He chuckled. “You really did read through everything. I don’t suppose that’s some ancient language you’re fluent in?”
“Unfortunately, no,” she said.
He sat back for a moment and looked up. “They’re supposed to point the way,” he said absently.
She reached into her bag for her tools. She unrolled the pouch and withdrew what looked like a miniature shovel. “Perhaps you only need to dig a little deeper.”
Graeme took the shovel and drove it into the muddy water. Almost immediately, it struck something that would not give way with mere pressure. He moved the instrument around in an effort to outline the object. It could be nothing more than another naturally formed cavern structure. But what was it?
With one hand, he held the miniature shovel in place and with the other, he dove in. The hole was much deeper than where he’d previously been looking. Now his arm was buried in the cold, murky water all the way up to his elbow. His finger moved over something decidedly hard and round.
“Did you find something?” she asked.
“I think I may have.” He worked the object free of its muddy imprisonment, then pulled it out. Mud caked to his arm and fingers and all over what he felt certain was the decoder. “Son of a bitch,” he swore.
Graeme rinsed the artifact in the muddy water, then held the light over the metal disc.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Vanessa asked. “The decoder you’ve been searching for?”
His pulse thundered. “Aye, it seems to be,” he said. The medallion dated back to the third century and yet still displayed every original carving. Now he could decode the last portion of The Magi’s Book of Wisdom.
“Had you been searching these caves for that piece?” she asked.
He shook his head, but never took his eyes off the metal disc in his hand. “No, I looked for this for several years after locating that book, but to no avail. Eventually I stopped. I figured if there was more than one way to bed a woman, certainly there had to be more than one way to find that bloody block of stone.” Then he looked up and met her gaze, only just realizing to whom he’d been speaking.
“Sounds logical,” Vanessa said. She swallowed, then came to her feet. She eyed their surroundings. “I’m going to go back to my search and see if there is anything else important in this cavern.”
He’d obviously flustered her, and ordinarily he wouldn’t have said such a thing to a lady. But she’d been down there on the ground helping him, providing encouragement and suggestions, and he’d simply said the first thing he’d thought. He’d momentarily forgotten she was his wife and instead had spoken to her as if she were a friend or a partner.
Decidedly male voices echoed somewhere behind them. Graeme pulled Vanessa close and motioned with his finger to his lips. He strained his ears to listen to the men’s words. Two distinct voices, but he couldn’t make out what they said.
He pulled her close and bent to her ear. “We’ll move closer, but stay behind me.”
She nodded.
Together they crept down the tunnel, in the direction from which they’d come. Graeme suspected the men were in the central chamber that led to the various tunnels. Their voices still echoed around them, their words becoming clearer.
“The Loch Ness treasure is what he really wants. It’s here somewhere,” one man said.
“We’ll find the stone before he does,” the other said.
Graeme held an arm out to stop Vanessa’s progress.
She pressed her body up against the wall, effectively hiding herself. “Stay hidden,” he told her, then sneaked closer to the main chamber. He caught sight of one of the men standing at the mouth of a tunnel. He had dark-blond hair cropped short, and his leather coat sported dust and debris from the cavern, but there was something oddly familiar about the material.
Only one man that he knew wore a coat like that. Anthony Braden was not a member of Solomon’s, but Graeme knew all about him—the man was a bounty hunter. Wealthy collectors paid him huge sums of money to find their treasures. Graeme’s friend Fielding had once earned this same living before he’d joined the ranks of the men of Solomon’s.
“What the devil are you doing here, Braden?” Graeme asked as he stepped out of the shadows. It was risky to confront them, especially since he was unfamiliar with the other two men, but sometimes surprise could work in one’s favor.
Though Braden didn’t start, Graeme knew his abrupt appearance startled the man. He turned and met Graeme face to face. The man was younger than Graeme, but by no more than a few years. “I should ask you the same question, but then your kin are local to these parts, aren’t they?”
Graeme nodded, but said nothing. The man standing next to Braden stepped forward, his hand moving to the pistol strapped to his leg.
“Sam, that won’t be necessary. Graeme here is merely being cordial,” Braden said.
Sam eyed Graeme for a moment longer before crossing his arms over his chest.
Graeme had no weapon with him. Unless he could count the small sharp instruments that his wife used to scrape things out of stone. Hardly a man’s weapon.
