Night Diver: A Novel (9 page)

Silence followed her words.

Grandpa Donnelly shifted his pipe and looked unhappy.

“It is a possibility,” Holden said carefully. “Experts in London have decided that the ribs of the ship down there aren’t big enough to belong to a merchant ship such as the
Cross of Madrid
.”

The thought that she might be anchored on her mother’s unmarked grave had Kate on her feet and out the salon door, fighting for breath every step of the way. She grabbed the deck rail and hung on, forcing herself to breathe through the panic attack.

I can’t be here anymore. The sea took too much from me that day.

The only reason it didn’t take Larry and Grandpa was they were ashore while Grandpa had a bad appendix taken out. If they had been there, the sea would have eaten them too.

Don’t they understand that?

Don’t they know that the sea is still hungry?

The door opened and closed behind her as someone came out.

“Hey,” Larry said. “Are you still having panic attacks? It was years ago, Kitty.”

Not for me. It’s as fresh as my next nightmare.
And she would be having one tonight, no doubt.

It didn’t make her look forward to sleeping.

“Hey,” he said softly. “You should be glad it might be a rich wreck. Even with that lousy contract, we’d come out ahead.”

“Assuming we’re in the right place and not just finding occasional scattered pieces,” she said stiffly.

“We’re not,” Larry said. “I have a feeling about this one. This is the big one we’ve looked for all our lives.”

“Every treasure diver gets that feeling and then they follow it too far down,” she said. “It’s a sickness.”

“I know you’re thinking about Mom and Dad,” Larry said. “But you can’t blame them for following their dream.”

“I can. Especially when their dream turned into my nightmare.”

Even as Kate spoke, she knew she was wrong. Yet that was how she felt. That hadn’t changed since she was almost eighteen and found out that everything could be taken away without warning. The sea she had once loved was unpredictable and treacherous.

“They were my parents, too,” Larry said. “Do you ever think of that?”

She let out a careful breath. “I know I’m not being fair. But damn it, you were a man when they died. I was seventeen, had basically lived on board all my life. Just a child in some ways. Important ways.”
And at night, I still am. Panic and terror and screaming.
“I’ve done enough for today,” she said abruptly. “Too much. Being out here is making me crazy.”

“You’re making yourself crazy.”

“Because I realize that when I’m out here, I’m at the mercy of a sea that has none?”

“Okay, okay, go back to the rental. Just don’t run off. We need you. Most of the time you’re all brains and common sense. You know that between Grandpa and me, we don’t have enough of either to fill a coffee cup.”

A ghostly smile flickered over her lips. “That’s the truth.”

“There’s my Kitty Kat,” he said. The pinched lines around his eyes and mouth relaxed. “You ready to go back in there before Grandpa does something stupid, like throw a punch at the Brit?”

The child in Kate wanted to pitch a screaming fit. The adult in her knew she had to find a better way to live with the past, took a deep breath, and headed back inside. It quickly became obvious that she was indeed needed. Grandpa was standing up, pointing his pipe stem at Holden.

Which meant that Grandpa was about to lose his temper.

“I didn’t ask for the captain’s cabin,” Holden said in a reasonable tone of voice. “I simply want a place to sleep aboard. It’s difficult to oversee a dive from shore.”

“We don’t dive at night,” Larry said. “On the wages your AO demands, we’re lucky to find enough men to dive during the day. Kate can taxi you back and forth from the rental along with supplies.”

“I don’t have time to be shopping for—” began Kate.

“There’s no room aboard,” Larry cut in with the irritation of the sleep deprived. “You saw the crew quarters on the way to the dive center. Men are doubled up as it is. We’re doing all we can and more just to keep the Brits off our backs.”

Holden supposed the mess he had seen through open doors could be the result of crowding, but he was much more interested in the fact that no one wanted him aboard. “The contract—” he began.

“Says we house and feed our overseers,” Grandpa cut in. “Doesn’t say where. We rented the house for the geek out of our lousy expense allowance, and that’s where you’re staying. If you don’t like it, whine to your bosses.”

“Bugger,” Holden snarled. Then he looked quickly at Kate. “Apologies.”

She shrugged. “Why? It’s rather refreshing.”

Larry snickered. “You can double up with the geek. Mingo’s brother is onto a cache of broken pottery found near the gold chain. Malcolm will be doing pictures and measurements and log entries aboard until sunrise.”

“Where does he sleep?” Holden asked blandly.

“In a cubbyhole the size of a coffin, with his feet propped on his desk and his chair tipped back against the door. You’d rather be ashore and so would he.”

Leaving the argument behind her, Kate walked out to the work boat and got in. The craft rolled in the gentle afternoon swell. She fired up the engines on the second try and then let them roar, signaling just how out of patience she was.

“This water taxi leaves in one minute,” she yelled above the noise.

Holden made a command decision and scrambled down into the workboat.

The ride back to the rental was swift and silent but for the engines. Behind his sunglasses, Holden thought about how eager the Donnellys had been to see him off.

Could be hiding something.

Could be responding to my persistent lack of charm.

At the moment, the possibilities were about even, but his orders hadn’t changed. If anything, the Antiquities Office was more eager than ever to pursue the salvage. The cynical side of Holden kept coming back to the oh-so-terribly convenient find just after he came aboard. The rest of him kept pointing out that coincidences happened. That was why the English language had a word for it.

Any pursuit of answers would have to wait until tomorrow. Which meant other pursuits were available tonight.

He concentrated on Kate’s profile. She was an intriguing woman, seemingly unaware of her beauty, making no attempt to ingratiate herself with the man who held her family’s fate in his fist. Yet he had caught her more than once looking at him the way a woman looks at a man who interests her. During the brief time he had known her, she had ricocheted between fear and anger and aloofness more than many women he had known over years of acquaintance.

Yet he didn’t think being volatile was a natural state for her. She didn’t have the pinched, nervous look of someone perpetually balanced on the edge of panic. Her hand on the steering was as competent as her posture was confident. She looked more and more relaxed with every minute.

Maybe it’s just her family that makes her nervy.

It would be a long time before he forgot her terror at the sight of the narrow staircase leading to the main deck. It would be even longer before he forgot the feel of her in his arms. The embrace had been meant to be soothing, but he was a man, after all. He had felt the woman heat as fear receded.

He wanted to feel it again.

Soon.

You’re rushing your fences,
he advised his body.

His body didn’t listen.

I’m a man, not a randy boy.

His body didn’t listen to that bit of reason, either.

Holden was relieved when the rental’s dock came into view. The sun was close to the horizon, setting sky and water afire, making the dock leap out like a welcoming hand. The engines dropped to a conversational hum as Kate slowed for docking.

Though the tides weren’t as pronounced in the tropics as they were in the North Sea, they did exist. But tidal swings weren’t the reason many seashore buildings sat on stilts. It was the storms that shifted huge masses of water, making and remaking the sea bottom in a few hours, rearranging beaches and shorelines in their paths.

“Amazing that the rental hasn’t washed away,” Holden said.

“It’s on the leeward side of the island, protected from the worst of the storm surges,” Kate said, coasting into the dock. “If the storm you’re so worried about materializes, we might get wet but we won’t be swimming.”

While she tied off, he grabbed his duffels and stepped lightly onto the dock. As always since the mishap, his thigh protested. As always, he ignored it. Some of his team would have been happy to be as lightly injured as he had been.

“I’m not worried about the storm,” he said as she joined him. “My boss is.”

“Has anyone ever thought that the whole supposed treasure was dreamed up by a long-ago bookkeeper to cover up losses or even theft?” she asked.

“I have. It was not a well-received observation.” As he spoke, he reminded himself of the considerable intelligence behind her wide turquoise eyes. He could have ignored the curvy body, but he had always been drawn to smart women.

Kate didn’t notice his assessing stare. With every step she took away from the water, she felt her nerves uncurling.

“The idea of bean counters getting treasure fever would be funny if it wasn’t for my family’s business,” she said.

“Oh, we bean counters have our romantic moments.”

This time she laughed.

“You don’t believe me?” he asked, pretending to be wounded.

“Holden, you aren’t a bean counter and we both know it.”

The undecided breezes of the doldrums riffled over him like a lover’s fingers. “You seem quite certain.”

“Am I wrong?” she said, turning to face him as they approached the house’s sagging porch.

“What gave me away?”

“Your eyes were the first clue. Your fitness was another.”

“I limp when I’m tired,” he said before he could think better of it.

“Your point? I’ve seen men in wheelchairs who were incredibly fit.”

“Another point to the lovely lady,” he said. “As for the rest, the eyes came to me at birth, no work required. They’re quite common in some areas of the world, crossroads of civilizations as it were. My eyes are a case of Pashtuns meeting soldiers of the British Empire in what we now call India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. More recently, I have an Irish grandmother and an ex-pat American mother. The men in my family have a real weakness for redheads.”

“And a lot of redheads have a weakness for tall, dark, and different.” She put her shoulder into opening the front door. Humidity and wood made for sticky doors. “Your English is excellent.”

“London boarding schools will do that to a man,” he said, sliding his sunglasses up on his head. He had never understood the trendy affectation of wearing unneeded sunglasses on the back of the neck, where they invariably got sweaty.

“You must have a good ear for accents,” she said. “Sometimes there is a difference to your inflections and word choices that is almost American.”

“Caught again,” Holden said. “I was raised in a very mixed household, linguistically speaking. As I said, my mother is American; my father’s childhood was divided between his father’s clan and his own preference for life in Wales. Unless I guard myself carefully—and really, why would I—I have quite a few accents and word choices.”

“I hope one of your languages is cooking.”

He gave her a sideways look. “It won’t be fancy.”

“I’ll settle for edible.”

“You don’t cook?”

“All the time. And then I clean up, all the time. I’ll take half of the chores, thanks. A love of housework does not come down in the female genes.”

He laughed. “Fair enough.”

She stared. His laughter was beautiful, rich and full and warm, and his dragon eyes gleamed in the twilight inside the house.

“You’ve got to stop doing that,” she said.

“What?”

“Being human. It makes your robot turns all the more unsettling.”

She flipped on a light, pushing away the dangerous feeling of intimacy that the hushed twilight gave.

H
OLDEN LOOKED AROUND
at the accommodations. Nothing had changed. Spartan was the first word that came to mind, followed by shabby. But it was as clean as anything ever was in the tropics, where the greenery and insects fought humans for every bit of space.

“Cozy,” he said.

“That’s a word I hadn’t thought of,” Kate said. “My reactions were more along the lines of wonder that the whole thing is still standing.”

“The fake wood paneling is particularly tasteful, don’t you think? The contrast with the broken louvered windows is quite witty.”

His deadpan delivery sent amusement fizzing through her. Added to her relief at being on land again, the result was almost dizzying.