Page 2 of Nyall

“No.” She couldn’t remember him ever once recording their coms chatter on a dive, and glanced up at the bottom of the charter. She didn’t like how he kept pushing her to go deep, either; it made her want to call off the whole thing. If she scrubbed now, she’d have to listen to Rich whine about how she’d ruined everything all the way back to the docks. “Unless you want me narked, stand by.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, sure. I mean, copy that.”

Caroline held onto the anchor line, deliberately slowing herself as she checked her watch. Deep diving not only required specialized gear, air mixes and years of training, but plenty of patience. Out here she also had to be on the lookout for the locals, as plenty of big marine animals liked traveling the warm, food-rich waters of the Gulf Stream. Jellyfish blooms were sometimes a problem, but her suit and gear were designed to protect her from their stings. Sea mammals didn’t consider her prey, but dolphins could be aggressive, while killer whales simply got nosy. Most sharks wouldn’t bother her unless she bled in the water or messed with them.

As she looked down, the map scan appeared on the flip-down screen with the electronic marks created by vague shadows on the bottom. Expecting to see the shape of an intact ship was the stuff of very bad diver movies; the violence of the hurricane and the immense pressure of the depths had more likely broken the San Miguel into kindling before centuries of tides buried it under tons of silt.

A curve on the map matched up with a barnacled shape at one end of the reef; that had been the thing that had excited Rich so much. Carracks, which in the fourteenth century had been built to be faster than traditional galleons, had a particularly rounded hull at the stern. Two blurs from the scan now looked to her to be the remnant forecastle and aft castle in the configuration that matched the lost ship. That provided the strongest evidence that this actually could be the wreck of the San Miguel.

I should tell him it’s a no-go. That would be the ultimate revenge on Rich, to deny him his dream. Good thing she had never been spiteful.

Caroline switched on her waterproof torch and began sweeping the bottom for any sign of debris. She wasn’t expecting to see a glint of gold, but after she surfaced, she could truthfully tell Rich she had looked for coins. A humming sound distracted her, and she wrapped her hand around the anchor line before she looked up, only to see the frayed end of the yellow rope drop down in front of her face shield.

“Rich, the anchor line snapped,” Caroline said as she grabbed hold of the tether line, and then saw the boat’s impeller churning, something that should never happen while she was in the water. “What are you doing? Shut off the engine.”

“There’s something I didn’t tell you.” The sound of the recorder clicked off before he added, “That wreck down there is the San Miguel, babe. You’re the first one to see it in four hundred years. I really envy you.”

Caroline didn’t like the tone of his voice, but the coms might be distorting it. “Why wouldn’t you tell me that? I didn’t need to make the dive.”

“Yeah, well, this is where we have to end things, babe. No blame, no shame, right?” He chuckled. “Honestly, in the beginning I liked you a lot. You’re gorgeous, and great in bed. Only I was never good enough in the sack for you. Plus that mouth of yours, man, I got tired of that real quick. Didn’t anyone ever teach you to be nice?”

What he was saying made absolutely no sense to her at all. “We broke up weeks ago. Why does any of that matter now?”

“I came back yesterday by myself and ran two more scans to confirm the upper deck measurements. They match perfectly.” He sighed. “You don’t understand what this means to me after all the years of searching. I’ve put everything I’ve got in this find. It’s gotta be my discovery. Mine alone.”

In that moment she knew what he intended. “Richard, don’t do this. When we get back I’ll tear up the contract and walk away. No one will ever know. I promise.”

“I wish I could count on that, babe, but you know me and my trust issues.” Rich’s voice took on a hard edge as he added, “Not like it’s a shocker, right? You said you always expected to die in the water one day.”

Her stomach dropped to her heels. “You bastard, don’t you dare–”

Caroline’s tether jerked as he disconnected her, forcing her to switch over to her emergency air. With forty feet left before she’d reach the surface, she’d never make it in time to grab the tender platform—and just as she’d suspected, the boat’s hull shot forward as Rich headed west, leaving her alone and stranded in sea thirty miles from land.

She had never been as alive as she was underwater. Now she was going to die here, alone in the deep blue.

Caroline broke the surface a few minutes later, where she glimpsed Rich and the boat disappearing at the edge of the western horizon, her diver down flag still fluttering from the rod atop the cabin. Outrage had her shaking so much she made the water around her churn. At the same time, she realized she was on the verge of hyperventilating, and fumbled with the latches on her helmet collar until she could pull it off. To clear her head she took in the air slowly, working through her diaphragmatic breathing exercises until her chest loosened up and her heartbeat finally slowed.

He confirmed the wreck was here yesterday. He brought me out here just to kill me.

Caroline knew how crazy people could get when it came to staking a claim to recovering priceless artifacts. Like winning the lottery, finding lost treasure turned some shipwreck hunters into greedy maniacs. She knew of one salvager who had stiffed his investors and hidden a motherlode of gold coins he’d brought up from a wreck; after seven years he was still sitting in jail for refusing to say where they were.

Some stranger didn’t do this to me. Rich and I used to be lovers.

Hindsight really did provide painful clarity. She had been pretty ruthless when she’d dumped him. She’d told him she understood why he couldn’t be faithful—even the girls who, unlike her, faked orgasms for him quickly got tired of how lousy he was in bed, so he never could keep a lover for long. No doubt being that blunt had shredded his ego. She also should have guessed from Rich’s extreme obsession with the San Miguel that he would want to keep all the gold and glory for himself. He must have figured staging a diving accident as the only way to cancel the contract and pay her back for emasculating him. No witnesses, no evidence and, unless she washed up on shore after she drowned, no body. It really was the perfect crime.

All right, Parish. Time to make sacrifices.

Pulling her knife from her thigh sheath, she saw how badly her hand trembled, and went slowly with cutting her harness loose from the tether. The very last thing she needed to do was nick herself and bleed in the water, which was like advertising herself as a free snack to every predator in the vicinity. Once the tether snapped she let the now-useless lifeline and her connected helmet sink. She had most of the eighty liters of air in her EAS tank left, so it was hard to let that go, but she had to eliminate anything that would create drag on her body.

If she swam west, there was the remote possibility that she could wave down someone. The Coast Guard regularly patrolled the waters offshore, and plenty of fishing and cruising charters hauled around tourists from St. Augustine on day trips. A few serious sport fishermen often came out this far in the Atlantic for blackfin tuna, mahi and wahoo, and the grouper season had just opened. All she needed was one boat.

There’s a chance. Not a great one, but a chance.

As Caroline told herself that, she also knew how useless it was to waste all her energy trying to make it back to shore. She was a good, strong swimmer, but she’d never last the entire thirty miles; all she could hope for was ten or fifteen at best—maybe twenty if she stopped to float and rest a few times, and nothing with teeth took an interest in her along the way. If a storm came along, the sea would grow rougher, making it harder on her to keep swimming. Holding off exhaustion would be her primary concern. And if no boats crossed her path...

My body will give out. That’s when I’ll drown.

She removed her thigh sheath and strapped it to her left forearm, where she could reach her blade faster in the event of a predator encounter. Maybe her luck would bring along a Coast Guard cutter. Once she told them how her partner had left her to die, they could radio ahead to the cops. After Rich was arrested, she could even go public with her story, which the media would love. She’d then notify the Division of Historical Resources at the Florida Department of State, which governed all ocean salvage, and donate the site to them. He could read about them finding the San Miguel while his greedy ass rotted in prison.