Dragon's Triangle (The Shipwreck Adventures Book 2) (6 page)

The doors hissed closed, and as Riley turned her attention from the platform to the inside of the car, she felt a sudden sense of déjà vu. Again, it was that glimpse of something familiar that didn’t register right away. She’d felt this sensation dozens of times over the past four years.

She swung her head back and saw a nearly empty station. Then the view vanished as the train passed into a dark tunnel. She closed her eyes and reached back into her memory, trying to recall that fleeting glimpse of something familiar. In her mind’s eye, she saw the image of a hoodie sliding off a head of brown hair with strands of sun-bleached gold, a
farang
man whose head stood above the crowd with only a small fraction of his face visible in profile.

She reconstructed the memory of what she had not paid attention to the first time around. He had been sitting on the platform, along the far side of a large round concrete bench area opposite the car ahead of hers. She’d noticed him only because when he’d straightened up, his hood had slid off his head. He was walking against the flow of people exiting the train. A flash glimpse of the side of his face caused her breath to catch in her throat. But then the image was gone and the harder she tried to retrieve the memory, the farther it receded.

“Cole?” she whispered.

Just saying his name caused that familiar hollow ache beneath her breastbone. She crossed her left arm over her chest, grabbing onto her right shoulder, and squeezed. Now that was real pain, not some phantom.

All the same, she felt the flush of heat spreading through her abdomen. She clenched her insides tight, and a shiver traveled up her neck and set her nipples tingling. Her eyes snapped open as the train drew to a fast stop and the doors opened. She looked around her to see if anyone was watching. All eyes were averted, but embarrassment that someone
might
have noticed made her face redden.

It was happening again. She’d think she saw him, then she’d have this physical reaction like she felt his presence. It was all in her head, and if she didn’t keep herself grounded in what was real, she was going to go mad.

It had been three or four months since her last vision. Just because she talked to her dead brother’s ghost and imagined she felt Michael’s touch at times didn’t mean she was some kind of conduit to the limbo spirit world. She was no Demi Moore shivering at the touch of her Patrick Swayze on the other side. Cole was either dead or he was alive—there was no in between. Time had shown her it didn’t matter how much she wanted him alive. Wanting it wouldn’t make it so.

But sometimes she made up little stories to make herself feel better. In these made-up tales, some evil force was keeping him prisoner and Cole would escape. Then he would appear on some terribly romantic street corner or at the top of a flower-covered hill and they would race into each other’s arms. Riley felt these dreams made her weak and she was more than a little ashamed of them—especially about their similarity to American shampoo or perfume commercials.

She squeezed her shoulder again and a jolt of pain coursed down her arm. Concentrate. She had to concentrate. She was about to meet a man who could tell her more about her mysterious grandfather and the history of the Riley clan. Maybe he could help her understand what had turned her father into a monster.

The Caribbean Sea
Off Îles de la Petite Terre

March 31, 2008

Cole Thatcher pushed his shoulders up off the wet sand and his stomach contracted. He vomited up yellow watery bile, but a wave rushed in and the water swirled around his body, carrying all the sick away. His arms gave out and he collapsed facedown in the sand again. When the next wave surged in he took a mouthful of salt water to rinse away the acid taste. He spit it out. The water was cool as it washed some sand off his face. The sun burned his back through his wetsuit and the bright light hurt his eyes if he tried to open them.

An inner voice was telling him he should move, but he didn’t know where he was. And his head—oh, God, his head was throbbing. And that sun was so bright.

Something about this situation was wrong. He knew that. He wasn’t supposed to be lying on the beach in his wetsuit. He was supposed to be somewhere else, but he couldn’t remember where. It hurt his head to think about it.

What he wanted to do was sleep.

So he shushed that inner voice.

And let the cool waves stroke his skin.

Whatever it was that he couldn’t remember could wait.

He was too tired.

When he heard the outboard engine it was already very close. He had no idea how long he had been lying there. He should sit up. People were coming and they would think it odd to see a man lying down in the surf. They might know what had happened to him.

A voice called out, “Hallo? Hallo?” Then he heard splashing and the engine stopped.

He tried to roll over. A hand touched his shoulder and helped him to sit up. The hand was a light coffee color and he looked up into the dark eyes of a young woman. Her face was pretty, but her forehead was creased with worry lines. She was saying something to him.

He blinked, trying to get his eyes to focus. The woman wore a baseball cap and men’s clothing. He couldn’t make sense of her words.

“Something happened to me,” he said. “Was I in an accident?”

Two dark-skinned men stood on the sand behind the woman. The three of them were dressed alike. Cole wondered if they were fishermen.

“Monsieur,” she said. “Do you know who I am?”

Cole shook his head and the pain exploded in a white-hot burst behind his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut, then opened them. He looked past the men at the long white beach. “Where’s my dinghy?” he said. “Have you seen my dinghy?”

“Do you know your name?”

“Yes. It’s Cole.”

“Monsieur, you’ve been injured. Your head is bleeding.”

He reached up and touched his scalp above the eyebrow. Blood. He pressed his eyes shut and watched the wild lights playing off the insides of his eyelids. He breathed in slowly through his nose, waiting for the pain to pass.

“I’m here to help you. Get you to a doctor.”

Cole let go of his eyes and looked up at the woman. “Where’s my dinghy? Something happened to me.”

“Yes, you’ve been hurt. I don’t know how you survived.”

“I don’t remember.” A small wave broke onto the beach, and Cole watched the sea foam in around his wetsuit.

“Don’t you remember me?” the woman asked.

He looked up at her face again and squinted.

“We met at my grandfather’s house,” she said. “My name is Monique Jules.”

He looked from her to the two men with her. He didn’t recognize any of them.

“I don’t remember.”

“My grandfather. You know him as Henri Michaut.”

An image flashed in his head. Three people sitting on chairs. He could not see the woman’s face. “I think I know that name.”

“Yes, my grandfather sent me to help you. We’ve been fishing nearby and watching your boat.”

The young woman signaled to the two men with her. They helped him to his feet. One of the men picked up a backpack with two diving cylinders that lay on the beach not far from him.

“Do you see my dinghy?”

“No, monsieur, you did not come by dinghy. You’ve been in an accident.”

They helped him climb into their open fishing boat. A couple of rods in holders at the stern were rigged for trolling. One of the men started the engine while the other lifted the anchor out of the shallows and waded out to the boat. That man hopped aboard, and with the engine in reverse they turned around and headed out to sea.

In the distance, through what looked almost like fog, he saw a big island.
Yes,
he thought.
I know that island.
He had been diving off Guadeloupe. A huge bulbous cloud loomed over the island. Cole
had never seen anything like it. As their boat moved out into deep water, the strange cloud covered the sun and the day darkened. Several boats speckled the horizon, including one cluster of boats with flashing colored lights. They were too far away for him to see what was happening, and besides, he couldn’t clear the salt haze out of his eyes.

The Cordillera Mountains
Baguio, Philippines

November 17, 2012

Elijah Hawkes awoke after the limousine had started the familiar climb into the mountains. He’d slept poorly on the eleven-hour Philippine Airlines flight, and he was attempting to make up for it on the long drive from Manila up to Baguio. He could have flown, but the wait for a flight was longer than the five-hour drive, and the Manila Airport wasn’t air-conditioned. He’d decided he could catch up on sleep in the limo.

He sat up, smoothed the wrinkles out of his shirt sleeves, and straightened his bolo tie. The gold and silver star emblem on his bolo matched the one on his belt buckle. It was important to make the right impression from the first moment he stepped out of the car. In case the big man was there. Elijah rolled his head around to stretch his neck and then reached for the bottle of water the driver had provided. The air was dry already at this elevation, and by the time they reached Baguio, they would be at forty-eight hundred feet. After a long drink,
he leaned back and admired the pine trees clinging to the craggy stone cliffs as the driver downshifted on the twisting steep grade.

Hawkes had always enjoyed the time he got to spend up in the Cordillera. He thought of it as cowboy country, and he felt at home there. The geology and the terrain reminded him of his home in Nevada, and it was not surprising that both regions were rich in gold. The gold-mining industry up here in Benguet province had started at the end of the Spanish-American War when many American soldiers stayed on to pan for gold. Through the years, the mining had grown more sophisticated, and they’d pulled tons of gold out of these mountains. Like many mines in the region, though, the Benguet Mine was nearing the end of its days for pulling new shiny out of the ground. Twenty years ago when his organization had bought the mine, he’d told them as much. That doesn’t matter, the big man had said. Mining new gold is not our primary concern.

When the big car pulled into the gravel parking lot outside the Benguet Mining offices, Jaime Belmonte stood on the big porch watching. Elijah supposed he’d seen the car enter the grounds on the video monitors. The headquarters building, made from rough-hewn logs and set back in the pines, looked like a tourist lodge. Belmonte was smoking, and when the car pulled to a stop, he strolled down the steps and ground out the butt under the heel of his black leather shoe. He brushed off the sleeves of his corduroy jacket and ran his fingers around his ears, making certain his hair was in place.

Belmonte was Brightstone’s man in charge of the Benguet Mining facilities, but he was not the man who had texted Elijah. Was the big man here, or would Belmonte deliver a message for him? If so, Belmonte would never know the true origin of the message. He had no idea that the corporation he worked for was nothing more than a front. Belmonte lived in his little “need to know” world.

Once the car door opened, the strong wind blew cold air inside and Elijah breathed deeply. At this elevation, it didn’t feel a bit like the
tropics. And the piney air smelled so much better than that canned air-conditioning he’d been breathing ever since he left San Francisco. He needed the clean air to clear his head. When he climbed out of the car, the noise of the mining operations drifted over the low hill to the south. The clanking of railcars, the shrieking of metal on metal, the roaring of both diesel and electric motors made the mine sound far more productive than he knew it to be.

Belmonte shook his hand. “Good to see you, Mr. Hawkes. Please, come inside where we can talk.”

The mine manager led him through the front office, past his elderly secretary who smiled and nodded at Hawkes, and back to a conference room where a small fire burned in a stone fireplace. He motioned toward one of the chairs in front of the fire.

“I trust you had a good trip?”

“As good as one can expect from eleven hours cooped up in an aluminum tube with several hundred coughing, sneezing strangers and their crying babies.”

Belmonte smiled. “You do always look on the bright side of things, don’t you, Mr. Hawkes? Could I get you something to drink? Are you hungry?”