Gunshots ring out across the bay. The rather large boat rocks up and down with the waves and only 20 minutes ago all was peaceful. They were hard at work, collecting, measuring and documenting all they had found. They were excited by their find and looked anxiously to the near future when they would present their findings to the academic community. This could set each one of them up for academic greatness, an incredible discovery. Their hard work would all pay off now. After cataloging all of these treasures, they would need to sit down and sort through all the evidence. Then came the task of interpreting the evidence and clearly and concisely explaining what they found in the multiple journal articles and conferences they were bound to be invited to and contribute to. It was all so exciting. But 5 minutes ago, everything changed.

So wrapped up they were in their work that no one noticed the quiet motored boat that approached from the east. Three armed gunmen silently made their way on to the deck and cautiously and slowly made their way down one set of stairs. They could hear them talking below deck.

"I knew it was here," Dr. Michelle Henderson said with such joy as she looked at the two Research Assistants helping out. "I've looked over those manifests and colonial official documents for years." The discovery was a true relief in more ways than one. First of all, as a tenure-track professor, she was expected to publish annually. For the last few years, the publications all said basically the same thing, more or less different versions of the same argument. Her point about Spanish involvement in the Philippines in trade in the 1500s wasn't exactly new either. If she wanted to be tenured, hold that coveted full time position and secure for herself a place in the highly competitive world of academic historians, she would need something new to say on a topic already discussed by 38 other world famous scholars. This discovery provided the evidence to support her argument and further the historical significance of the trade between China and Spain via the Philippines in the historiography of Imperial Spain and the importance of their holdings in the Americas. Looking at her two helpers here, she was already thinking about how she would list them in her acknowledgments for the book she planned to start next month.

Michael Tucker the Research Assistant there on loan from Dr. Alexander Whitehead looked up smiling as he carefully pulled out a small blue and white vase from a special solution used to clean it off and said, "This is the most amazing thing I have ever seen. I can't believe it, we found actual shipwreck treasure. This is so awesome!" The 20 year old still felt like he was living in some kind of pirate movie.

Gabrielle Aleman, Dr. Henderson's Research Assistant concurred, "This is totally awesome!" She was working with Michael by cataloging everything in a notebook as he cleaned it all. "I can't wait to tell my parents I did this, or the other graduate students. They are going to be so jealous. I knew applying to be your RA was the right decision, but I had no idea it would be this incredibly awesome!"

The three laughed and then heard something drop on the roof. They looked at each other and Michael offered to go up and look but Michelle stopped him. "No, you two keep working on this. I'll go up and see what's going on. It's probably just the rig we used to haul this stuff up or maybe some of the scuba equipment fell over. I'll be back in a minute."

She left the room happily enough until she got to the stairs. She didn't even see one of the three men, she didn't have time. He hid behind a closet door and when she walked by he grabbed her from behind and slit her throat with a knife before dragging her lifeless body into the closet.

The two RAs kept working but noticed it got awfully quiet. Gabrielle offered to go check on Dr. Henderson. She had already documented the tea cup Michael had cleaned and it would take him a while to clean off the plate next so since she really couldn't record anything she went looking for her boss. She noticed blood right away in the hallway by the closet and as she stopped to examine it, two men suddenly appeared at the top of the stairwell. Both were armed with machine guns. She screamed which Michael heard and came running out. As soon as both were trapped in that hallway the men opened fire and killed both.

The only ones now on board alive were the killers. They walked right into the room the three had just occupied, happy and having what they thought was the best day of their lives. They had no idea it would be their last and that they had only minutes to live. The discovery that they thought secured their future had just destroyed any future they could have had.

C.J. sat, cross legged on the floor of her own house. She had a notepad in hand and was cataloging everything she had just piled into a fairly large cardboard box. She took a black marker and put a 31 on the side of it to match the 31 she had in her book.

Matt walked in, clearly exhausted, sweating and breathing heavy and asked, "C.J., where are we going to put all this stuff? The beach house isn't that big and I've already filled up that UHaul out there."

C.J. closed the notebook, got up, walked over to Matt, put her hands on his face and kissed him softly on the mouth and then said, "I have a storage unit already paid for, its close enough to the beach house that I can get into it if I need to. When we find that bigger house, the one with all the bedrooms…" He started smiling at the thought of bedrooms for little ones, "then I should have plenty of room for all this stuff."

Matt smiled back and kissed her again with his arms around her waist. Then he looked around at the few remaining things that needed to be boxed up and loaded. Most of what remained were small, fragile type items. There were some picture frames, knickknacks and a couple of books. One particular item caught his eye and he left her and walked over to it. He had spotted 3 green blown glass ducks, a momma, a daddy and a baby duck. He picked up the largest one and held it as he asked her, "Green ducks?"

C.J. smiled and started to laugh a little bit. A few years ago they were working on a case involving an actress everyone thought was the target of some deranged killer. Ramona Landers had sold Matt her ranch outside the city and Matt felt a duty to try to find out who was trying to hurt her. In the course of the investigation they had to interview Miles Gantry, a jeweler on Rodeo Drive. After talking to him and as Matt was flirting with a model, a salesman named Rick waltzed by them and took C.J. in his arms for a second and asked "Tell me, how are the green ducks," to which she replied, "never better."

The look on Matt's face, C.J. thought was priceless. He seemed confused and maybe even a little jealous as he asked who that was and what was he doing there and what exactly did he mean by the green ducks. She in that split second decided to have a little fun at Matt's expense and pay him pack for flirting with the model right there in front of her. I mean, how dare he? It was ok for him to flirt, but not her? So she asked him if he knew what a green duck was and when he said he didn't, she made it seem like it was some private, perhaps even dirty little secret he didn't get. She amused herself for the next few days as Matt tried in vain to figure out exactly what she was talking about, especially when Rick took her to dinner the next night. She secretly wondered why Matt decided to not only spy on her date, but sabotage it by paying a waiter to spill spaghetti on Rick when they got their food.

She totally got him back though because she had a little talk with Mama, Rosa Novelli, the owner of that particular restaurant and their good friend. She explained the trick she was pulling on Matt. Mama not only agreed to go along with it, but made it sound even worse when Matt asked her if she knew what green ducks were by slapping him first and then saying, "C.J.'s a good girl, she should know from…green ducks….don't you tell her."

Now a couple of years later the gig was up. Her laughter told him it was all a trick. She explained, "I met Rick at an art gallery opening. He told me he made glass sculptures out of blown glass and he showed me those. You know green is my favorite color, that's why I love emeralds. So he offered those to me in exchange for a date. Running into him that day was absolutely perfect in so many ways. It gave me the chance to pay him back by scheduling a date and it made you turn about as green as that duck you're holding." She was smiling from ear to ear.

Matt put down the duck and put his arms around his wife's waist and said, "I think I made out a lot better than Rick did."

She put her hands on his chest and said, "I would say so. If I recall you spied on me during that date and caused the waiter to have a little accident?"

Matt nodded as he looked in her eyes, "I didn't know exactly why at the time, but the idea of you out with him bothered me, especially since I knew you were keeping something from me with the green ducks."

C.J. smiled back and then kissed him, another slow scorching kiss that she loved sharing so much with him and said, "Well you flirting with that model bothered me. I don't like sharing you."

Matt smiled back at her and said, "So its mutual, cause I don't like sharing you either. So, tell me, how exactly did you get Mama in on this?"

C.J. chuckled, "Oh she was so on board with this little prank. I think she always thought we should be together. She told me a couple of times, but back then I didn't really think you'd ever look at me that way." He noted a hint of sadness in her voice and in her eyes for just a second.

Matt brought her in for another long, slow and quite intense kiss before saying, "I loved you. I just didn't want to hurt you. I wasn't exactly the monogamous type back then, but I am now. I will never hurt you like that C.J., I want to make sure you know that. I love you more than anything else. Those days are behind me, you are my future." He moved around behind her with his hands on her waist and started kissing her neck and rubbing her abdomen as he continued, "And hopefully in a year or so, we will start the next generation of Houstons."

C.J. placed her hands on his on her abdomen and said, "That sounds so nice and I can't wait. I just want to make sure I'm in the best possible shape and I give our child the best possible start." The lawyer in her had successfully argued with her psyche that she needed to prepare her body in advance for pregnancy before actually becoming pregnant. Not to mention the fact that Matt's own mother died in childbirth and knew how that impacted his life. She thought Matt might have disagreed, but he seemed a little relieved actually when they discussed it a month ago. He pulled her hair back softly from her shoulder and slowly made his way from her neck to her earlobe and before she knew it, they were back in her old bedroom, laying out on the floor in a couple of unpacked blankets after being quite unproductive for an hour. They were quite happy though.