by Karen Harper
Mark pulled Bree to her feet. When she balked, he dragged her through the back room, out the door and down the dock toward her boat slip. Nikki followed, carrying the large net and the key to the boat. Bree had finally put Mermaids I in the dock space where the larger, newer boat used to be, the one that had become Daria’s coffin. She was the last mermaid left, and Mermaids I would be the hearse that took her to her grave.
“Say goodbye to Nikki, because she’s not coming,” Mark told her, shoving her into the boat on her belly. She saw he was going to pull the dinghy behind them so he could get back in after staging her suicide. “She’s going to campaign headquarters to lie down with a raging headache, while I get rid of its cause for her. A few volunteers are working late tonight, so they’ll be a good alibi. I’ll walk over there later, and everyone will assume I was with the car the whole time.”
Bree was barely listening. She was near enough to see the knife, but she’d never reach it with her hands tied behind her back. Why didn’t someone come along the dock? Nikki kissed Mark passionately—“for good luck,” she whispered—and hurried away.
Everything they did went off like clockwork. Clockwork, like the timed bomb they must have put on the hull of the Fun ’n’ Sun, where no one would see it.
Cole covered the trembling, naked girl with his suit jacket and carefully pulled the masking tape off her mouth. Despite all that, she spread her legs for him and he had to shove them together. He whispered to her in Spanish that he was here to help her.
Tears filled her eyes. “Cuidado! Cuidado!” Careful, she kept whispering.
She was afraid to say anything at first, evidently thinking he was another of Verdugo’s guys who had access to her. Finally, he coaxed out of her that she was from Guatemala, where he knew most of the women involved in the human trafficking trade had been taken from their homes or sold by their destitute families. She’d been promised a job as a waitress in a Miami casino, but Señor Verdugo, he bring her here for his boys.
It was enough to make Cole throw up, but at least it proved he’d been right about Verdugo. Sam might be behind everything else, but Verdugo was dirty, too. He’d get years, not on a luxury yacht but in the state pen, for this.
Cole explained in Spanish that there were some important people on board who could help, but he would have to leave her here for now.
“No, señor! No, por favor!”
Thank God, no one was in the hall, because he could kill Verdugo and his men with his bare hands for this. Wait until he told Bree he’d found a way to stop Verdugo and it had nothing to do with gambling.
Wearing gloves, just as Nikki had, Mark took Mermaids I out of Turtle Bay toward open water. As she lay facedown in the boat, Bree felt the vibration of the motor, the rush of water against the hull as they cut through the bay.
Back to the place where this horror began, she thought. The Trade Wreck, where Daria’s and her life was wrecked. If he’d just untie her and throw her in, she could swim in again. Piece of cake—no storm, maybe no sharks. But she knew, with the way he and Nikki had set everything else up, he would not just toss her into the water.
And then, as she saw the handle of a large, long-handled retrieval net he’d brought, she realized his possible plan. Maybe he meant to keep her underwater with that net until she drowned. Could she hold her breath long enough to convince him she was dead? If he untied her hands before he threw her in, could she yank him in or swim down and away from him? Did he have the gun or had Nikki taken it? If only she could get control of the boat, could she make it out to the casino yacht in time to tell everyone to get off? How much time was left? It had to be less than half the sixty minutes Nikki had mentioned.
Too soon, they reached the site of the Trade Wreck. Mark cut the motor and let the boat drift.
“Sorry about this, really,” he said as he hauled her to her knees. “If you had just let things go, not played detective after your sister was dead, this never would have happened. You should have taken the warning at the Gator Watering Hole, but we couldn’t have you running around knowing what Josh did, because that could point to Nikki in Daria’s death. Soon, everyone will point to her as the next senator from Florida, then on to the stars.”
Bree looked up at the stars through her tears. So beautiful but cold and distant. He finally pulled the gag out of her mouth. Her throat was so dry she could hardly talk.
“If she turned on him—she’ll turn on you,” she rasped. “In D.C., a stunning and ambitious woman like that, she’ll meet someone who can help her move up more than you. Her father won’t want her to marry a mere—”
“No,” he interrupted and gave her a shake. “Everything we’ve done together bonds us for good.”
“She got someone to get rid of him, didn’t she? She’ll get—”
“Just shut up. That’s it.”
He was going to use the net to hold her down, and he did not untie his shirt from her wrists. He planned to take it back later, when he was sure she was dead. Could she twist out of the shirt in the water? Could she get free from the net to swim down instead of trying to come up for precious air?
The boat rocked as Mark half picked her up, half rolled her in. She hit backside down and fought to right herself so she could dive, but he put the big net over her. It was a strong-webbed one, meant to bring up large, heavy items. He yanked it down over her and twisted it to entrap her so she couldn’t dive or escape.
Then, he shoved her underwater and held her there.
“Amelia, are you all right?” someone asked. She jolted back to reality and jerked away from the rail. It was Cole DeRoca. He looked upset.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine, any more than I do. Would you do me a favor and get Ben out here without drawing attention to it? I have something I have to tell him.”
“Sure,” she said, and started away, then gripped the railing because she felt unsteady. “Is it—not something about Bree?”
“No. Hurry, would you?”
She was back with Ben in less than a minute.
“I was checking a storage room downstairs,” Cole told them, “and stumbled on a young woman tied up there. She’s been abused, she’s naked and she’s terrified. Says she’s from Guatemala and Verdugo’s keeping her here for his guards—for the whole damn crew to rape, for all I know.”
“Got him!” Ben said, smacking his palms together. “I don’t care what kind of lawyers he pays for, I’ll get him at least ten years for harboring a sex slave. And we get rid of the casino boat at the same time. Bingo!”
“But so we don’t have a knock-down drag-out fight when they realize we’ve found her,” Cole said, “we’ll have to leave her there until we get back to the dock or get the coast guard out here.”
“You can’t leave her there for one more second!” Amelia cried. Both men had obviously forgotten she was here. But how dare Verdugo or anyone else treat a poor girl like that!
“…so let’s come up with a story,” Cole went on, “that someone’s ill, and Verdugo needs to head back in early.”
“I can do that,” Amelia told them. “I’ll claim an appendix attack, but I’d like to help that girl afterward. Yes, Ben,” she interrupted as he started to speak again, “I know she’ll be handed over to the authorities, but someone’s got to be her advocate. You’ll be busy with media interviews galore when all this hits. Cole,” she added, patting him on the shoulder, “you’ve saved another woman from destruction. Wait until Bree hears this. That young woman must be traumatized, maybe suicidal, and I know I can help her.”
Bree fought. Grabbing the metal frame of the net with both hands tied behind her, she tried to yank him in. Is this how a netted fish felt, pulled from the realm of the sea where it could breathe only drowning air? Daria, is this how you felt in the wheelhouse when our boat went down?
Cole. She’d wanted to have a life with Cole. She wanted to build bridges with Amelia, teach the boys to dive.
Should she not struggle, save air? Jus
t accept this? Needed a breath, save air…save herself.
Strange colors pulsated before her eyes, blues and greens, bright gold. Like a lovely underwater dive. Like the sun in the sky with the sea beckoning beyond…
Going to suck in seawater now…going to die…just hold Daria’s hand and sink into the soft earth under all the sea grass with her…Cole, smiling, sailing away with Cole…The bright colors in Bree’s brain were fading, fading to gray and black. She had been certain she could fight death below the surface. The sea was her friend, but it had taken Daria, and now…now…
With a whoosh, someone pulled her up. Her head broke the surface. She sucked in a huge breath of air.
Had Mark changed his mind? Was she hallucinating? Was she dead?
Bree blinked water from her eyes, took another deep breath into her burning lungs. Not Mark, but Sam Travers. He hauled her over the side of his dive boat, scraping her belly, but she didn’t care. If Satan himself had saved her, that was just fine.
Bree lay on her back, gasping in blessed breaths as Sam unwound her from the sopping net.
“Where—you—come—from?” she got out.
“I wanted a quiet boat ride, and I saw the bastard take your boat. Thought he was stealing it, so I followed him. When I figured out he had you in that net, I yelled at him. The SOB took a shot at me, so I shot him with a speargun someone stupidly left loaded here in my boat.”
Perfect justice, she thought. Her head cleared in a flash as she sat up and saw Mark Denton’s body, sprawled against the prow of Mermaids I with a spear in his chest.
“I should have let him drown you, of course,” Sam went on as she was finally freed. “Here I come back to help Josh Austin with your cause and find out I’ve been served with a search warrant. If you had anything to do with th—”
“Sam, I know we’ve had terrible times, but you have to help me,” she said, getting to her knees and then her feet. She was dizzy, but she scanned the horizon beyond the Trade Wreck site. Thank God, Verdugo’s big yacht was heading in, not out.
“What time is it?” she asked.
“What?”
“Time! I can’t explain now but to say the guy you just shot has planted some kind of bomb—the same kind that blew a hole in Daria’s boat—aboard that ship. He got the supplies from Ric.”
Sam swore only once, then seemed to go into combat mode. “It’s nine twenty-three,” he told her, glaring at the luminous dial on his watch.
“Then we have twelve minutes to get the explosive off the hull.”
“Twelve minutes? They put a timer on it? Even at full speed, they won’t make it in. And I’ll never get a diver, let alone the bomb squad, out here by then.”
“Sam, I’m the diver and you’re the bomb squad,” she said, grabbing one of the two tanks she saw on board and seizing a mask someone had left near the speargun. She spit in it and started wiping off the plastic to clear it. “And we have to catch that boat while you tell me how to get rid of a demolition cap with a primer cord, like you use to blow up bridges.”
“It’s Primacord,” he said. “Just pray we catch that yacht.” He started his motor, leaving Mermaids I with the dinghy Mark had planned for his escape in their wake.
“I’ll bet you had assignments harder than this in Vietnam!” she shouted. “And I’ll bet Ted did in Iraq, too! No matter what you think, Sam, I was proud of him and what he did there.”
Their eyes met. She thought she might have made a mistake mentioning Ted, but Sam nodded fiercely and revved the motor on full speed. “Wish I could have gone after Ted’s killers the way you did Daria’s!” he shouted.
Fighting tears, Bree nodded and braced herself in the bouncing boat, struggling into the unfamiliar gear and checking the gauge on the tank. Not much air in the tank. “Lights?” she yelled at Sam. “Do you have dive lights?”
“Portside storage under the seat!”
Bree knew she was exhausted and yet energy poured through her, as it had the day she swam through the storm. Sam had taken an angle where they were closing on the boat, but surely two more minutes must have gone by. Why was the yacht coming in earlier than expected? Could they have learned about the bomb?
She tried to concentrate as Sam shouted instructions to her.
“If it is one of my detonator caps—”
“It is!”
“It’s actually a form of TNT. It’s stable, relatively insensitive to shock, so don’t be afraid to pry it off. But do not jimmy the Primacord if it’s visible. It will be stuck on the hull by what looks like kid’s clay, in a bright color, maybe blue or red. It will have metal end caps and one end will be threaded for insertion of the detonator. For a boat as big as that, they may have used a booster of tetryl.”
“At least that’s a fairly new boat. It can’t have a lot of barnacles yet to obscure the cap. I’m going to look near the hull, since that’s where they blew up Mermaids II.”
“Who did?”
“Later. Look! Someone’s outside on the deck!” She saw two men, one as tall as Cole. Yes, it was Cole!
Sam buzzed the port side, blowing an air horn she hadn’t seen. Bree was screaming but it drowned her out.
Cole saw them. He leaned out. Josh was outside, too. Poor Josh—poor everyone, in about seven minutes.
“Stop the vessel!” Sam was commanding through a bullhorn. “Bomb aboard! Bomb!”
Josh disappeared. It seemed to take forever, and the big waves from the yacht kept pushing them away, but the yacht finally stopped dead in the water.
Dead in the water, Bree thought, as Sam took them closer, under the higher deck of the larger vessel.
“Bomb?” Cole shouted down. “Has Sam changed his mind and told you—”
“He’s here to help!” Bree shouted up to him.
Sam reversed their direction and motored them back closer toward the stern. Cole ran along the railing to stay over them. Bree had so much to say to him, but it would have to wait.
“Not much time,” she told Sam as she fitted her mask and stood up to jump in. “Get as far away as you can, just in case.”
“No, I’m backing you up. Just get it off and drop it into the depths, because there’s no time to defuse it. You’ll do fine.”
The entire world had gone mad. Sam Travers was backing her up and telling her she’d do fine and she believed him. Sam had given her her life back once already. At least that was one good thing to come from this terror.
“Get all the deck lights on!” Sam was yelling through the megaphone to Cole and Josh. “Get everyone up on the decks or front of the ship! And don’t let anyone jump off.”
The last things she heard as she descended into the water were, “Bree, be careful!” from Cole and Sam bellowing, “Tell everyone to brace themselves and call the coast guard, just in case…”
Bubbles and her lights gave her vertigo at first, but she righted herself. The sea around her lit up. They must have turned on more deck lights. How far under the surface would Mark have put the bomb?
Her dive light skimmed the newly painted dark blue hull, up and down. It was so shiny she could glimpse a muted reflection of herself, as if Daria dove with her.
How much time left? No one usually knew how much time was left in their lives. Daria had not known, Mark either.
Nothing here at this level. Try the starboard side, the one that would have been toward the dock. Yes, the dock would have sheltered Mark when he planted it.
Time ticking away. At Daria’s funeral, the words, So teach us to number our days that we might have a heart of wisdom…
Everyone’s days were numbered. How many would die here if she didn’t find the bomb?
Then, there it was. Two small, circular metal things, close together and stuck firmly to the hull. No cord was visible but it had to be here. With her dive knife, she pried the red adhesive off, not touching the detonator or the booster or whatever she was looking at. She’d seen movies where people had to cut the correct colored wires to stop a tim
er, but this seemed so primitive, so simple.
Yes, one was loose. Despite how cool the water felt, sweat was stinging her eyes within her mask and it was fogging up. Time must be gone. It was going to go off with her right on top of it, but she had to try. Try to save Amelia and Ben so their boys would not be orphans. Save Cole, even Verdugo. Josh, though, when everything came to light, might wish he was dead.
When she got the second metal piece off the hull, Bree let go of her dive knife rather than resheafing it. Then she dropped her dive light so it wouldn’t hold her back or bump the pieces. She was trembling so hard she might set them off herself.
She jackknifed and upended, taking the pieces, one in each hand, kicking down, down.
Then she let them go—somehow letting all her fear go, too—and kicked and clawed madly for the surface.
She saw the lights above her and was almost to the surface when a muted boom and a fist of water thrust her upward. The sea roiled, and she thought she was back again at the day this all began, fighting to make it to shore.
Her ears hurt. Then hard hands grabbed her and Sam hauled her up and over the side of his boat as Cole jumped, feetfirst, into the water and clambered on board, too.
Dizzy but delirious with relief and joy, Bree stripped off her mask, while Sam unstrapped her tank. Holding tightly to each other, Cole and Bree sprawled, soaking wet on the floor of Sam’s boat, while Sam patted her on the back, saying, “You all right? You all right?”
Despite the fact that she kept shaking, Cole’s embrace was rock steady. She was definitely more than just all right.
25
Two months later
Bree dived cleanly into the swimming pool on the patio of their new house. Cole knifed in behind her. Though she knew the chlorine in the water would make her eyes burn, she opened them anyway and reveled in the sight of him swimming with powerful strokes beside her, his hair rippling.
They had been married for three weeks but had been back only a few days from a trip to the Cayman Islands. Cole reached out and pulled her against him as they surfaced, rocking the water against the tiles. The pool was a small one, the villa just two bedrooms, but they had their businesses to build and they were insanely happy. Bree and Manny were running Mermaids, and Cole was transitioning out of rare wood paneling to building sloops and teaching others how to build them, too.
