All Kindza Trouble

By Barbara Lawrence

After live-or-die escapes from pre-historic dangers on LOST MOUNTAIN, Kitty Collins and her new husband Ric Bravo, leave for a quiet honeymoon cruise. How their simple plan leads to voodoo and a treasure of gold in the jungle of Zanzibar, should not be unexpected from Kitty and Ric who can’t pass up a good mystery and ALL KINDZA TROUBLE. This exciting book is a sequel to Lost Mountain.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Barbara Lawrence
• Release date: Feb 18, 2011
• ISBN: 9781458121356

Barbara Lawrence

About the AuthorBARBARA LAWRENCEAfter spending her teenage years and her twenties inmovies and television, Barbara Lawrence retired to marryand have four children. Those children are now grown andshe just recently became a grandmother. During her “free”time she studied writing at UCLA and became aninternational public relations account director withaccounts in the U.S., Italy, Mexico and Caracas. (She ispictured in Mexico during her five years there.)Returning to the States, she found the writing bug hadcome with her and she decided to try her hand at writingnovels - some reflecting her own travels abroad and allreflecting the excitement she found placing charactersin danger and watching them try to get out of it. “Enjoy."

Book preview

All Kindza Trouble

(A sequel to Lost Mountain)

By actress-author: Barbara Lawrence

Published by Barbara Lawrence at Smashwords

Copyright 2010 Barbara Lawrence

All Kindza Thanks

Bill Peniche, Editing

Michael Murphy, SCUBA

Elise St. Clair, Formatting and Book Cover.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy.

Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

CONTENS

Chapter 1: The Plan

Chapter 2:The Switch

Chapter 3: The Wreck

Chapter 4: The Cave

Chapter 5: The Old Fort

Chapter 6: The Witchdoctor

Chapter 7: The Surprise

Chapter 8: The Rag Doll

Chapter 9: The Excuse

Chapter 10: The Skulls

Chapter 11: The Lie

Chapter 12: The Ceremony

Chapter 13: The Hole

Chapter 14: The Secret

Chapter 15: The cell

Chapter 16: The Truth

Chapter 17: The Pirates

Chapter 18: The Death Tree

Chapter 19: The One That Got Away

PROLOGUE

The room was bare. An old vase sat in the middle of the room’s warped floorboards holding flea-chewed bird plumes. Placed around the vase were a rumpled pair of work pants and a string of pearls woven through hanks of human hair. The freaky remains were the leftovers of a witchdoctor’s black magic session to remove devils from a person’s body and soul.

The room’s cracked windows overlooked the alleys of Stone Town in Zanzibar, and the glare from broken street lamps provided the room’s only light falling in shadows on the figure of a young woman slumped in a corner. She looked dead.

No name brings to mind more intrigue than the island-nation of Zanzibar. Sultans, slavers, pirates, explorers, naval bombardments, buried treasure and voodoo were all part of its legendary history.

With no warning, the dead woman in the corner of the room sat straight up and laughed out loud.

All Kindza Trouble

Chapter 1

The Plan

TO NEWLY WEDS KITTY COLLINS and Ric Bravo, a honeymoon cruise had seemed like a wonderful idea. How could anything so right, go so wrong?

London’s Heathrow Airport:

In one of four monstrous terminals catering to the needs of sixty seven million travelers every year, the recently-wed, dark-haired, young and handsome geologist, Ric Bravo, was on a cell phone while pacing in front of a kiosk selling the latest cut-rate cameras and gee-whiz gadgets. Surrounded by lounges, newsstands, tax-free liquor stores, eating and shopping facilities, Ric was waiting for his bride-of-a-week: the long-legged, freckled-face blonde, Kitty Collins, as she checked out photographic products displayed in the open-fronted little shop.

Ric was animated as he spoke on his cell and turned his back to a line forming in front of a coffee shop so he could hear better and talk louder without drawing attention to himself. Travelers at the busiest international airport in the world were coming and going, rushing and waiting, frustrated and happy.

Inside the kiosk, Kitty asked the salesman to show her a particular something while catching Ric’s eye and pointing to her watch. They exchanged nods and smiles and she proceeded to spend her time between flights doing what she liked best - checking out stuff: the latest photographic breakthroughs, light kits, and funky new attachments were, to her, like candy to a kid.

Wearing a wooly sweater, jeans and Ugg boots, Kittyhung a carry-on bag over her shoulder to try out the latest point-and-shoot camcorder on the market. The impressed salesman had been talked into posing for the unconventional framing that Kitty Collins told him would one day identify her photographs.

Ric checked his watch against a series of large clocks on a terminal wall that told the times of major cities and destinations around the world. It was 5:30 AM in London. Deeply interested in what was being said on the other end of his conversation, he pulled at the neck of the gray turtleneck sweater he wore. Uncomfortable in its thick water-shedding fibers, Ric imagined it had been knitted by North Sea fishermen. How appropriate.

Finishing his call, he looked back at Kitty but couldn’t get her attention. Checking his watch again, he hurried away as if to handle an urgent matter.

~~~

Waiting for her husband in front of the camera display, Kitty Collins Bravo enjoyed looking back on the brief time it had been since they’d met. The brief time it had been since they fell in love and got married. As she fiddled with the zoom on her just-purchased toy, her satchel sat on the floor next to her feet filled with the usual carry-ons and a top-of-the-line camera she was hoping could capture images of a just-discovered sea monster hiding in the fjords of Norway. As luck would have it, it was on the very route of their honeymoon cruise.

Showing no concern about Ric’s momentary absence, Kitty pondered his sense of attention to the nth-degree, and supposed he was getting their boarding passes. She thanked God for her new husband’s ability to handle the ordinary tasks that drove her up the wall.

The former Kitty Collins from swampy Loxahoosa, Florida, couldn’t believe she was in London’s Heathrow Airport, and with her new camcorder she videotaped several angles of herself. Turning this-way-and-that to catch the airport’s organized chaos, she also recorded the scrambled din of languages, non-stop announcements and her own commentary:

Here I am at last, she said. The first days of my honeymoon. The first days of the rest of my life with the coolest guy in the world. Kitty and Ric were on the last leg of a honeymoon-flight from New York to the fjords of Norway. A tranquil cruise on natural waterways through the most beautiful scenery in the world was just what the doctor ordered... or so said Ric.

Tranquility had never interested Kitty. She couldn’t sit still that long. The only activities on a cruise that appealed to her were the uninterrupted mornings, afternoons and nights with her new husband. Yes, it was comforting to be married to a guy who was as much together as Ric Bravo.

Their planned honeymoon on the north side of the globe was a total departure for them both - in more ways than one. And as she waited outside the kiosk for Ric, Kitty relived their whirlwind courtship and marriage: Right out of a movie, one might say.

~~~

Kitty Collins was from Florida. At an early age, she became orphaned, and lived with her grandmother in the small town of Loxahoosa, Florida on the edge of the one of the largest swamp-marshes in the world. Obsessed with photography and the dream of being a top notch action photographer, Kitty lied her way into a press pass for an international hang gliding event on the Caribbean coast of a South American country called, Tanamar. And that’s where she met Ric Bravo, a young hang-gliding archaeologist who accepted her story of an assignment from Newsweek which could, according to her, get news coverage for his lost father and a geological site on a lost mountain in the Amazon jungle.

They were successful at doing that very thing and in spite of a Newsweek front-page story of their parachuting off the mountain to safety after the murderous threats of a madman, Kitty kept Ric and herself awake at night with her nightmares of the dangers they had faced on Lost Mountain. That’s when Ric suggested a honeymoon cruise.

*****

Chapter 2

The Switch

Kitty looked at her watch. She was still waiting for Ric in Heathrow Airport but it had only been ten minutes since he’d left her at the kiosk. Her thoughts turned to a strange creature called The Sea Goat: NEWSWEEK magazine was offering a magazine cover and big money for the picture of a Norse creature called the Sea Goat that had been seen in the fjords of Norway. As illusive as the Loch Ness Monster, a shot of the Sea Goat would be a major coup for any photographer who could capture the legendary beast on film. So it was Ric’s idea to go to the fjords - possibly the world’s most un-happening place - where they might-could relax and she’d have an extra incentive to pretend she was pleased with his choice for a North Sea honeymoon.

~~~

Kitty saw Ric approaching through the airport crowd. Hello husband, she said, walking up close to video them together. I do believe you were going to fly away without me.

Leaning down for a kiss, Ric said, Not a chance, Mrs. Bravo. Puzzled by the camcorder, he asked, Is that new?

Cute isn’t it?

A pink camera? I’ve never seen you in pink, he said, standing back to give her outdoorsy-look the once-over. I don’t believe it’s the color I would’ve chosen for you."

It’s a promotion, she said. The camera’s just short of a ‘throwaway.’ I promise not to take it on our cruise. Although, it’s supposed to do everything but tie your shoes - even has a cellphone with a personal ring tone. I asked for anything by the Chili Peppers.

Cool.

The cell feature won’t be processed for a couple of days, but I don’t need it anyway. I’ve got my cell in my carry-on.

Ric checked his watch. Hey, let’s get to the gate.

Turning to pick up her bag, Kitty found that there was no bag to pick up. Oh no! It’s gone! She frantically looked around her feet in case it had been accidentally kicked aside by a traveler.

What’s gone?

My 12.1 megapixel, FX-format, CMOS sensor and continuous-shooting camera with the super density 920,000-dot VGA color monitor,... she took a breath... my cell phone and my lipstick! It might-could take me three months to earn enough to buy that camera again!"

Quickly looking at nearby passengers for any sight of her satchel, Ric said, I think you can kiss your camera goodbye.

I just don’t believe it! Tell me we’ve got insurance.

We’ve got insurance, he said. Where’s your credit card?

Pulling it from a jeans pocket, Kitty handed it to Ric to put with the other documents he was checking. Our passports, credit cards, tickets and boarding passes, he rattled off, satisfied they were all there. Don’t worry about your camera, you can buy another one in Oslo.

Pushing past a throng of travelers to get on a moving walkway, Kitty and Ric were carried through long tunnels to the boarding gates of British Airways.

Thank the Lord, I’m an impulsive buyer, she said, as she hung over the walkway’s railing to film the tunnel ahead with her new camcorder. Who were you talking to earlier?

I was returning a call from a Brit named Simon Leach.

Who’s he?

He said he’s an experienced diver and has independent funding to search for a lost treasure in an underwater sea cave.

Is the cave here in England?

No. It’s in Zanzibar.

Zanzibar? She lowered the camcorder. That’s not a real place, is it?

Well, what did you think it is?

Someplace in a zombie movie.

Ric laughed. It sounds mysterious and rightly so, but it’s for real; it’s off the East Coast of Africa.

Zanzibar, Kitty repeated the name, sliding the z’s along her teeth, curious about the exotic sound of the place.

The guy sounded pretty cool, Ric said.

They stepped off the people mover and joined a line of shuffling passengers moving toward the gates. He read about me in JARS.

JARS? JARS? Kitty tried to guess what it was. Is that a magazine about archaeology?

It stands for the Journal of Archaeological Research and Sciences. They had a story about a sea cave exploration I was part of under an island off Yucatan. I was on that dive because of my interest in Mayan artifacts.

When was that?

About a year ago. The article ran last month.

How did Simon Leach track you down?

He picked up a phone and called me.

Uh-huh, Kitty said, recognizing Ric’s sly putdown. I get it.

"JARS gave him my cell number. Apparently, the archaeologist who led