By the time he had booties, fins and BCD strapped on, Emma had to concede the man knew his gear and wore it like he meant it. Much as she wanted, she couldn’t fault him there.
Would he be an idiot in the water? Taking off instead of staying within eyesight of his dive partner? She’d be damned if she’d chase him all over the ocean floor.
This trip was important to her. She really felt as though it could be the one. And so much rode on her finding the Anna Maria. She didn’t need a cocky diver with an attitude swimming off into trouble. “So what’s your story?”
A grin slipped across Creed’s face. “Are you always this direct?”
“I’m a nurse in my day job.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “It pays to be direct.”
He nodded. “A nurse, huh?”
“Yeah, so don’t get stung by a jellyfish or stab yourself with a knife.” She pulled her hair back off her face and secured it with an elastic band at the back of her neck. “I’m off duty, and it will only slow me down.”
“I’ll make a note of that.” He chuckled. “Do you reserve your good bedside manner for the day job?”
“Absolutely.” Emma smiled, loosening up a little. The man had a sense of humor and could give as good as he got. She didn’t want to like him, but when he smiled like he did at that moment, she couldn’t help herself. “If you’re such an experienced diver, why are you out wreck-diving without a partner?”
He shrugged and stared out across the bay. “I could ask you the same.”
“I do it all the time. I live here.” She tipped her head toward him. “Where are you from?”
“Around.”
Evasive as well as handsome, with his thick dark hair and penetrating dark eyes. They still had a few minutes to kill and Emma was good for a few more pulled teeth, so she asked, “Why the interest in the lost boat?”
“Besides the owner being missing and possibly dead? I want to protect the company interest and make sure the boat is in fact at the bottom of the ocean. It could be the owner found the tracking device and chucked it, taking off with the boat.” He crossed his arms. “Why so interested?”
“The more I know about you, the better prepared I am for anything that happens below. So if there’s anything I need to know, spill now.”
His brows rose. “I just need to find the boat.”
Emma opened her mouth to argue, but was interrupted by Dave.
“Get ready,” the captain said. “I’m as close as I can get to your coordinates without becoming a statistic.”
Emma glanced around at the rocks protruding out of the ocean. Sea lions basked in the sun on the smooth ledges. Some slipped off into the water, disturbed by the nearness of the boat.
Dragging her neoprene hood over her head, she tucked her hair beneath, then strapped her fins to her feet and shoved her hands into her gloves. Since she was the one in charge, she snapped the line for the surface marker buoy to her BCD and slipped her arms into the straps, hiking the BCD and cylinder up onto her back. Last but not least she pulled her mask onto her head and positioned it over her eyes, popped the regulator into her mouth and turned to see if her diving partner was anywhere near ready.
He stood fully equipped, mask and regulator in place, waiting for her.
Humph. So he was fast at getting geared up. That didn’t mean he would be a good dive buddy. Emma waddled toward the edge of the boat and grabbed the railing as the boat pitched in the choppy water.
One last thumbs-up to Dave and to Creed, and she back-rolled off the end of the boat to plunge beneath the surface. The water took her breath away, even through the thick neoprene, making her second-guess her decision to use the wet suit versus a dry suit. But once she got moving, her body would warm the water trapped between her and the suit.
As soon as she submerged, she released the surface marker buoy, allowing it to float to the surface where it would mark the divers’ progress beneath as they drifted along the ocean floor. That way Dave would know where to go to pick them up. Emma would make sure they swam away from the rocky protrusions when they were ready for the boat to retrieve them.
As Emma resurfaced, a splash beside her heralded Creed’s entrance into the ocean.
He held on to his mask and regulator as his head broke through the water, and then he gave her a thumbs-up.
Together, they signaled Dave with a thumbs-up and waved.
The captain waved back and set the boat in motion to pull farther out to sea, where he’d wait until Emma indicated for him to come retrieve them from the water.
She checked her dive computer, confident that she had plenty of air for a couple hours, as long as she didn’t have to go too deep. The deeper she dove, the more time she had to save for decompression coming up.
Emma loosened her mask, filled it with seawater, swished it, emptied and fit it snugly over her face. With one last glance at the departing boat and a double check on the surface marker buoy bobbing on the surface, Emma sucked in a gulp of metallic-tasting air and dove beneath the choppy waves. She headed straight for the rocks that had been partially submerged in the waves. Based on her calculations, the Anna Maria had last been seen there before the Devil’s Shroud rolled in that evening over two hundred years ago.
A school of lingcod swam by, their dull gray bodies slipping past like silent shadows.
With nothing but the sound of her breathing and the bubbles rising from each exhalation, Emma basked in the silent underwater world, the ebb and flow of the current less pronounced the deeper she went.
As they neared the bottom and the base of the outcropping, a startling array of sea urchins and anemones colored the moss- and lichen-covered rocks and ocean floor with their spiny bodies. A curious sea lion swirled past Creed, twisting and looping gracefully through the water.
Emma shone her diving headlamp onto the rocks, swimming into what appeared to be a small city of stone sprouting from the seabed.
Creed lagged behind, his own headlamp panning the area all around him.
She waited until he looked toward her, and then Emma urged him to catch up. The wreck of the Anna Maria had to be hidden somewhere among the black rocks, and she was anxious to find it before her air ran out.
As soon as Creed was within twenty feet, Emma swam between two house-size boulders, her feet flipping gently, propelling her ever deeper into the maze.
As she passed by another boulder twice the size of the first, she stopped, her breath catching in her throat when she glimpsed the outline of something with a sharper edge and straighter lines, not the rounded contours of objects natural to the ocean world. As her headlamp beam played over the object, her excitement waned. It was a boat. Not nearly big enough to be the Anna Maria, nor as old.
A boat would be underestimating the craft that appeared to be more a luxury yacht, shiny white and fairly new at that. By the looks of it, the craft had been freshly sunk, lacking the barnacles and lichen that quickly laid claim to objects resting on the ocean floor.
Disappointed, Emma made a mental note of the name on the stern. Pelageya. Emma checked her dive computer. She had sixty minutes left on this cylinder before she’d have to surface. If she wanted to find the Anna Maria, she’d have to move on soon.
She wondered if this was the boat Creed referred to, and if so, how long Creed would want to investigate the wrecked yacht before they could continue on. Emma glanced behind her.
The light from Creed’s headlamp reflected off the huge boulders as he swung it right and left. He had yet to focus in on what lay ahead of Emma.
Emma approached the yacht, making note of the large hole in the port bow. As her gaze panned upward, she caught movement behind the glass portal of the enclosed helm.
Curious, Emma swam closer and pushed open the door to the cabin. With a quick glance behind her to locate her dive bu
ddy, who was closing in fast, she eased through the narrow opening, careful not to let her tank and BCD get hung up in the confines of the interior.
As she neared the few short steps up into the helm, her regulator hose snagged on something behind her.
She reached back to unhook the hose so that she could move on. Unable to pull free, she reached out to the walls in front of her, ready to push back the way she’d come.
As she laid her palms flat on the smooth surface of the helm’s doorway, it gave way and a bloated face drifted out of the helm, coming straight at her, eyes white-filmed and vacant.
Emma let out a squeal into her regulator, the sudden appearance of the bloated face igniting her flight instinct. She back-paddled to get away, her clinical side overwhelmed into panic mode.
Something gripped her ankles and pulled hard, jerking her free of whatever had hold of her and out of the cabin.
Realizing she was breathing too fast, Emma tried to calm herself, but her head spun and a gray fog threatened her vision.
Creed’s hands clasped her shoulders in an iron grip, forcing her to focus on him through her mask.
He tapped her regulator, as a reminder to breathe normally or she’d use up all her air before she could resurface. His gloved thumb and forefinger formed an O for the signal that she was okay.
Emma’s gaze clung to Creed’s as she fought to slow her breathing and regain control of her senses. When at last she could think straight, she motioned for her and Creed to go up. Her heart still pounded hard against her eardrums, drowning out the sound of air moving through the regulator.
Creed refused to move, pointing toward the yacht.
Emma shook her head and jabbed a finger upward, wanting to surface immediately, to get away from the floating, ghostlike body she’d seen in the cabin.
Creed squeezed her shoulders, tapped her chest with his forefinger and signaled okay.
No, I’m not okay, she wanted to say. As a nurse, she’d seen blood and gore. But she’d never had a body float out at her while diving. The abrupt appearance had thrown her off-kilter, and her pulse had yet to slow to normal.
Creed pointed to his chest and then to the yacht.
Emma shook her head, refusing to go back inside the confining space. A shiver rippled across her at the thought.
Creed’s fingers squeezed her shoulders once more and he swam back into the yacht, leaving her hovering over the deck.
He better not get stuck. If so, he’s on his own.
Several minutes passed, each longer than the last.
A shadow moved over the boat, shifting, swirling, circling, like a...
Emma glanced up. A great white shark hovered over the boat between rocky bottom and the open sky above. The sea lion that had been swimming along with them had disappeared. Her heart racing, Emma froze, praying Creed would remain inside the yacht until the shark grew bored and swam away. If Creed emerged with the body, the shark could attack, seeking the ready food source.
The sleek sea creature seemed to know Emma was there and wanted to toy with her as she debated whether to stay put or join Creed in the yacht with the dead man.
Emma kept an eye on the shark, checked her watch and her air supply several times before Creed finally emerged from the cabin.
A quick glance upward reassured her that the shark had indeed grown tired of waiting and moved on.
Creed backed out fins first, his hand clutching the arm of the dead man. Just what a shark might be interested in.
Emma shivered and looked again, praying the shark truly had moved on and hadn’t swam out of view around a big boulder, intent on backtracking and surprising them.
A shadow swirled over them. Her heart pounding, Emma glanced up, only to see a school of lingcod blocking the sunlight between rock formations.
Their best bet was to get out with the body as quickly as possible. She touched Creed’s shoulder and made the hand signal for danger, steepled her hands for shark and circled her finger, then motioned up with her thumb.
He nodded, his head swiveling in an attempt to find the shark.
With so many big rocks surrounding them, it would be difficult to see the shark until they swam up on it or vice versa.
Emma kicked out, moving swiftly through the water, anxious to get away from the shark before it decided they were fair game for lunch.
Copyright © 2014 by Mary Jernigan
ISBN-13: 9781460324356
THE RETURN OF CONNOR MANSFIELD
Copyright © 2014 by Beth Cornelison
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