Chapter 21
CHAPTER
TWENTY-ONE
DEAN
The once-empty ice chest teems with the red shells of boiled crab, steam curling into the spice-soaked air. Smiling, I shut the lid, satisfied with a job well done.
“Your partner’s here.” Thorne nods at the end of the jetty, a rental cruiser rounding it, coming in hot. A massive wake ripples across the boulders, sending salt spray well over the rocks, and I shake my head in disgust.
Cutting it that close and fast to the jetty is asking for trouble.
“He’s gonna bottom out on the sandbar,” Thorne observes in a non-committal voice.
“Nah, he’ll be fine.” Thompson squints at the boat. “Who’s that with him?”
“Charlie.” June gnaws her lower lip, fiddling with her hands.
“I talked to Pierce on the sat phone earlier,” I say, casting her a concerned look.
“You’re sure she’s okay?” She inhales deeply, worry creasing her brow. “Why would he bring her out here? I don’t want her to get involved… well, any more than she already is.”
“Pierce thinks the Russian smugglers might latch onto her, use her as leverage.”
I’d like to see them try.
“Keeping her with him was the best solution he could think of in the short term,” I finish.
“Or so he says,” Thompson interjects .
Toting a civilian along on an active mission is a fool’s errand, and there is no way Charlie would have let on she was anything but that.
“You think they would do that?” Guilt colors June’s words.
It’s an emotion I know all too well.
“Do I think they would use a friend as leverage to get to you? Yeah, I do, princess. How well do you know Charlie?” There’s a hint of judgment in the question, but I make my tone as neutral as can be. This woman has a blind spot where friends and family are concerned.
June’s face pales under her mild sunburn. “I’ve been wondering the same thing.” Her forehead wrinkles, her frown deepens, and the wild urge to wipe it away grips me.
The boat pulls up short, and Charlie’s unmistakable white-blonde hair bounces around her as she throws the anchor out on the sandbar.
“Think they need help?” Thorne doesn’t seem able to tear his eyes away from the tall woman.
Pierce appears, waves a few times, and drops the ladder off the side. Helping Charlie splash down the ladder, their laughter carries on the sea breeze.
This doesn’t feel right.
Sure, Charlie’s safe, and Pierce is the DEA-sanctioned head of this op, but… I can’t put my finger on what feels wrong, exactly.
I tear my eyes away from the two of them.
“Nah. No way does Charlie want help.” Thompson picks up a paper plate and piles it with crab, then grabs an entire package of salad.
“June, wanna share this bag of salad with me?”
“Sure.” She grabs her own plate of crabs and a plastic fork and plops on a towel in the sand next to Thompson. Frowning, she looks at the steaming crabs. “Are there crab crackers? You know, to get the meat out?”
“Nope.” Thompson fishes a water bottle out and hands it to her. “We forgot those. But your body comes with these little things called hands? I don’t know if you’ve heard of them.”
An ember of frustration ignites in my chest as June stares, crestfallen, at her plate.
She’s not used to the usual teasing of my crew, and I give him a reproachful glare.
In half a second, I’m at her side, thigh brushing against hers, her plate in my lap, cracking open her crab for her, throwing the discards into the crackling fire. White meat piles high on her plate.
Without a word, I hand her plate back.
Her eyes are round, and wishful thinking tells me that’s not just sunburn that’s pinking her cheeks.
“Thanks,” she says around a mouthful.
I drag my gaze away from her long enough to see Thorne and Thompson grin at each other over their own plates before they notice me looking.
Am I that predictable?
Maybe I am.
Standing, I force myself to pile my own share of blue crab on a plate, adding a second plate full of hot boiled potatoes to share with June.
The sand crunches underfoot as I sit down awkwardly, balancing two sagging plates. “Here. Saw you didn’t get any potatoes or corn.” Her meat is nearly gone, so I crack open another crab, spearing the meat with my clean fork and putting it on her plate.
“Well, isn’t this cozy?” Pierce’s voice rings out over the waves.
Pierce and Charlie walk down the beach, hand in hand. Charlie glances at him from time to time with an expression so clearly vapid that I can’t help frowning.
“Pierce, glad you could join us.” I tip my chin up. “What’s she doing here?”
“Oh, I wouldn’t miss a crab boil, right, June?” Charlie smiles. “When Pierce told me you were having one, I begged to come along.”
June shifts uneasily next to me. Her knee rubs against my thigh as she repositions, sitting cross-legged on the sand.
She doesn’t like this either.
You learn a lot about a person after surviving with them.
June has good instincts.
“Well, help yourselves, folks. There’s plenty, thanks to these two.” Thompson points at the cooler full of steaming crab. “I’m Thompson, and that’s Thorne. You must be Pierce, but I reckon I don’t know your name.” He grins at Charlie, and she grins right back, not giving anything away.
Pierce’s body tightens as though Thompson has said something completely inappropriate.
“Didn’t think you were cleared to get more manpower on this, Dean,” he says, radiating a sort of killer calm that makes me sit up straighter.
“I thought we could use all the help we could get after how it shook out last night,” I tell him honestly.
If I trusted him, I might tell him that they’ve been privy to the unclassified basics from the start.
But I don’t.
I can practically feel the tension radiating from June, as if she also sees the barely contained violence that sweeps through Pierce. It’s there and gone so quick I can almost convince myself I imagined it.
I didn’t imagine it.
Pierce telegraphs instability, from the way he holds himself to the odd glint in his eyes. Thompson and Thorne both go fully relaxed, smiling at him in a way that doesn’t fool me at all.
They see it too.
Thorne steps closer to Pierce. “Are you here to eat?” he asks, his tone casual. His fists, however, are clenched at his sides.
He’s ready to fight if it comes to it.
“Of course we are,” Charlie says, her gaze tracking up to Thorne’s face. “Why else would we have come all the way out here? Right, Pierce?”
He laughs, and some of the tension dissipates from his body. “Right.”
June sags with an audible sigh of relief. I scooch my hand closer behind her, in case she needs a place to lean. In case she needs my support.
Or maybe I just want to touch her.
Thompson lets out an easy chuckle, and some of the crackling tension diffuses.
“Then grab a plate and load it up. Princess here was just about to tell us the story of her shipwreck before we go hunting for it tomorrow.”
“We’re coming along to help too, June,” Charlie’s eyes gleam in the firelight. “Pierce thought we could make a date out of it.” She bats her eyelashes up at him, and Thorne and I exchange a look.
June’s lower back meets the waiting support of my forearm, and she glances up at me. She’s worried for her friend, I can tell in the way she’s looking at me with her heart in her eyes.
That makes me feel like shit, because of all of us, Charlie is the least likely to need anyone’s help.
“Are you sure that’s a good idea, Pierce?” I ask, teeth bared in a smile. To Pierce, Charlie is a civilian.
And he would just drag her into this mess?
“Of course it is. A brilliant mind like Charlie’s will be a huge asset, don’t you think?” Charlie’s ice-blue eyes blaze as Pierce sinks a world of meaning into the word ‘asset.’
“Gross.” June’s barely audible, but I hear her, squeezing my hand around her hip.
I keep my expression as blank as possible.
Either Pierce knows something about Charlie, or he is trying to get in her pants. Maybe both. My lip curls in disgust. I wouldn’t put it past him.
Worst part is, I can’t even disagree with him, can’t push back. Pierce is in charge. Technically, the one who selected me for this mission. Even if I did plus up our numbers without running it by the powers that be.
Fuck .
“Well, I guess that’s settled then. Welcome to the team, Charlie.” Thompson claps her on the shoulder with an easy friendliness.
Charlie grins back at him, tight-lipped.
“Oh, I see you all brought tents. That was smart. This is all so exciting.” Charlie settles across from June, the fire between them. Pierce sits next to her, feeding her bits of food off his fork while she giggles outrageously.
June stares at her in disbelief.
“There’s only two,” I say loudly, trying to divert attention from the fact June’s about to realize that she doesn’t really know Charlie at all. “We can sleep four total.”
I am not about to send Thompson and Thorne off. I promised June safety, and the three of us are it.
Pierce better not pull rank and order my men to clear off, either.
“That’s perfect,” Pierce looks up from Charlie, that all-American grin plastered across his face. “We can go back to the boat, right? Sleep there?” He raises a suggestive eyebrow at Charlie, who lets out another giggle.
I resist the urge to roll my eyes at her obvious obliviousness. She’s laying it on thick.
“Oh, you’re so bad.” She takes another bite off his fork. Regardless of what I think, Pierce seems to be eating it up.
June says nothing, spearing a boiled potato with unnecessary force.
“Soooooooooo,” Thompson drags the ‘o’ sound out for an outrageously long time. Charlie looks up from Pierce, giving Thompson a withering stare.
“Dr. Legarde, why don’t you fill us in on your shipwreck?” Thompson finally asks.
“If she’s done eating,” I grind out, then immediately regret it. She can speak for herself. “Are you done, princess?”
She smiles at me, a slow, lazy grin, like a cat who’s gotten the cream, and nods once.
“I’d love to tell you about it.”
Pierce pulls Charlie into his lap, who sits stiffly for a beat before nuzzling into his neck. Thompson and Thorne are quiet until Thorne’s huge hands snap a crab in half.
June glances around with a deep breath, clearly gathering steam to tell her story.
I lean forward, curious as to what exactly it is about this shipwreck that’s so fully captivated her.
“The Santu Espiritu was the flagship of a flotilla of four, all traveling from New Spain, now Mexico, to Cuba. The original colonists were sent to the New World,” June puts up air quotes around the name, “to pillage, to steal, and to claim the land for God and country. All under the auspices of spreading Christianity to the peoples who already lived here. What they actually spread was disease, violence, and hatred. The colonists took root here and in Mexico, collapsed a society, a virus in every sense of the word.”
Her voice has the natural rise and fall of a storyteller, the cadence soothing and sure.
“The Santu Espiritu set sail in early June, according to some reports, to avoid the danger of hurricanes that spin up in the later summer months. The other three ships were laden with gold and precious gems as well, but the Santu Espiritu was the best among them. Her figurehead inspired poetry, a beautiful woman with flowing hair and blazing eyes, supposedly a likeness of the artist’s beloved. Her holds were full of gold bullion and chests with rubies and emeralds, according to legend, the lost treasure of Cibolo, the city of gold.”
Waves pound against the shoreline, providing a dramatic soundtrack to her tale. The light fades, the sky blazing gold and pink and red. June holds up two fingers, her face alive with the story.
“Two months later, in August, two of the four ships landed in Cuba. Two months. It should have taken weeks, not months. A third foundered in the Caribbean, blown off course. The treasure ship, the Santu Espiritu, loaded with the ill-begotten goods of colonial greed, was never seen again. Lost, according to the sailors’ accounts, in a surprise storm.”
She smashes her hands together for impact, and Thompson makes a low noise of assent in response.
Charlie catches my eye across the fire and I bite back a laugh at the familiar annoyance in her expression.
“Some say she was struck by lightning, a sign of God’s wrath at the greed of the Spaniards, sinking in a blaze of fire and fury, flames licking like hair across the face of the beautiful figurehead. Others say the treasure of Cibolo was cursed, and any who searched for it, much less took it out of greed, would find a watery grave.”
We’re all silent, save for the fire popping and waves breaking on the beach behind us.
Charlie coughs delicately, breaking the spell. “Tell them why you think you know where she is now.”
June’s face becomes more animated, and she leans forward.
She’s entirely captivating.
“I found a journal in an archive of a man set to become captain of the ship. He took ill, as did most of the crew, and the Santu Espiritu’s trip was delayed. She didn’t set off with the rest of the flotilla in June, but a month later, in July. She slammed into the famed hurricane of 1554, which took out several coastal villages, and sank somewhere near here, not far off the shore of the Padre Islands.”
“Then why hasn’t anyone found the rotting thing yet?” Pierce snorts in disbelief, voice brimming with sarcasm. “There are countless oil rigs around here.”
“The gulf is huge,” June tells him, eyes narrowed.
“Man, what a load of liberal garbage,” he mutters under his breath, but not quiet enough that we don’t all hear him.
Anger flares.
“1554 was a banner year for storms.” June tilts her head, considering, and a lock of hair slips over her face.
I catch the scent of the shampoo and inhale deeply, relaxing into the flow of her voice.
“I think between the storms and coastal erosion over the last few centuries, she’s been covered up. Besides, no one has charted the entire seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico. The only reason to spend the money doing that is for oil, and there’s no oil around where I think the Santu Espiritu ’s buried, so no one would have disturbed it. But we had a huge storm a few months ago, and…” She trails off, raising her hands in a shrug. “Based on current maps and where the tropical storm is, it’s likely the seabed shifted enough that she could be uncovered again.”
“I see why you didn’t manage to get your grant,” Pierce says with a derisive laugh.
My hands curl into fists.
“Believe it or not, Pierce, what I told you sitting around a campfire isn’t the same thing I presented for my grant. I had to take into account my audience’s own shortcomings.” June’s grin turns sharp. “I’d be happy to lecture you on tracking coastal erosion and the science of bathymetry, as well as all of the gruesome firsthand details of the captain’s illness, even the local myths and the historiography of this area. That is, if you think you can keep up.”
Pride swells in me, and I let out a laugh. Something dark passes across Pierce’s face, illuminated by the crackling fire.
“You know what the most interesting part of this is?” June continues, blatantly ignoring him. “The colonial history. Colonialism, especially American colonialism, didn’t stop centuries ago. It just kept going. And going. Most of the instability in Latin America can be traced to American imperialism, interference, and destabilization.” Her dark eyes are intense, her chin lifted as she stares defiantly at Pierce, whose mouth twists to the side.
Charlie stills in his arms.
“June’s right,” she finally says.
Pierce’s jaw twitches, an ugly expression marring his pretty-boy features.
“S’mores?” Thorne stands, throwing his soggy paper plate into the fire. The quiet man glares at Pierce, daring him to say shit.
“Dessert.” I nod, less at the idea of sugar than at the fact Thorne sensed something ugly in Pierce, too.
Fuck.
I hate wading in distrust. And yet, as I size up the man and woman sitting across the fire, that’s about all I can manage.