by MJ Fredrick
The alarm on her watch sounded. Two minutes. Damn it. She forced herself to keep steady. Whatever was under the sand would be fragile. She couldn’t let the time pressure or her excitement rush her. Just a glimpse was all she wanted for today.
Adrian swam by on his way to the line, carrying tools to send to the surface. He stopped to motion her along, so she waved him over and pointed at the sand beneath them.
She didn’t have to tell him what she was looking for; the fact that she was looking was enough. He tapped his watch and sent her a warning look before he went to work beside her.
There. A glint, something under the sand. She dropped her brush and began digging with her hands around the edges of the metal to uncover it, knowing she needed to surface, but needing to see this first. Adrian must have sensed her desperation and worked hurriedly too. Toney and Jacob swam over to remind them it was time to surface, but seeing Mallory’s focus convinced them to join in.
More of the metal came to light. It was huge, and as they uncovered it, Mallory could see the carvings, the sinew of a lion’s neck, the point of a tooth in an open mouth, the wave of a mane.
Again, her watch alarm sounded. They were overdue on their ascent. They had to go now or risk their health. Mallory held up a finger when Jacob tried to pull her away. One thing she wanted to see before she returned tomorrow. She followed the sand up, gauging the scale with her eyes, and swept away sand.
There it was. The lion’s eye, in glinting stone. The stone was difficult to identify in this light, but it was intact. She gave Adrian a triumphant look, before she helped him cover the find with the heavy rubber tarp.
Elation rose in her chest. She spiraled up through the water as they ascended to the first decompression stop. She couldn’t bear the wait, wanted to rip her regulator out and scream her joy to the whole crew. She wished she could dance and sing and laugh. The last thing she needed to do was dangle on a rope above the site, unable to do more work on it for hours.
She looked at Adrian hanging across from her and saw the glow of righteousness behind his mask tempering his own excitement.
When Adrian surfaced, he could tell by the vibrations coming off Toney and Jacob that they hadn’t revealed the find below. Good. Mallory had found it. She’d earned the right to make the announcement. Adrian turned to help her out of the water and she ripped off her mask with a squeal.
“God, can you believe it? It’s perfect!”
Adrian swung her into his arms, absorbing her joy to balance out the relief thrumming through him. She looked up, her eyes bright, her smile brilliant, staggering him more than the find below them. Not one ounce of wariness shadowed her eyes, so he didn’t hesitate. He dropped his mouth to hers.
He tasted the salt on her skin, the slight chemical taste of the Heliox, and her taste, hot and familiar.
Just as he felt she was about to soften against him, he became aware of the sudden silence around them. He released Mallory and stepped away.
She didn’t take her eyes from him and looked a little off balance as she raised the back of her hand to her nose and pulled it away clean. No nose bleed.
“Well, what is it?” Dr. Vigil demanded, breaking the silence. “What did you find?”
Mallory hadn’t looked away from Adrian. He nodded to signal her to go on.
“You did it, Adrian,” she said, her voice husky. He’d like to think the kiss had something to do with that and with the dark shine in her eyes. “This is it. It’s the one.”
“But you found it. Tell them.”
A smile spread across her face as she turned to the professor. “We located the figurehead. We didn’t get to uncover it all, but it looks to be intact.”
Adrian shifted his attention to his mentor in time to watch him pale, then turn bright red with joy. Now he embraced Mallory, released her to embrace Adrian, before he hugged them both together, blubbering something about being glad they were both here for this.
Adrian wouldn’t have wanted to share this with anyone else.
The party on the beach that night would have been wilder if Adrian had let his divers drink some of the champagne Dr. Vigil broke out. But drinking increased the risk of the bends, so Adrian insisted they abstain. He wanted to uncover the rest of the figurehead tomorrow, photograph it and perhaps bring it up the following day.
He’d have something tangible to show for his sacrifice.
The celebration was getting to be a bit much. Besides, he needed to go write all this down for his book. That responsibility wasn’t something he wanted to think about, but always hung in the back of his mind. He’d written magazine articles throughout his career, but writing a book was overwhelming.
He’d barely set out his notebook when Mallory pushed her way into his tent without preamble, a plastic cup of diet soda in her hand. “It seems a real shame that you can’t have a little drink to celebrate.”
He didn’t have the energy to try to figure out why she’d followed him. “I want to get that figurehead out of the water more than I want a glass of champagne. There’ll be plenty of time for that later.”
She acknowledged the fact silently and sat across from him, again uninvited. She had an agenda. He didn’t expect to wait long to find out what it was.
“You and Toney seem to have made peace,” he remarked.
She shrugged. “There’s a truce. I’m sure we’ll get along just fine the more I leave him alone and the more I leave you alone.” She set the cup on his table. “Have you thought about how you’re going to get the wood up?”
“It’s looking pretty hopeless. I just want a few good photographs, then we can start removing it. We should have enough to carbon date, and maybe if we’re lucky we’ll find something intact on the underside.”
“You don’t seem very excited.”
He folded his arms on the notebook. “Sad, I know. The biggest find of my life, and all I can think about is how long can we afford to stay out here, even with your contribution.”
“We could get corporate sponsorship. We wouldn’t have to give details—”
Aha. There it was. Now she wanted to bring in the big guns. He turned to the papers in front of him. “No. I’m doing this myself. We can’t risk anyone else knowing what we have here. I won’t lose it again.”
She drew her lower lip between her teeth as if considering what to say next. “But we need more people. If someone gets sick or hurt, it’s going to slow everything down.”
He leaned back in his camp chair and laced his fingers over his stomach. “Look at it this way. The fewer people in camp, the fewer I can drive nuts.”
She accepted his attempt at humor with a half smile of her own. “Too late.”
“Look, I appreciate your concern, but really, I don’t want you to worry.” He sat forward, shuffled his papers.
She frowned. “I’m part of this dive, Adrian. Of course I’m going to worry.”
“But it’s not your dive.” He watched the pain flash across her face and swallowed the regret that washed through him. But he had to be sure she knew he was calling the shots, to remind her he couldn’t give up that much control. “You dissolved our partnership when you asked me to sign those papers, Mal, no matter how much money you contribute.”
Mallory squared her shoulders, unwilling to show how much his words hurt. She’d done her best to be a part of this team. Now he was claiming she didn’t have a voice. Like Dr. Vigil said, she was accustomed to being his equal. Apparently he no longer saw her as such.
She held his gaze as she stood. “I was only trying to help. I won’t forget my place again.”
She turned blindly out of his tent and went to find Dr. Vigil. He was in his tent, and three sheets to the wind, though he still pored over the books she’d brought.
“You doing okay in here?” she asked, ducking under the flap. She’d watched him age over the course of the dive. Something else that worried Adrian, no doubt.
“Do you know that the masthead has a pipe running
through its mouth?” he asked, eyes bright when she entered. “The marines would use that to shoot fire at their enemies, terrifying them with the sight of an animal spitting fire.”
“It’s the proof he needs,” Mallory murmured, sinking to the chest containing the professor’s books, her knees weak with the realization that Adrian’s dream was coming true.
“You don’t have to come and keep me company,” he said. “Go party with the other ones.”
“I’m not much in the partying mood.”
He lifted a white eyebrow. “Fought with Adrian, huh?”
She didn’t deny it but couldn’t admit it.
“You’d always come talk to me after you fought with him and always pretended it didn’t bother you.” He stepped behind the privacy screen to change.
She flushed. “Surely that wasn’t the only time I talked to you.”
“No, of course not. But I would know when you’d had a fight.”
She sat on one of the camp chairs and ran her fingers over the top of the waterproof chest. “Nothing’s changed.”
“You still love him.”
Great, he would take her comment to mean that. She’d barely admitted to herself she still loved Adrian. She wasn’t ready to admit it to her mentor.
“He still loves you. I haven’t seen him so relaxed in three years.” He came from behind the screen in old-fashioned cotton paisley pajamas. She hid her smile, not hard to do after his next words. “He needs you. You’re good for him.”
“He couldn’t think I’m coming back to him just because I joined the dig.”
“Of course he thought it,” he replied gruffly. “Why wouldn’t he? You break up with your fiancé over diving? What kind of fool reason is that? You and I both know you’re still in love with Adrian.”
As much as she wanted to prove him wrong, she couldn’t. “All the reasons for me leaving are still there.”
“And those are?” He hobbled stiffly to the table with its decanter of whiskey. She’d always thought he’d watched too many old archaeology movies, the way his tent was set up with its rough comforts, almost Hemingway-esque.
He offered her a drink. She accepted, sipped, savored the punishing burn. “He’s emotionally unavailable. He gets so wrapped up in his work, I don’t matter—no one else matters. I need to matter.”
Dr. Vigil made his way to his cot and sat down heavily. “Mallory, when two people like you, people with such strong personalities, get together, there are going to be fights. But look at the two of you now. You’re together, you block out everything else in the room. You bring out the best in each other.”
She took another sip. “And the worst.”
“Maybe.” He conceded the point with a lift of his glass. “But no matter what you were fighting about, you had respect for one another. You respected the job and you respected the intelligence.”
“It didn’t stop us from saying hurtful things.” Even the memories of the words made her heart squeeze. She’d never talked to anyone like that in her life. But she’d said them to the man she loved.
“No, but you’re older now. You’ve learned control. I’d like to think that I made the two of you the archaeologists you are today, but the truth is, you made each other, with your competition and your drives. You can’t deny it.”
“I don’t.” There had been a time when she’d been so happy. She’d thought no one deserved to be so happy. “I just don’t want to forget the way he hurt me.”
“I know you must feel that way, but Adrian loved you more than anything in his life.”
“Loved. Past tense.” She edged toward the tent opening. If she didn’t remind herself of that, she might be tempted to fall into old patterns, no matter what lessons she’d learned last time. She couldn’t bear that pain again.
Something was off, something was wrong. Adrian realized it the minute the ship came into view the following day. It wasn’t covered, for one thing. Had the currents shifted in the past twenty-four hours, had they pushed the rubber sheet off the ship? He scanned the site and saw the tarp flipped back, not rolled as if it had been pushed by water.
As a result of being uncovered, much of the ancient wood had dissolved into the water. His stomach clenched. The more wood he lost, the more the integrity of the site was compromised. He couldn’t afford that.
He finned over to a curved shape rising out of the ocean floor. That hadn’t been there yesterday, had it? Or in their excitement over finding the figurehead, had they missed it? His heart rate picked up when he realized it was an amphora, and he reached for it.
A slender shape shot out of the mouth of the amphora. Shock blended with the sharp pain in his arm and he dropped the amphora as he jolted backwards.
Shit. Shit. Fucking moray eel had made its home in the ceramic vase. Adrian had been too distracted to notice. Hell and damn.
Before he could turn to inspect the damage, Mallory was beside him, squeezing the wound closed. His blood drifted into the water in a dark cloud. Mallory’s brow furrowed in concern as she realized they were in danger.
Sharks.
With his free arm, he motioned to Toney and Jacob, then to Mallory, and pointed up. They needed to get out of the water in case a nosy shark came to investigate. Mallory looked at him a moment before she took his other hand and clamped it over the wound on his triceps. He didn’t dare look to see how bad the damage was; he couldn’t risk letting more blood into the water.
Mallory swam to the others, signaled what had happened and motioned them to go up. The two men exchanged a glance, then nodded before ascending to the first decompression stop.
And Mallory swam to him. What the hell was she doing? He gave her his worst scowl, but she merely pushed his hand away and covered the wound with her own. So she squeezed a little harder than she should have—her way of getting revenge?
She gave him a questioning look and mimed swimming. He nodded. With her hand firmly on his arm, they swam up to where Toney and Jacob dangled near the decompression line. Mallory scanned the water, before looking at him again. He made a half-assed okay sign and her frown deepened.
He hated to admit he was getting weaker. His arms felt like lead and he could barely keep his eyes open. But whether it was from loss of blood or the poison moray eels were said to have, he didn’t know. He did know that Mallory’s grip kept him focused.
She tugged and they swam up the line to the next stop. He shook his head, as if that would erase the effects of the bite. Mallory hung on, scanning the water. The good thing about the Caribbean at this depth—clear as a bell. They could see sharks coming from a long way off.
He lost his grip on the line. She caught him with her legs, wrapping them around his, holding him to her. He tried to give her a leering grin as his hips nestled intimately against hers, but couldn’t manage an effective one with his regulator in his mouth and the muscles in his face refusing to obey his command.
Finally they reached the barge. The three of them worked together to haul Adrian up on the platform. Mallory shed her gear with amazing efficiency before she tugged at his torn sleeve to see the damage.
Her face paled above her bloodied nose, and he turned to look. The skin over his triceps was shredded. Blood oozed down his arm, coating his skin.
“He took quite the chunk out of me, yeah?” he asked and blacked out.
He came to with a start when Mallory spilled some liquid fire on the wound, and he sat up with a scream.
“I’m sorry.”
Her tone was unapologetic. She’d stripped her wetsuit down to her waist and leaned over him in a bright bikini top. That could do for some distraction from his present pain. Someone had peeled his suit off as well. “The bacteria in those eels’ mouths are bad. We have to kill the germs.”
“I am not a germ.” The slur in his voice surprised him.
Mallory ignored him and took a syringe from Robert. Adrian barely opened his mouth to protest when she jammed it into his arm.
He swore. “Is
this payback? Geez, Mal, I didn’t know you had a vindictive streak.”
She gave a small smile, her attention still on the wound. “I can’t say I’m not enjoying this a little. But you’ll be glad for the shot. I’m going to stitch you up.”
“Why don’t you give that job to someone I wasn’t married to?” He glanced around the barge and saw Jacob and Robert back away. He cast Toney a pleading glance before turning his attention to Mallory.
Her eyes sparkled as she threaded the blunt-looking needle with coarse black thread. “Why, don’t you want it to be pretty?”
“I’m afraid you’ll make me look like Frankenstein’s monster.”
She smoothed her hand over his skin. “I’m very proud of my work. Don’t worry.” She prodded his skin near the injection. “Numb yet?”
“No. Look, I don’t know how good of an idea this is,” he added as she edged closer, parting her legs around his hips as she inspected the wound. Okay, maybe not such a bad idea.
“It’s a four-hour drive to get to a hospital. And I let you stitch me up when I fell and split my chin in Mexico.” Tilting her head back, she showed off the thin white scar.
He brushed his thumb over the scar and sighed. “All right. I’m ready.”
Sucking her lower lip between her teeth, she placed a damp palm on his arm, pulling the skin taut. “Hold still.”
She scooted closer, surrounding him with the smell of ocean and sunshine beneath the coconut scent of her sunscreen. He would focus on that and not on the effect of her body wrapped around his as she tried to get a good angle to stitch his wound.
“Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, and stuck the needle in his arm. Yeow.
The thread tugged at his skin and he winced, but the pain wasn’t enough to kill his growing desire. Soon the whole crew would know it.
“Mal.” A lump rose in his throat and he swallowed. “Maybe there’s a better way?” When she looked up at him, he flicked his eyes to his lap.
She followed his gaze and scowled. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
