Chapter 7
SEVEN
Dakota found Jayden standing in the lobby in a swimsuit and cover-up, flip-flops on her feet, beach bag over her shoulder, and suddenly, he completely forgot why he’d been running.
A three-mile loop along the Cairns Esplanade. Pelicans on the railings. Harbor water catching the early light. He’d been trying to outrun last night—the almost-kiss, the closed door, the wall between their rooms that had felt thinner than paper.
All that effort, evaporated. Just like that.
“They didn’t find the bag.” Jayden crossed the lobby toward him, and he became acutely aware of how he must look—sweaty, breathing hard, shirt clinging in all the wrong places. “I checked with the front desk this morning. No reports.”
“Great. I’ll be back in a jiff.”
“I’ll ask around. See if anyone mentions losing their luggage in transit.”
“Good idea,” he heard himself say. “Give me ten minutes.”
Her smile widened. “The bus leaves in fifteen. Gift shop has swim trunks.” She winked.
Okay, he liked that she’d checked.
The gift shop had exactly one pair of swim trunks in his size—navy blue, mercifully plain—and a rack of overpriced reef-themed T-shirts.
Dakota bought the trunks without checking the price tag, took the stairs two at a time to his room, showered in approximately ninety seconds, and was back in the lobby with three minutes to spare.
His dive card was on his app on his phone. He’d kept his certification current through the years, logging hours whenever work took him somewhere with decent water. Military training first, then recreational dives scattered across roughly five years of security contracts.
Jayden was waiting by the doors, talking to a woman with a clipboard and relentless enthusiasm.
“—and you must be Dakota!” The woman descended on him before he could prepare. “I’m Bonnie, your tour guide! Maxi mentioned you might be joining us. So exciting! The reef is absolutely spectacular today—calm water, great visibility. You’re going to love it!”
She talked in exclamation points. Dakota managed a nod. He remembered her from before, but clearly all the tourists had become a blur for her.
“Bus is just outside. Find any seat you like!”
The bus was a comfortable coach with tinted windows and aggressive air-conditioning. Dakota followed Jayden down the aisle, cataloging faces as he went.
Vic sat alone near the front, already looking queasy. He gave Dakota a weak wave.
“Boats,” he said mournfully. “Even worse than planes.”
Behind him, an older man with binoculars around his neck was lecturing anyone who’d listen about reef fish species. “—the parrotfish alone, there are dozens of varieties. And the colors! Wait until you see the colors!”
Mags sat across the aisle, watching the boarding passengers. The younger woman beside her—tense, phone clutched in her hand—barely looked up.
Near the back, the Czech newlyweds from yesterday, Josef and Anna, sat close together.
A middle-aged man in a Hawaiian shirt was taking photos out the window, muttering about “insurance assessments for reef-tourism operators.” What was his name? Howard something.
The British woman from Hawaii—notebook in hand—glanced at Jayden, then away.
Two twentysomethings sat in the very back, absorbed entirely in each other, oblivious to everything.
Dakota filed it all away and slid into the seat beside Jayden, midway through the bus.
“Recognize anyone?” she asked quietly.
“Most of them were on our flight from Hawaii. The ones who got diverted to Fiji.” He kept his voice low. “The IT consultant. The bird-watcher. The older woman and her daughter. The Czech couple. The insurance guy.”
“So one of them is the owner of the mystery bag.”
“Probably.” He glanced at her. “Unless it’s someone who already left the tour.”
“Then we ask around. Casually. See who mentions luggage problems.”
“Casually,” Dakota repeated.
“I can be casual.” She smiled. “It’s practically my job description.”
The bus pulled away from the hotel, and Cairns began sliding past the windows—palm trees, tourist shops, glimpses of harbor blue. Bonnie launched into a monologue about the Great Barrier Reef that included approximately forty-seven facts and at least that many exclamation points.
Dakota let the words wash over him and watched Jayden instead. The way she leaned toward the window. The slight furrow between her brows when she concentrated. The fact that she’d woken up early, checked on the bag, come up with a plan, and was ready to execute it before he’d even finished his run.
Organized. Efficient. Adaptable.
All excellent qualities in a hotel inspector.
Also excellent qualities in an operative.
He pushed the thought aside as the marina came into view.
They disembarked and found their dive boat moored at the end of the dock.
“This is nicer than anything I’ve ever dived from,” Dakota said.
A sleek white catamaran with multiple decks, sun lounges, a small bar ready with welcome drinks, and “REEF DREAMS” painted on the hull in flowing script.
The dive platform at the stern was professional-grade—racks of equipment, tanks already filled and staged, crew members filling tanks and setting up rigs.
“This is the premium package,” Jayden murmured, taking in the teak accents and cushioned benches. “I’ve reviewed boats like this. They don’t come cheap.”
“Aussie Adventures isn’t messing around.”
“Apparently not.”
They found spots on the main deck as the boat pulled away from the marina. The harbor slid past—other vessels, the distant shoreline, the Cairns cityscape shrinking behind them. The water shifted color as they moved into open ocean, murky harbor green giving way to something clearer, brighter.
Vic had planted himself near the railing, face pale, gripping a bottle of water like a lifeline. The bird-watcher—Gerald, Dakota remembered—was already at the bow, binoculars raised, scanning for seabirds.
Mags was studying a dive-briefing sheet with an intensity that suggested she took this seriously. Her daughter, Lily, had retreated to a corner, phone pressed to her ear, voice too low to hear but body language screaming distress.
The Czech couple stood together at the stern, watching the wake foam behind them. The man’s hand rested at the small of his wife’s back—protective, possessive. Weirdly, he wanted to do the same to Jayden.
Focus.
A crew member with sun-bleached hair and a broad Australian accent gathered them near the dive platform. “All right, folks! I’m Jake, your dive master today. Before we get in the water, a quick rundown of the rules . . .”
He ran through safety protocols, reef etiquette, buddy assignments. Dakota listened with half an ear—he’d heard variations of this speech dozens of times—and watched Jayden listening as if . . .
“Wait. You’re diving?” The question came out before he could stop it. “Not snorkeling?”
She raised an eyebrow. “I gave them my certification info when I booked this morning. Why?”
“I just assumed—”
“That the hotel inspector would paddle around on the surface while the real adventurers went deep?” Her smile had an edge to it. “I’ve got over a hundred logged dives. Advanced Open Water. Nitrox certified.”
Dakota blinked. “That’s . . . a lot of diving for someone who rates breakfast buffets.”
“The travel industry has perks.” She shrugged. “I’ve reviewed resorts in Thailand, Indonesia, the Maldives, the Caribbean. Turns out a lot of them have dive programs. And swimming is different than diving. With diving, all you have to do is know how to breathe and kick.”
True. And her explanation made sense. It even sounded plausible.
So why did something in his gut still twitch?
“Guess we’re dive buddies, then,” he said.
“Guess we are.”
The crew had already prepped their equipment—BCDs fitted to tanks, regulators checked, weights calculated. Professional. Efficient. The kind of service that came with premium pricing.
Dakota pulled on his wet suit and tried not to watch Jayden do the same.
Yeah, he failed.
He zipped her up, and she did the same for him, then he helped her on with her BCD, fitted with her tank already, and shrugged into his own.
The team lined up, and he scissored into the water from the boat, circling around to signal clear and watch her land.
She came up beside him, her BCD inflated. So maybe she was right. You didn’t have to be a fantastic swimmer to dive.
Still, he didn’t quite believe her.
“Ready?” she said.
“Let’s dive.” He put his hand up, depressed the air from his vest, and down he went, equalizing his ears as he descended.
And, as usual, the moment he dropped below the surface, the world went quiet.
Blue everywhere. The particular blue of tropical water—not the steel gray of military training dives, not the murky green of harbors and rivers, but something luminous. Alive. Light filtering down from above, particles drifting like lazy snow, and below—
The reef.
It materialized out of the blue like an underwater city.
Coral in every shape and color—purple sea fans swaying in the current, orange plate formations stacked like impossible architecture, brain coral in browns and greens, staghorn reaching up like skeletal fingers toward the light.
Soft corals pulsed with the water’s movement.
Anemones waved their tentacles, clownfish darting in and out like bright orange punctuation marks.
Jayden stayed beside him, moving through the water with the easy grace of someone completely at home.
She pointed—a sea turtle glided past with ancient patience, flippers beating slow and steady.
A moray eel peered from a crevice, mouth opening and closing in that perpetual gape that looked threatening but wasn’t.
A cloud of bright-blue tangs swirled around a coral head like living confetti.
Maybe he should be watching her for signs of training, for the particular movements of someone who’d learned to dive for operational reasons rather than recreational ones. For any tell that would confirm or deny his suspicions that she was more than she said.