Chapter 26
CHAPTER
TWENTY-SIX
JUNE
The fish finder is good at its job—finding fish. Those, there are plenty of, swimming in massive schools, black rectangular blips across the screen. Shipwrecks? Not so much. I sigh. The sun’s high overhead, and perspiration beads on the back of my neck.
“It should be here.” I slam my hand on the base of the captain’s chair.
“This would be easier with another boat, huh?” He winces. “Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be.” I pinch the bridge of my nose.
Thompson and Thorne’s boat isn’t going to make it in time. They ran into some trouble with a team of smugglers waiting off the coast, and thought it better to go radio silent just in case.
Now they’re too far out to get here anytime soon.
A dull beep catches my attention. At this point, I can’t muster any excitement.
The thrill of discovery’s long since worn off, once all the beeping only proved that there were a lot of really big fish swimming about.
Freaking amberjack.
Sighing, I’m afraid to look, disappointment already settling deep in my gut.
“Wait.” Dean’s voice triggers a fresh rush of adrenaline. “June, look. June.”
I take a deep breath, filling my lungs, my chest expanding as I search the grayscale screen. It beeps again. This… if this is a fish, it is a mother-loving whale shark.
I continue my pass over the object, easing up on the throttle. My gaze cuts to the depth finder, which also beeps a small warning. Forty feet. Thirty feet. Holy crapola.
Finally, the fish finder shows we’ve reached the end of the object.
The keys slide in my clammy hands. The engine dies, and I stumble from the captain’s chair.
“I’m gonna be sick,” I mutter.
This is it. It has to be.
Dean calls my name, but I can’t focus on him right now. No way.
The metal barrier of the catwalk is hellishly hot on my hand. Carefully, I pick my way to the front of the boat, to the heavy metal anchor that is plenty long enough to cut into the silt and sand of this shallower water.
Water that, in the danged middle of the Gulf of Mexico, has absolutely no right to be so shallow.
A drum beats in my chest, picking up speed. My heart races so fast I can hardly catch my breath. In a smooth, practiced motion, I throw the anchor overboard, where it splashes and fizzes into a cloud of white bubbles.
Immediately, the boat slows, no longer at the mercy of the current. Then the anchor bites, and I brace myself against the railing.
Mud and silt fly, clouding the water. Dang it.
A deep breath steadies me. I need to calm the fudge down. If I do this wrong, if this… shadow blip is what is left of the Santu Espiritu , I need to do everything right. Take it slow. Stirring muck up from the bottom won’t help visibility once I’m down there.
“June, did you hear anything I just said?”
“Get the diving buoy out. It’s in the cabin. I need to check my tanks. Do you know how to dive?” Idiot . Of course he knows how to dive. He’s an ex-Marine, for crying out loud.
I glance over to where he stands. The salt spray and dirt across the glass windshied in front of the captain’s chair impedes most of my the view of his face, but his eyes narrow in concentration. One finger runs across the screen of the fish finder. His other hand is on the sat phone, dialing a number, rattling off coordinates to someone I can only assume is Pierce.
A pop sounds as I roll my neck, then my shoulders. Breath leaves my chest in a slow exhalation.
For all my father’s faults, he steered me to our goal. I don’t have time for DEA bullshit. This is the find of my career, of my lifetime.
The Santu Espiritu is down there, I’m sure of it.
Certainty settles in, followed by confidence and excitement. Even if my dad didn’t bother to tell me about his find while he was alive, I’ve found it now.
My chin juts out and I inhale the tangy salt air, calm settling over me.
Only one way to find out if I’m right or wrong.
“Did you ask if I could dive?” A gruff chuckle, before Dean ducks into the cabin.
Carefully, I pick my way back to the deck of the boat. “They’re to the left of the?—”
“Kinda hard to miss.” Dean winks, the sunlight somehow managing to flash off his all-American smile. Two sets of tanks and respirators clank against the deck.
The masks and snorkels follow, then the fins.
Grief stops me in my tracks, stealing my breath.
“You okay?” Dean pauses, the weight belts in his hand dropping to the seating.
“Yeah. I’m fine.”
“This is big, June. If what you think is down there is down there, take a minute. Soak it in. This is a big moment.”
“It’s not that.”
I swallow against the lump in my throat. “Those were his tanks. My dad’s.”
Dean doesn’t speak. Standing quietly for half a second, long enough that I regret saying anything at all.
He pulls me into him. His arms are around me, holding me. Strong. Safe. My cheek presses against his chest, his beard tickling my scalp, and I inhale deeply, catching the sea salt and sun scent of him, before cautiously circling his waist with my arms.
Dean leans his head on mine, and I squeeze my eyes shut.
There is what we had on the beach—the hot, the heavy, the kissing and his mouth and oh-my-god-the-kissing. And it was good.
Then there is this. This is what it could be, if it doesn’t burn out like a short fuse on a stick of dynamite.
Him, holding me steady. The sun beating down on us as the boat rocks beneath my feet and my heart rocks inside my chest. In his arms, I can let the stress go. I can relax. This embrace is different. Comfort. Companionship. Safety.
More than good old-fashioned lust.
The ache inside my heart eases and I pull away, tilting my chin up at him, afraid to breathe.
He takes me chin in his hand, and his soft smile nearly undoes me. “Take as long as you need, June.”
My throat bobs, and I press myself back against him, marveling at the way my body fits into his, the way he seems to know what I need.
The way he isn’t afraid to give it.
“Yes.”
“Hmmm?” The noise vibrates against my cheek.
“I said yes.” I look back up at him.
“To go in the water?”
“No, I mean yes, obviously, but also yes . Yes, Dean, I would very much like to go on a date with you.” It will be worth it. Even when he leaves. I’ll risk the hurt for more of this, more of him.
More of us.
He flashes that dazzling smile, and it takes all my self-control not to push him down and have my way with him. Self-control helped out by the fact that my shipwreck might lie mere yards away in the sand.
Excitement ramps up, billowing sails fueled by my sudden hope for the future.
My wreck. And a hot date. Two things to live for. I grin like a fool. Like a fool in love.
“You ready?” Dean smooths a hair away from my face.
Acting on impulse, hope and excitement bubbling inside, I stretch up on the balls of my feet, pressing a quick kiss across his lips.
“I’m ready.” I turn, checking the equipment with the practiced ease of someone who’s done it a million times.
Beside me, Dean does the same. I watch him from the corner of my eye, my body intimately aware of his.
I’m excited. So excited that it doesn’t feel real.
“Buoy’s out?”
“Yes, ma’am.” There’s a smile in his words, but if I look at his dang dangerous lips again, I’ll keep stalling finding out if my wreck is down there, or if… goosebumps pebble across my skin. If the narcotics are.
I slip into the cabin, adrenaline and excitement overriding my fear for once, and pull out my bikini from where Dean thoughtfully put it in the backpack, then pull out my black wetsuit.
Bikinis look great, but pairing wet skin and a nylon weight belt? No thanks.
The wetsuit cuts high on my legs like a one-piece, fitting like a glove, and the reflective taping works like a charm for visibility underwater.
My father bought it for me too, and I pause as I zip it up, wishing he was here. Wishing we were doing this together. With one last look at myself in the mirror, I duck back through the door and onto the deck.
The sun slicks across the surface of the water. Out here, far from shore and closer to the Mexican border, the water isn’t the typical gray-green murk of the gulf. It’s a crystalline blue and turquoise. Visibility should be good. Whatever is down there, we’ll see it.
I tug the tanks over my shoulders, clipping in, heart beating loudly in my ears. “Have you heard anything else from Thompson?”
Dean shakes his head, running a hand through his stubble as he straps on his tanks with the air of a man who’s done it a thousand times. His face is a blank mask, inscrutable.
I bite into my lower lip.
Are his men trustworthy? Dean thinks so. It will have to be good enough for me.
“They’re safe. They know protocol when things get iffy.”
Tension returns to my chest, my stomach tightening. My nerves are haywire, operating on overdrive.
Probably a side-effect of being shot at too many times in a forty-eight-hour time period.
“Okay.” I shuffle to the back of the boat, noting Dean has already lifted the props out of the water.
The long fins snap onto my feet, and I pull my hair back into a tight bun. The mask strap pulls on, and the snorkel flops against my cheek. Dean sits next to me, loosening the straps on his fins with a quiet efficiency that, for some reason, really does it for me.
Hot and competent.
“What’s that look for?” He grins.
A small shrug. “Just hopeful.”
“Ah.”
He doesn’t need to know I’m hopeful about more than the Santu Espiritu now.
“I’m going first.”
“I’m perfectly happy to let you go first.” His gaze runs across my legs. “But, for the record, I don’t mind if we both go at the same time.”
Heat spreads through me and I squeeze my eyes shut, as though it will block out my sudden fantasy of the two of us, tangled together, going at the same time.
Leaning backwards, I meet the cool embrace of the gulf waters instead.
Not that they’ll bank the heat in me.