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“Yep, I have more baggage than what went down with the Titanic.”
He burst out laughing. “Then you and I are going to get along just fine.”
That’s what scares me.
A pang of longing swam through me. It was so nice to have a decent conversation, but it wasn’t just our discussion I was enjoying . . . it was him.
With each nautical mile, our small talk continued. We shared our likes and dislikes of food; fancy restaurants for him and junk food for me. And music; he liked classical music, which just about floored me. I was more into AC/DC and Jimmy Barnes. We discussed the pros and cons of growing up as only children. He talked so fondly of his mom and dad that I was completely jealous of the bond he had with his mother.
I was beginning to understand that he really wasn’t able to tell me some things, but that only made him much more interesting.
Finally, we neared the location represented as a tiny red circle on the map, and I eased back the throttle.
It was rare to have barely any breeze at this time of day. Normally, the afternoon winds brought choppy waves. Today, though, the ocean’s surface gleamed like polished steel as the setting sun cast golden hues on the western horizon. I cut the engines, and Rhino coasted to a gentle stop, bobbing on the swells. The sonar had led us to a stretch of sea that looked no different than any other.
Tyler and I leaned over the magnetometer monitor. We had no idea what we were looking for, but if there was anything metal on the bottom of the ocean, then it would show up on this monitor.
“How does this thing work?” Tyler asked.
“The magnetometer measures anomalies in the Earth’s magnetic field. So, it detects anything magnetic like iron or?—”
Tyler jabbed his finger at the corner of the monitor. “You mean like that?”
We both leaned over the screen, and our shoulders nudged together.
“Holy shit.” I gasped. “That’s not a boat. It’s a plane.”
CHAPTER 14
Tyler
Side by side, Indiana and I stared at the fuzzy image of the small plane wreck on the bottom of the ocean.
“Jesus, I didn’t expect to find that,” I said. “I thought it was going to be another shipping container.”
“Same,” she said. “I’m glad it’s not though. I couldn’t handle going through another one of those.”
“I know what you mean. I better let Aria and Captain Watts know.” I pulled my phone from my pocket.
“No signal out here, Kingsley.” She scrunched her nose, making her look so cute. “Unless you brought a sat phone with you.”
I jabbed a few buttons on the screen. “Do you have a sat phone?”
“We used to, but I had to sell it to buy fuel. I always intended to replace it, but, you know, there was always something else that took priority.” She nodded to the paperwork on the wall with a couple of overdue notices on top.
I studied the plane again. It looked like a Cessna or similar make of aircraft, but the wings were missing, so it appeared as a long narrow tube on the monitor. It was impossible to tell how long it had been down there, but that had to be what Chui’s DIMS was tracking.
“We need to go down there and check it out?” I said.
She jerked back, frowning. “We? As in, you and me?”
“Yeah. I told you I know how to scuba dive.”
She squinted at me. “Yeah. When you were sixteen.”
“I have an excellent memory. I’ll be fine.”
“No way.” She stepped back.
