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  TREASURE OF THE DEEP

  Nick Caine #2

  J.R. RAIN

  &

  AIDEN JAMES

  Acclaim for the authors:

  “Gripping, adventurous, and romantic—J.R. Rain’s The Lost Ark is a breakneck thriller that traces the thread of history from Biblical stories to current-day headlines. Be prepared to lose sleep!”

  —James Rollins, international bestselling author of Bloodline

  “Aiden James has written a deeply psychological, gripping tale that keeps the readers hooked from page one.”

  —Bookfinds on The Forgotten Eden

  “J.R. Rain delivers a blend of action and wit that always entertains. Quick with the one-liners, but his characters are fully fleshed out (even the undead ones) and you’ll come back again and again.”

  —Scott Nicholson, bestselling author of After: The Shock

  “The intense writing style of Aiden James kept my eyes glued to the story and the pages seemed to fly by at warp speed. Twists, turns, and surprises pop up at random times to keep the reader off balance. It all blends together to create one of the best stories I have read all year.”

  —Huntress Reviews for The Devil’s Paradise

  Other Books by J.R. Rain

  STANDALONE NOVELS

  The Lost Ark

  The Body Departed

  Elvis Has Not Left the Building

  Silent Echo

  Bound By Blood

  Judas Silver: An Adventure Novel

  Lost Eden: An Adventure Novel

  VAMPIRE FOR HIRE SERIES

  Moon Dance

  Vampire Moon

  American Vampire

  Moon Child

  Christmas Moon

  Vampire Dawn

  Vampire Games

  Moon Island

  Moon River

  Vampire Sun

  SAMANTHA MOON

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  Teeth

  Vampire Nights

  Vampires Blues

  Vampire Dreams

  Halloween Moon

  Vampire Gold

  Blue Moon

  Dark Side of the Moon

  THE WITCHES SERIES

  The Witch and the Gentleman

  The Witch and the Angel

  JIM KNIGHTHORSE SERIES

  Dark Horse

  The Mummy Case

  Hail Mary

  Clean Slate

  SPINOZA TRILOGY

  The Vampire With the Dragon Tattoo

  The Vampire Who Played Dead

  The Vampire in the Iron Mask

  GRAIL QUEST TRILOGY

  Arthur

  Merlin

  Lancelot

  NICK CAINE SERIES

  with Aiden James

  Temple of the Jaguar

  Treasure of the Deep

  Pyramid of the Gods

  Curse of the Druids

  ALADDIN TRILOGY

  with Piers Anthony

  Aladdin Relighted

  Aladdin Sins Bad

  Aladdin and the Flying Dutchman

  WALKING PLAGUE TRILOGY

  with Elizabeth Basque

  Zombie Patrol

  Zombie Rage

  Zombie Mountain

  SPIDER TRILOGY

  with Scott Nicholson and H.T. Night

  Bad Blood

  Spider Web

  Spider Bite

  SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS

  The Bleeder and Other Stories

  Vampires Rain and Other Stories

  The Santa Call: A Christmas Story

  SCREENPLAYS

  Judas Silver

  Lost Eden

  COLLABORATIONS

  Cursed (with Scott Nicholson)

  The Vampire Club (with Scott Nicholson)

  Ghost College (with Scott Nicholson)

  Dragon Assassin (with Piers Anthony)

  Dolfin’s Tayle (with Piers Anthony)

  Daughters of Eve (with P.J. Day)

  Zombie Party: Stories (with P.J. Day)

  Hear No Evil (with Michele Scott)

  Other Books by Aiden James

  JUDAS CHRONICLES

  Plague of Coins

  Reign of Coins

  Destiny of Coins

  The Dragon Coin

  DYING OF THE DARK SERIES

  The Vampires’ Last Lover

  The Vampires’ Birthright

  Blood Princesses of the Vampires

  Scarlet Legacy of the Vampires

  NICK CAINE SERIES

  with J.R. Rain

  Temple of the Jaguar

  Treasure of the Deep

  Pyramid of the Gods

  Curse of the Druids

  TALISMAN CHRONICLES

  The Forgotten Eden

  The Devil’s Paradise

  Hurakan’s Chalice

  CADES COVE SERIES

  Cades Cove

  The Raven Mocker

  GHOSTHUNTERS 101 SERIES

  Deadly Night

  The Ungrateful Dead

  JUDAS REFLECTIONS SERIES

  with Michelle Wright

  The Whitechapel Murders

  Curse of Stigmata

  Treasure of the Deep

  Copyright © 2013 by J.R. Rain and Aiden James

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  The authors wish to dedicate this book to the amazing Leslie Whitaker. Thank you for all that you do! We appreciate you more than you know!

  Treasure of the Deep

  “What I seek I find, what I find I keep.”

  —H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon’s Mines

  Chapter One

  Maldives, Island Unknown

  Present Day

  The early afternoon sun was merciless, beating down on us as we left the deserted beach for the jungle that held our prize. That was the hope. A hope spurred on by an ancient map...or at least one that appeared to be ancient.

  Very little had been as advertised so far. Not since we had landed on this god-forsaken island last night. Other than the island being the very one discussed on the puddle-jumper we took from the southern shores of India to the southwestern portion of the Maldives, not a damned thing had panned out.

  I hate when that happens.

  “You keep looking at the map as if it tells you lies, and you are waiting for the lies to change to truths,” said my partner, Ishi, in his native Tawankan tongue, preferring to forgo the English he sometimes struggled with.

  He had just begun clearing a path through the thick tropical foliage at the jungle’s edge with his machete. We shared the same irritation. Our dear Marie Da Vinci’s description of the terrain had proved inaccurate so far. Getting to the caves primitively portrayed on the map was supposed to be easy. I had foolishly expected the trees and plants to present fewer obstacles than the Honduran jungles had just days earlier. I was dead wrong. Jungles were jungles. Any looter worth his salt knew that.

  I held up the map. “Does this damned thing look three-hundred and fifty years old to you?” I knew something about ancient maps, and this one was suspicious at best.

  “You are the expert, boss,” said Ishi. “I am just your humble servant.”

  I snorted. “Lot of good you are.”

  Ishi grinned as I irritably glanced down both sides of the beach one last time. The white sand, pristine in its brilliance, stretched empty for as far as my eyes could see. It was no different from the view I had at daybreak. That’s when we awoke to find our slick debutante missing. Yes, Marie was gone. The very woman
who’d led us here on this wild goose chase.

  I shook my head all over again.

  How the hell our chartered plane left without Ishi or me hearing it remained a mystery...although, the two bottles of Old Monk rum we’d picked up in New Delhi, and later shared between us last night, might’ve had something to do with it.

  Marie had left us high and dry sometime after we’d all retired. Well, that’s not exactly true. She did leave us two cases of bottled water and a week’s supply of rations. Not to mention another three unopened bottles of the aforementioned rum.

  At least there was that.

  But no goodbye kiss, no “sorry things didn’t work out.” No. Only a frigging note that read: Sorry, darling. I must leave. No time to explain. Be careful. M.

  I couldn’t believe I’d let this happen to my heart again, and frankly, it royally pissed me off. I’m a sucker for attractive brunettes with gorgeous doe eyes offering vulnerability, and a soft, sexy voice telling my ears what my mind is susceptible to believe. In this case, it was a double offer of loving companionship and a chance to secure a treasure rich enough for Marie, Ishi, and myself to retire in style.

  I fell for it hook, line, and sinker. Again.

  Ishi turned toward me. His sunhat was the only clothing to escape the humid heat, as his kaki shirt and shorts were drenched. Small streams of sweat coursed down the sides of his deeply tanned face. He was scowling, but his light brown eyes twinkled with mirth. I’m glad someone found this shit amusing. Especially since Ishi was the guy in charge of creating a path to the cave system through what looked like a previously unexplored jungle.

  He said, “But I will say this: I told you the day before yesterday it looked funny. But like you usually tell me, boss, you should’ve paid attention to your business instead of a beautiful woman’s eyes...eyes and other things,” he chided, almost playfully. He laughed to himself, and went back to the task at hand. “She could’ve told you a lot of things that may or may not be true.”

  Now, I was worried about our gold and the relics we’d left in Honduras. Would Marie double back to Honduras and leave us completely broke? She came from money, and even though the gold trinkets and coins the three of us stashed into five safety deposit boxes were a king’s ransom by Tawankan standards, they would only allow her to enjoy life unfettered in her American castle for a year or two. My previous artifact collections were safely stored in California, and would remain hidden until my eventual return. Only the vast fortune of Honduran gold in the crumbling Temple of the Jaguar would be something Marie might still go back for...and die for, without someone like me to help her get it. It was the very reason she hired me in the first place, back when our relationship was all business and no play...less than a week ago.

  “Your gold is safe...and even if it’s not, I’ll make it up to you,” I assured him. “Do you now agree we should assume the map is a fake, and use your knife on the drier wood around here to build a beacon so someone can rescue our asses from this Maldivian hellhole?”

  Ishi stopped hacking at the surrounding foliage and eyed me seriously for a moment. “Either way, we both know you would still insist on finding the caves, kemosabe,” he said.

  He had a point. Fake or not, I loved a good treasure story. Hell, I made a damn good living on treasure stories with less validity than this one.

  Ishi went on, “You think she’s coming back?”

  I stood there in the jungle, overlooking the beach below, hands on hips, sweating a river. Our only transportation was gone. We couldn’t have been more abandoned. As much as it broke my heart to admit it, I said, “She’s gone, Ishi.”

  My Tawankan friend eyed me. “The note did not seem her style.”

  I knew what he meant. Marie Da Vinci had not seemed the type to hide behind notes. If she had a problem, she told you. Then again, personalities changed when one was double-crossed.

  I gritted my teeth, angry at myself all over again.

  Then again, I didn’t know her well enough to say for sure. Better to focus on the present instead. And, Ishi was right. Despite the potential dangers lurking in an unknown jungle, and our limited food and water supplies, I wanted to find out if anything valuable was hidden there. Any lead to potential treasure—even highly questionable ones—needed to be followed up on. Damned straight I wanted to explore the place and see if these caves existed or not.

  Nick Caine’s Looting Tip No. 17: Follow each and every lead—they just might lead, in fact, to a pot of gold.

  Yes, as an artifact plunderer (or as I prefer to call myself, creative archaeologist), I’ve spent years following tenuous clues in order to uncover some of the rarest artifacts from eons ago. It would surprise most folks, I’m sure, to learn that many of the well-known museums around the world willingly pay my standard finder’s fee for such items. Fees that are substantial, and yet a fraction of what my products are worth—even in today’s black market.

  At present, the majority of priceless items I’ve elected to sell are displayed proudly to the public. Without my help, and dare I say keen sense for consistently finding artifacts that have been missed from previous excavations, many of the displays that tourists take for granted wouldn’t exist.

  So, really, I performed a public service. I worked, in essence, for the people. As long as the people paid my finder’s fees.

  Sadly, I’m a looter with a conscience, much to my chagrin—and to Ishi’s amusement. Often I make free donations from roughly two thirds of what I discover in remote locales across the globe. As for the other third? Well, while I’ll admit that most of it stays with me, it usually pays for the next expedition...such as what we’re on right now. The difference between those trips and this one is that they were funded with purpose, and planned with precision. I should have known from the very instant Marie invited us to join her on this spur-of-the-moment trip across the dateline that it was destined to be a complete clusterfuck.

  “Let’s forget about her, and focus only on reaching our destination, so we can cross it off our list of fun things to do while we’re stranded here,” I said, loosening my own machete to help speed the process of getting there.

  “Whatever you say, boss,” said Ishi, leveling a few more good solid machete whacks through the fronds of a thick palm tree.

  We exchanged slashes, working our way steadily through the dense foliage, sweating profusely and undoubtedly stinking up the joint. Not that anyone cared, since we were stranded on a goddamn island.

  Finally, Ishi pointed. “Have a look.”

  An overgrown trail led weakly through the jungle. Weakly or not, it just made our job easier.

  “Maybe there’s something to Marie’s map.”

  “Or maybe we just got lucky.”

  The trail was nowhere near as densely packed as the entrance to the jungle had been. Since it was my turn to lead, I continued through the hole hacked away by Ishi. The grass came up to my knees in some places, but what had looked like a dense jungle was nothing of the sort. Taller palms seemed to mark the course of the path. I smiled at the thought we might reach the map’s destination within an hour or two. Though hard to gauge the island’s exact size, it appeared to be no larger than a mile from its widest point. I thought about how it had looked from our plane in yesterday evening’s fading sunlight. The caves were supposed to be located in the middle of the island...somewhere.

  “Somewhere in the middle,” she’d said, as we prepared to land. “The caves are near a secluded lagoon with water that’s bluer than any along the South American coast...”

  Probably just up the road from the guy who could build us a bridge to get to said lagoon. I laughed softly to myself at my own stupidity.

  “What’s that, Nick?”

  “Nothing...just thinking how delightful this is going to be,” I said. “I hope you realize if we find this place, chances of finding Marie’s latest horde of gold are remote at best. Not to mention, we’ll still be stuck here unless someone stumbles onto us. There ain’t a
lot of nutrients in gold and precious gems, and the palms don’t appear to be the coconut, date, or banana varieties.”

  “It ain’t fun, if it ain’t a challenge,” said Ishi in English.

  I shook my head. Ishi worked my last nerves sometimes. Granted, it didn’t take much to work my nerves these days.

  Especially since I was fairly certain I had been duped out of a lot of money and left to die. Not to mention we had yet to come across any fresh water. According to the map, there was a fresh water spring somewhere nearby.

  A map that looked suspicious at best.

  After walking for roughly forty minutes, I heard what sounded like a young woman laughing. The sound jolted me out of my stupor—a stupor in which I actually wondered what Ishi would taste like. Anyway, the sound was unexpected and surely a sign that I was in the beginning stages of a form of jungle fever.

  Except, apparently Ishi had heard them, too. He touched my back shoulder as I raised my finger to my lips. The sound came again, and seemed to be coming from just ahead, to our right. So much for the island being deserted.

  I motioned toward the area where the voices seemed to emanate from. “I’m going to get a better view. Stay here.”

  “Your humble servant awaits.”

  “Can it, will ya?”

  I had just taken my first steps to the right, pushing aside the thick fern fronds, when I heard the nearby click from a weapon being cocked. A rifle. Perhaps it was an old Winchester, or similar model from yesteryear. I gathered that information from the barrel extending toward us from a cluster of palms up ahead. Whoever pointed the weapon our way carefully emerged from the trees, along with another individual rising up from the tall grass on the left side of our path. Two others approached from behind.

  We were surrounded four women. I might have died and gone to heaven, except all of them were pointing their weapons at us, and all looked angry enough to shoot first and ask questions later.