Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (42 page)

Elijah’s head swung around slowly. “She’s that woman sailor?”

“You know this story?”

Elijah said nothing.

“Well, unless she has some sort of fetish for male treasure hunters, there’s a good chance that our Mr. Jones might be the guy who went missing four years ago. If only we can establish some connection between the two of them.”

They were interrupted by a knock on the hotel room door. Elijah assumed it was the room-service attendant returning to clean up. He crossed to the door and opened it.

Benny stood outside.

“What are you doing here? You’re supposed to be out on Corregidor.” Elijah stepped aside so the man could enter.

“My phone died. I saw her boat pass by last night. I waited until morning and took the ferry back to Manila so I could report to you. But by the time I got to the yacht club she and the old man were leaving.”

“I assume you followed them.”

Benny nodded. “But I lost them.”

Elijah leapt forward and grabbed Benny by the front of his shirt. “You fucking stupid savage.” He pulled Benny close. “You were outsmarted
again
by this girl?”

Elijah wanted to see fear in the man’s eyes. Instead he saw a blank face, and those dark, almost black eyes were trying to burn a hole right through him.

Benny said, “They went straight to the docks by Rizal Park and they got on a seaplane. There was no way I could follow. The plane headed north.”

Nils Skar interrupted. “Can you describe the plane?”

“Just a seaplane. It did have a name on the side. It said ‘Gama’s Resort and Dive Center.’”

Skar grabbed Elijah’s arm. “That’s Brian Holmes’s plane.
There’s
our connection.”

Subic Bay, Luzon
The Philippines

December 3, 2012

Greg opened the door to the room, stepped back, and handed Riley the key. “There you go. You’ll be in here and”—she pointed down the open corridor—“Irv, you’ll be right next door.”

Irv gave Riley the thumbs-up sign and said, “
Constant togetherness is fine—but only for Siamese twins
.”

Riley rolled her eyes at him.

“This is a dive resort so the rooms aren’t fancy, but they’re clean,” Greg continued.

“It looks great to me,” Riley said. “After almost two weeks at sea, I’m heading straight to the shower.”

“Okay. Let me know if there’s anything you need.”

“I can’t thank you enough.”

“Whenever you’re ready, come on down to the restaurant and we’ll talk about tomorrow. I know you are anxious to join the
Bonhomme Richard
, but there just wasn’t enough time to refuel and make it up there in daylight today.”

Night had fallen by the time Riley left her room and headed to the bar. It was more crowded now than it had been when they’d arrived and Brian had taxied the seaplane right up to the floating dock in front of the restaurant and dive center. There was a flat-screen TV above the bar and though the sound was muted, Riley saw the headline “Typhoon Bopha takes aim at Mindanao with winds of 250 km/hr.”

The crowd was mostly Caucasian men, a few with Filipina wives or girlfriends. They all seemed to know Brian, who was holding court behind the bar. He was in the middle of a story when he spotted her.

“Riley, welcome to Gama’s!” he shouted. His Australian accent was even thicker than it had been earlier.

She leaned over the bar. “I have a favor to ask.”

“Anything,” he said. “Just ask.”

“Have you got any way to contact the
Bonhomme Richard
?”

“Sure. I’ve got a radio in my office and we usually chat in the evenings about this time.”

“Could I—”

“Follow me.” Brian came out from behind the bar and led Riley from the room and down a hall. He opened a door and switched on the light.

What he referred to as his office looked a lot more like a workshop to her. There was a long table in the middle of the room on which were several artifacts in various stages of restoration. One piece looked like a blob of coral, while another was a perfect blue-and-white porcelain Chinese jar. The design on the jar was of frothy waves at the bottom and several winged dragons flying around above the waves.

Brian sat at a desk along the wall of the room and turned on a single-sideband radio. “Those boys are frustrated. This ought to cheer them right up.” He only called their boat name a couple of times before Cole replied. Riley smiled when she heard his voice.

“
Bonhomme Richard
, I’ve got a young lady here who would like to talk to you. I’ll leave you two alone.”

Brian handed her the mike and closed the door on his way out.

“Hey, Cole.”

“You made it. I was getting worried about you. The southern islands are getting slammed by this typhoon.”

“Yeah, I’m pretty glad to be here, too. My boat’s at the Manila Yacht Club. How are things with you?”

“Frustrating. We know it’s here somewhere, but we’re having no luck.”

“Well, I’ve spent some time with an expert. Remember Irv?”

“Yeah. The old guy from Bangkok?”

“Right. He and I have been going over some things.”

“Please tell me you’re not sharing information with him. Riley, I don’t trust him.”

She wasn’t sure how she was going to explain to Cole that she’d been sharing her boat with him. “I know that. But Brian is going to fly us up tomorrow afternoon. Can you meet us off the island that is to the southeast of you? If you head out in the morning, you could be there by noon, right?”

“What’s this about?”

“I’ll explain when I see you.”

There was a long silence. Riley was certain Cole understood the need for camouflage. They had no idea who might be listening.

“So I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

“Okay. We’ll be there.”

“Good. Trust me on this, Cole. You’ll be happy you did.”

She shut down the radio after they had both signed off. Businesslike. From this point forward that would be how she would deal with him. It was foolish to think their six days in the Caribbean meant as much to him as it did to her. If it had, he wouldn’t have stayed away from her for four long years.

She was tired and she wanted to get some much-needed sleep. She hurried to the door. When she stepped out into the hall, she saw a man with shoulder-length hair hurrying off toward the bar. Where had he come from? She walked to the door a few steps away in the opposite direction. It was locked. He hadn’t been in there. There was only one other logical explanation. He’d been outside the door to the office. She followed him.

When Riley stepped into the bar she couldn’t see a man with long hair in the crowd at first. Then she saw him on the other side of the bar—at least she assumed it was him because she hadn’t seen his face in the hall. It was a face you wouldn’t forget. His eyes bulged out of his head to such an extreme degree it had to be some physical ailment. On the bar in front of him was a half-finished beer and a cigarette burning in the ashtray. He certainly didn’t look like he’d just been lurking down that hall.

“Riley, come here!” Brian shouted. “I want to introduce you to some of my mates here.”

She walked over to the bar and one of the fellas gave up his stool for her. She slid onto the seat and found herself directly across from the long-haired guy. Brian went around the bar, telling her names. When he got to the bug-eyed fellow, he said, “This guy’s got experience working up in the Babuyan Islands. We’re in luck. He just flew in from Manila. You might want to talk to him. Nils Skar, meet Riley.”

The guy nodded at her and lifted the hand with the burning cigarette.

Brian continued. “Folks around here call him the Norwegian Psychic on account he hears voices. The good part is the voices tell him where to dig!”

There was good-natured laughter around the bar.

“Since he knows the area up there, I’ve invited him to come along with us tomorrow.” Brian set a beer in front of her and he lifted his own glass in the air.

Riley raised her glass.

“To good hunting!” he said.

Camiguin Island
The Philippines

December 4, 2012

Cole stood on the bow of his trawler with his forearms resting on the steel bulwark. He had just dropped the anchor in thirty-five feet of clear water and watched it hit the white sand bottom before letting out a little more than a hundred feet of chain. The four-hour trip over from their anchorage off Calayan Island had been rough, with twenty- to thirty-knot winds on the nose and fifteen-foot seas. Here in the anchorage off the west side of Camiguin Island they had found excellent protection, and the water was calm, with a pleasant cooling breeze off the land. Cole didn’t know why Riley had asked him to come to this place, but he hoped her reason was sound. He didn’t want to have to retrace his route across that channel anytime soon.

Ashore was a white sand beach backed by a fringe of palms with assorted structures that mostly looked like homes. Just back from the village, the island rose up at a steep incline toward the jungle-covered mountains. He could count at least two volcanoes, the southernmost of which actually had steam rising out of it. On his chart that one was
called Mount Camiguin. After what had happened to him in the Caribbean, being this close to active volcanoes made him uneasy.

He turned at the click of dog’s nails on the deck to see Theo and Leia walking toward him.

“Hey, boss,” Theo said, “what does it look like ashore?”

“You’d like it, my friend.”

Theo rested his arms on the bulwark next to Cole and they both turned their faces toward shore.

“It looks a bit like Dominica. It would remind you of home. Two volcanoes in sight. There’s a small village and I can count at least five good-sized fishing canoes pulled up onto the beach. So far nobody seems to be paying too much attention to us, but if I know small islands like this, that won’t last for long.”

“No, I imagine the village is all abuzz already about the new boat that just dropped anchor offshore. The coconut wireless is humming.”

“Just wait until a seaplane drops out of the sky. That will really get the gossips started.”

Theo chuckled. “You’re right there. Is there plenty of open water for them to land?”

“Yeah. You could bring an aircraft carrier in here.”

Theo nodded. “Judging from the number of wrecks marked on the chart, this harbor has been used by ships quite a bit. I wonder how many of those wrecks are from the war.”

“Most, I suspect. But I hope Riley asked us to bash our way over here based on something more concrete than the number of old wrecks marked on a chart. If the wrecks are charted, they’ve also been well picked over.”

“You’ll be able to ask her yourself soon enough.”

“Yeah—if she’s speaking to me.”

“Hey, all you did was steal her treasure map. Why should she hold that against you?”

Cole opened his mouth and started to protest, but he saw his friend grinning.

Theo said, “You know what, mon? You make it too easy. Come on, Leia, let’s leave Cole to his misery and go get this boat ready for company.”

Misery was right, he thought after Theo left. When he’d decided three years ago that he couldn’t risk contacting Riley and endangering her, he thought he had lost her forever. Now he’d been offered this second chance, and he was afraid he may have blown it already.

Cole didn’t know how long he’d been standing out there when Theo called out to him from the wheelhouse.

“I just heard from Brian on the VHF. They’re about twenty minutes out. He says it’s him and four passengers.”

“What the hell?” Cole walked back to the door to the bridge and the boat’s navigation center. Theo sat in one of the two raised chairs that faced an impressive array of electronics. “We’ve got five guests coming?”

“That’s what he said.”

“Where are we going to put everybody?”

Theo laughed. “I see what you’re getting at. We don’t have enough bunks. I guess somebody is going to have to double up. Like maybe Riley can bunk with you?”

“That’s not what I was thinking.”

“
Right
. You keep telling yourself that.”

“I’m going to go launch the Boston Whaler. Somebody is going to have to ferry this lot from the plane to the boat.”