Rogue Angel 46: Treasure of Lima Read Free Page B

she’d have the chance to view the grotto uninterrupted, just as he had the first time he’d dived the well. Gazing at it now, she was thankful that he had; it was a glorious sight!
    Other lights broke the gloom above her and she knew the rest of the divers were on their way down. She moved closer to the side wall, noting the stronger current along the cenote’s edge as she did so, and waited for the others to reach her. The guests came first—Julie and Steve, a couple in their mid-twenties spending their honeymoon in Costa Rica, and Rick, a heavyset male in his early forties here on a business trip—with Manuel following directly behind them to be certain they made the descent without problem. The three guests had completed a weeklong dive-instruction course just the day before and today’s dive was sort of their graduation exercise. Annja remembered her first time making a major dive and felt a slight thread of envy; for the three of them, it was all new territory, and boy, did that feel good.
    Once they were all gathered together on the bottom, Manuel checked with each of them to be sure that they were okay. Annja gave them a thumbs-up when his attention turned to her. His eyes smiled at her through his mask. Bear with us, he seemed to be saying, and she smiled inwardly in return. She’d noticed Manuel eyeing her when he thought she wasn’t looking and she was pretty sure that he was working up the nerve to make a pass at her, something she wouldn’t mind in the least. Fact was, if he didn’t get up the nerve relatively soon, she’d probably make a pass of her own. Not only was he fun to be around, but he was damned good-looking, too, with raffish good looks and a body to rival that of a professional fitness instructor. It was all that swimming, she knew. Gave him abs to die for.
    She chided herself. The sun, sand and sea were starting to get to her, it seemed. It was hard being alone in the midst of so much beauty and it was only natural that she’d want a little male companionship given her surroundings, wasn’t it?
    Damn straight.
    At five feet ten inches tall, with chestnut hair, amber-green eyes and an athlete’s share of smooth, rounded muscle, Annja got more than her fair share of male interest, but her schedule normally didn’t allow her to take advantage of it. She was always jetting off somewhere new, following the latest mystery, searching for the answers to some age-old puzzle, and her social life was practically nonexistent as a result. It took a vacation to remind her that life shouldn’t be lived alone. Or, at least, not all the time.
    She shook off thoughts of Manuel and concentrated on the grotto into which he was taking them, letting them drift among the rock formations and marveling at the uniqueness of each stalactite and stalagmite that hung down from the ceiling above their heads or grew upward from the floor beneath their feet.
    Annja was about to take a look down one of the adjoining passages that led deeper into the cave system leading off the cenote proper when she was struck by an overwhelming sense of impending danger. It was so strong that she literally spun about in a circle, certain that an enemy was looming nearby and that she was about to come under attack, but aside from her dive companions, she was alone.
    What on earth?
    On the heels of that thought came another.
    Get out of here. Now!
    Annja had learned to trust her instincts. She didn’t question them. She didn’t second-guess herself. She just turned herself about, searching for Manuel and pointing frantically upward, knowing that whatever was coming wasn’t going to be good.
    Unfortunately, she and the rest of the dive group had far less time than she thought. She’d barely given the signal to ascend to Manuel when a thundering groan filled their ears and in the next second they were struck by a massive pressure wave that rolled inexorably over them, shaking them about like corks in a stream, tossed and turned in