Read Online Timeless by Teresa Reasor - Free Book Online

trail you’re bound to find the end of it.” He frowned down at her. “You’re not planning to stick your nose into that too, are you?”
    She smiled. “Are you saying I’m nosy, Henry?”
    “Yes.”
    She laughed. “It isn’t hard to figure out. Nicodemus builds ships. It’s one of his biggest industries. Those ships run on oil and Scotland has a supply.”
    “Sounds as though you’ve done some research.”
    “A little.” A woman had to be cautious traveling to a strange country in the company of strange men to work for an even stranger, more powerful man. “Weren’t you curious about whom we’d be working for when we won this appointment?”
    “Some. But not enough to look too closely. I needed the job too much.”
    “I did too.” Regan slipped inside the garage. She stripped off her dry suit and thermal underwear. Feeling exposed, despite Henry standing guard at the door, or maybe because of it, she hurriedly dressed in jeans, a sweater, and tennis shoes. Folding her dry suit, she shoved it into her pack with her underwear and stuffed the glutted bag, with her weight belt, buoyancy vest, and flippers, back behind the drum. Scuba diving equipment was expensive and, low crime rate or not, she wasn’t taking any chances with hers.
    As they walked from behind the Field Director’s office to the path, she remembered another snippet of information about Sebastian Nicodemus she had gleaned from the net. “He’s a collector,” she said continuing the conversation they had begun earlier.
    “Nicodemus?”
    “Yes. The last dig he funded was in Nigeria. The Nigerian government gifted him with some kind of artifact as payment.
    Henry glanced down at the stones. “He’ll pay hell getting one of those in his wall safe.”
     
    *****
    Quinn taped the schematic of the cofferdam up on a free standing white board so all the men could see it. Fergus’ office was little more than a twelve by ten section of the larger structure that housed the surveying team. The group of ten men and one woman was crammed into the small space.
    He marked the four areas where lightning had struck and the stability of the dam might have been compromised. “Check these four areas in particular. Follow the plan and if there seems to be any damage, send up a marker buoy to designate the area and get the hell out of there. This thing is put together like a tongue and groove floor. If one section is weakened, it may remain stable because of the rock, sand, and gravel filling the inner core, as long as the water seeping in can be pumped out. Or it could come apart like the teeth in a zipper and empty into the loch.”
    “That sounds like bloody fun,” Struthers MacIntyre, one of the divers commented. He murmured an apology to Adeline Fraser, the Foreman’s wife, standing next to him.
    She shook her strawberry blond head and threw up a hand in a dismissive gesture. “During the construction of the dam the engineers put in metal supports to stabilize the structure, then filled the entire bottom of the dam with concrete to prevent leakage. The chances of it coming apart are very slim. It was constructed with the steel pilings so it could actually be used as a permanent structure. The interior of the core will eventually be filled with concrete and the sides reinforced by earth. It does have exterior supports set at intervals as well. It would take a direct blow to damage it, or an unusual occurrence.”
    “Four lightning strikes in one night would be considered unusual and one that could compromise the dam since it hasn’t been completed,” Quinn argued.
    “Four. Are you sure?” Adeline’s eyes rounded in surprise.
    Quinn picked up an object from her husband’s desk. At first glance, it looked like a long bit of dried branch coral encrusted with barnacles. “We found four different fulgurites at four different locations inside the core.
    “What is that, Quinn?” one of the divers asked, his bushy brows clumped together in a