower assessments and let Janice write the Thermo-Con EA, the artifacts would have been there. If she had never met with Sam Riversong, if she hadn’t tried to get his DNA, if she hadn’t chosen to meet the senator, Lee would never have suspected a thing, and the artifacts would have been there.

If she’d taken the job at Starbucks and never met Lee, JT, Joe, or Sam, the artifacts would have been there. And Starbucks would have given her better health insurance.

Every action she’d taken, every choice she’d made, had been a mistake.

Probably including this one.

She tucked her car up against a run-down fishing shack located a half mile up the road from the Menanichoch marina. It was two thirty in the morning. She needed to search the
Andvari
to find what Jake had pulled from the Atlantic near Norfolk. She opened the hatchback and pulled out her dive gear; she would approach the boat from the water.

Her stomach knotted. Would Marco be on the boat?

After donning her dive gear, she entered the Chesapeake, her breath catching as she sank into the dark, cold water. On a clear day at noon, she’d only be able to see five feet in front of her, but now her flashlight illuminated only two feet. The full moon would be up for hours, so she surfaced several times to check the shoreline until she reached the marina entrance. There she spotted Jake’s boat tied to the end of the longest dock and took a compass reading. Until she reached the boat, she would stay underwater, using her flashlight and compass to navigate.

She surfaced in the shadows of the
Andvari’
s dive platform. Holding the ladder rail, she listened for several minutes to determine if anyone was aboard. Sick with fear, she placed her foot on the first rung. Her wet, gloved hands slipped, and she gripped the bar tighter. Her whole body shook as she boarded the vessel. Ironically, it was just one week shy of a year since she’d escaped this boat by jumping from this very platform.

She pulled her mask down around her neck and left the heavy air tank and fins on the platform. She would confirm Jake had Iraqi artifacts, get the hell off the boat, then call the FBI.

She entered the below deck area through a rear hatch and listened for movement, hearing only water lapping against the hull, and her pounding heart, which beat so loud she feared the sound would give her away.

She paused outside Jake’s cabin. Any valuables on the boat would be inside this room. With her ear to the door, she listened for several seconds, then took a deep breath and turned the knob. She used her flashlight to scan the room. Shock and surprise rippled through her. Dozens of bright blue waterproof dive bags filled the cabin.

She reached for the closest bag and opened it.
Holy shit.

Inside were neatly stacked bundles of crisp, new one-hundred-dollar bills. She hesitated, then decided her dive gloves made it safe for her to touch the money. She lifted a bundle and fanned the bills. The money looked real, the numbers sequential. How much money was here?

One hundred bills in a bundle meant each bundle was worth ten thousand dollars. Ten bundles would equal a hundred thousand. The money was arranged in four rows by five rows: twenty bundles visible on the top layer. She was looking at two hundred thousand dollars per layer.

She ran her hand down the side of the bag, trying to estimate how many layers of bundles were stacked. Her hands shook, and she lost count. Better just guess. Each bundle was a little more than an inch thick; the contents of the bag were stacked about two feet high. Twenty layers? Two hundred thousand times twenty—

She dropped her flashlight, then held her breath, wondering if anyone was around to hear the soft thunk that echoed in her ears.

She looked at the other bags in the room and tried to count them, but she couldn’t focus, adrenaline surged through her. The one bag she’d opened contained approximately four million dollars. And at least twenty bags were stacked on Jake’s bed and floor.

She wasn’t looking at the proceeds from artifact smuggling. This was so much bigger, so much worse than that. Jake was now smuggling cold, hard cash.

Where had the money come from?

All she knew was she had to get off this boat. Now.

She was back on deck, closing the hatch when she heard a voice from the dock. “They’ll be here soon,” Jake said. She wondered who he was talking to.

She couldn’t get to the dive platform without crossing open space. She waited. Jake entered the hull from the sliding door on the side, but his companion remained outside.

She ducked behind a storage bench on the port side, hoping she’d have a chance to make a run for the dive platform.

Seconds later, she heard a yell, and Jake raced onto the deck. “Someone’s been here. There’s water in the hall and in my cabin.”

“Feds?”

“Feds wouldn’t drip everywhere. My money’s on Erica. She was asking about the boat tonight.”

“You should have killed her. But you were too fucking horny for the bitch.” Erica recognized Marco’s voice.
Oh God.
She should never have come here.

“We couldn’t kill her, and you know it. If she turned up missing, we’d have been asked too many questions by the wrong people.”

Marco called out from the stern, “She’s still here. Stupid bitch left her dive gear.”

She heard a splash over the sound of her frantic pulse.

“She won’t be able to get away without her tank,” Marco said. “We’re in deep shit. She probably called the cops. Get in the Zodiac.”

The boat rocked—Marco jumping into the smaller vessel?
Please let them leave.

“Get the stern line,” Jake said.

Suddenly, light washed over the deck. Spotlights, coming from the dock.

“Fuck!” Marco yelled.

“Jake Novak, this is the FBI—” The rest was drowned out by the sound of an outboard motor revving. The small Zodiac sped out into the Chesapeake.

Erica heard cursing from the dock. The spotlight shifted from the
Andvari
and found the fleeing boat.

Shit. What should she do? Stay and answer questions? She had a history with Jake, a reputation for stealing artifacts, worked for Talon & Drake, and someone who worked for the company was involved with smuggling.

By stepping on board the
Andvari
tonight, she’d cast herself as scapegoat.

Footsteps sounded on the dock. She had one chance to get away. She hoped the FBI agents were too focused on the fleeing boat to notice her. She ran for the dive platform, took a deep breath, and dove straight down.

She kicked downward and pulled on her mask, using precious air to clear it. She estimated she’d descended about twenty feet and hoped the light from her flashlight wouldn’t be visible at the surface. When she reached the murky bottom, she read her depth gauge: thirty-five feet. In a drop that deep, the current could have shifted her scuba tank several feet in any direction. She could see only two feet in front of her.

She felt the sea floor frantically. Her lungs ached. She wasn’t wearing a weight belt and had to kick in a frenetic rhythm to keep from rising, fighting both buoyancy and her desperate need for air.

She couldn’t panic.

She’d spent hundreds of hours underwater and was trained to search methodically. She tried not to think of what was happening on the boat above her and swam in a circle, widening the radius with each pass.

The burning in her lungs became unbearable.

L
EE HAD BEEN AT HIS POST
on a neighboring boat for half an hour when he saw a dark form climb onto the dive platform of the
Andvari
. Even in a wet suit, her body was recognizable. He probably knew her shape better than his own and felt a jolt of disbelief and pain slice all the way to his core.

Erica is still working for Novak.

No. He didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it.

The agent with him quietly radioed the other agents stationed on vessels throughout the marina. Lee and the agent were probably the only ones who’d seen her, as the other agents faced the boat from different angles.

“You know the woman? Does she work for Talon & Drake?” the agent asked Lee.

He didn’t hesitate. “I can’t be sure; the mask and hood hid too much.”

Erica’s water entry onto the scene caused a flurry of conversation as the agents decided what to do. They agreed to wait. The woman was the first conspirator to arrive.

At nearly three in the morning, Erica appeared on deck just as Novak arrived with someone else. A minute later, the unidentified man dropped her tank into the water.

The radio crackled. “A suspect is untying the Zodiac at the end of the dock.”

The agent in charge came over the radio. “Shit. They’re gonna flee. Move in!”

“You stay here,” the agent said to Lee and left.

Alone, he watched the scene play out. She dove into the water while the Feds raced to the end of the dock, intent on the fleeing boat. He needed to tell the agents. Instead, he held his breath, wondering what she’d do without her scuba tank.

He watched, reminding himself she was a diver and an archaeologist. If anyone could find a tank in the murky Chesapeake, it was Erica.

The agents argued over whether there were two or three people on the fleeing Zodiac. Another boat left in pursuit.

He found it impossible to hold air in his lungs any longer and took a great gasping breath.

Time to tell the FBI the scuba diver had gotten away.

He hoped he’d given her enough time to escape.

E
RICA HAD TO SURFACE
. She needed air.

She planted a foot on the bottom to push off for a fast ascent. Pain shot up her leg.

Her ankle had hit something. Something metal.

Her scuba tank. A frantic second later, she had the regulator in her mouth and took a slow, deep breath. She fumbled with the straps as she forced herself to take even breaths.

She checked her compass, found her bearings, and hoped she had enough oxygen to swim back to her car.

C
HAPTER
F
ORTY-
T
HREE

E
RICA WAS SOUND ASLEEP
on a pile of blankets and towels when there was a loud banging on her apartment door. She glanced at the clock: six a.m. She’d slept for an hour. She didn’t have to fake bleary-eyed confusion when she opened the door for the two FBI agents.

They questioned her for hours, asking about Novak, the
Andvari
, and her whereabouts at three a.m. She claimed to have been sleeping from one on but was truthful about everything else. She gave them the camera disk and the prints that proved the Aztec artifacts had come from the shipwreck, and as she’d expected, they told her the photos alone proved nothing. They had no artifacts to compare them to. She told them about the DNA test she’d sent off and her hopes that the envelope contained Sam Riversong’s DNA. The agents, one male, one female, rolled their eyes and told her the envelope was useless without proof of where it came from.