A/N: Sorry this is so late! Hopefully, the length and the little lemon make up for it! Off you go then!
"How is he?" I asked Jasper that evening as we all gathered for dinner in the galley. He'd just gotten back from Sal Hospital where Caius had been taken.
"It was touch and go for a while, but they have stabilized him," he told me.
"Did he say who shot him?" I asked, and Jasper shook his head.
"He wouldn't say anything. I'm not sure if it was because he's scared to talk, didn't know who did it, did something illegal to cause it to happen, or if it's because he knows that I know you."
"Did he say what his plan was when he got released?" Edward asked, and Jasper shook his head.
"I asked one of the nurses to call me when he got released. I may have lied and said I was a concerned friend and that I was afraid he was going to do something stupid and reinjure himself."
"Nice," Edward said with a grin.
"So, he didn't say anything at all? Nothing about why he was out this way?" I asked because I needed answers.
"Sorry, Bells."
"I may have the answer to that," Rose said, her voice full of venom as she slapped some papers down on the table in front of us.
"What's that?" I asked her.
"Phone records. Specifically, Heidi Caius' phone records," she said. "Guess who she's been in contact with for the past ten months?"
"No!" I gasped, and she nodded her head.
"Yup. She's been talking to daddy twice a week for the past two years. She called him right after she landed in Miami, called him right after she had lunch with you, and she called him right after she left Poseidon once the FBI was done talking to her."
"And her mother?" I asked through gritted teeth.
"No calls from her to the ex. I'm not sure she knows just how much her daughter is talking to Caius."
"That little bitch!" I muttered. She'd seemed so innocent, but it turns out that she had played us. I'd bet anything she tipped him off and let him know the FBI was looking for him. Although, we hadn't mentioned coming out toward Cape Verde, so I wasn't sure how she'd figured that out, and I mentioned that as well.
"Could she have planted a bug?" Alice asked from behind us.
"Maybe," I said with a shrug. "She was in the conference room with us for several hours. I guess she could have put a bug in there."
Anger flashed across Jasper's face, and he excused himself to make a phone call.
"Maria? We've got a problem," he said. I'd forgotten that his sister was one of the FBI agents in charge of this case.
I could hear him talking to her down the hall, but I focused on what Rose was showing us.
"See this?" she said, pointing at a line on the paper. "This is the last call made from Heidi's phone which you can see was just twelve hours ago. I did some digging and discovered its last GPS location was Sao Filipe, Cape Verde."
"What the fuck is going on?" I muttered, tugging on a strand of hair that had fallen loose from my ponytail.
"I don't know, but I can guarantee that Jasper is doing his best to find out."
Unable to stomach what was left of my dinner, I rinsed off my plate and decided to get some more work done in the research room.
It was empty at the moment, Dr. Tanner was upstairs eating, and I picked up where I'd left off earlier.
We'd uncovered a couple of trunks, one of which was made of leather. Cleaning leather was a long-ass process. The leather trunk would first have to soak in freshwater for at least two weeks, and then we'd be able to gently brush it clean with a nylon brush. Once it was somewhat clean, we'd have to soak it in a solution of alcohol and freshwater and then transfer it to a solution of pure alcohol. The last step was to soak it in polyethylene glycol for approximately one month. After all of this was completed, I had high hopes it would be worth it.
Checking on the leather trunk to make sure it was fully submerged, I turned my focus to the small wooden box that we'd found buried deep in the sand. The box was no bigger than a hat box, made of wood with iron hinges and locks that had been corroded by the saltwater and looked to be moments from falling apart.
It, too, was submerged in a small tank of freshwater while I attempted to carefully remove the rust from the hinges. It was a long process, but really, what wasn't when it came to excavation and restoration?
"How's it going, Little B?" Emmett asked from the doorway.
"It goes," I told him, setting down the little hammer I'd been using to knock the rust away, and sat back in my chair.
"You've been down here for hours," he commented, and I realized that he was right. I was shocked to see that it was quarter to ten, and I still wasn't done removing the rust on this box.
"So, what's in the box?" he asked, and I shook my head, telling him I had no clue.
"What? Don't you want to know?"
"Of course, but I can't just lift the lid. I have to preserve the iron first or else these hinges and locks are going to crumble."
"I've got a portable handheld x-ray scanner that we can use to see if there's anything in there," he said, and my head snapped up to look at him.
"Seriously?"
"Yeah, I totally forgot I brought it with because we haven't needed to use it. Let me go get," he said, rushing out the door and headed to the robotics room a few doors down.
Minutes later, he was back with it, and it looked like some sort of handheld game with a screen.
"I got the idea from my dad who's a carpenter. The tool industry created a handheld scanner that scans walls and tell you what's behind them. I just improved on it a bit."
"You're a fucking genius."
"Well, yeah. My IQ is around one-seventy, and I'm a member of Mensa," he said as he fiddled with his scanner, and I grinned at him being so matter-of-fact.
"Do I need to take it out of the water?" I asked him, and he nodded.
Very carefully, I slowly moved the box out above the water, and Emmett scanned the entire box. He scanned each side, the top, and the bottom, his scanner reporting back to the tablet that was on the table beside him.
"Thanks, B," he said as he set his scanner down and picked up his tablet.
"Oh, ho! We've got something here," Em said, and I set the box back down in the water and looked over his shoulder at the tablet.
There seemed to be another box inside the wooden box, and it needed to be extracted immediately if we were going to preserve it as well.
"Fuck," I muttered as I tried to figure out the best way to do it without compromising everything.
"Can you get Dr. T down here?" I asked Em, and he took off to go get her, leaving me to look at the smaller box. I couldn't see much detail, but I was concerned about its state of decay.
"What do we have?" Dr. Tanner asked a few minutes later, and I explained that we'd discovered another box within the wooden box that I had been cleaning.
We talked for a few minutes before deciding that extracting the smaller box was worth the risk of possibly damaging the lid of the larger one. So, slowly and carefully, I lifted the lid of the wooden box, wincing when the hinges creaked. I opened it just far enough so that Dr. T could reach in and gently remove the smaller box.
"Got it," she said, and I closed the lid before submerging the box back into the freshwater tank.
The smaller box was in amazing condition and that was partially because it was made of bronze and partially because it had been hidden away inside the larger box. The box was no bigger than a cigar box, and the bronze lid was painted with something, but I couldn't tell what because the painting was covered with years of sand and rust.
I grabbed the camera and took pictures of the box from every angle before grabbing the video camera and turning it on.
"It's the 30th of August 2016 at 10:16 PM. I'm with Dr. Bree Tanner and Dr. Emmett McCarty, and we have discovered what looks to be a bronze box that was tucked inside of this larger wooden box," I documented.
Giving a nod to Dr. T, she began to slowly lift the lid, stopping when it made an awful creaking noise.
Taking a deep breath, she continued opening it, centimeter by centimeter, unitl it was opened all the way.
The inside of the lid looked like it had been covered in some sort of delicate cloth, silk or satin perhaps. I zoomed in closer with the camera and spoke about the damage that I saw.
Nestled inside the bottom of the box was a pouch made of some kind of cloth. It, too, had suffered at the hands of time.
Dr. Tanner picked up a pair of tweezers that were resting nearby and very carefully peeled the cloth apart. It had obviously been tied at one point in time, but whatever had held it closed was long gone.
"Bella!" Dr. T said, and I handed the video camera off to Emmett so that I could help her separate the small pouch.
We moved slowly, each of us with a pair of tweezers in hand, as we separated the pieces, and I let out a gasp when I caught a glimpse of what appeared to be jewelry.
Soon, the pouch was spread open and revealed the Treasured Heart that had been nestled inside.
"Is that—" Emmett asked, and I nodded.
"Oh, yeah," I said as I stared down at it, barely paying attention as Dr. Tanner picked up the camera and took a million photographs of the brooch.
"Can you pick it up for me please?" she asked and with trembling hands, I very carefully picked up the brooch.
"The Treasured Heart," I whispered in awe as I stared down at it nestled in my hand. "It looks different than I imagined."
And it did. I'd seen drawings that had been done throughout the years, but it had never shown the ruby encrusted heart was surrounded by a bed of emeralds in the shape of vines and a diamond cross on top of the heart.
"Are you sure that's it?" Emmett asked, doubt in his voice, and I nodded my head. I knew as I held it that this was the brooch that had cost my father his life and had almost cost Edward his.
Picture after picture was taken before we weighed it. It came in at a little over seventeen ounces.
"How much is that thing worth?"
I looked over at Emmett before staring back at the brooch.
"Rumor has it ten to twenty million. I'm not a gemologist, but I'm sure the price depends on the grade of the gems and the gold that was used to make the brooch."
While I was talking to Emmett, Dr. T pulled up several drawings that had been done over the years of the Treasured Heart, and she showed them to us. There was one that was sketched by a jewelry designer in the early nineteenth century, and it was the closest to the actual item.
"I'm saying that this is the Treasured Heart," she said in a whisper, and the three of us stared at each other for a moment before Emmett let out a whoop and began to do a dance around the room, the video camera still in his hands.
"We need to tell the others," I said as I continued to stare down at the brooch. Despite the fact that it was dirty and needed a good cleaning, it was in amazing shape, and it felt all too surreal.
I barely noticed when Emmett set down the video camera and ran up top, hooting and hollering about how we'd found the Treasured Heart. I couldn't seem to take my eye off the damn thing, and there was part of me that wanted to destroy it for all the heartache it had caused, but the rational part of me knew this was a huge find. Not to mention, the French government wouldn't be too happy with me if I destroyed the Treasured Heart. Plus, there was a very nice finder's fee coming our way, well the company's way, for finding the jeweled brooch.
Moments later, there was a thundering of steps so loud you'd have thought an elephant was on board the ship.
Everyone rushed into the small research room, and I took a step back as everyone gathered around.
"May I?" Jasper asked as he put on a pair of gloves that we wore when handling the artifacts.
Carefully, I handed the brooch over to him, and he spent a good five minutes looking at it. He turned it over, studied the back, and then turned it back around to study the front.
"Pictures?"
"Taken," Dr. Tanner and I told him, and he asked if he could take one more using his cell phone. He handed the brooch back to me, and I set it down gently in a small box that Dr. Tanner had found and lined with some soft cloth.
Jasper took a picture of the brooch and then told us that he was going to contact Leo Dubois, our contact within the French government who had coordinated the hiring of Poseidon.
With his cell phone in one hand and the satellite phone in the other, Jasper excused himself to make the call. Dubois was already aware of the fact that we'd found the shipwreck, but Jasper wanted to let him know that we'd found the Treasured Heart as well.
The following morning, all of us were still in a bit of shock over finding the Treasured Heart, and the galley was filled with chatter.
After breakfast, Jasper called a meeting, wanting to let us know that he'd talked to Leo Dubois and find out what the man wanted Poseidon to do now.
"Okay, gang, here's what's going to happen. The French government wants the Treasured Heart released into their custody immediately, and I'm fine with that. I'd rather not keep it on board the ship."
"Are they sending someone to come get it?" I asked him.
"They are, but Alice and I are going to accompany whomever it is when they go back to France to make sure that the brooch arrives safely and is properly documented. I don't want the Treasured Heart to slip through the cracks and get lost or have the French government try and claim that we lost it, or worse, stole it."
We all nodded our heads because we'd all heard stories about artifacts being stolen or lost by government officials and then blaming others. No one wanted that to happen, especially not us.
"While we are gone, you are to continue salvaging and excavating everything you can. The French haven't put a time limit on this operation, but they want it done as efficiently as possible now that we've found the wreck."
"No problem," I replied with the others nodding their heads in agreement. "I do have a question though. Does the French government want the hull of the ship brought up? Because, as much as it pains me to admit, I don't think we can move it without destroying it. It's incredibly fragile."
Jasper rubbed a hand over his face before answering me.
"They do want it. I've warned them that if we attempt to bring up the hull, it will be in pieces. They still want it, but we're going to need another research vessel for that alone. Hell, the Icarus already has what, three cannons that we've brought up from the secondary site?"
Newton and Black both nodded before Black mentioned that they had part of the mast as well as cannonballs and some furniture that had seen better days.
"Okay, I need to call Aro anyway, so I'll also tell him we need one more vessel out here for the hull. Considering how much the French are going to pay for finding the brooch, I can't imagine he'd say no. Then again, he's a tightass, so he might fight me on this."
I'd only met Aro a handful of times, but he was a tightass and a jerk. He was pompous but incredibly intelligent and tended to think very highly of himself.
Once the meeting was over, Edward pulled me aside, and I melted into his embrace. I'd been working so hard lately that I felt like we hadn't see each other all that often even though we were living on the same ship.
"Mom and Dad want to Skype with us later if that's okay?" he asked me, and I nodded my head.
We agreed that we'd talk to them at six our time which would be around eleven in the morning there, and he sent his dad a quick email to let him know.
"See you later," he said, pressing a quick kiss to my lips, and I watched as he made his way back to the wheelhouse.
I was on my way to put on my dive suit when Jasper came rushing around the corner, and the look on his face, stopped me in my tracks
"No."
He nodded his head.
"I'm sorry, Bella."
"Fuck, fuck, fuck! Now, he's gone. They'll never find him again! Hell, he could just chill somewhere down here, and we can't ever touch him!"
"I know, Bella. The hospital said he checked out this morning, and no one knows where he went. It's not exactly legal, but I've got Rose keeping an eye on his phone records as well as his daughter's. I've also kept my sister up-to-date on what's going on."
I honestly wasn't as shocked as I thought I would be. At this point, I was sort of used to the fact that Marcus Caius was going get away with murder and attempted murder. There were times when I was so focused on what he'd done to my dad that I tended to forget that he'd almost killed Edward. Caius deserved to go to prison for that as well.
Needless to say, my focus for the rest of the day was shot. Oh, I did my best to stay on task, and I did my job, but I can't say I gave it one hundred percent.
"Take a break, Bella," Dr. T suggested a little after two that afternoon. "Go have lunch with that handsome captain."
I rolled my eyes, but I didn't argue with her. I grabbed a couple of sandwiches, two small bags of chips, and two sodas before making my way to the wheelhouse where Edward was talking with Seth.
"Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to interrupt," I said, but they shook their heads and told me to come in.
I handed over the plate with the ham and cheese sandwich as well as the chips and soda to Edward and set my own down at the small table that was set up in the corner.
Seth offered me his seat, but I shook my head and I thanked him. I didn't know anything about him except that he'd given Edward his first job as a captain. Seth looked to be in his late fifties with long black hair that was kept in a braid down his back. He had copper colored skin and it could be he was Native American or just tan from years of being on a boat.
"How's your mom?" Edward asked Seth, and as I sat there, listening to them talk, I felt like I was intruding.
"You know my mother. She's good. She refuses to retire despite being eighty, and I'm sure she'll run that seaside restaurant until the day she dies."
"Seth's mom owns this tiny seafood shack in La Push, Washington. It's got the most amazing crab cakes that I've ever had, and I've had a lot of crab cakes."
"Did you guys meet in Washington?" I asked because I'd thought they'd met in Mexico.
They both shook their heads no.
"I met Edward in Manzanillo, Colima, Mexico a few years after he'd dropped out of college. He was a fucking mess. He lived in this tiny apartment and was working as a waiter or something like that."
"I was a dishwasher," Edward interrupted. "And a half-assed one at that. I worked just enough to pay for my rent and my alcohol."
"Anyway, one morning, around four or so, I went down to the pier where I kept my boat, and as I was walking across the beach, I stumbled over a passed out drunk."
I looked over at Edward whose face was red with embarrassment and nodded his head.
"I was a mess back then, Bella. Seth saved my life. He woke me up, dragged me onto his boat, and made me drink some awful concoction that was supposed to cure my hangover."
"I was short a deckhand, and Edward, despite being a drunk college kid, looked strong enough to handle the job, so I hired him with the condition that he wasn't allowed to drink anymore."
"How'd that work out in the beginning?" I asked, the food on my plate forgotten as I listened to their story.
"I kicked his ass a lot," Seth said with a grin. "He fought me from the get go, but eventually, he got his act together. That was when I learned his folks lived in Forks, Washington which is about an hour and a half from the reservation that I grew up on. He also told me about what happened to you all in the summer of '02. I can't tell you how sorry I was to hear about your father, and now, all of this."
I groaned as I thought about it.
"It's a fucking nightmare," I said with a sigh. "Rose is not-quite-so-legally keeping tabs on Caius' phone as well as his daughter's, but I just don't get it. If my father was a murderer, I wouldn't go out of my way to help him. Hell, I'd have turned the bastard in and washed my hands of him. I don't understand what her motive is for helping him now."
"He's her dad," Seth said. "Maybe she thinks that by doing this, she can win his affection or his love."
"Maybe."
After spending another fifteen minutes with Edward and Seth, I went back to work. By the time six rolled around, my eyes were watering and I had a massive headache.
"Hey," Edward said from the doorway of the research room, and I held a finger up telling him to give me a minute.
As I finished typing up my findings, Edward wandered around the room, looking inside containers and flipping through reports we'd written.
"Okay, I'm ready," I told him, closing my laptop and following him down the hall to his room.
I sat down on the couch next to him as he brought up Skype on his iPad, and I smiled when his mom's face filled the screen.
"Hello, dears! How are you?" she asked, and we told her we were doing okay. We hadn't told them that we were, whatever it was we were, probably because we, ourselves, didn't know. We hadn't put a label on it.
"Uh huh. Something's up. Let me get your father, and then you can tell us," she said before hollering for Carlisle to hurry his ass up.
I sat there twirling a strand of hair around my finger, something I tended to do when I was nervous, and Edward reached over and grasped my wrist gently.
"You're gonna pull your hair out," he said, and I let go of the lock, sitting back in my seat and began to fiddle with the hem of my shirt.
Moments later, Esme, who had gotten up to hurry Carlisle along, returned, and Carlisle took a seat beside her on their couch.
"How is Caius?" Carlisle asked right away, and Edward and I shot each other looks.
"He's in the wind," I said, anger seeping into my voice. "He checked himself out of the hospital against the doctor's wishes, and he's gone underground. Although, I don't know why. Cape Verde is a safe haven for criminals because it doesn't have an extradition agreement."
"I was afraid that would happen. Are the FBI aware?" he asked because Edward had filled them in on everything.
"Yeah, Jasper has kept them up-to-date," I replied, leaving out the part about Rose and her illegal phone tracing. I wasn't sure how they'd handle that, so I figured it best not to bring it up.
"That's good. I know you're worried that he's going to get away again, but I have faith that he will get caught," Carlisle said, and I wished I had that same faith, but I didn't, and Carlisle could see it on my face.
"Bella, I promise you, he will get caught. Caius will pay for what he did to Charlie and for what he did to Edward. And knowing Marcus, he's probably done several more illegal things over the years. Karma is a bitch, and he will get what's coming to him. Hell, it sounds like he's already pissed off the wrong people, and if they found out he's still alive, well …. It probably won't be for long."
"Enough talk about that horrible man," Esme said. "Tell me what else you've found because you've definitely found something. I can tell."
I grabbed my phone from the side table and opened up the picture gallery. As soon as I found the picture I wanted, I brought it up and then held my phone up to the laptop so they could see it.
"No!" Carlisle gasped upon gazing at the picture. "Is that—"
"Yes," I interrupted, unable to keep a little bit of excitement from leaking into my voice. "The Treasured Heart. Well, we're at least ninety percent sure it is. She looks different than the sketches and artist renderings that we've seen over the years, but the heart part of it is identical to what we've seen."
"Holy shit! She's beautiful," Carlisle said, and I nodded my head in agreement. However, Carlisle's face became serious real quick a few seconds later.
"Please, promise me that you'll both be careful. That damned brooch has cost both of our families a lot of heartache, and I wouldn't put it past Caius to try and come after you if he finds out that you've found it."
"I know, Carlisle, and I promise we're being careful," I told him before Edward chimed in and let them know that it wouldn't be in our possession for much longer.
"The French government is sending out an archeologist or gemologist by the name of Leo Dubois to take the brooch back to France. Jasper and Alice will accompany him on the return trip to make sure that everything is documented and handled legally. That should happen by the end of the week."
"Good. It was no coincidence that Marcus was in the area where you found the shipwreck. Someone, whether it's someone in the French government or not, I don't know, let him know where you were. Be vigilant."
We both promised we would, but I would also be relieved when the Treasured Heart was off the ship. I, too, was afraid word was going to leak out, and I felt uneasy having something so rare and so valuable at my fingertips.
"Now, what else have you found?" he asked, and I was quick to fill him in on all the artifacts that we had recovered.
We ended up talking to Esme and Carlisle for almost two hours, and I realized just how much I missed them as we hung up. I was definitely going to have to take a vacation after our work was done and go visit them in Washington.
"That went way better than I expected," I admitted to Edward. "I honestly thought your dad was going to flip his shit or something."
"I was worried about that as well when I called him a few days ago to let him know about Marcus. All I could remember was how bitter and angry my dad had become after that summer, but we've, obviously, all grown and changed. He was incredibly calm and collected about it."
"I want to go visit them when we're done with all of this," I told him.
"Yeah?" he asked, a smile growing on his face. "You want to go to Forks?"
I nodded my head.
"I know my folks would love that. I would too," he said before placing a kiss on my lips.
I kissed him back, my fingers delving into his hair, and we lost ourselves in the kiss until we both had to breakaway to breathe.
Not that that stopped Edward from kissing, licking, and nibbling on my neck and collarbone, effectively turning me into mush.
At some point, we moved from the loveseat to his bed, and I found myself straddling him as our lips met in a frenzied kiss.
His large, calloused hands ran up and down my back until one of them slipped underneath my shirt, and I moaned at the feel of his warm hand on my bare back before he broke the kiss and pulled my shirt over my head.
His other hand found purchase in my hair and he gently gripped my ponytail as he maneuvered his mouth over mine.
I couldn't help but let out a moan as he gripped my hair tighter, and at some point, our pants disappeared and we were left I our underwear. Straddling him, my hips rolled over his, and I could tell just how turned on he was.
"Oh, shit," he mumbled against my lips as both of his hands moved down to my hips where he grabbed on to them.
He began to thrust his hips against mine, and I broke my lips away from his, tossing my head back as he hit the right spot over and over again.
"Let go, Bella," he said, his voice husky with want, and I did just that. It didn't take long, and Edward fell soon after me, his hands digging into my hips and my name being called from his lips.
As I slumped over him, trying to catch my breath, I found myself fighting sleep.
"Want to stay here tonight?" he asked as he brushed a loose piece of hair from my face.
"I'd love to. I need to grab some clothes, though," I said, but I made no move to get off of him, and he held me close.
Finally, I extracted myself from Edward, quickly cleaned up in the bathroom, and then dashed down the hall to my room.
Neither Dr. Tanner nor Jessica were in there, so it made it easier for me to grab a handful of clothes to take back to Edward's room. Hell, I might as well just pack my suitcase and move in with him because I'd spent almost every night in his room.
Not too much later, I was asleep in Edward's bed, his arms wrapped around me.
a/n: So, am I forgiven for this being later than usual today? As always, let me know what you thought!