Patience, Grasshopper, patience, she told herself.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll do it.”

Michaels’s grin widened. “See? That wasn’t so difficult, now was it?”

He waited for her to shake her head, the very act acknowledging his control over her, and then, over his shoulder, he said to his henchman, “What are you waiting for? I told you to kill one of them.”

At first she thought she’d misheard him, but then the air was filled with the terrible sound of a gunshot and Annja watched in horror as Bernard’s body slumped over on the deck in front of her.

“You son of a bitch!” she cried, surging to her feet, the blood pounding in her ears as she mentally reached for her sword…

…only to be struck in the face with the butt end of the assault rifle held in her guard’s hands.

The blow was hard enough to knock her unconscious. As she tumbled backward, she thought she heard someone call her name and, over that, the sound of the madman in front of her cackling like a particularly vicious little child, and then the darkness had her and she knew no more.

30

When Annja regained consciousness, she found herself lying on the deck of the Kelly Maywith the dead for company.

The bodies of Jimmy Mitchell and Bernard Reinhardt lay where they had fallen, their blood staining the wood beneath their still forms, their sightless eyes staring out at the world from which they’d been taken too soon.

Of the others, there was no sign.

Blaine Michaels and his henchmen were gone.

The boat that they had arrived in was gone, as well.

Garin was missing, too.

Annja pushed herself up into a sitting position and was nearly overwhelmed by a wave of dizziness that washed over her. She held still, waiting for it to pass. Her face hurt and her nose throbbed, but a gentle exploration of both with her fingertips told her that nothing seemed to be broken. Swollen, yes, but not broken.

When the dizziness had passed and she was reasonably sure she wouldn’t vomit, she climbed to her feet.

“Hello?” she called, or tried to, at least. Her voice came out as more of a croak and she could taste the blood from her damaged nose at the back of her throat.

No one answered her.

Well, who did you expect? she asked herself. The Ghost of Christmas Past? You can see there’s no one here.

She could, too. There really wasn’t all that much more to the boat than she could see. Foredeck. Aft deck. And the wheelhouse. From where she stood she could observe both decks and everything above waist height in the wheelhouse, so unless someone was crouching on the floor of the latter, she was on her own.

An image of a wounded Garin lying bruised and bloody on the wheelhouse floor came to her, and though she didn’t think it likely, she knew she wouldn’t be able to put it out of her mind until she checked, just to be sure. She wobbled forward on unsteady legs, her equilibrium still out of whack from the blow to the head, and peered inside the wheelhouse.

There was no one there.

That didn’t mean there wasn’t anything of interest inside, however.

A black cell phone stood on the control panel right next to the throttle, plainly visible from the wheelhouse door. It was one of those disposable models that you could buy in just about any corner store these days. She didn’t remember seeing Jimmy with a phone like that and she knew it wasn’t hers or Garin’s. It seemed it had been left there specifically for her.

Next to it was the Jeffersonian Key that had been secreted inside the porcelain horse.

She crossed over to the phone and picked it up. A quick examination showed her that there was a single number stored in the device’s memory. She called the number, listening to the line ring for a few moments before it was answered by Michaels.

“Welcome back, Miss Creed.”

Her fury rose at the sound of his voice. “I’m going to kill you for what you’ve done,” she told him, and meant every word of it.

“You can certainly try,” he replied, and then laughed at the very idea of it.

For a long moment all Annja could see was red. When she came back to herself she was clutching her sword in her hand, her fingers wrapped so tightly around the hilt that they were turning white. Michaels was speaking.

“Wait, what?” she asked, shaking her head to clear it while releasing her sword back into the otherwhere with a flick of her hand. She hadn’t unconsciously called her sword before, and its appearance was a bit surprising, but she didn’t have time then to puzzle it out.

“Pay attention, Miss Creed! Your friend’s life depends on it.”

“What did you do with him?”

“Do? Why, nothing. I simply invited him to accompany us for a bit while you finished the task ahead of you.”

“If you harm him—”

“You’ll do what, Miss Creed?” He laughed again, setting her teeth on edge. “You’re not in a position to do anything but what I tell you to do. And I’m telling you to find the missing treasury if you want to see your friend again.”

Annja knew when she’d been backed into a corner. She’d have to figure out a way to get both herself and Garin out of this mess, once she had the treasure in hand.

“Fine.”

His voice was practically dripping with satisfaction as he said, “Excellent. Take the phone with you. I’ll expect a call from you inside of seventy-two hours at which point I’ll tell you where to rendezvous with me to turn over the treasure.”

“Seventy-two hours? Are you crazy? I can’t possibly find it in that kind of time frame.”

Michaels’s tone was firm and brooked no disagreement. “You can and you will. Or you can say goodbye to your friend. Seventy-two hours, Miss Creed. That’s all you get.”

There was a click and the line went dead.

Seventy-two hours? How the hell was she supposed to accomplish that?

By moving your ass, girl, she told herself. Stop whining and get to work!

She grabbed the key and the phone. Her gaze flicked across the pair of bodies on the aft deck. They were lying right out in the open, visible to anyone who happened to pass by, and Annja knew she couldn’t leave them that way.

Something had to be done.

Routing around in the storage compartments at the rear of the boat, Annja found several large tarps and she used those as a temporary solution to cover the bodies of her friends. She weighed the edges of the tarps down in several places so that the wind wouldn’t pick them up and blow them aside once they got under way.

Because that’s exactly what she was going to have to do. Get under way. She couldn’t just leave the boat here, in the middle of the river, no matter how badly she might want to in order to avoid having to deal with the mess Michaels had dumped in her lap. Bernard deserved better than being left behind like some discarded piece of trash. Jimmy Mitchell did, too.

She was going to have to bring the boat back to the marina, put it in its proper slip and hope no one observed her when she made her departure.

The dive line and magnetometer were still being towed behind them, so she had to bring those aboard first and stow them. Despite not having seen another boat other than Michaels’s the entire time they been on the river, she was still filled with anxiety as she worked, afraid another vessel was going to come along at any moment and notice something irregular.

Like the two corpses on the aft deck, she thought with a shudder.

Getting caught seemingly red-handed with the dead bodies of her friends with the deck beneath them covered in their congealing blood was not something she thought she had a chance of walking away from. She’d be locked up quicker than she could blink. If that happened, Garin would be left at the mercy of that psycho, Michaels.