The Cursed

by Heather Graham

  Hannah opened her mouth to argue and then didn’t. He made her crazy, coming on like a general and then softening to make his commands sound like requests.

  “If you’re going to blame Hannah, you have to blame me, too. I figured that, on top of everything else, there was no reason to send the woman to the poorhouse,” Kelsey said.

  “And don’t forget, it’s because of Valeriya, I found the key—for whatever it may be worth,” Hannah said.

  “The key...yes, let’s see it,” Dallas said.

  Hannah drew the key from her pocket. “It looks really old,” she said as she handed it over.

  Dallas took it from her and lifted it up to the light. Hannah studied it from that new angle and drew a sharp breath.

  “What?” Dallas asked.

  “The insignia on the end—I know what it is,” she said excitedly.

  “What?”

  “It’s the coat of arms of Duke Ricardo Montoya de la Geraldo.”

  “Who?” Kelsey asked.

  “Kelsey, come on! You know the legend. Geraldo, as he was called, was the Spanish nobleman who sailed the Santa Elinora. The ship whose treasure started this whole mess,” Hannah said.

  Dallas studied her. “So,” he said softly, “that could mean the treasure really is here.”

  Hannah shook her head. “No, the treasure is not in the house. I mean, feel free to look, but workmen have been in here too many times to count over the years. There is no basement, just a foundation that reaches down into the coral. You can’t dig a basement here, because it gets watery as soon as you go down too far, trust me. And we used to play in the attic, so I know there are no secret walls or anything. The missing chest is not in this house.”

  “But this might well be the key to it,” Dallas said.

  “It could be the key, but would anyone—especially a man like the Wolf—risk so much and kill two people just to find a key when all he’d have to do is break open an old chest to get to the treasure?”

  “We’re back to perception,” Dallas said. “The chest may not be here, though I’m not a hundred percent certain of that. But maybe some clue to finding the chest is here, along with the key.”

  “I’m telling you, this place has been lived in continuously since it was built. It’s been repaired, painted, explored, you name it.”

  “What was in the chest?” Dallas asked.

  “As far as I know, no one’s really sure. They say gold from South America, and jewels,” Hannah said. “If there was ever a full inventory, I don’t know about it. And I live with ghosts who were around before the treasure was lost, and even they don’t know more than that.”

  “There’s got to be someone who knows something,” Dallas said.

  “Archives. We could dig around in the city archives, but I think Hannah’s right. If anyone knew, there would be stories about it,” Kelsey said.

  Dallas fingered the key. “Still, keep thinking. The Wolf has to know—or think he knows—something. Something that makes him certain the treasure is hidden here, in this house.” He hesitated. “I’ll keep the key with me—if I may.”

  Hannah lifted her hands in surrender. “Sure. Why?”

  He laughed. “Because no one will expect me to have anything on me. I’m an outsider here, even though I’m from here. Go figure. I need to head down to the station and then the wharf, but I’ll be back in plenty of time for the ghost tour. Logan will be back by eight, and Liam and a few plainclothes officers will join us, as well. I’m afraid you’ll have to forget that sixteen-person limit for tonight.”

  “Are you hoping something happens?” Hannah asked.

  She met his eyes and realized she shouldn’t have been surprised by the flash of heat that filled her. She almost blushed. He was all business right now, and all she could think about was last night.

  “So we just stay here until the ghost tour?” she asked.

  “Yes, but I’ll be back long before that. See if you can think of anything—anything at all—that might connect the key to something in this house, some kind of clue. It could be something hidden in plain sight. Maybe Melody or Hagen could help,” Dallas said. “The Wolf may be afraid of the curse, but I’m assuming you’re not.”

  “You heard Hagen. He was the one who cursed the treasure, and he says the idea of a curse is bunk to begin with,” Hannah said

  “A curse is bunk—unless, once again, you’re talking perception rather than reality. The Wolf wants the treasure, but he does believe in the curse, so he doesn’t want to risk finding the treasure himself. If we could find it for him, well...we might be able to trap him,” Dallas said. “Meanwhile, I’m going to show that sketch around and see what I find out, so yes, you two need to stay here.”

  “We can prowl around in the attic,” Kelsey offered.

  “We can prowl, but...” Hannah said.

  “You never thought you’d find a key, did you?” Dallas asked.

  Hannah shrugged. “No.”

  “Just remember, no one else in the house,” Dallas said.

  “Right,” Kelsey said.

  “All right,” Hannah agreed after a moment, realizing that they were waiting for her to agree.

  Then Dallas left, reminding her again to lock the door after him.

  * * *

  Machete watched the house, grateful for something, anything, to keep him from thinking about the trouble with his mind, something he hadn’t expected.

  Because he could still see her.

  Yerby Catalano. He could see the trust in her eyes as he lured her away to kill her.

  It was strange. He had shot a crooked cop out of Mexico and he hadn’t blinked. He’d stabbed an art dealer in Florida City without a pang—but, then, he’d seen the bastard trying to seduce the thirteen-year-old daughter of a client just moments before. The man had been a pedophile. Not that he thought it was his role in life to judge.

  He’d been told to kill, so he had.

  But the woman...the first—and, God willing, the last—woman he’d ever killed...

  Yerby Catalano. Her name, like the look she had given him, seemed tattooed on the walls of his brain.

  So now he just kept watching the house.

  He’d been watching it all day. He’d watched the patrol car come, and he’d watched the FBI agents leave. He’d watched the officer sitting in his car. The man had been vigilant at first. Then he’d started playing with his cell phone, and then he’d put on his sunglasses and leaned back.

  Probably dozed off for a bit.

  He’d seen the pretty Russian woman—Valeriya Dimitri—come, and he’d been somewhat surprised when they’d let her in. He thought about lying and not saying she’d been there, should the Wolf ask. And of course the Wolf would ask. But would he know it was a lie? How many people could he have watching?

  Did he have someone else watching him watch the house?

  Machete was watching when Valeriya left with the FBI agent. They weren’t taking any chances, it seemed.

  But, like the Wolf, just how many people could they watch around the clock?

  His phone began to ring. He looked at it with dread.

  Dear God, don’t tell me to kill her, don’t tell me to kill her, please....

  He realized he was praying.

  He hadn’t even known he remembered how.

  13

  Dallas had high hopes for the sketch Lottie and the police artist were working on.

  He was sadly disappointed when he finally saw it.

  He knew that she had tried, and he was grateful to her. But when he saw the sketch he knew it would do him no more good than a verbal description. Of course, he couldn’t blame her or the artist. All she had to go on was a man in a wet suit and goggles. The entire lower half of his face had been
covered by his regulator. He supposed he should be grateful she’d seen enough to know the man’s eyes were blue.

  He tried not to show her his disappointment when he thanked her.

  And he tried not to be upset that, despite Martin Garcia’s having given them the real names of the other three men who’d been with him the night Jose was killed, the cops had yet to find any of them. None of them had been at home or in any of the most likely bars and clubs. None of them had wives or roommates who could give them any leads to the whereabouts of the men. The police were still looking, but so far they had nothing.

  But at least, thanks to the DMV, they had pictures of who they were looking for. When he left the police station he had images on his phone of all three.

  He thought of the cases he had worked that had taken weeks—even months—to solve. That was often how it went. Following every possible lead and finding that, still, all you did was watch and wait.

  The problem was, he just didn’t feel that they had weeks, much less months, to solve this case.

  Part of him wished that he, rather than Logan, had been the one to go to Miami to check into Jose’s sister, but the truth was that he didn’t want to be away from the Siren of the Sea any longer than he had to be.

  Who was he kidding? He didn’t want to be away from the property’s owner. Hannah O’Brien.

  What the hell were you thinking? he demanded of himself.

  She’d wanted him to stay. They’d both felt the attraction. On some level he’d been feeling it from the first time he’d seen her. That was life. Sometimes you were just attracted to someone, right or wrong.

  But now he cared about her. Too much. It was a mistake to care that way. It was a mistake to get too close. A massive mistake in the middle of a case that she was inextricably a part of.

  Heading to the wharf to speak with the local dive captains, he muttered aloud to himself in disgust, “And it’s a mistake you’re going to make again, given half a chance, right?”

  Yes. The answer was yes.

  He could argue all he wanted that she was actually safer if he was right next to her.

  It was still wrong.

  Or was it wrong only because he felt as if he’d caused the death of his best-friend-with-benefits?

  He hadn’t caused it. He knew he hadn’t.

  And he also knew there was no way in hell he could let himself cause Hannah’s death.

  There was no way in hell he would let her die. Period.

  The problem was, being emotional could cause a man to make real mistakes—serious mistakes. Life-or-death mistakes.

  He pushed his thoughts to the back of his mind as he reached the wharf. He parked illegally—it was hell finding parking anywhere on the island—but he had official decals on his car, so he wasn’t going to come back and find a ticket on his windshield.

  Walking out along the wharf, he found the Sea Serpent, the dive boat Yerby had gone out on—unknowingly heading to her death.

  He knew he stood out among everyone else on the wharf in his tailored shirt and a casual beige jacket. At least he wasn’t in a typical G-man black suit. Still, among the swim trunks and T-shirts and colorful Hawaiian shirts, he might as well have worn a sign that identified him as agent of the law.

  The captain of the Sea Serpent—George Howard, according to his notes—was setting up his tanks for the afternoon dive when he looked up and saw Dallas. There was something so depressed in his expression, Dallas felt sorry for the man.

  “Hey,” he said drearily. “You’re looking for me, I guess. I’m Captain Howard. George. I gave a statement several times. The cops investigated me, my crew, the equipment, the boat—if it can be investigated, it was. We did everything by the book. They said I was cleared, but...

  “My divemaster’s been at this almost twenty years. I can’t believe she disappeared on us—or that we couldn’t find her in time. We do counts every five to ten minutes to make sure all our divers are with us. I tell people all the time not to go into that wreck. We can make people get certified to dive, but there’s no paperwork that prevents them from being stupid.”

  “That’s true. And Miss Catalano’s spirit of adventure took her where she shouldn’t have gone,” Dallas said, and introduced himself. “I’m just trying to make sure I have all my information straight, and I also want to ask you about a man you might have seen.”

  Howard, a man of about fifty with salt-and-pepper hair beneath his captain’s hat, frowned at that. “The story...cut-and-dried. We had an odd number of divers. The Brennan couple were real nice. They’d been chatty with Miss Catalano while we headed out. I don’t let anyone go down without being partnered up in one way or another, just like I don’t let anyone down if they don’t have their certification on them. Anyway, as soon as the Brennans came up, they raised the alarm. I didn’t even have to do a count. First thing we did was search around the ship. When we found out she was in there... God, we were just sick.”

  “It wouldn’t have changed anything if you’d found her.”

  Howard looked more closely at Dallas. “Hell, you’re the guy who found her.”

  Dallas nodded. “I’m trying to find out about a man, someone Lottie and Don Brennan saw. Lottie remembered him making a point of joining the group when he wasn’t actually part of it.”

  “Lots of dive boats out there at that time. It was a—”

  “Beautiful day, yeah, I know,” Dallas said. “But I need to know if you recognize this guy.”

  He produced the drawing the police artist had made based on Lottie’s description.

  Howard looked at him disbelievingly. He didn’t say it aloud, but clearly the man was thinking, Huh? From that?

  “I didn’t see him. But let me ask Clancy, my divemaster.” He turned around and shouted, “Hey! Clancy!”

  Clancy was about forty, fit and bronzed to the color of coffee from years in the sun. He recognized Dallas, too. “Hey. You’re the Fed who found Miss Catalano. Man, I’d give my eyeteeth to go back—hell, I’d give my life to go back. I’ve never lost a diver before. Ever.”

  “Agent Samson wants to know if you saw this man,” Captain Howard told him, handing over the sketch.

  Clancy stared at it and then at Dallas. “Yeah. Yeah, I think I saw him down there. I figured he was off one of the other boats. Some of the divemasters give instructions and hang out but don’t really lead the dive. The divers can go where they want on the reef. We’re a really tight operation, especially compared to some of those guys. But, yeah, I’m pretty sure I saw him hanging around our group. Right near the ship.”

  “Thanks,” Dallas told the two men. “Do you remember which other dive boats were out at the same time you were?”

  Clancy pointed down the docks. “All five. Captains, divemasters, crew—we’re all pretty friendly around here. We have to be. If one of us ends up overbooked, the others pick up whatever we can’t handle. Sunset Dream, Magic, Aqua, Matty May and Twilight—all of them were anchored near us.”

  “Any other boats—boats you didn’t know?” Dallas asked them.

  Both men looked thoughtful, but it was Captain Howard who answered. “Actually, yes, but not that close to us. Two private boats. I don’t know if the cops spoke to their captains or whoever else was aboard. One was just a fishing boat, but the other was a really nice vessel. It was a Sea-Doo, I think. Maybe a Donzi. I don’t remember, really. Not a dive boat either, really, more a pleasure craft. But, where to find them or who owns them, I don’t know. Oh! I think the fishing boat’s name ended in ‘sun.’”

  Dallas nodded. He knew how hard they were trying to help. Unfortunately, the word sun was in the name of lots of boats down in the Keys.

  He thanked them both. For the next hour, he went along the docks, speaking with captains, crews and divemasters. Everyone was devastated by what ha
d happened and wanted to help, but no one actually knew anything.

  At the end of the last dock he hit a crusty divemaster named Jimmy Jones who told him, “Man, am I sorry for those people. We lost a man once. I was working out of Key Largo then. We were at the Spiegel Grove dive site and some old fellow who shouldn’t have been diving—had a pacemaker he didn’t tell us anything about—wound up panicking and coming up with the bends. By the time we got him in and to a hyperbaric chamber, well, it was too late. I know what Cap Howard and Clancy are going through. You can do all the right things, but if someone goes off where they shouldn’t be...”

  “I’m not here to blame Captain Howard or Clancy,” Dallas assured him. He produced the sketch and asked, “Did you see this guy out there yesterday?”

  “Yeah, I remember that guy. He was down there. I just saw him kind of peripherally, you know?” Jones said. “I remember wondering why he was all covered up like that. In the heat we’ve been having? Crazy. But I had twenty divers down with me. I didn’t have time to waste thinking about him.”

  “What about other boats in the area?” Dallas asked.

  “Yeah, there were a few. But, you know, there are always a lot of boats out. Especially on a beautiful day.”

  Dallas sighed. If there was anything he knew really well by now, it was that Yerby Catalano had died on a beautiful day. “Right. But do you remember anything about any of them?”

  Jones was thoughtful. “There were other dive boats, of course. And a few other boats that came and went. A couple of fishing boats. A speedboat. Now that I think about it, that was kind of odd. Speedboats don’t usually just sit out there.”

  “What kind of a speedboat?” Dallas asked.

  “Donzi, I think.”

  “What about the fishing boats? Did you notice a name? Did you see a boat with the word sun in the name?”

  “Yeah, come to think of it. Something like...no, wait. It wasn’t sun. It was sin. Something sin. Like Evening Sin or something like that.”

  “You’re sure? Sin, not sun?”

  “I’m absolutely sure.”

  Dallas thanked him and called Liam, giving him all the information he had so far. They needed everyone out there—cops and Coast Guard—looking for those boats.