Scoring Big Read online

  Rex Sterling

  Scoring Big

  Treasure of the Hidden Harem

  Copyright © 2021 by Rex Sterling

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  Rex Sterling asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.

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  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Also by Rex Sterling

  Chapter 1

  Through the murky underwater haze, the narrow beam of my flashlight tripped over a barnacle-clad iron safe. Adrenaline spiked in my arms and legs, rocketing my heart rate while beside me, a firm hand locked around my wrist. I glanced to my right and found Brooke staring wide-eyed through her goggles at the centuries-old safe.

  A steady stream of air bubbles rose from Brooke’s re-breather while she gestured wildly at the safe and turned her flashlight’s high beam on the iron door’s crusty handle. Her long strawberry-blonde hair floated in the murky space around her head, and she gestured me forward while she worked hard to remain still inside the cramped bursar’s office.

  Discovering the ultimate resting place of the civil war era wreck, Lady Dancer, was the culmination of my late father’s life’s work. His dream of discovering the legendary treasure of an ancient Aztec god had led me here. While I had seen no sign of a ship laden with gold and jewels, he never believed the Lady Dancer would contain epic loot. Rather, Butch believed the fabled wreck held the next clue in a long line of clues he had followed for thirty years. What we discovered on the Lady Dancer would confirm the existence of the ancient Aztec treasure, once and for all, or turn me away from the hunt forever.

  I floated forward, wrapped my hand around the rusty iron handle, and twisted. The handle groaned but didn’t turn. After spending two-and-a-half centuries submerged, rust, time, and the sea had taken a mortal toll on the nineteenth century technology, but the lock still worked. I glanced over my shoulder and my gaze settled on Brooke’s creamy cleavage, pushing the boundaries of her skintight wetsuit.

  She busted me checking out her tits, rolled her eyes, and waved a sleek black crowbar in front of my face.

  It took me a moment to tear my gaze from the breathtaking view before focusing on the crowbar. I grinned, shrugged, and took the offered crowbar before turning back to the safe.

  Brooke hovered over my right shoulder, shining the light on the safe’s seams encased in barnacles and rust.

  I chipped away a few pesky barnacles, slid the crowbar inside a seam, and pried with just enough leverage to pop the door. After two more minutes of hacking away at centuries of layered rust, the door groaned open.

  Brooke swam closer until the beam from her flashlight broke through the murky shadows, revealing the safe’s long-lost treasure.

  A metal box sat on a narrow shelf along with several pieces of gem-encrusted jewelry that might actually pay for the cost of the trip. I scooped it all into the bag attached to my dive belt before Brooke and I left the wreck and ascended to the surface.

  My boat, the Topless Mermaid, bobbed on the gentle swells while the south Florida sun blazed high overhead. In every direction, the sea stretched to the horizon.

  Brooke emerged from the depths beside me and pushed her goggles up on the crown of her head. She turned to me, smiling excitedly, and her green eyes sparkled with nervous energy. “We found it.” She threw her arms around me and mashed her big tits against my chest.

  I wrapped my arms around her waist and drew her in tight, laughing while I struggled to contain my wandering hands. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. We found a metal box. It’s probably another dead end.”

  Brooke kept her arms wrapped around my neck, with her face mere inches from mine.

  My heart sped up, and I took turns soaking in her big green eyes and full pink lips. The heat from her body spread across my chest, and my cock thickened inside my wetsuit. She was unbelievably beautiful and strictly off limits.

  She shook her head. “Not this time, Trap. I have a good feeling about this wreck,” she said. “Butch spent his life searching for the Lady Dancer and that ship is the Lady Dancer.”

  We found the name clearly marked on what remained of the left bow. “Maybe you’re right.” I slid my hands lower, cupping her ass and squeezing, before Brooke glared and pushed me away.

  “Is that all you’ve ever got on your mind?” She huffed and swam toward the ladder, leaving me floating in the waves behind her.

  “We had a moment,” I said. “I got carried away. Can you blame me?” I followed Brooke up the ladder and carefully lowered our loot bag onto the ship’s flat deck at the stern. I slipped off my tank and quickly stripped down to my wetsuit while I watched Brooke strip off her gear and glance back at me over her shoulder.

  She stood on the deck with her back facing me. “Trap, help me with my wetsuit.”

  At twenty-five, Brooke Fox was ten years my junior, and I had a giant years-long crush on the stunning young beauty. Her thick, dripping wet reddish blonde locks snaked halfway down her back and even her sleek form-fitting wetsuit couldn’t hide a figure cut straight from the pages of Playboy magazine. Years ago, my dad hired Brooke based on her exquisite beauty and raw athleticism, but she knew more about diving wrecks and treasure hunting than anyone I’ve ever met. Well, anyone except me. And I learned everything I knew at the hand of one of the greatest treasure hunters to ever live. That man was my father, the great Butch Ashford himself.

  I stepped up behind Brooke, and she tilted her head forward before pulling her hair over the front of her shoulder. “Where’s your ring?” I asked, as I found the zipper at the base of her neck.

  “Why would I wear my engagement ring on a dive?” she said without looking back.

  “When are you going to dump that loser?” I tugged down her zipper, lowering it halfway, revealing her supple back muscles and the bow tie knot securing her white bikini top.

  She laughed without humor. “Logan’s the CFO of a well-funded tech startup. I’d hardly call him a loser.”

  “Logan… what kind of name is that?” I lowered the zipper the rest of the way until her wh
ite bikini bottom came into view.

  “Can we just focus on the job?” She glared at me over her shoulder. “Besides, you’re too old for me.”

  “I’m thirty-five,” I said. “And I guarantee I’m in better shape than that accountant you’re dating.”

  Brooke pulled her arms free and wriggled the wetsuit over her voluptuous hips. She turned around to face me, then sat down on a bench attached built into the stern. “Sorry, Trap. I don’t date coworkers.” Her creamy tits, perky and full, slid into my field of vision, including her hard nipples, straining the front of her thin white top. Under the bright sunshine, the outline of her areolas were clearly visible making me forget all about the loot we hauled up from the Lady Dancer.

  As I drank in her incredible body, my cock shifted inside my wetsuit, and I let out a deep sigh of sexual frustration. I needed to get laid. Six months was the longest dry spell of my life. “Then you’re fired.” I grinned and ran my hands back through my thick, wavy, dark hair.

  Brooke rolled her eyes. “You don’t pay me, and I’m only doing this last job to honor your dad’s memory.” She stood up and came around behind me before sliding her hands over my shoulders, then working the zipper down the back of my suit.

  “The job might last awhile,” I said, glancing back at her.

  She locked her mesmerizing green eyes on me and smiled. “I’m aware.”

  I returned her smile with my most devilish grin. “Admit it. You’re addicted to the hunt.” I shucked off my wetsuit, revealing my smooth, muscled chest and six-pack abs.

  Brooke’s gaze flickered over my muscles before she averted her eyes. “I admit I enjoy the hunt, but I won’t spend another decade of my life chasing ghosts. I want to settle down and start a family.”

  I pushed the wetsuit over my hips and down my legs. “You don’t strike me as the minivan and shopping mall kind of gal.” I flashed a toothy grin and held out my arms, turning in a slow circle. “Look at where we are, Brooke. You can walk away from all this?”

  Overhead, the shrill call of seagulls rose above the sound of the waves slapping gently on the hull. A warm breeze stirred, whipping strands of Brooke’s hair over her cheeks and lips. She squinted at me through the bright sunshine, adorably scrunching up her nose. I could have spent all afternoon kissing every freckle dotting her face.

  She smiled at me and shook her head. “I’m not like you. I need more out of life.”

  “Ouch,” I said. “Am I that shallow?”

  She put her hands on her hips, causing her tits to jiggle and shake. “You’re a narcissist,” she said. “This life suits you. Besides, you are not the type of man to settle down with one woman.”

  I crossed the deck and grabbed the loot bag. “I can settle down… for the right woman.”

  She grinned mischievously and folded her arms over her chest. “And I’m the right woman?”

  I shrugged. “We won’t know until we’ve gone out a few times. I’ve never even properly kissed you.” I reached inside the bag and pulled out the metal box. “Now let’s see what we’ve got.” I placed the box on a waist-high work bench bolted down in the middle of the stern deck.

  Rust covered the box’s black surface, but the safe’s interior had kept the barnacles at bay. Twin skeleton keyholes appeared on the surface, one at each end.

  Brooke came up on the opposite side of the table, facing me. She squeezed the excess water from her hair and her creamy porcelain skin glistened with beads of water dancing across her mouthwatering cleavage. She gazed down at the box and frowned. “A double lock?”

  “It’s pretty common for these old strongboxes,” I said. “Once we clean it up, we might even get a couple of hundred bucks for the box alone.”

  “We?” she asked.

  “We’re partners,” I said, glancing up across the table and meeting her eye. “Or am I too much of a narcissist to partner with?”

  Brooke’s cheeks flushed red. “Sorry about that.” Her lips flickered up in a guilty smile, and she nodded tentatively. “Partners.” She extended her hand in my direction.

  Since my dad’s passing six months ago, the Lady Dancer was the first wreck Brooke and I dove together. Before, it had always been the three of us. With my dad around, our back-and-forth flirtatious bantering had seemed innocent, and with my dad as a buffer, nothing ever happened. It was all in good fun. Now, I genuinely wanted Brooke. The thought of permanently losing her company sickened me. Maybe it was because we shared my father’s love right until the day he died. He had treated her like a daughter, but I had anything but sisterly feelings for her. I cherished every moment I spent with her, and each was like preserving a small piece of my dad’s memory. The day she turned her back on treasure hunting was the day I placed those memories firmly in my rear-view mirror.

  I grinned and took her offered hand, feeling her icy fingers against my warm skin. “Good,” I said, and let out a long sigh. “Let’s see what we’ve got.”

  Chapter 2

  After a few minutes with a lock pick, I discovered rust had sealed the locks beyond salvage. Not that this was a big surprise. Two hundred and fifty under water tends to have that affect.

  The strongbox itself had dried with layers of thick rust covering every inch of the surface. Faint raised letters on the lid read, Property of US Army.

  I brushed my hand across the surface. “Dad would have given anything to see this,” I said, my words heavy with emotion.

  According to my father’s research, the Lady Dancer was a US Army supply cutter schedule to deliver supplies to Fort Sumter in the early spring of 1861. But a tropical storm had pushed the ship far to the south where it eventually sank after running into a shallow coral reef off the coast of Florida.

  He had spent years calculating the speed of the ship, the winds and, most importantly, the reefs that could have sunk the vessel. His findings had led to a dozen potential sites for the wreck, ten of which the three of us had scoured prior to his death. That we had found the wooden ship at all was a miracle, considering the vastness of the open sea and the centuries that it had gone undiscovered. My father believed the secret service had stashed the contents of the safe aboard the Lady Dancer as part of a top-secret mission to uncover an ancient Aztec treasure.

  Brooke reached out and squeezed my hand. “He would have been proud of you, Trap.”

  I smiled at her wistfully. “And you,” I said. “I’m also sure Butch would have chastised you for giving up your dreams for a pencil pusher named Logan.”

  Brooke clenched her teeth and glared at me, tightening her grip on my hand until I winced in pain.

  “Ouch,” I said, pulling my hand back and shaking it off. “Someone is a little defensive this morning.”

  “Someone else needs to mind his own fucking business,” she said with no real heat in her voice. “Let’s get on with it. I have important suburban homemaker things to do.”

  “In that case, we should probably hurry this along,” I said, with no small hint of sarcasm. “What’s more important? Getting your nails done or a six-hundred-year-old buried treasure?”

  “I’m not getting my nails done, and I didn’t tell you to hurry anything,” she said. “I’m as excited as you are, so can you please back the fuck off?” She batted her eyelashes at me and grinned sarcastically.

  I held out my hand. “Can you hand me the flathead screwdriver and the rubber mallet?”

  She folded her arms over her chest and glared.

  I rolled my eyes. “Can you please hand me the flathead screwdriver and the rubber mallet?”

  Brooke dug around in the toolbox and came away with everything I needed. A few minutes later I had popped the locks, and the lid sat loose atop the strongbox.

  My heart ticked a few beats faster, and my legs turned buttery with anticipation. I stole a few quick breaths and gazed up at Brooke.

  She locked her eyes on the lid, and her chest rose and fell in rapid succession. She was every bit as excited to discover the contents as I was
.

  I pulled off the lid, and we peered inside.

  Inside sat a leather bag cinched at the top, rotting with decades of submersion. Whoever originally packaged the satchel would have used wax as waterproofing, but father time had washed it all away.

  “What do we here,” I whispered and reached for the bag.

  “Careful,” Brooke said. “Leave the bag where it’s at.”

  I nodded and carefully opened the cinch, then peeled it open while Brooke shone a flashlight into the murky shadows. She crouched and peered inside. “I see a flash of gold and what looks like a piece of gray slate.”

  “I’m reaching in,” I said and carefully slid my hand inside before my fingers brushed against something smooth and metallic. Could it be? My heart raced, and I stopped to breathe. “It feels like a figurine.”

  Brooke jerked her head up, and her eyes widened with surprise. “Is it….” She sealed her lips and swallowed, as if afraid to say the word out loud.

  I shook my head, not daring to give voice to my hopes. With my hand trembling, I pulled the figurine from the bag and brought it out into the light.

  Brooke gasped, and she covered her mouth with her hands.

  “Holy shit,” I said, as a wash of adrenaline left me too weak to stand. I sank back onto the nearby bench, careful not to drop the object that represented decades of blood, sweat, and tears.

  The golden figurine was that of the Aztec goddess of fertility, Xochiquetzal. She had a curvy hourglass figure with an enormous arched crown resting atop her head. Twin rubies sparkled, dangling from each side of her crown. She wore an ancient bikini top and a long, flowing dress that hugged her hips. The goddess’s long hair fell down her back and over her shoulders, etched in solid gold. The craftsmanship that went into the six-inch statue resulted in vivid detail, but a sheen of grime from the centuries spent under the waves covered most of the surface, giving it an overall lackluster appearance.

  It was a priceless treasure. Too priceless to turn in. Such an antiquity would end up in the hands of a government with Brooke and I, seeing only a fraction of its true value. I had seen it happen more than once with my father.