Relic Hunter: Spear of Destiny

Chapter One The Map, The Pirate and Other Things.

Chapter 1

    Gemma tugged at her dress.  It was too short.  Her shoes were too tight and the pins that held her hair in places dug into her scalp.  The cape and feathered mask she rented for the ball kept getting in her way. If it weren’t for the map, she wouldn’t be caught dead in a outfit like this. She stood outside the door to the library where Jonathan Drake reportedly keep the map.
   

An eruption of laughter made her pause.  Was someone coming down the hall?  No, just someone having a good time, maybe too good by the sounds of it.  She had forged a handwritten  invitation to the Drake’s Annual Masquerade Ball with the intention of sneaking into the library, taking the photo and getting back out before anyone knew she was missing.  Not that anyone would notice since she knew absolutely no one here.
 

   She glanced down the hallway before slipping into the library.  The room was a little dark but she didn’t dare turn on the light with the fear someone would notice she was here.
She scanned the room.  Her sources said his safe was behind the picture on the wall behind his desk.  That would have been too easy.  Drake doesn’t do easy but he was predictable and she had done her homework.  Jonathan was a book collector.

    She looked over at the bookcase and  headed straight for it.  Stopping short, she ran her fingers over the titles.  All classics.  All in mint condition.  Tolstoy’s ‘Ana Karenina’, Austen’s ‘Sense and Sensibility’,  Hardy’s ‘Great Expectations’,  Dickens ‘David Copperfield’.

    Wait a minute!  Thomas Hardy didn’t write Great Expectations.  Charles Dickens did.
She pulled it off the shelf.  It felt light.  Not like the books of old.  A smile spread slowly across her face as she open the cover.
    A fake!  The pages had been carefully glued together then hollowed out to make a perfect hideaway.   She almost laughed.  Great Expectations.  Drake was certainly original.

    She reached in and puled out an old, faded, piece of leather and a black velvet pouch.  She laid the pouch on the table then unfolded the piece of leather over the desk.  Her source had been correct.  The map did exist and Drake had it.  “You are awesome, Gemma Stone,” she whispered congratulating myself.  “Dad would have loved this.”

    She could barley contain myself.  She had been searching for the map for a long time. She took out my camera ready to photograph it when she noticed some etchings on the side.  She ran her fingers over them then closed my eyes and sighed.  Those won’t show up in the photograph. 

    What was she  going to do?  Well, she had no choice now.  She had to take it with me.  She didn’t want to do that.  Jonathan Drake’s reputation for those who cross him was well documented.  Well, she would just have to make sure he never found out who took it.

    She quickly folded the map then tapped it on her hand.  Where would to put it was the question.  Her dress did nothing in the way of a hiding place.  It barely covered her.  But the cape had a compartment in the lining for personal belongings.  She grabbed the map and black velvet pouch an stuck it in the lining when she heard a noise outside the door.

    She froze.  If Jonathan Drake found her in here she wouldn’t make it out alive.  She quickly put the book back on the shelf and looked for a place to hide.  She had just slide behind the thick red drape when the door opened and someone came in.  She held her breathe and waited for the lights to come on and be discovered.

    When that didn’t happen and she heard serval thumps and an “ouch” she peered around the drape.  Someone was rifling through Jonathan’s desk! 

    He was dressed as a pirate.  A very well put together pirate at that.  His black pants were tucked neatly into knee high boots.  A thick, black belt circled his trim waist and his billowing white shirt made his tan skin even darker.  But his black and red cape kept falling off his shoulder and getting in the way.