by Helen Brenna
“The curse is real, Jake.”
“You’re still alive.”
“I never wanted the cross.” She laughed, a bitter, sad sound. “Besides, I think that curse has been hanging over me all these years. I doubt you can call me huddling in Chicago afraid of the sight of water or diving equipment a life.”
He smiled and touched her cheek. “You said you never huddle.”
“Not anymore. I want my life back. I knew I had to go either to Aztec lands or the shipwreck at Andros. I don’t know anything about jungles, so here I am. The Santidad Cross has to be reburied, Jake. Left alone. It did fine for almost four hundred years on the ocean floor. I want to put it back.”
“So this is really why you’re here. To put the cross back?”
She nodded.
“You could have shown it to Harold and me right off the bat. You went through that dog and pony show for nothing.”
“Some treasure hunters are so blinded by their gold lust they can’t see what’s right in front of them. Like my mom and dad. I didn’t know if I could trust you. I still don’t.” She searched his eyes. “What kind of treasure hunter are you, Jake?”
He wasn’t touching that with a ten-foot fishing pole. “Can you find the Concha site again?”
“Yes.”
“Will you take us there?”
“Jake, there’s no treasure. There was nothing in the main cargo hold except for this cross.”
“I have to see for myself.”
“I don’t want anyone to get hurt. I’m returning the cross, and you have to promise me you’ll tell the world that there’s no treasure. They’ll believe you. That’s why I picked OEI, so they’d leave the site alone. Don’t tell anyone about the cross. Promise me you’ll leave it hidden in the rocks.”
Could he do that? Leave the Santidad Cross? The one thing that would prove beyond a doubt they’d found the Concha? His father had drummed into his head from the time he’d been in diapers that the Concha was the be-all and end-all of shipwrecks.
“Promise me.” Her green eyes bored into him, at once trusting and sad.
“First, tell me where to find the Concha.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
THE MORNING DAWNED for Annie not all that differently from the others she’d experienced on the Mañana. Cool and sunny, the slight breeze promised a clear, warm day. A line of low, heavy thunderheads hung in the sky past the southern end of Andros as though the angels dangled a stormy shower curtain down from the heavens. Without a drop of rain so far, their luck would soon run out and the storm would head north.
Although the Lori Lou left for Miami the previous evening, Westburne’s boat had moved closer up the western coast of Andros, probably after realizing they’d been duped with fake aerials. There was little activity topside as far as Annie could see with her naked eye, only an occasional man traipsing across the deck and no diving at all.
She grabbed a set of binoculars and focused in on the boat. “Ahh!” Startled, she dropped the binocs. They landed with a quiet thud on the blue vinyl seat in front of her.
“What’s the matter?” D.W. looked up from the mask he’d been rubbing with an antifogging agent.
“There’s a man looking at us through binoculars from Westburne’s boat.”
D.W. grinned. “Who does he think he is? Lookin’ at us?”
She flashed him a nasty look, and he chuckled before returning to maintenance on the masks. She picked up the binocs and studied the man in return. He looked like that partner of Mitch Westburne’s Annie had met at the marina in Miami, but she couldn’t remember his name. Brazenly, he studied the Mañana with an arrogant, wide-footed stance and the stub of a cigar between his fingers. He seemed to be waiting for something. Maybe for them to head back to Miami like the Lori Lou. Maybe not.
Frustrated, she stowed away the binoculars, and for about the hundredth time that morning, she went from standing to sitting to pacing. “This waiting’s driving me crazy.”
D.W. dropped the mask he’d been working on and moved on to checking all the gauges on the tanks. Jake wouldn’t let him dive again today, and apparently one day of sloughing off was all he could handle. “You’ll get used to it.”
A diver’s head surfaced and moved toward the boat.
“Simon,” D.W. said and went back to the tank in hand. “He’s only good for an hour at a time.”
“Anything?” she asked Simon after he’d climbed aboard and took off his mask.
He merely shook his head. She helped him take off his tanks. He sat and quietly mapped out the ocean floor’s topography covered in their search, and she went back to pacing.
Before too long, water splashed off the portside as a diver surfaced five feet from the Mañana. Already accustomed to his powerful, deliberate strokes, and to the look of his wet swath of black hair, Annie knew immediately it was Jake. And she knew he hadn’t found the Concha. “He doesn’t look happy.”
D.W. stopped adjusting an oxygen tank to peer over the rail. “He sure don’t. Guess today isn’t the day.”
This wasn’t good. This wasn’t good at all. Shielding her eyes from the glare of the hot afternoon sun on the calm blue water, she studied the deserted palm-tree-lined coast of Andros and gauged their distance from shore. Though they might be too far east, she was almost certain this was close enough. So why hadn’t they found a little piece of the Concha, let alone its main cargo hold?
Jake popped up over the side of the boat and stood on the ladder. The regulator dropped from his mouth, and he flipped off his mask. Despite her concern over their location, she couldn’t ignore the way his wetsuit hugged his lean frame like a second skin, outlining every muscle and bulge on his body.
Men had played virtually no part in her life for the last ten years. To find herself so consumed by one now didn’t make any sense whatsoever. Especially one so unsuitable for her in every way. She imagined him in Chicago, amidst the tall concrete and mass of freeways. That’d be the day.
“It’s show time, Dr. Annie,” Jake said. “We need you below.”
A wave of nausea rolled through her stomach at the thought of hitting that water. She’d known she’d have to dive eventually to put the cross back, but with only one brief, nearly catastrophic swimming jaunt under her belt, she didn’t feel ready for more. “I mapped out the terrain for you. That should be enough.”
“I’m sorry, Annie.” The taut muscles of his jaw showed him straining for tolerance. “I need you to come down with us to figure out whether or not we’re in the right spot.”
“We have to be. Everything looks so familiar.”
“I can’t identify the terrain.” He wiped the water from his face, all trace of patience gone as he raised his voice. “Our deal was you’d be ready to dive today! We need you. Now.”
D.W. smiled at her, back to his good-natured self. “You can do it, sport. Piece of cake.”
Surprisingly, Simon reassured her with a timid smile.
“I’ll send up Claire,” Jake said. He replaced his mask and regulator and fell backward into the water.
Obviously, he didn’t want to repeat the close encounter from the other night alongside the Mañana or yesterday morning’s near miss in his cabin. He’d been avoiding her like a sea fungus. She’d move to the stern deck, he’d go to the bow. She’d move to the bow, he’d go to the stern. Last night when she’d approached him in his cabin to discuss their next dive site, he’d acted like a cornered wild animal.
That was fine by her. After all she knew about him, she couldn’t believe she’d let herself get so carried away. It had to be the cross. Its spell was lifting from her as if it knew it was going home, and her body was being none too picky about making up for lost time. “Is he always this crabby at a dive site?” she asked.
“Actually, it’s a pretty good sign.” D.W. said.
“How do you figure?”
“Jake’s intuition’s pretty shitty when it comes to most things. Except shipwrecks. He gets ornery when he thinks we’re clos
e, but the cigars are coming too slow to suit him.”
As she listened to D.W., she zipped the wetsuit she’d put on earlier to get used to its feel. It still seemed strange at first, the thick neoprene against her skin. After a few minutes, the awkwardness turned to comfort. As a kid, wetsuits had been to her like she imagined pajamas were to other kids, soothing and snug. She could still remember the feel of her mother’s wet, rubbery embraces.
“The nastier Jake gets, the closer you can figure we are to the mother lode.” D.W. helped her into a BC vest, weight belt, and oxygen tank. “I checked and double-checked all of your equipment. You’ll be fine.”
She shrugged into the apparatus and buckled. Next came a personal decompression gauge. These had been developed during her time in Chicago. The handy wrist computer would keep track of how long she’d been diving and at what depths, calculating for her how quickly she could surface without threat of the bends or an air embolism. After flippers, mask and regulator, she was fully equipped.
“Looks like you’re good to go,” Claire said from the direction of the ladder behind Annie.
“I’m not so sure about that.” Annie stood in the center of the deck.
Simon looked at her. “Sometimes I get scared under the water. Claustrophobic, almost,” he said softly.
“Really?”
He nodded. “I close my eyes. Stay still. And breathe. After a few minutes, it goes away.”
That was the most she’d heard the man say at one time.
Turning, she took strength from her crewmates. In two days, despite the uncertainty of who was helping Westburne, she’d gotten closer to these people on the Mañana than she had in all the years she’d spent with her coworkers at the Field Museum. If D.W., Claire and Simon thought she could do it, all she had to do was believe it.
She snapped on her mask, gripped the regulator in her mouth and began breathing slowly through the mouthpiece. Determined, she walked to the stern and climbed steadily down the ladder. Breathe. Just breathe. She heard, more than felt, the water as she pushed her flippers below the surface. “You can do this,” she said aloud and forced herself to take another step down.
Her back hit the wall of water, then her neck, and she was under. Under! Oh, my God. Cold water hit her scalp and surrounded her. Bubbles billowed around her mask. She tried to kick, tried to wave her arms to steady herself. But she…could…not…breathe.
Panicked, she popped back up, spit the regulator out of her mouth and sucked in a mouthful of air. Then another and another. She couldn’t do this. She wasn’t strong enough. She’d never be strong enough. Never.
Stop that!
If she didn’t do this, no one would. There was no one else who would risk his or her life to bury the Santidad Cross. The cross would win. It had taken her parents. It would take her, too. She’d be stuck with the awful thing. Her life would be over, and she could kiss the man of her dreams and her white picket fence goodbye.
She couldn’t let that happen. She had to get her life back. No one could do this for her. She took another quick, jerky breath, slid the mask back over her face and took the regulator into her mouth. Slowly, she let her body settle into a steady rhythm of breathing. She closed her eyes and let herself sink. Into the water.
Don’t think. Just do it.
Water closed in around her. She took one shaky breath. And another. Swallowing the panic, she opened her eyes. Air bubbles cleared around her, and Claire appeared at her side, her face beaming behind the mask. Seeing Claire settled Annie, like magic. Her new friend gave a thumbs-up sign, and Annie felt herself calming. She was going to be okay. She could do this.
Claire motioned for them to go deeper, and after one more deep, smooth breath, Annie kicked her legs and followed. Minutes later, she’d settled into a steady kicking and breathing rhythm. It felt so natural, as if she’d never been away.
With no sign of the other divers, they explored the ocean floor side by side. Claire carried a magnetometer and swung it slowly back and forth in front of her. It wouldn’t locate gold or silver, but it would identify concentrations of iron, like an anchor or cannon. If they found either of those, there would most likely be a ship nearby.
Though she kept track of Claire’s position, Annie found herself darting off to look at an outcropping of rocks. Like old times. It was peaceful and serene, the only sound her steady breathing. The sea life varied from lagoon to coral reef to ocean shelf. If she remembered right, the Mañana had been anchored on a shallow part of the shelf, outside the reef surrounding much of Andros.
Here, she saw everything from a luminescent hydromedusa jellyfish to a school of grunts, a mass of silver-rimmed eyes, and yellow and blue stripes. A line of spiny lobsters played follow-the-leader across the sandy floor, steering clear of a giant brain coral, and a hawksbill turtle crossed directly in front of Annie, carrying its heavy, armored body effortlessly through the crystal clear water.
There was more activity than she remembered. The ocean truly breathed life. Everything from the majestic five-foot sea fans to the tiny long-snout sea horses looked new, exciting and overwhelmingly beautiful. Still, not a thing looked familiar. Nothing about this wonderfully colorful terrain looked close to the nightmares that had plagued her for years.
Before too long, it became clear to Annie they weren’t where they were supposed to be. She’d gotten something wrong. She motioned for them to head back and surface. Along the way, they found Jake and Ronny and went topside.
The regulator popped out of her mouth. “This isn’t right. This area looks completely unfamiliar to me.”
Jake glanced at his watch and wrist gauge. “It’s almost dinnertime. We all need to do some decompressing if we’re going to do any amount of diving tomorrow. Let’s call it a day.”
Annie trailed behind the divers on their way back to the boat. The feeling that she’d disappointed her newfound friends was surpassed only by her own apprehension. It was something she’d never considered in her months of planning. She’d never thought she wouldn’t be able to find the Concha again. What if they never found it? What if she was stuck with the Santidad Cross for the rest of her life?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
JAKE LOVED the Mañana, but at this particular moment everything on this boat seemed small. The portholes. His desk. The head. Even the refrigerator. The walls and rails closed in on him. This kind of thing happened occasionally in the past after spending a few hard months on board, but never to this extreme, never with this intensity.
The reason was as clear as the Caribbean waters. Annie. He couldn’t get away from her. If he couldn’t see her, he could hear her. If he couldn’t hear her, he could smell her. If he couldn’t smell her, he could sense her, the way one sensed imminent danger.
This afternoon had been the worst. After cleaning and storing their gear, they’d all taken turns in the miniscule head for showers. Running into her in the narrow hallway with only a towel wrapped around his hips had been the last straw. They’d been forced to glide against each other to pass. Her breath still made the sensitive skin on his neck tingle. Her distinctive spicy floral scent still filled his senses. It didn’t matter that there’d been a T-shirt between her breasts and his chest, or a layer of thick terrycloth and her clothes between her soft belly and his hard groin. The damage had been done. His awareness of her was at an all-time high.
After that, he’d relegated himself to his cabin and took care of some e-mails and other business while waiting for dinner. He’d checked the weather faxes and radar on the Internet and reassured Harold and his anxious mother that they were doing fine and would head either into the port on Andros, or Miami if the tropical storm took a turn toward them.
The entire time, he couldn’t quite seem to wipe thoughts of Annie from his mind, or stifle the questions ricocheting intermittently through his head all day long. Ten years could wreak havoc on already shaky memories. She could have mistaken any number of things. What if the Concha wasn’t at Andros? The Santid
ad Cross hadn’t been on any official manifests, so no one knew with certainty it had been on the Concha. What if her parents had found a different ship?
The scary part was, he almost didn’t care. The Concha had waited four hundred years for discovery. He wanted Annie now.
When dinner was finally ready, the six of them barely spoke a word to each other as they sat around the table chowing on Simon’s concoction of pasta and Italian sausage with a garlic and sun-dried tomato sauce. He’d outdone himself tonight, proof that the oddly quiet man was as frustrated as the rest of the crew at not having found anything of substance.
Of course, Simon didn’t know what they were looking for. Maybe that was part of the problem.
The somber atmosphere inside the galley matched the climate outside with its heavy, dark sky and quiet evening air. Jake wasn’t the only one feeling edgy. Rarely had he seen his crew in such poor spirits. The fact that they all knew someone in this room had helped Westburne was probably taking its toll on everyone. Ronny had started swilling down beers, a sure sign he, at least, was in need of a break.
“I think we could all use a night of shore leave.” Ronny looked at Jake and threw out the challenge, giving voice to his own silent musings. “A little dancing, a few margaritas. Andros doesn’t have much in the way of nightlife, but I’m sure we could make some. What do you guys think?” Ronny looked around the table.
Simon shrugged.
“You know me,” D.W. said. “I’m always in the mood for a party.”
“Not a good idea,” Claire offered.
Though part of Jake would have been more than happy to head back to Miami, he wasn’t about to give in to whatever madness had taken over. “We’re not leaving this dive site. The stakes are too high.” He effectively cut off all options, but he couldn’t help questioning Ronny’s motives. Why would he want them to leave the dive site?
“Don’t you think it’s about time you tell us what those stakes are?” Ronny glared at Jake while stabbing several hunks of pasta with his fork.
