Beneath Still Waters. Alex Archer

Beneath Still Waters

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A wrecked German bomber…key to the secrets of the Third Reich?

All it took was one phone call and TV show host and archaeologist Annja Creed is in mortal danger. Her producer Doug Morrell has been abducted by a greedy treasure hunter who’s seeking the lost raubgold, or looted gold of Nazi Germany. The terms are simple: retrieve the bounty and Doug lives. Fail, and he dies…

Now Annja and her friends must find a missing German fighter plane that was shot down over the Alps in 1945. According to legend, the aircraft not only holds a shipment of gold the Nazis had stolen, but also carried the last letters of the führer himself. Letters that point to a more startling treasure buried underwater halfway around the world. But Annja isn’t interested in treasure, or even unearthing historic relics. Annja has one agenda: get Doug out alive…even if it means drawing her sword from its otherworldly sheath. Even if it means death.

Because once greed drives a man to violence, nothing will stop him…

It was Doug on the screen. He was tied to a metal chair in a nondescript room.

Annja’s anxiety propelled her closer to the hotel room’s television as she turned up the volume on the DVD player.

Not that Doug was speaking. His arms and legs were tied to the chair, leaving his hands free and his bare feet resting on what looked to be a wet concrete floor. The camera was close enough that Annja could tell his face was bloody and swollen. A thin line of dried blood ran down the side of his face. When he raised his head and looked at the camera, the one eye not swollen shut was filled with fear.

“Help me, Annja,” he said, and his voice was little better than a croak. “I don’t care what he asks you to do or who he asks you to do it to—I’ll die here if you don’t do what he wants.”

The camera zoomed in on his face and then slipped down to his body and stopped on his right hand. That close, Annja could see that his last two fingers were bent at odd angles.

She could hear Doug saying, “No, no, I didn’t do anything! Don’t!” She steeled herself but she didn’t turn away. Annja owed it to him to watch what he was having to endure.

A gloved hand reached into the camera frame. It was neither large nor small, so she couldn’t tell if it was a man’s or a woman’s, though she suspected the former. Not because a woman couldn’t be that cruel—she knew from experience that that certainly wasn’t the case—but because her mystery caller who’d sent the DVD had claimed to be the one who had kidnapped Doug.

The individual took hold of Doug’s middle finger and snapped it. Doug let out a shriek of pain and the screen went blank.

Watching the kidnapper inflict pain on Doug to coerce her into action filled Annja with a righteous fury.

He’d picked the wrong woman to tangle with.

Beneath Still Waters

Alex Archer

THELEGEND

…THE ENGLISH COMMANDER TOOK

JOAN’S SWORD AND RAISED IT HIGH.

The broadsword, plain and unadorned,

gleamed in the firelight. He put the tip against

the ground and his foot at the center of the blade.

The broadsword shattered, fragments falling