Lost Gems (Shark Key Adventures Book 4) Read online

  Lost Gems

  A Shark Key Adventure

  Chris Niles

  Contents

  Copyright

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Chris Niles

  Copyright

  Lost Gems is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2021 Chris Niles

  All rights reserved.

  Visit the author’s website at chrisnilesbooks.com

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use, please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of the author and the team of professionals who contributed their effort to this creative work.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without express written permission from the author. The scanning, uploading, or distributing of this book via any means without permission of the author is illegal and punishable by law. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  The author appreciates your time to read this work. Please consider leaving a review wherever you bought this book, and please tell your friends who might also like it. The best way for a reader to find new favorites is still a recommendation from a trusted friend.

  Cover by Shayne Rutherford at Wicked Good Book Covers

  Edited by Staci Troilo

  01160939

  For my Office-mates, who kept me from falling prey to 2020.

  Prologue

  The old woman’s knees creaked as she lowered herself onto the stool beside her basket. On the packed dirt floor beside her, her young grandson sorted pieces of fabric from a pile, laying them out in front of him like pieces of a puzzle.

  “Abuela, tell me the story.”

  She smiled. The boy’s mother never had any interest in the old stories. She’d only been interested in running to town, walking through the shops, and talking to the boys.

  This little one had heard the story more times than the woman could count. But he was a good helper, and someday he would go to work under the mountain. It was good for him to know. So, as she lifted a piece into her lap and began to stitch it together, she began the story for him the same way it always began.

  “In the days before the conquerors arrived, our people made their home in these mountains. Many generations lived and died here. They farmed here. They hunted here. Other groups lived nearby, and sometimes they fought here.

  “But before they were here, there was only Aré, the Creator.”

  Rain tapped on the tin roof above her. Buckets and bowls—anything that could catch water—were hung all around the ramshackle room to catch leaks where the roof had rusted away to nothing. If the product was damaged, there’d be hell to pay.

  “One day, as Aré walked alone through this valley, he came upon a stand of reeds by the water’s edge. He took one of the reeds, long and slender, and from it he crafted the most beautiful woman in all the world—the first woman. Her hair was long and thick and black as the night sky, and her skin was smooth and brown. And her voice.”

  The old woman closed her eyes and leaned back for just a moment, hearing the musical sound in her imagination, before she resumed.

  “Her voice was soft and warm and she sang more beautifully than the birds and more soothing than the waterfall. And he named the woman Fura.”

  She glanced up from her work. Women perched on similar stools around the perimeter. A long wooden table covered with rolls and scraps of fabric dominated the center of the room. Two bare light bulbs dangled above it.

  “Aré set her by the river and she began to explore, her light filling the valley with love and joy. While she explored, Aré took another reed from the water. This time he chose a thick, sturdy stalk. And from it, he made a man. A strong and handsome man with sharp eyes and a silent step. He named the man Tena, and he gave Tena a sturdy spear that would never grow dull.

  “He gave Fura and Tena this valley to rule as their own, the slopes and the fields and the river running through its center. He told them to plant in the fields and to hunt the animals. And above all, he told them to be true to each other.

  “Then Aré ascended beyond the top of the mountain where he could admire all that he had created.”

  The abuela poked her needle through the hem of her skirt, then lifted the limp pile of soft cloth and began to shove bits of thick white stuffing into the crevices. Its form began to emerge, identical to the ones growing in various stages around the room.

  She continued her story. “Fura and Tena lived a very long time in this valley. And unlike you and me, little one, they never grew old. Tena’s muscles never grew soft or weak. Fura’s hair remained shiny and black.

  “Until one day, while Tena was hunting along the western slope, a stranger appeared along the bank of the river. Fura had never seen such a man, with skin the color of the stars and hair yellow like a stalk of grass during the dry season.

  “But it wasn’t these things that were her downfall, no. It was his eyes. The color of the morning sky, and sparkling like the water in the mid-day sun.”

  She chose a long, narrow stick with its end carved into a flattened paddle, then wrapped clumps of stuffing around the end and pushed them deep into the long limbs of the creature coming to life in her hands. While she talked, she began to stuff its body, cramming more and more of the white fluff through the open seam along its side.

  “Now Tena had been good to Fura. They had lived together in harmony for more moons than Fura could count. But this man, whose name was Zarbi, when she looked at him, she felt a warmth in her middle like nothing she’d ever
felt before. It felt like sitting beside a fire on a cold night, and it felt like the wings of a bird taking off into the wind, and it felt like the glittering stars and the shimmering river.

  “Fura knew that Tena would be away. She remembered the Creator’s warning, but she reasoned that he must have created this feeling inside her, and so she went to Zarbi and she took his hand.

  “But Tena returned early from his hunting trip.”

  “Uh-oh.” The little boy looked up at her, entranced.

  “You are right, little one. Uh-oh.”

  She looked down at the animal in her lap. It was nearly full. The abuela pulled open a tiny drawer hidden in the seat of her stool, and from the drawer, she pulled a small, heavy bundle of white cloth.

  She carefully tucked the bundle deep into the fluffy stuffing, packed in tightly, then filled the void so the animal was firm.

  “Tena was angry and chased Zarbi away with his spear, then he called upon Aré to pass judgment on this woman who had betrayed him. And Aré did. But he passed judgment on them both. On Fura for her infidelity, and on Tena for neglecting his bride. Because women need to be loved and cherished and respected, little one. You remember that when you grow up.”

  She chose a sturdy needle and a length of thick brown floss, then handed it to her grandson to thread—his eyes saw small details far better than hers in this dim light.

  While he prepared the tool, she shuffled to the table where a tall pile of white labels printed in English sat in a small box. She reached beneath the box and chose a label, identical except for its dark green background.

  She returned to her stool and took the needle from the boy.

  “What happened next, Abuela?”

  As she stitched the label to the cloth, closing the gap in the toy, she told him how the story ended.

  “Aré punished them both by allowing them to grow old. Their bones grew brittle and their hair turned gray. As Fura cried for the loss of her beauty and her love, her tears fell into the river then sank to the bottom of the lake. Finally, the mountain absorbed them into itself to hold her sorrow forever.

  “And when they died, Aré lifted them up, one on each side of the river, there” — she pointed out the filthy, rain-streaked window toward the twin mountain peaks that rose on each shore of the river through their valley — “and there, to remind us all of their mistakes.”

  Chapter One

  Kate Kingsbury wiped a bead of sweat from her temple.

  A purple bicycle wobbled toward her across the thin gravel. Her arms hovered in the air, spread wide as if she could hold up the bike with sheer willpower. Colton Dawson perched on the seat and clutched the handlebars, his knuckles white. His stare bored through Kate to the white concrete laundry building just beyond the little lane’s curve behind her. A lean, muscular man with sandy blonde hair ran alongside the bike, bent at the waist, his fingers outstretched where the seat had just abandoned them.

  “Keep pedaling. You’ve got it, Colton,” Tony Bowden shouted. “Keep go— Whiskey, NO!”

  Whiskey, Kate’s seventy-five-pound German Shepherd, raced out from behind a seagrape hedge and drew up beside the boy, tearing his focus toward the ground. In an instant, Kate, the dog, the bike, and the boy became a tangled pile of limbs and metal and grease and dust.

  Kate pulled herself from the bottom of the pile, then helped Colton brush the tiny flecks of crushed coral from his dark, curly hair. The boy’s grin stretched the width of his face.

  “Did you see that, Miss Kate? I made it all the way past Tony’s house!”

  All three of them turned toward a gutted 1973 Airstream Excella, its various parts strewn across his campsite, as Tony’s laugh drifted across the island. “The word house might be a little strong for what that is, Bud. But you made it farther than you ever have. I think you’ve almost got it. Wanna go again?”

  Kate smiled at how even his laugh seemed twinged with a soft Louisiana accent.

  Tony hiked the small bike up on his shoulder, then the two raced down the lane to their starting point near the south end of the narrow lagoon that split Shark Key Campground and Marina into two distinct sides.

  Chuck Miller, the campground’s owner, had recently ordered truckloads of fresh crushed coral for the mile-long lane that stretched north from the gate at the Overseas Highway all the way to the small parking lot at the marina and restaurant that spanned the north tip of the island. Tony had carefully raked a long stretch of the lane down to its hard base and agreed to teach Colton to ride before the thick bed of gravel arrived.

  Colton and his mother had been staying at Shark Key for a year. He had just turned nine, but he was small for his age. Not knowing how to ride a bike was one of the many things that made him a target for the town bullies. And neither Kate nor Tony tolerated bullies.

  As Tony helped Colton balance on the seat near their starting line, Kate’s pocket vibrated. She glanced at the screen.

  Get him inside.

  “Tony!” Kate shouted down the lane.

  Tony’s head swiveled across the narrow island. On their side of its shore, a row of empty campsites, broken only by Tony’s Airstream and an empty fifth-wheel trailer beside it, stretched along the east coast of the island. The lagoon blocked their path to the few sites along the west, including the camper where Colton and his mother Jodi were staying.

  “My place. Go.” Tony pointed to his site as Kate grabbed the little boy’s hand and ran. Lifting the bike by the crossbar, Tony raced to a break in the seagrape hedge lining the shore and tucked it deep into the thick green leaves.

  Kate jerked the Excella’s door open then swept Colton inside. Whiskey whooshed in, then Kate locked the sturdy aluminum door behind them.

  “Here.” She brushed a pile of sawdust from the plywood frame that would someday become a couch, then spread a towel across it. “Stay—”

  “Down. I know, Miss Kate,” the boy whispered as he lay flat on the towel and Whiskey took up a position in front of him. Kate glanced out the window as the nose of a sparkling black pickup crept around the curve in the lane.

  A mini-fridge sat beside the exposed wheel-well, plugged into a bright orange extension cord that ran past a neatly made air mattress lying on the plywood subfloor at the back of the camper then out the cracked rear window. Kate opened it, pulled out two bottles of water, then handed one to Colton.

  She slowly raised her head to peer through the front wraparound window. Tony stood in the center of the lane, his arms relaxed at his sides, but with a concentrated hardness in his eyes. The truck idled, the Confederate flag on its front bumper just a few feet short of his legs.

  As he slowly lifted his right arm, pointing back toward the entrance to the campground, a rickety green-and-white golf cart rolled up behind him. Chuck Miller drew to a stop, blocking the truck’s path forward.

  Kate set her bottle on top of the little fridge. “Colton, stay here and stay down, okay?”

  “Don’t worry, Miss Kate. I know.”

  “Whiskey, stay. Guard.”

  The dog straightened his stance, pointed directly at the door. Kate crossed the patchy Bermuda grass, then strode past the cart onto the grassy slope leading to the lagoon, flashing a glance at the older man. Chuck pushed out of the cart then started up the lane.

  “Just turn around and leave, man.” Tony slowly eased toward the open driver’s window. “We don’t want trouble.”

  “Trouble?” the man slurred. “Only trouble is keeping me ’way from my boy and my bitch wife. Fathers got rights, too.” He flung the truck’s door open. “Where’s she?”

  Tony bolted toward the truck, while Kate and Chuck planted themselves along the lane, ready to run.

  The man twisted to climb out of the truck, but jerked back into his seat as the safety belt caught his hip. “Dammit.” He swatted at the latch until it snapped loose, his arm and shoulder still tangled around the shoulder strap.

  Chuck stepped forward, his voice steady and low. “Corey, this
is my property, and I need you to leave.”

  Corey wrangled his arm loose from the seat belt and planted his feet on the truck’s polished chrome running board. “I ain’t goin’ nowhere ’til you tell me which one o’ these cans the bitch lives in now.” His arm flailed toward the campers across the lagoon.

  “Last warning. You need to get back in the truck and drive on outta here.” Tony’s casual drawl carefully hid the threat contained within.

  “Or what?” Corey jumped to the ground, stumbling and stretching his arms out to his sides for balance. He lurched at Tony.

  Tony stepped to his left. He caught Corey’s outstretched wrist then wrenched it up between the man’s shoulder blades.

  Tony shoved Corey against the truck bed. He snarled in his ear. “Or I’ll—”

  “How about you just go, Corey?” Kate approached the truck. “It’s three against one.”

  “Where is she?” He glared over his shoulder at Kate. Without thinking, her eyes flicked toward Tony’s Airstream. In a flash, the sturdy man shoved off the truck, throwing Tony off balance, then ran toward the shining trailer. Chuck scrambled into his path, but Corey dropped his shoulder and plowed through the older man.