Chapter 35
GRADY
O ur breakfast was light. All of us were anxious and none of us were dumb enough to eat much. We were all sticking to oatmeal and drinking plenty of water.
I had to keep my eyes off Cece. She was wearing a one-piece swimsuit with shorts covering her lower half. Lina was in a tiny bikini as expected. I barely looked at her. Felix wasn’t interested either. He had the same rules I did about messing around with students.
I pushed the oatmeal around in my bowl, more focused on the conversation than eating. Felix was regaling us with stories from his first dive, which had apparently been a disaster of epic proportions.
“I’m telling you, I panicked so hard I forgot how to breathe through the regulator,” he said, gesturing wildly with his spoon. “Just started holding my breath like I was in a swimming pool. My instructor had to literally grab me and force the regulator back in my mouth.”
Lina laughed, shaking her head. “That’s nothing. On my certification dive, I got so excited when I saw a sea turtle that I forgot about buoyancy control and shot straight to the surface. Nearly gave my instructor a heart attack.”
“Decompression sickness is no joke,” I said. “You’re lucky you didn’t hurt yourself.”
“Trust me, I learned my lesson,” Lina replied. “Now I’m obsessed with proper ascent rates.”
I glanced at Cece, who had been unusually quiet. “What about you? Any diving disasters you want to share?”
She looked up from her oatmeal, a small smile on her face.
“My first night dive was interesting. I was maybe sixteen, diving with my dad off the coast near Virginia Beach. Everything looked completely different in the dark, and I got disoriented. Spent twenty minutes following what I thought was the dive light, only to realize I’d been chasing a bioluminescent jellyfish. ”
Felix burst out laughing. “You followed a jellyfish?”
“For twenty minutes,” Cece said, grinning now. “My dad finally caught up to me and tapped me on the shoulder. I turned around and he was making the ‘what the hell are you doing’ gesture. When we surfaced, he couldn’t stop laughing.”
“Did you get stung?” Lina asked, wincing at the thought.
“Just my pride.” Cece pushed her oatmeal away, barely touched. “But it taught me to always stay aware of my surroundings, no matter how beautiful the distraction.”
Her eyes met mine across the table, and I felt that familiar jolt of electricity. Everything she said seemed to carry a double meaning lately, and I was probably reading too much into it, but the way she looked at me when she said “beautiful distraction” made my pulse quicken.
“Alright,” I said, standing up and clearing my throat. “Time to gear up, kids. We want to be in the water by nine.”
We carried our gear down to the dock. The dive boat was a thirty-foot research vessel with all the equipment we’d need.
I was all nerves. My heart rattled in my chest, throat dry, even though I’d done enough wreck dives with Felix to map them in my sleep.
Still, this wasn’t a controlled pool or that weekend fun dive off a cruise ship.
It was the very first descent inside a newly found pirate wreck thirty feet down.
The kind of dive we’d spent months prepping for.
Thirty feet wasn’t all that dangerous, but it held plenty of risks. No dive was guaranteed to be safe.
The captain of the boat steered us out to sea.
The four of us pulled out our gear. Lina was chattering about some club she went to the other night.
I liked her better when she was talking about s’mores.
It wasn’t that she was dumb, but she didn’t seem all that invested in history.
She wasn’t the typical archeology student.
“Ready, partner?” Felix glanced back.
I squared my shoulders. “As I’ll ever be.”
He’d already checked our gear twice over. I followed suit. Mask strapped, tanks sealed, fins ready. Behind us, Cece and Lina sat on the stern, dipping their toes in with cautious confidence.
We had a ship captain that would be monitoring things, allowing all four of us to go under. Cece had put on her wet suit and tank.
“Ready?” I asked her.
“Yep.”
I adjusted my mask one final time and looked at my team. “Alright, listen up. Felix and I will be going inside the wreck. Cece, Lina—you stay outside the structure. Explore the perimeter, look for any artifacts that might have been scattered, but do not attempt to enter the ship itself.”
Lina nodded, but I caught the flash of disappointment in her eyes. Cece’s expression was harder to read behind her mask, though I could see her jaw tighten slightly.
“The interior is unstable and unexplored,” I continued. “We don’t know what’s in there yet, and that’s what Felix and I will be checking before anyone else goes in. Too many ways to get disoriented or trapped. So stick to the plan.”
“Got it,” Cece said, her voice muffled by her regulator as she tested it one more time.
Felix gave me a thumbs-up. “Ready when you are, boss.”
I took a deep breath and rolled backward off the boat, the Atlantic water enveloping me like a familiar embrace. The others followed suit, and within moments we were all floating on the surface, adjusting our gear and getting our bearings.
“Everyone good?” I called out, receiving affirmative responses all around.
We descended slowly, following the anchor line down through the blue-green water.
The sunlight filtered through the depths, creating dancing patterns that shifted and swayed with the gentle current.
At twenty feet, the water grew noticeably cooler and darker.
At twenty-five feet, the ghostly outline of the ship began to take shape below us.
It wasn’t like an actual ship, but with a far-off view, it wasn’t hard to see what it would have been like before it went down.
My breath caught in my throat despite all my years of experience.
The wreck was magnificent—larger than the sonar readings had suggested, her wooden hull remarkably intact after centuries on the ocean floor.
Barnacles and marine growth had claimed much of her surface, but the basic structure remained, a testament to the skilled craftsmen who’d built her.
They didn’t build them like they used to.
I glanced over at Cece, floating beside me with wide eyes behind her mask. Even through the distortion of water and glass, I could see her awe. I felt the same thing.
Moments like these, when history revealed itself in all its glory, reminded me why I did what I did. Why I dealt with the politics at the university. Whether underwater or in a jungle, exploring these mysteries was what I lived for.
Felix was already photographing the wreck from multiple angles, his underwater camera flashing intermittently. Lina hovered nearby, looking slightly overwhelmed by the scale of what we’d found.
I checked my dive computer and gave the signal to begin our exploration.
Felix and I approached the main opening where the ship’s hull had been damaged, likely the breach that had sent her to the bottom.
The gap was large enough for us to enter, but anything could be lurking in that darkness.
Debris and rotting timbers could shift without warning.
Before entering, I turned back to Cece and Lina, pointing firmly at the perimeter of the wreck and then at them. The message was clear: stay outside, explore the area around the ship. Cece nodded, though I caught her lingering gaze on the opening Felix and I were approaching.
I knew she was dying to go into the ship but the proper procedure required us to document things before too many people went in and stirred things up. It was about preserving the history, as well as safety.
My flashlight beam cut through the inky water. Felix gave me a thumbs-up and went inside. I followed. We were doing our best to move slowly. Years of sediment covered every surface. Even our slow movements were stirring it up a little.
Felix took pictures before we moved into an area. Bursts of white illuminated the dark recesses. Those were the images we would study. Images of what it all looked like before we started poking around.
I knelt in the sand, careful not to disturb it. All technical divers know how wrong it goes when silt is floating around. Bad visibility inside an enclosed space? That’s a disaster waiting to happen. Like trying to swim in a snow globe after it’s been shaken.
It was silent but for our bubbles. I trusted Felix to chart the interior, find openings and weak points, but we were here for documentation.
This dive wasn’t about snagging treasure or digging anything up.
Not yet. We were tagging, measuring, and photographing.
It was all about respecting the site and documenting it for the history books.
There would be no removing anything. Not yet.
We’d bring up evidence, pin it in a digital archive, and return tomorrow to map it more deeply. We were not treasure hunters. I hated those assholes. They were in it for the money. I was a firm believer in karma. And ancient curses. No way I was going to bring that shit into my life.
I loved history. I could see men standing on the deck and thinking they were almost to land. Or maybe they had just raided a village and were trying to get out of the area. Every person on the boat had a story. They probably had families.
I was watching a breach in the hull when a shape passed by. I turned and spotted Cece. She glided through the water and stopped to hover near the bow, lips pressed to regulator, nodding at me in the glow from Felix’s lights.
Damn if I didn’t feel that squeeze again.
She was doing fine. And she moved like a fucking dolphin.
I swore she had gills. She glided through the water, barely making a wave.
Hell, maybe I should have had her come into the wreckage.
I had a feeling she could get what we needed without stirring up any sediment.
I moved ever so slowly, controlling my breathing as I moved closer to where Felix was.
I studied the area around him, my flashlight beam revealing what looked like a collection of metal objects partially buried in the sediment.
Coins, maybe. Or buttons more likely. The kind of personal effects that told the real story of who these people had been.
Felix caught my attention and pointed to his camera, then to the objects. I nodded, understanding. Document first, analyze later. He positioned himself carefully, angling for the best shot while I held my light steady.
A movement in my peripheral vision made me turn.
Through the murky water, I could see Cece outside the wreck, her red hair flowing like seaweed around her mask.
She was examining something near what looked like the remains of a cannon.
Even from here, I could see her excitement in the way she moved, the careful way she was documenting whatever she’d found.
Pride swelled in my chest, mixing with something darker and more possessive. She was exactly where she belonged—not wrapped in bubble wrap on dry land, but in her element, doing what she was born to do.
Felix tapped my shoulder and pointed toward the stern. Time to move deeper. I checked my dive computer. We’d been down for fifteen minutes, plenty of air left.