Chapter 7 #2
Instead, he was watching her point at a parrotfish—impossibly green, impossibly pink—and seeing her eyes crinkle with delight behind her mask.
Instead, he was letting her lead, following her deeper, trusting her judgment about where to go and what to see.
Instead, he was forgetting.
The rifle components. The mission. Ham waiting in Sydney. The questions he still couldn’t answer. All of it fading into the blue, replaced by this—the reef, the fish, the woman beside him, the sound of his own breathing, steady and slow.
For the first time in longer than he could remember, Dakota stopped analyzing.
He just . . . was.
Present. Here. Alive in a way he’d forgotten he could be.
Jayden caught his eye through the water.
Gave him an okay sign. He returned it, and something passed between them—not words, not even a real communication, just a shared recognition that this was extraordinary.
That they were lucky to be here. That whatever else might be complicated between them, this moment was simple and good.
They drifted along the reef face, following a coral-cleaning spot where small fish picked parasites off larger ones. Watched a spotted ray ripple past, wings undulating. Found a giant clam with lips of impossible blue.
And then the angelfish came.
A school of them rising from deeper water. Silver and black, disc-shaped bodies, dorsal fins trailing like elegant scarves. Dozens of them. Maybe a hundred. Moving in perfect synchronization, flowing around Dakota and Jayden like a living current.
Dakota stopped swimming. Hung suspended in the water as they passed—above him, around him, close enough to touch if he reached out. The light filtering through their bodies. Their movement impossibly coordinated. The silence of it broken only by the rhythm of his own breath.
Like swimming with something from heaven.
He wasn’t a man who thought in metaphors. Wasn’t a man who found the spiritual in the physical. But here, now, surrounded by silver wings and filtered light, he felt something shift inside him.
Jayden had tilted back, arms spread slightly, watching the fish flow overhead. Even through her mask, he could see her smile. Pure, unguarded joy.
She was beautiful.
Not just attractive—he’d known that since Hawaii. But beautiful in the way that mattered. Present. Real. Fully alive in this moment.
He needed to learn to live like her.
The angelfish flowed past, disappearing into the blue, and Dakota realized he’d stopped breathing. He took a slow breath through his regulator, equalizing, grounding himself.
Jayden caught his eye. Made a small explosion gesture with her hands.
Wow.
Yeah. He repeated it. Wow.
They finished the dive, ascending slowly, making their safety stop at fifteen feet while the boat’s shadow loomed above them. When they broke the surface, the sun was blinding and the air was warm and Dakota felt like he’d been gone for hours instead of forty-five minutes.
He spit the regulator from his mouth. “That was incredible.”
She did the same. “I know.” She laughed, bright and genuine. “I’ve done a lot of dives. I’ve never seen anything like that.”
They swam to the dive platform, handed up their gear, climbed the ladder. Dakota’s legs felt strange on the solid deck—that particular post-dive sensation of having left one world and rejoined another.
“Second dive in an hour,” their captain announced. “Different site, supposed to have a resident Napoleon wrasse. Big fella, very friendly. Anyone up for round two?”
Jayden looked at Dakota. “Well?”
He should stay focused. Should use the surface interval to talk to the other passengers, ask about luggage, investigate like he was supposed to.
“Wouldn’t miss it,” he said, and something filled his chest that felt dangerously like peace.
“Okay.” Jayden peeled her wet suit down to her waist, wringing water from her hair. “That was amazing. That whole experience. I’m—” She laughed. “I’m actually speechless, which doesn’t happen often.”
“The angelfish,” Dakota said. It seemed to be the only word he had for what they’d witnessed.
“As if from heaven.” She said it casually, like it was obvious, and something in his chest tightened.
He hadn’t said that out loud. Hadn’t told her about the thought that had surfaced from nowhere. But she’d felt it too.
“As if from heaven,” he said quietly.
They sat on the sun deck as the boat headed toward their second dive site, towels around their shoulders, the morning turning golden.
Other passengers milled around—the bird-watcher enthusing about reef fish to anyone who’d listen, the Czech couple keeping to themselves, Vic looking marginally less green now that they were about to serve lunch.
Dakota realized he hadn’t talked to any of them. Hadn’t asked about luggage. Hadn’t investigated anything. And he couldn’t bring himself to regret it.
“So,” Jayden said, stretching her legs out on the lounger. “Any of them seem like luggage thieves to you?”
He huffed a laugh. “I was a little distracted.”
“By the reef?”
“By—” He stopped. Met her eyes. “Yeah. The reef.”
She held his gaze for a moment, something warm and knowing in her expression. Then she looked away, toward the water, and the moment passed.
“Tomorrow’s the Hunter Valley,” she said. “Wine country. Maybe we’ll have better luck asking around when everyone’s relaxed and drinking.”
“So we’re staying on the tour.”
“Do you have somewhere else to be?”
Sydney. The summit. The Opera House assessment. Ham waiting for an update.
“Not really,” Dakota said. “Wine country sounds good.”
Jayden smiled and Dakota felt something shift in his chest. Not the analytical part. Not the threat-assessment part. Something older. Something he’d thought he’d trained out of himself years ago.
Longing.
He looked at her—wet hair drying in the sun, face bare of makeup, eyes bright from the dive. How could he have ever suspected her of anything?
The women’s clothes, the disassembled weapon, the questions he couldn’t answer—none of it fit the woman sitting beside him. The woman who had looked at him through the school of angelfish like they were sharing something sacred.
She wasn’t an assassin. She was just . . . Jayden. Hotel inspector. Adventure seeker. Whatever else she was hiding—and she was hiding something, he knew that much—it wasn’t what he’d feared.
The steward announced lunch, and the rest of the travelers headed down to the galley.
But Dakota sat beside a woman he barely knew, hoping for the first time in years that he wasn’t wrong.
Jayden had forgotten how to breathe.
Not in the dangerous, running-out-of-air way. In the way that happened when the world turned so beautiful your body forgot it needed oxygen to survive.
She sat on the top deck, wrapped in a towel as the boat skimmed back to the bay, but in her mind, Jayden still hung suspended in liquid turquoise, the Great Barrier Reef spreading beneath her in a riot of color.
Coral formations rose from the sandy bottom—purple and orange and electric blue, brain coral and staghorn and giant clams with lips of iridescent green.
A school of angelfish drifted past her mask, their silver bodies catching the filtered sunlight, and she reached out instinctively before remembering look, don’t touch.
It had been a pure, magical first dive, and it helped that beside her, Dakota wore an expression of what seemed like . . . peace.
And with it, something shifted in her chest. A loosening. A letting go.
“You okay?”
She nodded, leaning against his shoulder. She was more than okay. For the first time in days—maybe weeks—she wasn’t thinking about the mission. Wasn’t wondering if the man beside her—or maybe someone on the boat—was secretly planning to kill the president.
She was just . . . here. Present. Alive.
Stop it. He was still a potential threat.
But the voice sounded hollow. Unconvincing. The ocean had stripped away her defenses, and she couldn’t quite remember why she’d needed them in the first place.
The boat hit a wave, and spray blanketed them. She laughed, and he grabbed his towel. “You hungry?”
She nodded and let him pull her up.
The boat’s air-conditioned dining area was a shock after the warmth of the reef. Jayden shivered as the cool air hit her damp skin, her hair dripping salt water onto the vinyl bench.
“Cold?” Dakota slid a towel across the table toward her.
“Freezing. I think they’re trying to preserve us for later consumption.” She wrapped the towel around her shoulders. “Very efficient. Skip the ice—just refrigerate the tourists.”
He laughed. “At least the pasta looks safe.”
The lunch spread was standard tour fare—penne with marinara, Caesar salad, garlic bread that had seen better days. Jayden loaded her plate and dug in. The diving had left her ravenous, the kind of hunger that came from using every muscle in her body to stay buoyant and moving.
Dakota, she noticed, barely touched his food. He pushed a piece of penne around his plate, his eyes fixed on the window where the reef shimmered beneath the surface.
Far away. That’s what he looked like. A thousand miles from this boat, this moment.
“Hey.” She nudged his foot under the table. “You okay?”
He blinked. Came back from wherever he’d gone. “Yeah. Sorry. Just thinking.”
She stabbed a piece of pasta. “What about?”
A pause. He set down his fork. “My grandfather.”
She remembered what he’d told her in Fiji—the regret about never taking the old man fishing one last time. The flies he couldn’t use and couldn’t throw away.
“The fish made you think of him?”
“Everything makes me think of him.” Dakota’s mouth curved, but his eyes stayed sad. “He would have loved this. The reef. The colors. He was the one who told me to go see the world.”
Jayden set down her fork. “Tell me about him.”
Dakota was quiet for a moment. Outside the window, a seagull landed on the railing, ruffled its feathers, and took off again.