The Rush Read Online Free PDF Page A

was—laid out before him. The skeletal
form of the shipwreck stretched out a hundred yards from his perch, as if
waiting all these centuries just for him. Its beauty eclipsed Venus herself, at
least for Jarod.
    A pristine Spanish galleon. She was like a lover he’d dreamt
of his entire life, elusive and unattainable until he met her on a street
corner. Or, in Jarod’s case, a shark- infested, seismically active ocean
valley.
    Just beyond the site, the seascape suddenly ended, and a
black stretch of ocean appeared immediately beyond. The ravine. The Tongue of
the Ocean.
    A tremor ran up Jarod’s boots, resonating in his knees, his chest,
and his head. Sand shifted crazily below his feet. The crevasse yawned—its
black mouth was open, ready to engulf Jarod’s prize, but he breathed through
it, keeping his breaths slow and steady. They’d felt aftershocks all day. He
couldn’t get this close to his life’s work and then hyperventilate himself into
unconsciousness.
    Once the ground stabilized, Jarod headed out. Taking
measured steps, he made his way to the wreckage. As the last tremors died down,
Jarod pushed aside the sand covering the ancient wood. The rotten beams
crumbled under his fingers. Just as well. He didn’t want the planking. He
wanted what was inside the planking. With more and more urgency, his air gauge
dipping far into the red, Jarod shoved the silt aside until he felt his glove
bump up against something solid. The sand moved in concert with the buried
object. A golden flash gleamed in the rippling water.
    Jarod’s smile could have eclipsed the sun.
    * * *
    Cleo scanned the water for the fiftieth time since they’d
lost contact with Jarod. The surface showed the only changes it had for the
past twenty minutes, the unceasing break and flow of the waves lapping against
their ship, the Rogues’ Gamble. The vista beyond the railing was fit for a
postcard.
    But her mind slipped below the surface of the water, the
true source of her joy. Years of education and experience filled in the gaps
her eyes couldn’t. Beneath the cleansing ocean spray and glitter of the sun on
the water lurked a more fascinating, yet sinister, world below.
    The ocean was a hostile place, akin to the heights of the
Himalayas in terms of danger…and the foreign atmosphere. Down there, humans
were not at the top of the food chain. Hell, we don’t even make the second
slot, Cleo thought.
    Teams of hammerhead sharks, swarms of deadly sea snakes, and
a host of other, not-much-lesser evils lurked in her mind’s eye. And with the
quakes stirring up debris, causing their instruments to fritz, even their
technology wasn’t a sure protection against what was down there. Granted, Jarod
was a skilled diver. Still, her hands, browned by the sun and her own partial
African heritage, gripped the railing tightly. Jarod had been an equally
skilled diver last year, and look what had happened.
    A voice interrupted her vigil. “The GPS tether is only functioning
at 24.7 percent.” Buton, their resident computer expert, said as he lurched
across the deck of the Rogues’ Gamble. He had been working with them for over a
year; yet somehow, he never quite managed to find his sea legs. His tweed suit
with leather patches on the elbows, as well as the laser-precision of his
British accent overlaying his Mumbai heritage, spoke of his many years at
Oxford. “But at last sweep, it appears that Jarod is surfacing.”
    “Thanks for the update,” Cleo answered, reaching out a hand
to steady him. Buton latched onto the proffered arm before transferring the
steely grip onto the railing. “You didn’t have to come down to tell me, though.”
    “I knew you were…concerned. The history here—”
    “I’m just up here to be ready when Jarod finds a way to
complicate things.”
    “That is not necessarily the predetermined outcome of this…”
Buton must have noticed her eyebrow arching, for he stopped, and then nodded. “Agreed.”
    He was right to