Alpha Adventures: First Three Novels Read online

  ALPHA ADVENTURES:

  First Three Novels

  “A” is for Amethyst

  “B” is for Bullion

  “C” is for Crystal

  by

  K.T. TOMB

  Acclaim for K.T. Tomb:

  “Epic and awesome!”

  —J.T. Cross, bestselling author of Beneath the Deep

  “Now this is what I call adventure. The Lost Garden will leave you breathless!”

  —Summer Lee, bestselling author of Angel Heart

  “The best adventure novel I’ve read in a long time. K.T. Tomb. I can’t wait to read the sequel. Count me a fan. A big fan.”

  —P.J. Day, bestselling author of The Sunset Prophecy

  “K.T. Tomb is a wonderful new voice in adventure fiction. I was enthralled by The Lost Garden...and you will be, too.”

  —Aiden James, bestselling author of Plague of Coins

  Other Books by K.T. Tomb

  STANDALONE ADVENTURES

  The Last Crusade

  The Kraken

  The Adventurers

  The Swashbucklers

  The Tempest

  Sasquatch

  Ghosts of the Titanic

  The Honeymooners

  Curse of the Coins

  Drums Along the Hudson

  THE CHYNA STONE ADVENTURES

  The Minoan Mask

  The Mummy Codex

  The Phoenician Falcon

  The Babylonian Basilisk

  The Aquitaine Armor

  THE EVAN KNIGHT ADVENTURES

  The Lost Garden

  Keepers of the Lost Garden

  Destroyers of the Lost Garden

  THE PHOENIX QUEST ADVENTURES

  The Hammer of Thor

  The Spear of Destiny

  The Lair of Beowulf

  The Fountain of Youth

  THE CASH CASSIDY ADVENTURES

  The Holy Grail

  The Lost Continent

  The Lost City of Gold

  THE ALPHA ADVENTURES

  “A” is for Amethyst

  “B” is for Bullion

  “C” is for Crystal

  SASQUATCH SERIES

  Sasquatch

  Sasquatch Found

  Alpha Adventures: First Three Novels

  Published by K.T. Tomb

  Copyright © 2015 by K.T. Tomb

  All rights reserved

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  "A" is for Amethyst

  "B" is for Bullion

  "C" is for Crystal

  Reading Sample

  About the Author

  “A” IS FOR AMETHYST

  An Alpha Adventure

  #1

  by

  K.T. TOMB

  “A” is for Amethyst

  Published by K.T. Tomb

  Copyright © 2014 by K.T. Tomb

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  The author wishes to dedicate this book to the late

  Sidney Sheldon.

  “A” is for Amethyst

  Chapter One

  Somewhere a million miles away a phone was bleating rudely.

  Travis didn’t move to answer it. Angelo didn’t move to answer it either, but then, he was only a Jack Russell. Travis had no excuse, being a grown man of thirty-nine years of age, except that he was very drunk, lying on the floor, and feeling incredibly sorry for himself for at least the fifth time this morning. Angelo looked at him with his usual curious canine face. At least he could be depended on to be exactly the same. Travis shrugged back at him, and rolled over on the floor onto his belly. The third bottle of wine was probably a mistake. But he had found that since getting shot by Russian criminals and spending far too long on Ultram and Valium during his recovery that; in large quantities, whiskey made him maudlin, beer caused him to urinate too frequently and was too weak to produce the desired effect...an alcohol-induced coma. The phone stopped ringing, but Travis was at least semi-conscious now, so he rolled over again and sat up, inadvertently kicking Angelo in the muzzle. The small dog yelped and ran under the desk in one corner of the office.

  “Crap, sorry buddy. You ok?” His voice was old leather and Angelo glowered at him. Travis wanted a cigarette, but he knew it would probably just make him feel sick. He tried to make friends with his dog, but Angelo decided he hadn’t forgiven him yet and slunk further under cover. As to why he was camping out most nights in the office, Travis knew the uncomfortable truth. Despite four months of recovery, of which only the first month and a half were for the physical trauma of the gunshot, Travis had not been able to shake the events in Russia from his mind. He was, after all, an anthropology professor, not a mercenary. Of course he had seen a counselor who had prescribed some anti-depressants (which remained untouched) and he knew about the process of post-traumatic stress. Travis didn’t care. He wanted to be alone, and too many people knew his home number. After taking a sabbatical from the university, he packed a small bag of essentials and moved into the Alpha Adventurers Inc. offices in downtown Atlanta. Naturally, he had felt no need to speak to his colleagues in the project about this decision. Thyri and Adam, by whose usual outstanding aesthetic taste the office was decorated, had returned to Europe within days of touching down in the States after the Russian escapade; Thyri to continue her clandestine industrialist role, Adam to Britain, to host a series of antiques- related shows. Fiona had, eventually, been dissuaded from skipping bail all together to fight pollution in Antarctica or whaling in wherever, and assented to serve a rather draconian sentence of six months at Her Majesty’s Pleasure in HMP Holloway. Apparently the British judicial system looked unkindly on those who decided to run halfway across Europe while awaiting trial. Travis couldn’t say he was particularly upset about that, Fiona could definitely use a cooling off period from reality...and people. Especially Travis himself.

  Then there was Savannah. Beautiful, well-educated, multilingual, whisky-soaked Savannah. She had tried to help him through the bleakest parts, and she at least helped him see that his days of slamming bourbon with freshmen were long over, drinking him under the table three times in as many days. She had held her patience with him admirably, he felt, until her lecturing duties began again at the start of term. Now they spoke fairly infrequently. It infuriated him that he, as a well-educated, reasonably smart, man could see that he was closing himself off from the few people he knew well. He had never been one for making many friends, although he was quite successful with the fairer sex- or at least he used to be. He hadn’t been on a date since Baikal. In fact, he hadn’t done much of anything since Baikal, apart from substantially increasing the profits of the vineyards of Châteauneuf-du-Pape. He hadn’t answered his emails (mainly from Adam, although some of his students had got in touch too), he certainly hadn’t answered his phone, and he was damned if he was going to be answering the landline in the Alpha Adventures office.

  The phone on the table rang again. Travis clawed his way into the high backed office chair, which was no easy task as the seat swiveled away under his inebriated half-timed lurch. He groaned a mixture of frustration at the chair and himself with a measure of pain as his burgeoning hangover gave his forehead a swift stab with a dull spear. The phone rang uncaringly. Travis looked at Angelo, still under the desk, but no longer cowering.

 
“Don’t suppose you want to get that, do you?”

  The dog didn’t look like he fancied the job at all. Travis guessed the call must be important, if the caller called twice in the five minutes it had taken him to get off the floor and into a chair. Resentfully he picked the receiver up and promptly managed to knock a delicate marble statue of Ganesha off the edge of the table. The statue landed neatly, the right way up and entirely unscathed.

  “Fuck! Oh, you lucky elephant bastard.”

  “Who are you calling an elephant bastard?”

  The voice on the line was slightly indignant, but amused. Savannah.

  “Oh, hey Sav,”

  Travis found he was actually glad to hear from her.

  “No one is, I just nearly killed a Hindu god, which I’m pretty sure is a bad idea as far as escaping the cycle of karma goes.”

  “That’s fascinating, Travis. Now, listen, put some coffee on, and try to sober up a bit. I’ll be with you in an hour. And open a window for God’s sake; if you’ve been in that office for as long as I think you have, it’ll stink of booze and dog.”

  Travis tried not to tell the obvious lie, but he did it anyway.

  “I’m not drunk, I’m fine. Just had a few glasses, reading up on the Marid myths of the Middle East, actually.”

  He had honestly meant to read up about the Marids, but had barely got to page five of his book before inebriation rendered the exercise futile. Savannah made a noise that indicated she didn’t believe a word of it.

  “Sav, what’s the big rush? Alpha Adventures is inactive, everyone’s off somewhere else.”

  Travis walked around the office, trying to clear up one-handed, holding the phone in the other. Bottles clinked, and Angelo gave the entire game away by barking at his feet.

  “Traitor!” Travis hissed.

  Savannah, to her credit, pretended not to hear.

  “I have been trying to get hold of you all morning.”

  Travis checked his watch. He must have blacked out for hours. Consequently, he must look like road kill, and smell about as fragrant.

  “I just had a call from Thyri,” Savannah continued, “she feels it would be a good idea if we took on a little job ourselves, keep our eye in, so to speak. Fall break begins this weekend at the University, so I have the time and you... well. You need to get motivated by something.”

  “Is that you speaking, or Thyri?”

  Travis was annoyed he had been discussed in private ‘and’ but he guessed it had happened at least more than once.

  “Thyri. I’ve kept her in the loop, and she does finance this project, she had a right to know if one of us is having trouble. Travis, you need to get out of Atlanta for a bit. I’d suggest a holiday, but you’d probably just be holed up in a hotel room getting hammered for a week. You need something to do. Look, get on to Prometheus’ Torch and have a poke about, see if there’s anything easy that we can do, just you and me, okay?”

  Savannah had the slightest hint of pleading in her voice. Travis guessed she must be more worried about him than he had thought.

  “Yeah, OK. See you later.”

  He dropped the wine bottles he was holding in the trash, and hung up the phone. Drawing the curtains, he saw the skyline of Atlanta draped in heavy clouds. He knew a storm was coming and that the October climate would be thick, heavy with rush hour pollution and humidity. Still, the grey skies reminded him, oddly, of London. He had the office looking presentable in only a few minutes. Thyri and Adam had covered most surfaces with antiques, pictures of explorers and objet d’art from around the world. The effect was, with the mahogany furniture, very much of the office a very wealthy time traveler would have. Most of the pieces didn’t belong together, separated by centuries in time and thousands of miles, but they had been purchased with enough care that there were similarities between adjacent pieces, a use of color, or similar material linking items stylistically, if not historically. Travis had to admit Adam knew his stuff when it came to artifacts from the past. He noticed a half empty wine bottle hiding behind a large figurine of Eris, Greek goddess of discord. Appropriate, Travis thought, that she would be trying to sew trouble by concealing the evidence until Savannah arrived. Satisfied that he had collected all the incriminating items, he picked up the trash bag and took it down the three flights of stairs to the bins outside. He passed a couple of workers from one of the other offices, who gave him odd looks. His clothing was creased, hair unkempt, he couldn’t remember the last time he had shaved, and there was presumably more red in his eyes than white. Travis made a point of smiling a madman’s grin at them. Once safely back in the office, Travis had meant to put some coffee on and turn on the PC, but his head was swimming. Instead, he sat back in the ornate swiveling chair, put his feet on the desk, and fell right back to sleep.

  He did not wake until Angelo barked to announce Savannah’s entrance to the Alpha Adventures office.

  Chapter Two

  Fortunately for Travis, the thunderous disapproval that he had anticipated from Savannah did not arrive as he had feared. She did, “however” greet Angelo much more warmly than him, but then Angelo didn’t smell like a distillery. The little dog submitted to a merciless fussing that he had not experienced from his owner in a considerable time. To assuage yet more guilt, Travis made coffee. He despised instant, but with only a small kitchenette stapled on to the side of the office room there was no room for a hot plate and he had not gotten around to purchasing a coffee maker, nor, for that matter, had he bought any milk or sugar in quite some time. The milk in the refrigerator was at least some of the way to being classified as an intelligent species in its own right, and Travis managed to glean half a teaspoon of sugar for each cup in a vain attempt to make the black mess palatable.

  He delivered the coffee to Savannah with what he hoped was an apologetic face. Savannah barely looked at him, now occupying his place in the office chair and engrossed in catching up on the Alpha Adventures emails that Travis had not bothered to read. Behind her half-moon glasses, Savannah’s eyes darted from side to side as she digested the information on the monitor.

  “You could have answered some of these, Travis. Mostly begging letters and spam, but there’s some interesting stuff here. Some of it might even be worth looking into, once the team is back together. Although, the press coverage of Baikal hasn’t done us any favors by publicizing us to every crank and conspiracy theorist on the planet.”

  Travis perched himself a little awkwardly on the desk, looking over Savannah’s shoulder. The bright screen was just about visible if he closed one eye completely and squinted a bit with the other.

  “This guy thinks that aliens, in collusion with the U.S. government, are poisoning cattle in Wyoming to introduce super-viruses into the food chain. Can we investigate?”

  The chuckle in Travis’ throat was stymied by the pain in his skull. Savannah touted at him, and produced some painkillers from her jacket pocket.

  “Oh, Sav, you’re a life saver.”

  “I know. Damn the emails, have you checked Prometheus’ Torch at all while you’ve been camping out here? And stop sitting on the desk, it’s a Miles & Edwards.”

  Savannah shooed him off with a wave of her hand. Travis took to standing behind her instead, fumbling for the aspirin and knocking a couple back with the bitter black coffee.

  “Everything in here is a bloody antique. It’s like working in a museum. And no, I haven’t checked the website; I thought we were off the job for a while.”

  Savannah didn’t reply, but logged into prometheustorch.org and accessed the ‘open investigations’ tab. On this open forum, anyone could post a project they wanted investigated, provided that it was within the remit of the Torch’s area of collective expertise. There were the usual pleas for help with missing people which were usually handled by the increasing number of private detectives utilizing the forum. Travis had not seen quite so many posts before. The Alpha Adventures recent case investigating the mysterious floating city at Baikal mu
st have brought some serious publicity, judging by the number of direct requests for their company in particular. ‘Alphas, I think we have found Bigfoot.’ read one, another claimed to have a lead on Atlantis itself.

  “Wow,” said Travis, “You crack one criminal crime gang in Russia and all of a sudden you’re a member of the Scooby Doo Gang. Do you want to be Velma, or Daphne?”

  Savannah snorted, and did a passable impression of the cartoon dog.

  “Good one, Shaggy!” She dropped the accent- “Hey, look at this. This is local… sort of. Atlanta/Tochigi.”

  Savannah opened the thread, which had a smattering of replies. Travis knew Tochigi was in Japan, and his mind was already made up to reject the inevitable excitement Savannah would exhibit at the prospect of another overseas stint, especially to a country with as much detailed history as Japan.

  “Sav, can we just stick to domestic? I’d really rather not have to deal with international foreign relations again. If you remember, I kind of got a little bit shot the last time, and regardless of how much that hurt, which was a lot, it caused a lot of problems with Homeland Security, not to mention the unending questions from the press and the Russians. And my mom. She was the worst of them all. You’ve not met her, but a sixty-five year old woman from Wisconsin on the warpath about her son getting shot is something even I am afraid of.”

  He couldn’t help the sarcasm in his voice. It made it easier to talk about the shooting if he acted like it was a big joke. Savannah wasn’t convinced in the least.

  “Ok, Trav,” she accentuated the contraction to illustrate her annoyance at Travis’ insistence on doing the same to hers. “Firstly, Japan has incredibly strict gun laws. No one has guns. It’s a highly formal society, and I doubt we’ll be running into the Russian mob, ok? Secondly, those are Thyri’s orders. We’re taking a job. I’m not going to sit here while you reject everything on the basis of ‘it-might-cause-some-paperwork’. And thirdly, if I have to field another call from Adam at five in the morning because he can’t get hold of you on the phone, I’m going to send YOU to England, so then you will be his problem.” Her tone softened, as she switched her approach. “It’s been four months since Baikal, Travis. It’s time you got back on the horse. I know it was tough, b-“