A/N: Hello! I hope you all had a great weekend! Thanks so much for reading and/or reviewing the last chapter! As always, a huge thanks to my beta, Heather, for her amazing beta skills.

So, this chapter is a bit long, so off you go!

"Welcome to Casablanca, Morocco," the pilot said as the plane landed on the runway. "The current time is 10:19 AM with a temperature of 73 degrees. Enjoy your stay."

God, I couldn't wait to get off the fucking plane. Fourteen hours on a plane was too long, and we were all ready to leave the confined space and get our feet on land.

As soon as we deboarded, the seven of us, Jasper, Alice, Rose, Dr. Tanner, Jessica, Emmett, and myself, caught a taxi van to the pier where the research vessel was docked.

Fifteen minutes later, we were walking up the gangplank of the Arrakis, and I was greeted by a wonderful sight. Edward stood on the deck, his bronze colored hair blowing in the breeze and his green eyes covered by a pair of sunglasses.

"Welcome aboard, guys!" he shouted over the wind, and we all shouted greetings back to him.

God, I wanted to run up the plank and toss my arms around him in a hug, but I restrained myself. Instead, I gave him a huge smile, and the smile I got back had me melting inside.

"Let me show you around," Edward said, and we all followed him below deck.

The staterooms were pretty big, but there weren't quite enough for everyone to have their own rooms when you counted the ship's crew and the rooms that were going to be used for various offices, so Dr. T and I agreed to bunk together for the meantime.

"When are we leaving?" Jessica asked him after he'd finished giving us the tour, her eyes raking over him, and I gritted my teeth.

"In a few hours," he responded, his eyes never leaving mine. "Get yourselves settled in, grab a bite to eat from the galley, and I'll let you know when we're about to take off."

As soon as he left, Rose whirled around and looked at me, a smirk on her face.

"Oooh, girl, you've got it bad!" she teased, and I felt my face flush as I shook my head and denied what she was saying.

"He's got it just as bad," Jessica said, and I gaped at her. "What? He does. He barely looked at me, but he couldn't keep his eyes off of you. There's a history there."

"You know the story," I told her. "We met when I was sixteen and he was twenty. He spent most of that trip, not talking to me or being a jerk when he did."

"And then he almost died," Rose interrupted, and I nodded my head.

"Yep. After that, I kept in contact with his parents, mainly his mom, but he and I hadn't seen nor spoken to each other until I saw him onboard the Brizo."

"Maybe so, but you guys sure are talking now," Rose said with a glint in her eye. "He texts you, calls you, Skype's with you, and emails you all the time. You're practically dating."

"Hardly," I snorted.

"Go on," Jess said with a nod of her head toward the doorway. "You know you want to go talk to him."

Oh, I tried to deny it, but Jess and Rose along with Dr. Tanner told me to scoot, so I did. I raced down the hall at a quickened pace until I reached the stairs going up to the deck. Not wanting to trip and hurt myself, I slowed down and did my best to act cool and nonchalant, but I was pretty sure I wasn't fooling anyone.

Once on the deck, I looked around for Edward, spotting him talking to a young man on the starboard side. Not wanting to interrupt him, I wandered over to the other side of the deck and took a good look out at the harbor and then at the city, or what I could see of it.

I would have loved to explored Casablanca for a little bit, but that wasn't why we were there.

"Have you ever been here before?" Edward's voice asked from right beside me, and I turned to look up at him.

"Nope. It looks nice, but I'm not sure I'm properly attired to go wandering around the city," I told him, gesturing toward my clothes. At the moment, I was wearing jeans and a white tunic-styled shirt, but most of the clothes I brought were shorts and t-shirts with the occasional jacket and hoodie in my bag.

"Maybe once we get back, we can take a look around," he suggested, and I told him I'd like that.

"It's good to see you again, Bella," he said a few moments later, giving my shoulder a squeeze, and I felt a cheesy grin cross my face as I told him I was glad to see him, too.

Before I could say anything else, the skies opened up and rain poured down, drenching us in a matter of seconds.

"Shit!" I yelled as Edward let out a laugh. I wasn't laughing because I was wearing a white shirt which was fairly see through now that it was wet.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I dashed below deck and into the stateroom I was sharing. Thankfully, it was empty, and I quickly changed out of my soaking wet clothes and into some dry ones before stopping in the galley to grab a snack.

Edward was in there, having changed as well, and he gave me a naughty smirk that had my stomach dancing with butterflies.

"Not a word, Cullen," I said, knowing he'd seen the hot pink bra I'd been wearing.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Swan," he countered as he sipped a cup of coffee, and I narrowed my eyes at him. He wasn't fooling me for a second.

"Meeting!" Jasper yelled from somewhere down the hall, and the moment between us was broken.

Snagging my own cup of coffee, I followed Edward down to the small conference room where Jasper had everyone gathered.

"Pink looks good on you," Edward whispered, and I whirled around and stared at him as he gave me a wink. Before I could reply, Jasper began the meeting where introductions were given to the crew members and to us before Jasper outlined his plan.

"Dr. Black and Dr. Newton will be joining us in a week."

Jess and I both scowled upon hearing that news. I didn't want to spend months, trapped on a ship with Jacob Black, and Jess sure as hell didn't want to spend that much time with her ex-husband. Poor girl already had to do that on the last expedition. At least, Lauren wasn't here on this one.

I could feel Edward's eyes on me, and when I looked over at him, he mouthed what's wrong? I shook my head, indicating we'd talk about it later.

"Okay, folks!" Jasper said. "Let's get this show on the road."

And with those words, our expedition had officially begun. I knew I needed to meet with Dr. Tanner in one of the research rooms, and I was on my way to do just that when Edward reached out and gently grabbed my arm.

"Follow me to the wheelhouse?" he asked, and I did.

Once in there, he gave instructions to a couple of guys that were on the crew to untie the boat while he raised the anchor.

"So, what was that all about?" he asked me, and I knew he was talking about the face I made in regards to Jacob Black.

"Jacob Black asked me out a while back, and I turned him down. Since then, he's asked me a few more times. It seems he can't take a hint," I explained, and Edward's green eyes darkened until they were almost black.

"If he bothers you once he's on board, you come to me. I'll take care of it," he said, his voice taking a menacing tone, and holy hell, it was hot.

"I can take care of myself," I told him.

"I'm not doubting that, but Black is taller and stronger. I mean it, Bella. If he becomes a problem, I want to know about it. I might not have the right to fire him, but as captain of this ship, I will remove him if he's a threat to anyone on board. Now, what about Newton?"

"He's Jessica's ex-husband and a lying, cheating, dirt bag. He cheated on her with Lauren, the girl that was on the last trip. Needless to say, things between Jessica and Mike are tense."

"I'll be keeping an eye on him as well," he muttered.

"Thanks," I told him, and he nodded.

"Time for me to get this ship moving. Come visit when you can."

I promised I would as I made my way below deck and to the research room Dr. Tanner has claimed as ours.

"Leaving port for the coast of Sal, Cape Verde. It will take roughly four days, so get comfortable," Edward's voice said over the com.

It had been a long four days on the ship, but we were finally nearing our destination, and Jasper was busy convening in the wheel house with Edward.

"Are you ready for this?" Jessica asked me as I leaned against the railing, the spray of the ocean hitting me and the wind whipping my hair into a mess.

"Yeah, 'm ready to find the Sirène and be done with it."

"Do you think we'll find the Treasured Heart?"

"I don't know if we'll find it, and I'm not sure I want to find it. That piece of jewelry cost my father his life and almost cost Edward his. On the one hand, it would be nice to find it, hand it over to the French government, and know that it's somewhere safe, but on the other hand, it would be fine with me if it stayed lost forever. However, the problem with that is that people like Marcus Caius will never stop looking for it and will go to any lengths to get it in their greedy hands."

"Well, maybe we'll get lucky and find it."

"Maybe," I replied as the ship began to slow down, and a few minutes later, Edward announced over the intercom that he was dropping anchor.

"Emmett! Get the drones ready!" I heard Jasper yell, and Emmett, who had been standing near the bow of the ship, rushed to get his underwater drones ready, a huge grin on his face.

"Time to get to work, ladies," Jasper said as he motioned for us to follow him down below.

All seven of us crammed into the room that Emmett and Rose had setup as a base of operations with six monitors hooked up as well as five laptops and a handful of tablets.

"Sea Drone One in the water," Emmett said into the laptop's microphone that was recording every move his drone made.

With the tablet in his hand, he maneuvered the first drone along the sea floor.

"How far out can this go before you lose the signal?" I asked him.

"About a hundred miles," he said, and I stared at him in disbelief.

"Seriously?"

He nodded as he informed me that he'd tweaked them since we'd gotten back from our trip to the British Virgin Islands.

"Oh, Bells, Dr. T, I wrote a program that maps your grids out for you. Two by two meters, just how you like it. The map is connected to Em's drone so when it's gone two meters it sends a message to my laptop and marks it on my map," Rose said.

That was seriously fucking cool, and I told her so as did Dr. T. If Emmett's drone ended up covering up to a hundred miles, we'd now have a record of which areas of the ocean floor had debris or possible artifacts, and that would make our job so much easier when it came time to dive.

"Get comfortable, guys," Emmett said. "This could take a while. Rose, can you do me a favor and put the second drone in the water?"

"Okay, but who's going to control it?" she asked.

"You are," was Emmett's reply, and that, right there, told me that Emmett was in love with Rose. He didn't let anyone touch his drones, much less control them.

A few minutes later, the second underwater drone was in the water, connected to the program that Rose had written, and she began to control the drone.

After an hour, nothing had been found, and I was slowly going insane being cramped in a room with so many people. I needed out, so I excused myself for a few minutes. I used the bathroom, grabbed a snack, and went up top to catch some fresh air.

"Find anything, yet?" Edward asked from where he was standing, puffing on a cigar.

I wrinkled my nose at the smell of his cigar as I shook my head.

"Not yet. I'm going back down in a few. With two drones in the water, we should hopefully find something. That's two hundred miles of ocean floor that we're able to cover."

"No shit?"

"Yeah, Emmett's a fucking genius. I wouldn't be surprised if the Navy didn't come calling, asking him to build them prototypes or something."

"Well, let me know if you guys find something," he said.

"You'll probably hear Alice's squeals all the way up here if we do."

He barked out a laugh at that as I walked away and went back to the tiny computer room.

I sat down in the chair I'd been using earlier and stared at the screens surrounding us. Sand, fish, shells, and the occasional octopus was all I could see.

And that's how it went for the next hour until Emmett's drone, which was about forty miles north of our current location, stumbled upon a shipwreck.

"Found something!" he boomed, and my head snapped up to look at his monitors. Sure enough, there on the screens was the bow of a ship. The rest of the ship was missing, but there was the front of the ship, buried in the sand and surrounded by fish, rocks, and debris.

"Can you see the ship's name?" Jasper asked, leaning forward to get a closer look at the ship on the screen.

Emmett carefully maneuvered the drone closer to the hull, but we couldn't see a name on the side. Granted, part of the ship's hull was buried in the sand, so we were definitely going to have to excavate it.

"Should I continue on or bring the drone back?" Em asked Jasper, and he looked over at the rest of us.

"What do you guys think?"

"Keep searching," I said. "Rose's computer program has marked this spot, and I've jotted down that there's a bow of a ship there, but we need to find the rest of the ship."

"Agreed," said Dr. Tanner.

Five miles west of the bow, we found the remainder of the ship. It was in pieces, like it had been hit by a bomb, and I wondered if that wasn't exactly what had happened or maybe a cannonball had been responsible for the damage. Hell, a hurricane could have ripped it apart, but we'd have to get down there to really find out what happened.

Emmett and Rose circled out of that area up to twenty miles, but nothing else was found, so we decided that half of us would investigate the bow and the other half would investigate the stern.

"Bella, why don't you lead the dive of the bow?" Dr. Tanner suggested, and I eagerly accepted.

Jasper called up to the wheelhouse to let Edward know where he needed to move the ship, and while we sailed the forty miles, the rest of us sat down and came up with a plan.

"Emmett, are you able to dive with us?" Jasper asked a little while later, but Em didn't look too thrilled with the idea.

"I can, but I'm not the greatest diver in the world, and I've never excavated before."

"I can go if you need another hand," Edward suggested from the hallway, and I was startled by his offer. He didn't like diving either.

"I need you here to captain the ship should something happen," Jasper said, but Edward told him that Bandar, the first mate of the ship, was capable of handling the Arrakis should it be needed.

"Are you sure, Edward?" I asked quietly, and he looked me straight in the eye as he nodded. I understood his need to be a part of this especially if this was the Sirène. He was just as invested in this as I was.

Jasper considered it for a moment, asking the rest of us if we had a problem with Edward diving with us. Of course, none of us did because we all knew Edward was an experienced diver despite not being a huge fan.

Twenty minutes later, we were suited up in our diving gear with bags, knives, and flashlights attached to our diving belts.

Rose and Emmett, along with the five crew members would keep an eye on the ship and help pull aboard any items we sent up to the surface.

Alice, Edward, and I were going to investigate the bow of the ship while Jasper, Jessica, and Dr. Tanner would take an inflatable boat five miles over to the stern of the ship. Riley, one of the crew members, would stay on the inflatable and be in constant contact with them as well as the main ship.

"Ready?" I asked, a grin on my face and then I rolled backwards off the small platform at the stern of the boat.

Soon, the three of us were swimming down to the hull of the ship, and I took a moment to take it all in and then pulled out my camera, snapping picture after picture. I'd given Alice the video camera so that she could film what we did.

I spent far more time than I should have just taking photographs, but even if this wasn't the Sirène, it would still need to be excavated by someone if we didn't do it.

Once that area of photographs were taken, I made my way down to the ocean floor that a part of the bow was buried. With Edward and Alice's help, we were able to move some sand away. I hoped that we'd be able to find the figurehead which would tell us what ship this was. Chances were pretty damn good that the name wasn't painted anywhere on the boat. It looked to be pretty old, and I was guessing that it was from around the same time period as the Sirène.

"Look for the figurehead," I said over my communications unit. "That will tell us what ship this is."

We fanned out, each taking a gridded area that we were marking with string, and while I hadn't managed to find the figurehead, I had found a bunch of pottery pieces that looked like they were from a bowl or plate.

"I've got a coin!" Alice's excited voice said over the unit.

"Record your find before picking it up and putting it in your bag," I told her right before she exclaimed that she'd found a few more.

"I've got a bottle," Edward said. "You still collect them?"

"Yeah, I do," I answered, a silly grin covering my face because he'd remembered.

"I'll photograph it before putting it in the bag," he promised.

All too soon, it was time to return to the surface. We had found some artifacts, and I was excited to show them off to the rest of the team.

"Riley's on his way back with Jasper, Jess, and Dr. T," Rose said as she took the bag I was holding out to her.

"Find something?" she asked, and I grinned as I told her that we'd all found something.

While we waited for the other team to arrive, I took the bags and set them near a table with a sink attached. It would be used to gently clean the sand off the items and to wash them.

Ten minutes after we'd arrived back on the ship, the other team arrived, grins on their faces and bags in their hands.

It seemed as though we'd all had some luck, and as soon as Jasper, Jessica, and Dr. Tanner were onboard, we all began babbling and talking over one another about our finds. We were acting like giddy teenagers.

"Okay, so let's sort out what we've got," I said in a loud voice because we needed some sort of order.

"Coins and metals on this table," I said, pointing to a table to the right of me. "Woods and pottery over here, and jewelry and personal stuff on the far left."

One at a time, we all opened our respective bags and began to place the objects we'd found on the designated table on which the item belonged.

Once we were done, we discovered we had found quite a bit of stuff, and I couldn't wait to delve into it.

Dr. T took over the coin and medal table. She had Jessica rinsing the coins while she photographed and catalogued the items on the tablet Rose had brought over.

While Dr. T was doing that, I was looking over the pottery table, seeing we had several partial plates as well as a couple of forks.

It took several hours before everything was washed, photographed, and catalogued, but I loved every minute of it. This was what I lived for. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed diving and excavating, but cataloging and research were what I loved the most. I loved figuring out what was laid out before me.

"The coins are definitely French," Dr. Tanner said, handing me one, and looked it over, seeing it was silver coin with a portrait of King Louis XV on it. Turning it over, I saw an urn with smoke on the back and the words Superis Non Gratior Usus along the edge of the coin. Below the urn were the words Menus Plaisirs et Affaires De La Chambre 1739.

"Regarding the use of grace," I said, tracing the words along the ridge. "At least, that's what I think that means. My Latin is a bit rusty."

"Wait, it's Latin?" Emmett asked. "So, these aren't French coins?"

"No, they are French. Latin was an international language up until the 20th century," I mumbled as I continued to stare at the coin. My French wasn't very good, but I was positive that plaisirs meant pleasures, affaires was business, and chambre was bedroom.

"So, this bottom part says something about pleasures and business in the bedroom, or something like that," I said, grinning as Emmett let out a whoop.

"Anyway, these are definitely French coins," I said as Dr. Tanner handed me a few more. They were all in decent enough shape although they wouldn't fetch much in a coin market. I'd say a hundred bucks a piece at max.

"The time period on these fits to that of the ship's," Dr. Tanner said, and I nodded my head in agreement.

The three bottles that Edward had found looked to be from the 18th century, but I'd have to check with the bottle database that an archeologist had created years ago. Despite my bottle collection, I wasn't an expert on them; however, these dark green and brown bottles looked to be from the right time period.

Dr. Tanner and I spent the next few hours, going over every artifact that had been brought up. While we were doing that, Jess was studying the sand as well as the barnacles that had been gently scraped off some of the items.

"Take a break, and eat some dinner, yeah?" Edward asked from the doorway to our research room. Dr. T and I had moved to a separate room that we had set up to store the items after we had looked over each individual item.

"Huh?" I asked, looking up from my laptop and over at Edward.

"It's past eight. Let's grab some food."

I looked over at the clock on the wall, shocked to find that it was, indeed, eight. Time flew when I was knee deep in research. I took my reading glasses off and tossed them lightly onto the table before rubbing my eyes.

Standing up, I stretched a bit, feeling Edward's gaze on me, and when I looked over at him, he was smirking. I rolled my eyes at him, tugged down the hem of my shirt that had ridden up, and made my way toward him.

"You need to eat too, Dr. T," I commented, and she promised she would as soon as she was finished doing some research on a gold ring Jasper had found.

Figuring I'd better bring her something back from the galley, I followed Edward down the hallway toward the small kitchen and eating area.

"There's pot roast in the crockpot," he told me, and my stomach let out a loud rumble that had me blushing.

Moments later, I had a huge bowl full of pot roast and a couple of rolls in front of me, and I dug in. I hadn't realized how hungry I was until I started eating, and I didn't even care if I looked like a pig. I was starving.

"So, how's it going in there?" Edward asked me, taking a seat across from me with a slice of pie on a plate, and I knew I'd be having a slice later.

"Good," I told him after I swallowed some food. "We've got just about everything documented, but there's more down there, so we'll definitely take some more dives."

"Do you think that shipwreck is the Sirène?" he asked me.

"I don't want to say yes for sure, but it definitely fits the time period, according to the coins, flatware, and jewelry that has been found so far. Dr. T is researching a gold ring right now that she thinks is from around the 1750's. The Sirène left France in 1756, so this could be her. Of course, we always assumed that she'd made it to Virgin Gorda Island and was sunk on her way back to France, but Jasper doesn't believe that's the case. He doesn't think she ever made it, and there are no records to indicate that she did."

"God, I hope this is the Sirène so we can put it behind us once she's salvaged."

"I agree," I told him, sitting back in my chair, my belly now full of the wonderful pot roast I'd eaten.

a/n: All kinds of stuff going on in this chapter. Let me know what you thought!