Acheron

I realign them I'd appreciate it.'

Ash hid his smile.

Dr. Allen looked perturbed, but graciously nodded. 'Take your time.'

And she did.

People around him were getting agitated by her delay as she tried to put the speech together again.

Dr. Allen leaned forward. 'Aren't they numbered?'

Her face turned bright red. 'No. I forgot to do that.'

Several people in the audience laughed while a couple more cursed.

'Sorry,' she said, looking up hastily as she patted the pages together. 'Really. I'm very sorry. Let me just go ahead and get started.'

With one last wistful look at her abandoned speech, she clicked a photo onto the overhead projector that showed an image of the Parthenon in Greece. 'Many of you know that it was my father's and uncle's lifelong obsession to find Atlantis-they both gave up their lives to that quest, as did my mother. And like them, I've made it my mission in life to solve this mystery. Since I was in diapers, my family and I've been excavating in Greece, trying to find Atlantis's true location. In 1995, my cousin Dr. Megeara Kafieri found what I believe to be the correct site and though she abandoned her quest, I never did. This past summer I was finally able to find definitive proof that Atlantis is real and that Megeara's research finally uncovered it.'

Ash rolled his eyes at the claim so many had made. If he had a nickel, he'd be even richer than he already was.

Soteria pressed the button and switched the photo to one that made him sit up straight in his chair as he recognized it. It was the broken bust of his mother, Apollymi. And there was only one place the good doctor could have found it.

Atlantis.

She pushed her glasses up on her nose with her knuckle. 'This is one of many artifacts my team and I have brought up from the bottom of the Aegean.' She used a red laser pointer to show the Atlantean writing on the bottom that spelled his mother's name. 'I've been looking for someone who can translate what appears to be a form of early Greek writing. Yet no one has been able to decipher the words or even all the letters. It's as if this alphabet has characters that are missing from the traditional Greek.'

Artemis hit him on the arm. 'Looks like you're broken, Acheron.'

'Busted,' he corrected under his breath.

'Whatever,' Artemis huffed.

Soteria looked out at the audience and then centered her attention on Dr. Allen. 'Because no one can read this or even identify all the ancient letters, I'm convinced it's Atlantean. After all, if Atlantis was in the Aegean Sea, as my family and I believe, it's possible their language had a Greek basis or maybe it was their language that shaped what we know as Greek. The island's location would have firmly put it in the center of where Greek sailors traded, making it a power to be reckoned with and allowing it to shape the culture, traditions and language of ancient Greece.'

She clicked to the next photo which showed a fragment of wall from the royal Atlantean palace. 'This is from a building I uncovered…'

'Aren't you going to say something?' Artemis whispered.

Ash couldn't. He was too stunned as he stared at images he hadn't seen in over eleven thousand years. How could this one young woman have found it?

How could he have not known?

Then again, there was an easy answer. Damn his mother. She would have known they were pilfering the island's site, but rather than let him in on it, she'd be sitting back hoping one of the archaeologists released her from her captivity.

'My partner thinks it's from a temple,' Soteria continued, 'but given its location I'm convinced it was a government building. You can see here where there's more of the writing we saw on the bust, but again I can't decipher it.' She flipped to another photo of underwater columns. 'Now here is a sister site we found that we believe to be a Greek island which traded frequently with Atlantis. I found a piece of stone with the name Didymos etched into it.'

Ash couldn't breathe. She'd found it. Dear gods, the woman had found Didymos…

She went to another picture that literally made him break into a cold sweat. 'This is a journal we uncovered in the Didymos ruins of what appeared to be a royal palace. A bound journal,' she repeated excitedly. 'I know what all of you are thinking-they didn't bind books at this period in time. They shouldn't even have had paper. But again, we have the same writing and the dating on it shows it to predate anything we've ever found in Greece. What we have here is the Holy Grail of Atlantis. I know it with every part of me. These two sites are integral to each other and the main site is in fact Atlantis.'

'Acheron?' Artemis snapped again.

He couldn't speak as he stared at one of Ryssa's carefully made journals-at her handwriting that was as clear as if it'd been written yesterday. That page documented nothing in particular, but what scared him most was what else it might contain and, unlike the other writings, it was Greek. There weren't many people in the world who could translate it. But there were enough that it could ruin his life if they did and it held something incriminating.

'Oh this is boring,' Artemis huffed. 'I'm out of here.' She got up and left.

The next picture was a bust with a crushed-in head. It had been one of many in Didymos that had lined the streets and it was an image of his twin brother Styxx. Ash almost came out of his seat.

It was time to stop this before she exposed him.

He forced himself to appear nonchalant even though inside he was terrified and angry. 'How do you know the carbon dating on the journal isn't contaminated?'

Tory looked up at the calm masculine voice that was so deep it commanded attention. It took her a second to realize who it belonged to.

Mr. Goth Asshole.

Pushing her glasses back on the bridge of her nose in a nervous habit, she cleared her throat. 'We were meticulous with it.'

He gave her a cocky grin that seriously annoyed her. 'How meticulous? I mean let's face it, you're an archaeologist with an agenda who's out to prove her father and uncle weren't treasure-hunting crackpots. We all know how data can be corrupted. What was the time span of the journal?'

She cringed at the question. Lie, Tory, lie. But it wasn't in her. 'Well some of the initial tests showed a much younger date.'

'How much younger?'

'First century B.C.'

One finely arched brow peeked up over the rim of his black sunglasses, mocking her. 'First century B.C.?'

'Still too early for a book and yet we have a book,' she said firmly, flipping back to the picture of the journal. 'Hard empirical evidence that no one can refute.'

He actually tsked at her. 'No, Dr. Kafieri, what we have is an archaeologist with a preconceived agenda looking to wow us into financing another vacation for her in the Mediterranean. Isn't that right?'

Several people in the audience laughed.

Tory felt her anger rising at his accusations. 'I'm a serious scholar! Even if you discount the journal, look at the other pieces of evidence.'

He scoffed. 'A woman's bust? A building? Some pottery fragments? Greece is littered with that.'

'But the writing-'

'Just because you can't read it doesn't mean it can't be read by someone else. It could be nothing more than an undocumented provincial dialect.'

'He's right,' a man in the front row said.

A man behind the Goth dick laughed. 'Her father was a lunatic.'

'Nothing compared to her uncle. Must run in the family.'

Tory gripped her pointer in her hand, wanting to hurl it at the jerk who'd started this session of ridicule.