Hurricane Bay (25 page)

“Um.” She nodded and smiled at him, feeling a bit of a guilty twinge. Then she gave her attention back to the diary, aware that he walked off with a snort of impatience.

Men. Men, men, men. Can't live with 'em, can't get them when they're nice and then shoot them when they become obnoxious.

The best ones out there—the cutest, the funniest, the most courteous—are all gay. They're even the best built, half the time. They make the best friends, that's for sure.

Maybe I should go that way myself. Try it, anyway. I can make anyone think I love them. It's fun.

But I need more. Want more. Just what do I want? I should probably be in therapy. Good old Larry. He always told me I needed help. He's too involved. He thinks he can fix me, and we'll fall in love all over again, even get married again. Poor boy. I know I'm self-destructive. I'm trying to get even with someone. Or prove something. I really should get therapy. There's something in me. Every time I get near someone, I have to prove I can seduce him. And I get something from everyone, like a little trophy. I think even the fact that women are supposed to be so much more selective and discreet makes me want to prove everyone wrong. I hope Kelsey comes. I want to spill all this to her. I need to tell her how I'm suddenly afraid, even though I'm not sure why.

Once upon a time I might have been in love. But even then, the evil seed was blooming in me. I know some people would say it wasn't my fault. But if it wasn't my fault, why do I always feel so guilty?

Dane is at Nate's all the time. Oops, there I go again.

Hafta have, hafta have. Hafta prove I can take what I want. I think it's the chase. I need so much. But maybe not in this instance.

Okay, I will look into a therapist.

Kelsey set the diary down, feeling a strange chill sweep through her.
Had
Sheila made a play for Cindy just to experiment with her own prowess?

She stood, feeling acutely uncomfortable. She didn't really want to know all the private thoughts, emotions and deeds, of her friends.

But she felt she had to finish the diary if she was ever to have a chance of finding Sheila.

Or of finding out what had happened to her.

Because, like Dane, she was beginning to sense that Sheila was dead.

She realized that, despite the chill that had swept through her, she was baking. At least she'd had the sense to apply sunblock. She looked around. The others were all in the water and the dive flag was up on the boat.

She walked aft. She saw Cindy's head bob to the surface, then Larry's. They were laughing about something.

Their voices carried over the water. “What the hell were you aiming at, Cindy? We can't eat a cute little yellow tang for dinner.”

“You didn't see the snapper?”

“We're not down here to massacre fish, children,” Larry called back.

“I'll get a bigger fish,” Cindy assured him.

Her head disappeared beneath the water.

Kelsey looked around. Since they had anchored, several boats had joined them at the sandy-bottomed fishing spot. The sun was glinting so brightly, she couldn't make out much about them. The charter captains often came here. On the outskirts of Pennecamp, where fishing was allowed, there could be a good catch. Fish naively left the safety of Pennecamp and wandered into the area where they were fair game.

Kelsey went over to the equipment and found her mask and snorkel. She leaned over the port side of the boat to spit in her mask and rinse it, then jumped into the water.

 

Dane had tried many of the usual haunts before trying the fishing spot. He didn't know why, but his sense of anxiety had been growing ever since he had learned that Andy Latham was back on the streets.

Latham had a tendency to fish the Gulf side, but when the fishing was poor there he went over to the Atlantic.

The shallow bank near Pennecamp was a favored spot. Some of the best reefs were close by, and not far away was a small, barren island, almost a sand spit, with a few tenacious grasses and trees. It was a popular picnic spot for boaters. Beneath the water's surface there were long spits of sand, as well, making it a safe place to anchor without harming the coral, while still being close enough to several small outcroppings of reef where the fish tarried before—hopefully—falling prey to rod and reel. There was also the wreck of a fishing boat that had gone down before they had been born. It provided a place for barnacles to form and sea life to find a home. It made the spot a special place, good for fishing, diving and, especially, for snorkeling, since the water ranged from twenty to forty feet deep.

As he motored in slowly, Dane surveyed the boats already anchored there.

“Bingo,” he said softly.

He could see the
Lady Havana, Free as the Sea,
Nate's
Madonna,
and two of the other charter boats that went out from the same marina. Jorge Marti wouldn't be captaining the
Free as the Sea,
since he was with Kelsey and the others.

Izzy Garcia might well be aboard the
Lady Havana,
though.

He set his anchor and picked up his binoculars. He could see the groups aboard the
Lady Havana,
the
Free as the Sea
and the other two charters, the
Key Kiwi
and the
Sea She.
He studied the
Lady Havana
closely, but he didn't see Izzy among the men with their rods.

He turned to study the
Madonna.
There was no one topside, and the dive flag was up.

He set the binoculars down. The view before him was almost picture-perfect, entirely serene. The day was spectacular, without even the customary puffs of white clouds above him. The sky was a crystal blue, the sea shimmering in shades of blue and green. The waves were light, without a hint of chop, and the boats at anchor rocked gently where they lay.

And yet…

He should have been on the phone with the women he had met at the strip clubs, pushing and prodding to find out if they recognized any of the people in his pictures. He should have been tracking down Andy Latham, calling every number from the list Kelsey had taken from Izzy's cell phone, or bribing or conniving a friend at the phone company to give him names and addresses for those numbers he didn't know.

Instead he was here.

There was no reason to suspect that Kelsey should be in any kind of danger. She wasn't a stripper, and she didn't lead Sheila's lifestyle.

But she never shut up. She was determined to find Sheila. She was always asking questions, and her questions were an awful lot like accusations.

The temptation to get in the water and find her was overwhelming. He felt like an Alfred Hitchcock trailer. “Have you ever had a premonition…?”

Dane put up his own dive flag, went for his snorkel equipment and dived in. Surfacing, he headed straight for the area where the
Madonna
lay at anchor.

 

Kelsey took a deep breath and dived. She could see Cindy ahead of her. Cindy could be a pure predator. She had apparently shaken Larry, having decided he would scare her fish away and ruin her catch. Now she was headed toward the scattered coral.

Something brushed Kelsey. She instinctively moved, then realized it was only a piece of seaweed. There was a lot of it today. Whatever was happening with the storm out in the Atlantic might be driving it in.

She surfaced and took another gulp of air.

Her lung capacity was good. Probably because she had grown up an islander and spent almost as much time in the water as she had on land the whole time she was growing up. They were all good, of course, though Larry wasn't quite up to par with the rest of them. But then, he had been a weekender. And no one was quite as good as Dane, but then…well, he was Dane.

Joe had been as good, though.

Kelsey swam toward the coral and found a tiny flatfish digging into the sand. She teased it with a finger and watched as it dug deeper. She surfaced and found herself pulling away from a big patch of seaweed again. For a moment she floated, staring up at the sky. She found herself thinking that she was going to make a point of calling her parents that night. She remembered her feeling, after the initial anguish of Joe's death, of failure that she wasn't all that Joe had been, the perfect son.

It all seemed so petty now.

She was grateful to them; she loved them so much. They were so normal and they did love her. They had given her a good home, a good education and so many of the silly things she had wanted over the years.

She had not led Sheila's life.

She turned in the water, took a deep breath and made another dive.

She was very close to what could be classified as a reel reef. And, she realized, she was by the old wreck. How far had she come from the boat? As experienced as she was, she never went diving alone, and even when snorkeling, she was careful to stay close to the others. The best swimmers in the world could drown because they were too confident in their own abilities.

She would surface, get her bearings and head back.

Now, she saw, she was right over the wreck. The scattered coral near it was intriguing. As she headed up, she was surprised to catch a glimpse of green curling around one of the larger pieces near the rusting hull of the boat, and she found herself taking a breath and slipping beneath the surface again. She dived down low to the ground, wondering if a moray eel was making a home here. She swam deep. Tangs, parrot fish and medium-size grouper swam past her, the grouper eyeing her warily. She kept her distance, circling, watching.

She was startled at a whooshing sound in the water, close by.

She spun around and saw nothing, but the fish that had been near her were all darting to and fro in sudden confusion and fear.

She turned around in a full circle but still saw nothing.

The old boat sat decaying in the sand and rock, silent and still.

The fish around her slowed again, their movements easy through the water.

As she turned back to the little spit of coral rock, she was pleased to spot an eel. It poked its head out from a hole in the formation of living rock, then ducked its head back in.

Treading water, she waited at a safe distance, anxious to see the moray again. She'd missed being in the water like this. She loved the serenity in the water, the beauty of the creatures that lived there.

The moray tentatively peered out.

She was careful not to move.

How long had she been down? At one time she could make almost five minutes. She probably wasn't that good anymore.

The eel seemed to accept her.

Then…

It jerked back so suddenly it was almost like a disappearance into thin air—or water, as the case might be.

She heard the whooshing sound again…

And saw…

A streak of silver.

A spear…

Some idiot was spearfishing right here, with her in the water. Surely, despite the coral and the seaweed, she could be seen.

She couldn't see anyone attached to the spear that had just shot by her, dangerously close.

She looked around…and again…the whoosh.

Damn tourists!

Was someone in the hulk of the old boat, thinking they could do better if they were hidden in the rotting wood and rusting metal of the wreck?

She got ready to kick her way to the surface, out of the fishing grounds. Before she could do so, she nearly screamed as a hand landed on her shoulder.

She turned in alarm. Dane. He grasped her hand, pulling her upward.

They broke the surface together.

“Dane, what the hell are you doing here? You scared me half to death!”

“
I
nearly scared
you
to death? Jesus, someone down there is using you for target practice! Get back to the boat, Kelsey.”

“Back to the boat? Where are you going?”

“Back to find out who is down there.”

He pulled free, about to dive. She grabbed his hair, jerking him back up. His dripping head and blazing eyes reappeared.

“Dane, you idiot, there are tourists down there who don't know what they're doing! You've got to come with me. We'll call the Coast Guard.”

“Kelsey, dammit, get back to the boat. I don't think that's some dumb tourist taking potshots. Let me go.”

“You're not going after someone with a speargun. You're unarmed!”

“Kelsey…” He was impatient.

“Dane!” She was adamant.