A Whisper of Danger by Catherine Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

hair turned auburn, her eyes violet, her face familiar. Shock zapped through him. Recognition dawned in her eyes, and her cheeks drained of color. She clutched her stomach and crumpled onto the sidewalk. Sick, trembling, as white as the sand on the beach, she curled into a ball.
    He could hardly remember what had happened next. Somehow he had found himself bending over Jessica. His Jessie. He had cradled her in his arms and carried her to a chair, murmuring soothing words.
    And then she had hit him. Her camera bag smacked into the side of his head. She shouted at him. Somebody pulled him back. Escorted him away.
    When he had finally rid himself of Hunky’s crew and returned to the café where he’d left her, she was gone. Had the woman really been Jessie? He had been so sure. Positive. Now he could hardly believe it.
    Rick drove his motorcycle up to the verandah of a huge old house, a relic of the years of Portuguese and Arab occupation of Zanzibar. He cut the engine and took off his helmet, determined to bury the incident and focus on the project ahead. Karim appeared beside him.
    “Let us go inside Uchungu House, Bwana McTaggart. Bwana Wallace is eating his breakfast.”
    “How long has Hunky been working the wreck?” Rick asked as they climbed the steps into the cool shade of the verandah. “A month?”
    “Not so long. Perhaps two weeks.”
    When he walked into the living room and spotted the painting on the wall, a faint memory pricked his spine. “Uchungu House. Isn’t this where that artist used to live? The African van Gogh?”
    “Yes, Bwana McTaggart. This was the home of Ahmed Abdullah bin Yusuf.”
    “I thought I read somewhere that he died recently. Cancer or something.”
    “I do not know, Bwana . There are many rumors.”
    They crossed a room with a stone daka , entered another room with a curving staircase, and then stepped out onto the porch surrounding the courtyard. Hunky Wallace and his men filled the chairs around a long table that had been piled with fresh bread, mangoes, boiled eggs, and white cornmeal posho mounded high in a bowl.
    “McTaggart!” Hunky pushed back his chair and beckoned with a wave of his beefy hand. “Join us, won’t you? We’ve a long day ahead of us, and a man needs a good breakfast when he’s working the waters of the Indian Ocean. Make room there, my good lad. That’s it.”
    A boy of ten or twelve moved down a chair to leave room beside the treasure hunter. Rick accepted the place of honor, cocked his elbows on the table, and eyed his host. “So, what’s all this about, Wallace? Yesterday you claimed you didn’t even have a wreck—said you didn’t have any idea what I was talking about. You called me every name in the book. You announced that the government of Tanzania and I could go straight to—”
    “Not in front of the boy, I beg you.” Hunky clapped a hand on Rick’s shoulder. “We’ve a special guest here this morning, Mr. McTaggart. Meet young Spencer. He insists we’re to call him Splint.”
    The boy turned a pair of wide violet eyes on him. “Are you a treasure hunter, too?”
    “I’m a marine archaeologist, Splint. There’s a big difference.”
    Hunky snorted. “Ach, it’s a fancy name for the very same thing. McTaggart searches the seawaters for shipwrecks, same as I do. And when he can’t find any of his own, he comes pestering me to have a look at mine. Then he gets out all his fancy books and charts and pipes and chains—and he slows me down to a snail’s pace. What I could do in a month, he stretches out to a year.”
    “What you could do in a month,” Rick countered, “is blast a ship’s fragile timbers to smithereens with your airlift, shatter conglomerate with a hammer, and haul off truckloads of valuable but undocumented historical data to throw in your warehouse and sell to the first antiques dealer who shows his face at your door.”
    “Now, listen here, McTaggart—”
    “You listen to me, Wallace—”
    “Can I go