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“I know, and I promise you can trust me.”
“Cops never keep their promises.”
“I have never broken a promise.”
She turned to peer toward the rear of the boat, and there, leaning against the side railing with his arms crossed, was Wesley Bolton’s ghost.
My chest nearly caved. I’d made a promise to Wesley that I would always look after him.
But it was my bullet that had taken his life.
When Indiana turned back to me, her expression was almost fatalistic, like she, too, had seen Wesley. Or maybe she expected me to fail her.
I wanted to reiterate my promise, but my words felt so hollow.
Behind Indiana, Wesley’s image vanished into the ocean beyond, but my memory of what I had done to him was forever etched into my brain.
Protecting Indiana was always important, but it was no longer just about guarding her and Old Smithy. This was about protecting my sanity, too.
If I let anything happen to Indiana and Old Smithy, I would never recover.
CHAPTER 8
Indiana
The sun had just popped above the horizon when Dad and I stood on the back of the dive platform, ready for our first scuba dive down to Chui’s wreck. It pissed me off that the weather was perfect. I could be searching Siren’s Lure for those priceless cases of wine rather than this bullshit.
The sooner we got this over, the better.
With Tyler’s help, and the use of the crane, we had lowered the cage filled with our salvage gear over the side of Rhino in record time. The car-sized cage was now sitting on the bottom of the ocean. What Tyler didn’t know was that Dad and I planned to fill the cage with anything we found down there worthy of saving. Once we got Chui’s yacht off our hands, Dad and I would come back and bring up our cage filled with our goodies. At least, that was the plan.
I couldn’t remember the last time Dad and I dived together, and I couldn’t decide what troubled me more: Dad getting distracted by all the ‘shiny’ things on the multi-million dollar wreck we were attempting to salvage, or that I had a cop who was a relative stranger maintaining my air compressor.
Both scenarios could give me trouble.
I was used to doing almost everything myself, but if we were going to get the job done quickly, I needed their help.
Dad had given Tyler a summary of what could potentially go wrong with the equipment while we were one hundred and fifty feet below the surface, and he seemed to understand. I hoped so. Without the compressor, we would have to use the air tanks we were taking with us, and that reduced our dive time dramatically.
The tanks were bulky and annoying, and we potentially didn’t need them, but no way was I diving without them. Not when I had to rely on Tyler to keep the compressed air coming.
“You ready, Kingsley?” I asked, thankful that he’d put a shirt on so I wouldn’t get distracted by his defined abs.
He gave a thumbs up. “I’m ready. Be careful down there and watch your back with those sharks.”
His mirrored glasses hid his stunning eyes. I have never seen eyes as blue as his before, and I hated that they were on a cop. Every time I glared at him, his eyes caught me off-guard . . . and for all the wrong reasons.
“You good to go, Dad?”
“Yes. Yes. Stop fucking fussing over me.” Dad yanked up his wetsuit zipper so hard it was a wonder it didn’t smack him in the chin.
“Start the compressor,” I called up to Tyler.
The muscles in his arms bulged as he pulled the rip cord. The engine plumed a cloud of black smoke and a crunch that could crack teeth, then settled into a loud drone that removed all other noises.
I tested that my breather was working with the air compressor. Then I tested my back up air from the cylinder on my back. I gave Dad a thumbs up. After he did the same, I turned my valve back to the compressed air, clicked the button on my dive watch to start my dive time, checked that I wasn’t about to jump onto a shark, then took a giant stride off the back of the boat.
The warm ocean wrapped me like a hug as I turned to face downward and kicked for the bottom with Dad right beside me. We followed the winch cable down the first thirty feet. A school of trevally swam around the giant hook at the end of the cable, giving it a wide birth as if it was a massive fishing hook.
