Treasured Heart

Chapter 11

A/N: As always, thank you all so much for reading and reviewing! So, camp nano is this month, and I'm already 3k words behind where I want to be. Meh. It happens, and I'll catch up. I am glad to say that I've just started chapter 21. I'm not sure how many chapters there are going to be. 25 maybe. We'll see.

Anyway, a huge thanks to my beta, Heather, for her input and her grammatical fixings, of which I need often.

.............................

"Holy fucking shit!" I shouted over my communication unit two days later. We'd spent as much time as we could everyday, excavating, and we'd found a ton of stuff but not the one thing we needed to identify the wreck.

We'd decided to concentrate on the bow of the ship for now, so all of us, minus Rose and Emmett, were in the water constantly searching and excavating. To help in the search for the figurehead, Emmett and Rose put out the underwater drones

"Guys! I think I found it!" I shouted again, staring down at the wooden figure buried in the sand. I could only see part of it, the water around me a bit murky, but I was positive it was a figurehead.

A few minutes later, I was surrounded by the rest of the team, and after taking pictures and making sure that Alice was recording it, we began to dig in the sand with our hands and small shovels.

It took almost twenty minutes to uncover, but we were well rewarded when we did.

"Holy fuck!" Jasper whispered in awe as we all stared at the figurehead. It was of a woman, her long hair half down and wearing a dress. It looked just like the drawing I'd seen, but I wasn't sure I could trust my eyes.

"Jasper? Is it her?" I asked, a quiver in my voice.

"Yeah," he said so quietly I almost didn't hear him.

"Whoohoo!" came Emmett's reply through our coms, and I felt a huge grin break across my face. We'd fucking found it!

Quickly, we formulated a plan to bring it aboard the ship. Thankfully, the ship we were using had originally been a crabbing ship, so it had a seven-foot tank built-in that could be filled with water. When bringing up wood that had spent so long under water, it would start to deteriorate once it began to dry out, so were going to have to put it in the tank almost immediately after bringing it up.

Three of us decided to stay in the water helping to secure the figurehead with some chains, so that Edward and his crew could haul it up out of the water.

It was going to be a delicate process since the figurehead weighed at least a hundred and fifty pounds and was extremely precious.

It took several hours and a few failed tries before we got the six and a half foot figurehead onto the ship ,and as soon as we did, Jasper, Jessica, Alice, and I climbed back onboard to get a real good look at it.

"Wow," I muttered because she was in way better shape than I thought she would be.

Jasper, still in his dive suit, raced off and came back moments later with his tablet. His hand shook as he turned it on and began to run his finger across the screen.

"Here she is," he said, holding up the tablet so we could see a sketch that had been done of the Sirène along with its figurehead.

"Oh, God. It really is her," I said, sinking to the deck beside the figurehead. I didn't know how to feel. I was excited to finally have found the ship, but I was terrified of what it could mean. If Marcus Caius, who was still out there, got wind that we'd found the ship, we could all be in danger. Hell, out here, we were sitting ducks if pirates or other assholes with weapons came our way.