Chloe looked over the inventory list as Moncada’s mercs lugged crates on board his cargo plane, lashing them into the hold, fitting them with nets and chutes. They had food and water, tents and climbing gear, rafts and motors, lights, demolition and excavation equipment, a portable ground penetrating radar unit, chemical toilets… She’d even thought of sunblock and bug spray. The gold was likely buried, it could take days to unearth it. Someone else was handling weapon stuff, a big guy named Juan with split ends and some bullshit tribal tats, which was fine by her. She didn’t look into the heavy crates he was loading—presumably materiel for the half dozen mercs loading boxes, all of them swaggering around like characters from an old Western, bristling with black nylon instead of leather. Testosterone gone wild, and complete overkill in Chloe’s opinion: they were headed to a bare speck of rock in the middle of the ocean, who did they think they were going to have to fend off?
Not even my business to ask. She was an independent contractor, nothing more, brought in to find the gold and oversee the excavation, if one was necessary. Moncada was paying the bills, he could invite a circus if he wanted… And really, hadn’t he? Cirque de Psycho. Braddock and her two henchmen had shown half an hour ago and boarded without even looking at Chloe. She’d want to watch her back with that one; Moncada had made them enemies when he’d handed the op to her, and Jo Braddock definitely struck her as the grudge-holding type.
Once she’d verified that everything had been unloaded from the latest truck, Chloe stopped for a drink of water, pushing her hair off her sweaty forehead. It was late in the day, heat waves shimmering off the tarmac of Moncada’s private airstrip. The plane was huge, a C-17 Globemaster III, fifty meters long with a wingspan just as wide, made for militaries the world over to transport troops and outsized cargo. The cargo plane’s ancient loadmaster walked back and forth in front of the ramp, telling the grim-faced mercs where to put what, and how to secure the boxes to the rails that ran the length of the hold. The old man had left a wide path right down the middle to load in Moncada’s Mercedes Gullwing, of all things. The gleaming red coupe was parked in the lengthening shadow of a pyramid of crates.
A shining Hyundai GV80 rolled up to the plane, parked behind the loading workers. Moncada got out of the back and walked to the foot of the ramp, looking cool and surprisingly at ease for someone whose father had been murdered the day before. He wore sunglasses and a tan leather coat, white slacks. No black for mourning, then, unless you counted the shades. Santiago Moncada was a villain under his smooth surface charm, which Chloe had always known, but now she knew knew. His dad had found God in his dotage and wanted to give away the family fortune; conveniently for the heir, Armando had been murdered before any actual giving could occur. Even more conveniently, a pair of dead criminals had turned up just this morning with Moncada Senior’s money clip and the driver’s wallet. Chloe had heard about the crime on the radio over breakfast. The narrative was that the two crooks had fought over the loot and knifed each other to death. Crazy, how well that had worked out for the polished, handsome man who was now smiling at her, waving her over.
Chloe touched the strap of the scroll’s waterproof case on her shoulder— she’d worn it all day, along with the gold keys in her smallest leather pack— and headed to the ramp, wishing she was more excited for the trip. Finding the gold was the thing. As long as she hung on to that, she wouldn’t have to reckon with herself for who was sponsoring the expedition. It had just sort of happened, falling in with Moncada. She’d let it get around a few months back that she had a line on one of the Brotherhood crosses, and when the billionaire had approached her to offer her a stake in his venture, she’d meant to turn him down… But he’d presented a lucrative sum just to let him know if she heard anything, and, after all, it was her business to find things… And when Sully had announced his arrival to Barcelona with the second key, dropping Moncada a text hadn’t seemed such a crime, because… well, because Sully…
Stop it. You made the decision, it’s happening. Head down, watch your back, do the job.
Chloe stopped in front of him, but he was talking to one of the mercs, waving at his shining red Gullwing.
“Load her near the front,” Moncada said. “I don’t want her getting scratched.”
He smiled at Chloe, gesturing at the coupe. “Mi cariña. My father, may he rest with the saints, gave me this car when I turned eighteen. I’d never seen him so proud. To see his son become a man.”
A cold chill snaked up Chloe’s spine, at the beatific expression on Moncada’s face. Crikey.
“It’s been my good luck charm ever since,” he finished.
Chloe had a sudden reckless urge to respond like Nate might—so, have you picked out a casket? She bit her tongue, hard, to keep from smiling at the thought. She had no right to pretend her and Nate were friends, and now was not the time to play. Moncada was a patricide and a creep.
“Sorry he’s not here to see this,” Chloe said, in full neutral, and handed over the black waterproof tube. “The map.”
Moncada took off his shades and looked at her, studying her. She worked harder on neutral.
“It’s natural to feel some conAict,” he said, apparently reading remorse in her discomfort. “You made a difficult decision, but the right one.”
To rip off Sully and Nate? Or to work for you?
She met his gaze evenly. She wasn’t going to be intimidated by him, or engage with him on his terms. Pretty much the whole point of the independent contractor deal. “I don’t really do regret.”
He smiled, locking eyes with her, and she could see how much he liked the line.
“Yo tampoco,” he said. Neither do I. “In fact, I feel… liberated. Shall we?” There were still a number of crates to load up, but the organizing was done. Chloe put up all her shields, nothing but the gold, I’ll find the gold, and let him walk her to the front of the plane. She didn’t even Ainch when he touched her shoulder to guide her up the steps.
* * *
“There she is,” Nate said, watching Moncada and Chloe walk toward the air stairs, Moncada carrying the map tucked under one arm. Chloe was easy enough to pick out—she was wearing a utilitarian light gray jumpsuit thing with black trail boots.
“When you’re right, you’re right,” Sully said, super modestly. He was stretched out next to Nate, both of them peering through the thin white railing atop an industrial cargo loader. There were several at the end of the strip, parked in front of a row of giant mobile cranes.
Nate lowered the binoculars. She hadn’t been smiling. Obviously she was working for Moncada, it wasn’t like a hostage situation, but she didn’t like him —Nate could tell. She’d been stiff and blank-faced.
“She only cut us out ’cause she knew you were going to cut her out,” Nate said.
Sully reached for the binoculars. “Still harboring feelings for the girl who knocked you on your ass?”
Nate didn’t answer, while Sully looked around. He wasn’t wrong: Nate was still attracted to Chloe, like a dumb stupid idiot. She could have been playing him all along—okay, so technically she had been—but when they’d cozied up on her balcony, there’d been chemistry, a real moment of mutual appreciation. And she hadn’t faked her personality: being comfortable in her own skin, funny, smart, an avowed non-sharer. On the other hand, his face still hurt. Like, a lot.
Sully handed Nate the binoculars and picked up his pack. “C’mon, looks like they’re getting ready to go.”
Nate nodded, heart rate spiking. He didn’t know what Sully had in mind to get them onboard, but he was up for it. He didn’t want to die—and if they got caught, their chances of survival were pretty crappy—but he couldn’t walk away, he didn’t want to. He was going to put his bravest self forward and live in the moment.
Anyway, death can’t be any worse than going home to fill out job applications.
Sully stuck to the shadows, leading them to the shrubby field that ran along the east side of the strip. Nate kept low and followed him.
* * *
Braddock and her team had already been waiting for the better part of an hour in the Globemaster’s command center, a big cabin behind the cockpit fitted out like a military operations room—consoles and plush chairs overlooked by a platform with a black “command” table, the shining surface littered with controls. The walls were dark gray padded foam, screens affixed to the walls. Some of Moncada’s men had wandered in and out from the passenger cabin behind theirs, and Braddock nodded at the few she recognized. Guns for hire, most of them, though she’d also met an auto mechanic who was there to fuss with Moncada’s Gullwing. Apparently, there was some process required to prevent whatever the pressure changes did to the fuel, or something. Stupid and vain, Aying a car around because it was his rabbit’s foot, but it set her thinking. Once they’d found the gold, what would she do that was outrageously wasteful? Quit this fucking line, obviously, settle a few scores, but after that… The sky was the limit, wasn’t it? With unlimited resources you could do whatever you liked, and the world would adjust to your whims.
Moncada ushered Chloe Frazer into the room, and Braddock felt her expression set into a professional mask as she stood up from her lean against the rail of the upper platform. Two of the mercs had settled at one of the consoles below, Juan Alvaro and a bearded man she didn’t know. Juan was a bruiser, but smart enough to run a team; she assumed the six she’d counted were his. Moncada carried a long plastic tube, and while the Aussie girl Aipped on monitors, Moncada slid its contents onto the table, rolling out a map.
Braddock stepped to the table. Sixteenth-century, painted parchment tacked to waxed leather. The map was mostly uncolored except for a blue compass rose around the Malukas, west of New Guinea, and some orange along northern Australia. Everything else was outlined in dull green.
“Animo!” Moncada said, smiling. “Invigorating, isn’t it? To be part of something greater than ourselves. Who’s ready to make a little history?”
He waved at Chloe Frazer, who was fussing with a laptop, a confident look on her pretty little face. What was she so smug about? She’d ripped off Sully, that didn’t mean she knew what she was doing, and the way she’d pranced around all day… Braddock had already decided that if she could get the girl somewhere private once they were at the site, she’d put an end to her. Just on principle.
“This map was drawn in the sixteenth century, with limited knowledge of the twenty-five thousand islands that make up the East Indies,” Chloe said, in her annoying twang. “So I overlaid the map with modern satellite imagery.”
They all looked to the monitor that had lit up suspended over the table, a split screen—the blown-up map on the left side of the screen, a satellite shot of the same area on the right. Braddock studied the two images.
“Demar is the closest fit,” Chloe continued, and tapped at the laptop’s keys. The two images converged, the modern shot overlaying the drawn. “A volcanic island on the southern side of the Banda Sea. It’s uninhabited. No access roads, no electricity, no nothing.”
Braddock had to admit, the borders and location looked a match, the pattern of smaller islands around Demar fit perfectly.
“We’ll drop our supplies from the air, land in New Guinea, and come in by boat,” Chloe continued.
We should come in from Timor, actually, it’s closer. The girl was winging it, she’d glanced at a map and guessed.
Chloe stepped to the table and turned the medieval map over. Etched into the cracked leather were deliberate lines, the roughly embryonic shape of Demar. A tiny, red-stained X was drawn at an indent just inside the southern shore.
“The captain drew the island itself in more detail on the back,” Chloe said. “Wow, never would have thought to Aip it over,” Braddock sneered.
Chloe ignored her, pointing to the X. “We should find the pot at the end of the rainbow here, in Cala de Oro.”
Cala de Oro.
Golden Cove, she thought, tasting the words. Magellan’s pirates had buried the treasure in Golden Cove, and they were going to go dig it up. They could be there in ten, twelve hours, give or take.
She looked up, saw the same feverish excitement on the faces of the others.
“Bueno!” Moncada said, grinning. “Vamanos!”
* * *
The plane lifted off, rocking Nate and Sully even closer together in the pitch black of their impossibly cramped hiding place. Moncada had taken out a panel between the tiny trunk and the back seat of his Gullwing at some point or they never would have pulled it off, but it had been extremely fucking tight regardless. They’d left the spare tire and portable gas tank back in Barcelona, along with their bags. Nate had slid Sam’s postcards into his back pocket and ditched the rest, all in the interest of an extra few inches.
Lot of good it did. He and Sully were packed in like sardines, and Nate couldn’t stop thinking about Jo Braddock. The woman who’d killed Sam was on the plane. “Was it actually Braddock?” he whispered. “Who pulled the trigger?”
Sully’s breath was going right into his neck. “Don’t go there, kid. Nothing good’ll come of it. You want revenge? Beat her to the gold.”
Sully shifted, and something hard jabbed into Nate’s back. “Ow! What the hell is that?”
“My arm.”
“Well, can you move it, please?”
Sully shifted again and whatever part of him was jabbing dug in deeper. “You’re just making it worse.”
“Whose fault is that? We had a perfectly good thing going.”
They both shifted, grunting, sweating, barely able to move their limbs. Nate’s legs were crunched to his chest, and Sully smoked too many cigars, the smell was sunk in his clothes. Sully’s arm finally came up and snaked over Nate’s shoulders.
“Now you’re holding me,” Nate said.
“It’s always something with you,” Sully gasped. “Oh, god. I’m claustrophobic, and—” He sucked in air. “—I think we’re running out of oxygen.”
“Dude, you’re killing me here,” Nate said, and scrunched tighter, gritting his teeth. He was going to beat her to the gold, alright, whatever it took. Whether or not that would satisfy him remained to be seen.