The Recovery Agent (gabriela Rose, #1)

The Recovery Agent follows Gabriela Rose, an internationally respected insurance fraud investigator and recovery agent, on an adventure that begins with a failed mission in Ecuador. On her 30th birthday, Gabriela treks through the rain forest to retrieve a valuable amulet from an archeologist, only to find him dead. On the return trek, a panther snatches the amulet, leaving her empty-handed.

That evening, Gabriela's mother calls with troubling news. Scoon, the small South Carolina coastal town where Gabriela grew up, never recovered from a devastating hurricane six months earlier. The fishing wharf is destroyed, and a developer is pressuring residents to sell at rock-bottom prices. Gabriela's grandmother, Fanny, proposes an unlikely solution: A ghost named Annie, whom Fanny claims is the spirit of Blackbeard's lover and Gabriela's ancestor, has revealed that a chest hidden beneath the floorboards of Great Aunt Margareet's house on the Caribbean island of St. Vincent holds a diary that could lead to treasure worth enough to save the town. The complication is that Gabriela gave the house to her ex-husband, Rafer Jones, in their contentious divorce seven years earlier.

With no pending cases, Gabriela flies to St. Vincent. Rafer catches her searching his house, but after she explains, they pry open a trapdoor in the floor and discover a chest containing maps, weapons, and a journal attributed to Sir Francis Drake, the 16th-century English explorer. The journal describes Drake's pursuit of the Seal of Solomon, a signet ring said to have been given to King Solomon by God, granting power over demons and spirits. According to the diary, the Spanish conquistador Pizarro used the Seal to defeat the Incan emperor and hid it in the Peruvian jungle. Drake died before finding it, and scholars speculate it rests in the lost Incan city of Paititi. Rafer insists on being Gabriela's partner since the journal came with his house, and they form an uneasy alliance, both wanting to save Scoon, where Rafer's family also lives.

In Peru, they hire a guide named Pepe, whose family runs what Gabriela suspects is a coca operation rather than the claimed coffee plantation. Pepe brings Caballo, a 70-year-old who knows the region. Following Drake's clues, the group rafts a dangerous river, reaches a dragon-shaped rock formation surrounded by venomous snakes, and follows a trail of kukui nut trees, whose nuts were historically burned as candlelight, through a hidden slot canyon into a vast valley of stone ruins that could be Paititi.

Inside an interconnected cave system, the group is captured one by one. Gabriela awakens before El Dragón, a tall man with tattoos depicting Supay, the Incan God of Death, who commands a militia of Supay worshippers and wants the Seal for himself. Rafer improvises, suggesting Gabriela claim Annie the ghost as her spirit guide, and the superstitious leader plays along. Following carved markings on the canyon walls, Gabriela directs El Dragón's men to dig at a marked spot. The ground caves in, revealing a treasure-filled cavern. Lowered inside, Gabriela finds a silver box containing a signet ring matching descriptions of the Seal and conceals it on her finger. When El Dragón threatens to kill them, Gabriela kicks him into the hole; he vanishes in a flash of green light. She bluffs his soldiers by raising the ring and claiming Supay's power, and they flee. The group escapes through El Dragón's hidden compound, a coca operation concealed under the jungle canopy, stealing a boat and reaching safety at Pepe's uncle's plantation.

In New York, Columbia professor Simon Gitten analyzes the ring and reveals it is a convincing fake dating to the early 1800s, though its accuracy suggests the forger worked from the original. Gabriela connects this to the 1820 Treasure of Lima: Captain William Thompson of the ship Mary Dear was entrusted with transporting Lima's wealth during political instability but turned pirate, stealing the treasure. Gitten finds evidence that the real ring was swapped for the fake and loaded onto the Mary Dear.

Danger follows Gabriela home. Her neighbor is killed after apparently interrupting El Dragón's soldiers searching her condo for the ring. El Dragón then kidnaps Gabriela's assistant, Marcella Lott, demanding the ring in exchange. Gabriela hands over the fake at a building under renovation, but El Dragón sets the floor ablaze. Rafer helps Gabriela and Marcella escape down the fire escape.

The search shifts to Costa Rica, where Dan Thompson, who claims descent from Captain William Thompson, has spent 40 years searching a heart-shaped island called Juliet Island with his partner Mickey Forbes. Diving the island's underwater perimeter, Gabriela discovers a hidden lava tube entrance. She and Rafer swim through into a domed cave filled with treasure chests, weapons, and a life-sized golden statue of the Virgin Mary. Cradled in the statue's hands is the authentic Seal of Solomon.

El Dragón arrives by boat, captures Thompson and Mickey, and forces Gabriela to surrender the ring. Rafer throws Gabriela overboard and dives after her as soldiers fire into the water. They shelter overnight in the treasure cave. The next day, El Dragón departs and Thompson's boat explodes, but Thompson and Mickey survive. A fishing boat rescues all four.

Gabriela contacts Pepe, whose uncle was already planning to move against El Dragón's expanding operation. A coordinated raid on El Dragón's Peruvian compound seizes his armory, but El Dragón escapes by helicopter. Intelligence traces him to an estate in Santa Barbara County, California, where a neighboring vineyard conceals a drug lab cutting cocaine with fentanyl. Gabriela plans a nighttime raid, but El Dragón anticipates them. The house is filled with venomous snakes, and Rafer is shot twice, saved only by body armor. Gabriela is stun-gunned and placed on an altar in El Dragón's temple before a golden statue of Supay. Caballo fires a rocket at the compound's gas tanks, triggering explosions. Rafer storms the temple and rescues Gabriela. El Dragón escapes once more, but Pepe and Caballo steal the golden Supay statue, delivering it to a crematorium to be melted into gold bars.

Back in Scoon, Gabriela and Rafer each reveal they pocketed handfuls of precious gems during their adventures, enough to help their families but not the whole town. Then a courier delivers a letter from Pepe: The melted statue has been converted to untraceable Bitcoin, with each of their four shares amounting to $8,245,000. With over $16 million combined, Gabriela and Rafer have enough to rebuild Scoon.

That night, El Dragón appears in Gabriela's kitchen with a gun and the Seal around his neck. Believing her touch has corrupted the ring, he insists only her sacrificial death can restore its power. He forces her at gunpoint to Scoon's abandoned lighthouse—a disused promontory structure she has known since childhood—locking her in a spiked collar and shackles. Gabriela counts 100 steps up the spiral staircase to a balcony door she memorized as a child. She slips through, and when El Dragón follows, she charges him. The wind and his heavy cape send him crashing through the rusted railing to the rocks below. Gabriela nearly slides off the balcony herself, but unseen hands pull her back, though no one else is present.

Rafer and Fanny arrive, both roused by urgent voices they attribute to Annie. Rafer frees Gabriela, but a wave sweeps El Dragón's body and the Seal into the sea. Back at the kitchen table, Gabriela quietly thanks Annie, and Rafer and Fanny raise their glasses in agreement.