Treasure

by Helen Brenna

  “You do a pretty good job of flirting yourself.”

  “Me? Shoot, I’m all talk and no action. You know that. I’m not much to look at, either.” He smirked in a sad, tender way, and fiddled with a hangnail on his index finger. “I spent the summers in Florida with my dad. School years in Texas with my mom.” He bent his head, focusing on the deck. “Every year I fell more in love with Claire and every year she and Sam got closer while I was gone.

  “I didn’t stand a chance against Sammy, but I figured my best bet was to wait it out. One of these days, if I was lucky, he’d get bored and move on. Claire would get over him. I’d be there to pick up the pieces, if she’d have me.” He sighed and looked Annie straight in the face. “Except that didn’t happen. They got married right out of high school. How was I supposed to come between my two best friends?”

  “He’s gone now,” she said softly.

  “Less than two years. Shoot, that ain’t nothin’. Besides, all summer long she’s been so busy bustin’ my chops, I’m beginning to think she hates me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you, but the only way you’re going to know exactly what she does feel is by talking with her about it.”

  A spark of hope lit D.W.’s face.

  “Haven’t you had enough waiting, D.W.? Maybe it’s time to do something.”

  “Duane Weston Clark?” Claire’s determined voice came from behind them. So intent on their discussion, they hadn’t heard her footsteps from the helm.

  D.W. spun to face her.

  “I want to talk to you.” Claire didn’t crack a smile. “In private.” She went below deck.

  D.W. looked at Annie. “What’s got her all worked up?”

  “The transmission yesterday and the GPS this morning.” Annie quickly updated D.W. on the navigational problems.

  Their attention shifted at the sound of Jake’s heavy strides. He stopped in front of D.W. “You were the last one at the helm.” Accusation tainted the already tight sound of his voice.

  “And you think I threw us off course?” D.W. shot to his feet. “For crying out loud, Jake, it was pitch-black when I shut down last night. All I had to go by was the GPS. The instrument panel showed us right smack-dab at the coordinates you gave me. Off the north shore of Andros.”

  “You couldn’t tell the difference between Grand Bahama and Andros? There would have been hotel and harbor lights blinking all over the place.”

  “We were close to ten miles from shore, and it was cloudy, no moon. If I’d thought to pull out the binoculars, I might have noticed. At two in the morning, I wasn’t second-guessing the instrumentation. I didn’t know I might have to.” D.W. shook his head. “I can’t believe this.”

  “You make one wrong move, D.W., and I’m sending you to shore in the raft.”

  D.W. looked back to Annie. “See what I mean? Right in the teeth.” It was obvious their previous conversation had been raw enough. This cut deeper. “Have it your own way, Jake.” D.W. strode past him and headed below deck, his feet pounding out an angry beat. “What do you want, Claire?” A second later, a cabin door slammed closed.

  “Simon! Ronny!” Jake yelled. “I want to talk to you two.”

  Simon scooted from the galley with Ronny trailing behind him. Simon sat on a bench seat while Ronny leaned against a rail. “What’s going on?” Ronny asked.

  “We’ve got a problem.” He explained his thoughts about the GPS malfunction and transmission trouble. “Someone on this boat’s working with Westburne.”

  Annie looked from Jake to Ronny to Simon. Ronny crossed his arms, and Simon’s jaw dropped open in apparent disbelief. Her gut told her it had to be one of these two men, but in truth, she didn’t know much about anyone on this boat.

  “A bit quick on the draw assuming sabotage, aren’t you, Jake?” Ronny asked.

  “The GPS was working yesterday when we left Miami.” Jake yanked his baseball cap out of his back pocket and pulled it low over his brow. “Either of you want to own up before this gets too far out of hand?”

  Simon snapped his mouth shut and glanced at Jake, worry creasing his forehead.

  Ronny chuckled and jerked his head toward Annie. “What about her?”

  Oh, for heaven’s sake. If she’d wanted—

  “If Annie had wanted to work with Westburne,” Jake said, voicing her thoughts, “she wouldn’t have come to us first.”

  “I guess.” Ronny shrugged. “How’d D.W. come out so clean and clear?”

  “Claire’s talking to him.” Jake sounded tired. This had to be difficult for him. “What do you two have to say?”

  “Jake…I don’t…I…” Simon said, stumbling on his words.

  “What he’s trying to say,” Ronny interrupted, “is that we can’t stand Westburne any more than you can.”

  Simon nodded.

  “I know.” Jake rubbed his temples, as if tension were causing a headache. “Everyone keep an eye out, all right? You see anything suspicious, I want to know about it right away.”

  “You got it, Jake.” Ronny pushed off from the rail.

  “Simon, take us into Freeport and get a new cooling line.”

  “Whatever you say, Jake.” Simon nodded.

  “And Ronny, after Simon gets back, I want you to follow the manual course Claire set out in the control room.”

  “I’ll take care of it.”

  Jake turned and headed below deck.

  Annie followed him. “That’s it?” she whispered. “That’s the extent of your questioning?”

  “Stay out of this.”

  She followed on his heels. “You’ve already decided it’s D.W., haven’t you?”

  “None of your business.”

  “This involves me, too.”

  “You don’t know the history.” He charged into his cabin and turned.

  Before he had the opportunity to close the door in her face, she stepped over the threshold. For a moment, being in his space—a space so personal, so homey, so Jake—stopped her cold. She’d halfway expected the stereotypical seaman’s quarters with souvenirs from past finds, antique compasses, those impossible bottles with ships inside them and old-fashioned helm’s wheels littering the walls.

  Though the detailed historical maps of the Florida Straits, the Keys and other parts of the Caribbean fit the bill, she certainly hadn’t expected to find framed photographs of family and friends covering much of the shelf and wall space. There was a stereo, CDs and books housed in the floor-to-ceiling shelves behind the small desk, along with shot glasses, various electronic gadgets and numerous unidentifiable objects strewn on every shelf. Every single nook and cranny in the small room was filled with mementos.

  If she’d needed more evidence Jake was wrong for her, this proved it. This boat was Jake’s home. Whatever space he occupied back in Miami could only be four white walls.

  “You have something to say, say it.” Jake’s comment reeled her back around. “Otherwise, get out of my cabin.”

  She stepped farther in and closed the door. “You’re right. I don’t know much of the history of this situation, but maybe that gives me a better perspective,” she said. “I know D.W. wouldn’t sabotage your boat.”

  “You’re so sure of that in one day?” He stared her down.

  “Positive.”

  “Since you know everything there is to know about D.W., you must also know he may be responsible for my brother’s death.”

  That gave her pause.

  “So you didn’t know. Rather impulsive, aren’t you? Wanting to know all the facts after you’ve come to a conclusion?”

  “Tell me what happened.”

  “What’s the point? You’ve already made up your mind.”

  She threw his logic back at him. “Because as a member of this crew I have a right to know.”

  He took two steps toward her, his presence nearly overwhelming her in the small cabin space. “As captain of this crew, I have a right to give orders without being challenged.”

  “Poin
t taken. Now tell me what happened.”

  He narrowed his dark eyes as if he wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction and then said, “Sam got tangled in the winch rope he was securing to some machinery. His oxygen supply got cut off, and he drowned.” He relayed the information with the matter-of-fact cadence of a man who had gone over it and over it. And over it. The pain had long since dissipated, leaving a hollow hull in its place.

  “How was D.W. involved?”

  “When Sam got tied up in the rope, D.W. didn’t draw in the winch line fast enough.”

  The same winch line Annie knew from her conversation with Claire that Jake had also gotten caught up in, complicating an already dire rescue situation.

  “Mom was hysterical for a few days,” he went on. “Dad took it the hardest in the long run.” The rest came out of him in one long rush, as if she’d opened a floodgate rusted shut for years. “When Sam was little, Dad would sit with him for hours pouring through boxes of information he’d accumulated over the years. Historical facts of the flotilla’s passage through the Straits. Salvagers speculations throughout the centuries and the areas he’d surveyed himself.”

  It sounded all too familiar. Annie could see herself lying on her stomach on the deck of a boat, her feet kicked up behind her, her chin in her hands, mesmerized as her own dad read those fascinating stories about Spanish flotillas, Roman war ships and ancient trade routes. Most of it had gone right over her little head. “Why did your dad sit with Sam and not you?” she asked. “You were the oldest.”

  “Sam was the inspired treasure hunter in the family. I was the worker bee.”

  “You listened anyway, didn’t you?”

  “Listened? Hell, I absorbed it all like a sea sponge, washed up on the beach and dried in the hot sun, thirsting for that first lick of high tide. I could tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the Concha and its flotilla,” he went on, “from the date and time it left the port in Veracruz to the crew complement. I could rattle off most of the manifest from memory. So could Sam. We used to sit at night around the galley table trying to stump each other with Concha trivia.”

  Her own parents would pour through maps and charts, quizzing her on where they should dive next and why. The undeniable similarities between Jake’s life and hers troubled Annie.

  “Though Sam remembered about as much about the Concha as I did,” he went on, “I grew up believing—no, knowing—I’d be the one to find it.”

  “Then your dad would finally look at you the way he looked at your brother.”

  “I guess.” He glanced at her, his expression softening. “Everyone—all the crews, Mom, Dad, Harold, Sam and Claire—figured Sam would find it. So when he died, a big piece of OEI died with him. Dad lost hope. When he had the heart attack several months later, he didn’t care anymore. His life was already over.” All was quiet on the boat. Only the engine noise droned on in his cabin. “That’s why I promised Dad I’d find the Concha. For him, Sam, everyone at OEI.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

  “Why? It’s not your fault.” He turned, angry all over again. “It’s mine. He was my little brother. I was his diving partner that day. I should have saved him.”

  Jake was blaming himself, not D.W. How many times over the years had she sounded like him, saying again and again if only this and if only that, maybe her parents would still be alive? “Accidents happen,” she said. “There’s no rhyme or reason.”

  “Not on my boats.”

  “My dad would have said that.” She paced the narrow confines of his cabin. When was she ever going to let the ghosts go? “He was so sure he was never at risk. That he would never put my mother at risk.”

  “What happened, Annie? Tell me.”

  She folded her arms across her chest, holding on to it. She should have never listened to him, never let the similarities in their lives draw a connection inside her. She should turn away, shut him down. Instead, she looked into his eyes. Her own pain reflecting back at her brought the memories crashing in like it was yesterday. The sight of those huge boulders moving in slow motion. The ineffective sound of her screams muted by the water surrounding them. Watching helplessly as the rocks crushed her parents. Clawing, tugging, pushing at them.

  “We’d found this wreck site one morning,” she whispered, “I was maybe twenty feet away and swimming toward them when all of a sudden I felt an earthquake or something. A group of boulders dislodged and…”

  “They were buried?”

  “No. More like trampled. The boulders rolled over and over them. There was blood everywhere. I can still see it tainting the water. I’ve never seen so much blood.”

  “You were all alone,” he said, softly. “What did you do?”

  “I don’t remember much. All I know for sure is that my dad died instantly, either the impact killed him, or he drowned. Tanks were smashed, hoses ripped. My mom was still alive, barely. I brought them both to the surface. Mom was conscious for a few minutes. I tried stopping her bleeding, but she was hurt…all over.”

  He stayed silent, waiting for her to finish.

  She finally dropped her hands to her sides and paced again. Now that she’d started, she couldn’t keep it in. “All I could think of was getting them on the boat, getting them to shore, half-crazy, hoping someone could save my mom, maybe do something for my dad. I remember trying to throw her over my shoulder, trying to get her back on board. She was too heavy. At some point, I must have gone on board by myself and radioed for help because some fishermen found us. The last thing I remember is hanging on to the ladder, doing my best to keep my parents’ bodies from floating away. Worrying about sharks.” She stopped her futile trek of his cabin in front of the small porthole. “I didn’t want sharks to get them.”

  “It’s not your fault, Annie.”

  “I know. That’s the problem with accidents. We try to find reasons, explanations, at least place blame. Somewhere. Anywhere. We keep thinking if only we’d been able to do something. As if we could have done anything.”

  A stretch of comfortable silence followed. “I’ve never told this to anyone,” she finally whispered. “There’s never been anyone who would have understood.”

  Release. Like that, a weight lifted from her heart. For the first time in years, she no longer felt alone. Her initial tears came slowly. In no time, she was sobbing.

  “Annie.” He wrapped his arms around her, enfolding her in a circle of strength and such sweet tenderness. Drawing her back with him onto his bunk, he cradled her. Offering only the reassurance of his embrace, he held her tight, and she clung to him, an unlikely anchor in her storm.

  CHAPTER NINE

  CLAIRE WAITED belowdeck for D.W., fear, anger, elation and uncertainty colliding in a whirlwind of emotion inside her. While she didn’t know exactly what D.W.’s feelings were for her, she did know that from the moment he’d carried her on board this boat and she’d cried in his arms—those sturdy, infinitely warm arms—her feelings for him had developed into something distinctly stronger than friendship. And whatever was happening between them couldn’t happen fast enough.

  D.W. slid down the ladder rails and dropped onto the lower deck. “You gonna chew my butt about the problems with the GPS, too?”

  “I want to talk to you about something.” Before fear could win out, she stepped inside her cabin and leaned against the door for support. “Not the GPS.”

  Suspicion veiling his clear blue eyes, he grudgingly joined her, leaned against the farthest wall with his arms crossed against his chest and kicked his size thirteens sullenly out in front of him. “This the part where you strip me naked and have your way with me?”

  She closed the door, her pulse thundering in her head. “Maybe. Is that what you want?”

  Concern immediately flooded his features. He pushed away from the wall and gripped her upper arms, supporting her as he had so many, many times in the past. “What’s the matter?”

  “I want you.” Shoot! She cringed
inwardly. She hadn’t meant to blurt it out that way. Oh, the hell with it. “I want you right now.”

  He stared at her, bored a hole right through her. For the first time since she’d met him, Claire couldn’t read what was going on inside that stubborn, funny, Texas-born-and-bred head. Of course, all these years, maybe she really hadn’t known. He dropped his hands from her shoulders, and she panicked.

  “I’m sorry.” She gave a little shake to her head. “I thought you might be interested in me as…more than a friend. I guess I was wrong.” She opened the door.

  His arm came up, and he pushed it shut again, holding it there. “You’re not wrong.”

  She spun around, her heart racing.

  “I been fixin’ to tell you.”

  Relief surged through her, and her knees buckled.

  “Whoa!” He caught her by the waist.

  “Fixin’ to?” She came alive and swatted his arm. “And when were you actually going to get around to it?”

  A glint of fury sparked his pale eyes bright. “Sam hasn’t been gone that long.”

  “A year and a half isn’t long enough?” She wasn’t sure if she was mad at him or herself. “Is five better? Or ten? What exactly are you waiting for?”

  Emotion doused the fire in his eyes. “Don’t be mad at me. Not now.” He swallowed. “Claire, I love you. Always have. Always will. There. I said it. I love you.”

  Loved her! Her flesh chilled with goose bumps. Both Annie and Jake had guessed D.W. had feelings for her, but no one had said anything about love. Lust would have been fine. Lust would have been great. Lust was all she could handle for the time being. She stepped back, unsure. “I love you, too, D.W. You’re the best friend—”

  “I’m not talkin’ ’bout friendship.”

  “But…”

  “This is real love, Claire. The kind that won’t go away no matter what I do. Women. Booze. Distance. Time. I’ve even tried hypnosis. It’s still the same.” He brushed her cheek with his fingertips and whispered, “No day’s ever right until I see your face.”