Roxanne St. Claire - Make Her Pay

“What do we have?” He lifted sunglasses as he strode to the dive platform.

Alita put her hands on her hips and gave Con a glamour-shot smile. “We have beginner’s luck, that’s what.”

“No beginner’s luck,” he said quietly, unzipping the pouch and kneeling down next to where Lizzie sat. “I just brought it up. Lizzie found it.”

He felt her bristle, but she didn’t say a word. He reached in, slid the piece out, then looked at her.

“Lizzie had first hands,” he said.

Her expression softened momentarily.

Paxton clunked clumsily onto the platform. “Nice work, Lizzie.” He seized it out of Con’s hands and waved the medallion. “You brought us good luck, Con! Welcome aboard.”

“Hey!” Lizzie choked, grabbing Paxton’s arm. “Be careful. It’s a hundred and fifty years old!”

“We don’t know that yet, Lizzie,” he said.

But Lizzie did, Con thought. She knew exactly what the piece was.

Con stood and turned to where Charlotte held out the cloth. “Let’s handle it with the appropriate care, Mr. Paxton.”

Ignoring the chastisement, Paxton put the piece in the cloth, bending close to it. “What is it?”

“A religious artifact,” Con said. “Hard to tell until that crust is gone, but it looks quite distinctive.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Kenny said, joining them with a brand-new hat, still folded from being in a box. “But I recognize greatness when I see it. That right there could pay for this whole excursion. Here you go, Ms. Dare.” He handed her the cap with a flourish. “You are officially a Gold Digger.”

For a moment, she just stared at the cap, then looked at Con.

He nodded. “Take it. You earned it.”

She did, reluctantly. “It was kind of a tie,” she said softly, still looking at him.

Paxton nodded to Charlotte. “Start the cleaning and conservation process,” he ordered. “I want to get it off the boat.”

“There’s a lot of chloride on this,” Charlotte said quickly. “I need twenty-four hours, then you can take it.”

“Fine.” Paxton glanced around as though sizing them up, and landed on Con. “You sleep in the lab tonight-we’ll get a cot. I’m not taking any chances until we get this thing off board.”

Kenny shot Paxton a disgusted look. “No one’s going to take it.”

“I’m not worried about the crew,” Paxton said. “But after what happened on my dad’s boats last summer, we’re not taking any chances. Putting a person on guard is just added security.”

Everyone on deck looked like they thought it was added bullshit, except Lizzie, who was staring at the piece as though she could memorize it, as though she would never see it again.

“And Lizzie,” Paxton added, “we need to make an excursion to the mainland with Brady to get some supplies. I want you to come with me.” Then he pointed to Con. “You don’t leave that piece, and you have my permission to kill anyone who tries to touch it.”

POWER. SOLANGE BETTENCOURT could swear she could feel the power of the scepter every time she picked it up, every time she stroked the plum-sized blue diamond that formed the handle. Maybe it was magical. Maybe it was imagined. Maybe it was just the fact that this stunning work of art was originally designed to be held by a king or queen, and used to force others to bend to their will.

Or maybe it wasn’t power that Solange could feel, as she sat inside a three-hundred-year-old pile of stone cradling the scepter. Maybe it was just irony .

And irony made her laugh, something she’d stopped doing until she found this. Irony was a wonderful thing.

Especially the irony that Jaeger Bettencourt IV had shamed her, accused her of unspeakable things, then exiled her to a rock in the middle of the ocean… and that she had been stumbling up a hundred stairs on her way to throw her miserable body over a cliff and prove him right when she fell-literally, fell -on a loose stone and uncovered the very thing Jaeger wanted most in the whole world.

That’s when the balance of power had shifted from Jaeger to her.

She had the greatest treasure ever lost, then found. Well, half of it. And if all went according to plan, she’d beat him to the other half.

A shiver skimmed up her arms when she thought about it.

Fortune had finally, finally smiled on her. And spat on the demon who made her an outcast. And all the despicable liars who called themselves friends as they whispered about her at fund-raisers and balls.

Solange is crazy .

Solange is suicidal .

Solange is taking a mental health break at one of the Bettencourts’ vacation homes in the Azores .

As if this three-hundred-year-old dump and dingy old windmill would be a Bettencourt vacation home. He’d stuffed her away, made her take drugs she didn’t want, planted a simpering fool of a nurse next to her, and stolen her life.

And inadvertently given her the treasure he wanted more than anything. She laughed out loud. Irony was pure fun.

The sound of her laughter bounced off the round stone walls, almost as loud as the never-ending groaning of the wheel and the cogs and the never-ending sweeps that blew the never-ending wind.

It had all seemed so never-ending… until she found this.

She tried to hold the scepter aloft, the way a queen might, but it was too heavy for her slender arm to manage. With two hands, she returned it to the white velvet bed she’d made for it, her attention shifting to the parchment papers spread over the rough-hewn wooden table. The words, despite the flourish of hundred-and-fifty-year-old script and a language barrier, were burned into Solange’s brain now.

She’d even gone to that pathetic little library in town, found a Portuguese-English dictionary, and translated almost all the pages. Then committed them to memory.

She rubbed her arms against the coolness from the stone walls that surrounded her. Standing, she walked to the single door, the only opening in the whole windmill structure, looking out at the dark waters, blackness as far as she could see.

Was this the way it looked when Aramis Dare stole away in the night like the pirate he was, taking half of what he’d been paid to leave? Taking what belonged to the Bettencourt family, what now belonged to her?

She returned to the table, where the satellite phone sat silent. Ring, damn it. Tell me what I want to -

The soft beep of the phone thrilled her.

Oh, yes… she had power . And, God in heaven, she was going to use it to bring her husband the deepest form of misery he could imagine. As deep and miserable as the pit in her heart.

She answered, making sure she sounded commanding, and not breathless. Not crazy. This man was one of the only people who knew the truth about Solange. That she wasn’t crazy, merely devious.

“I think we’ve got something.”

His words tightened her insides. “Did you find-”

“No,” he interjected. “But we found some proof that we’re in the right spot. We’re very close. The map you have is correct.”

Of course it was. She’d copied it long ago from Jaeger’s files-the minute she suspected that he was cooking up his plan to get rid of her. “What did you find?”

“There’s a large jeweled pendant in the drawings. Are you familiar with it?”

“I’m not paying you to find a necklace,” she said through gritted teeth.

“I know, Mrs. Bettencourt, but this is an important find. It tells us we’re in the right place. Or at least, we have the right wreck. I need you to confirm some details.”

“I have the papers here. I was just studying them.”