The Reef

by Nora Roberts

  was a valuable asset, when tempered with a well-ordered mind.

  Tate Beaumont possessed both.

  Professionally, she had more than exceeded his early expectations of her. She’d graduated third in her class, publishing her first paper in her sophomore year. Her postgraduate work had simply been brilliant. She would earn her doctorate years before the majority of her contemporaries.

  He was thrilled with her.

  So thrilled he had opened several doors for her along the way. Doors that even with her skills and tenacity might have been difficult for her to unlatch. Her opportunity to research in a two-man sub off Turkey in depths of six hundred feet had come through him. Though like an indulgent uncle, he had taken no credit. Yet.

  Her personal life earned his admiration as well. Initially, he’d been disappointed that she hadn’t remained attached to Matthew Lassiter. A continued connection would have been one more method of keeping tabs on Matthew. Yet he’d been pleased that she’d shown the obvious good taste to shrug off a man so clearly beneath her.

  She’d concentrated on her studies, her goals, as he would have expected from his own daughter, had he a daughter. Twice she had explored relationships. The first no more than the rebellion of youth, in VanDyke’s opinion. The young man she’d attached herself to in the initial weeks after her return to college had been little more than an experiment, he was sure. But she’d soon shaken herself loose from the muscle-bound, empty-headed jock.

  A woman like Tate required intellect, style, breeding.

  Indeed, after graduation she had been drawn into a liaison with a fellow postgraduate student who shared many of her interests. That had lasted just under ten months, and had caused VanDyke some concern. But that, too, had ended when he’d arranged to have the man offered a position at his oceanographic institute in Greenland.

  To fully realize her potential, he felt Tate needed to limit her distractions, as he had over the years. Marriage and family would only tilt her priorities.

  He was delighted that she was now working for him. He intended to keep her on the fringes for the present. In time, if she continued to prove worthy, he would draw her into the core.

  A woman of her intelligence and ambitions would recognize the debt she owed him, and would understand the value of what he could continue to offer.

  One day they would meet again, work side by side.

  He was a patient man and could wait for her. As he waited for Angelique’s Curse. His instincts told him that when the time was finally right, one would lead him to the other.

  Then he would have everything.

  VanDyke glanced over as his fax began to hum. Rising, he poured himself a large tumbler of freshly squeezed orange juice. If he hadn’t had such a full schedule that day, he would have added just a dollop of champagne. Such small luxuries could wait.

  He lifted a brow as he picked up the fax. It was his latest report on the Lassiters. So, he mused, Matthew had jumped ship and gone back to his uncle. Perhaps he would stick the drunken fool in another rehab center. It continued to surprise him that Matthew didn’t simply leave the old man to wallow in his own vomit and disappear.

  Family loyalty, he thought, shaking his head. It was something VanDyke knew existed, but had never experienced. If his own father hadn’t conveniently died at fifty, VanDyke would have implemented his plans for a take-over. Fortunately, he had no siblings to rival with, and his mother had faded quietly away in an exclusive mental hospital when he’d been barely thirteen.

  He had only himself, VanDyke thought, sipping the chilled juice. And his fortune. It was well worth using a small part of it to keep an eye on Matthew Lassiter.

  Family loyalty, he thought again with a small smile. If it ran true, Matthew’s father had found a way to pass his secret to his son. Sooner or later, Matthew would be compelled to hunt for Angelique’s Curse. And VanDyke, patient as a spider, would be waiting.

  Rough weather hit the Nomad and halted excavation for forty-eight hours. High seas had half the crew down for the count despite seasick pills and patches. Tate and her cast-iron constitution rode out the storm with a thermos of coffee at her worktable.

  She’d left the cabin to a moaning, green-faced Lorraine.

  The rock and roll of the boat didn’t stop her from cataloguing the newest additions to the trove.

  “I thought I’d find you here.”

  She looked up, let her fingers pause on her keyboard and smiled at Hayden. “I thought you were lying down.” She tilted her head. “You’re a little pale yet, but you’ve lost that interesting green tinge.” Her smile widened wickedly. “Want a cookie?”

  “Feeling smug?” Warily, he kept his eyes averted from the plate of cookies on the table. “I hear Bowers is having a great time finding new ways to describe pork to Dart.”

  “Hmm. Bowers and I, and a few of the others, enjoyed quite a hardy breakfast this morning.” She laughed. “Rest easy, Hayden, I won’t describe it to you. Have a seat?”

  “It’s embarrassing for the team leader to lose his dignity this way.” Grateful, he lowered himself into a folding chair. “Too much time in the classroom, not enough in the field, I guess.”

  “You’re doing okay.” Happy to have company, she turned away from the monitor. “The entire film crew’s down. I hate to be pleased with anyone’s misfortune, but it’s a relief not to have them hovering for a couple days.”

  “A documentary will pump up interest in this kind of expedition,” he pointed out. “We can use the exposure, and the grants.”

  “I know. It isn’t often you have the benefit of a privately funded expedition, or one that pays off so successfully. Look at this, Hayden.” She lifted a gold watch, complete with chain and fob. “Beautiful, isn’t it? The detail of etching on the cover. You can practically smell the roses.”

  Lovingly, she rubbed a thumb over the delicately etched spring of buds before carefully opening the clasp.

  “ ‘To David, my beloved husband, who makes time stop for me. Elizabeth. 2/4/49.’ ”

  Her heart sighed over it. “There was a David and Elizabeth MacGowan on the manifest,” she told Hayden in a voice that had thickened. “And their three minor children. She and her eldest daughter survived. She lost a son, another daughter, and her beloved David. Time stopped for them, and never started again.”

  She closed the watch gently. “He’d have been wearing this when the ship went down,” she murmured. “He’d have kept it with him. He might have even opened it, read the inscription one last time after he said goodbye to her and their children. They never saw each other again. For more than a hundred years, this token of how much she loved him has been waiting for someone to find it. And remember them.”

  “It’s humbling,” Hayden said after a moment, “when the student outstrips the teacher. You have more than I ever did,” he added when Tate glanced up in surprise. “I would see a watch, the style, the manufacturer. I would note the inscription down, pleased to have a date to corroborate my calculation of its era. I might give David and Elizabeth a passing thought, certainly I would have looked for them in the manifest. But I wouldn’t see them. I wouldn’t feel them.”

  “It isn’t scientific.”

  “Archeology is meant to study culture. Too often we forget that people make culture. The best of us don’t. The best of us make it matter.” He laid a hand over hers. “The way you do.”

  “I don’t know what to do when it makes me sad.” She turned her hand over so that their fingers linked. “If I could, I’d take this and I’d find their great-great-grandchildren so I could say—look, this is part of David and Elizabeth. This is who they were.” Feeling foolish, she set the watch aside. “But it doesn’t belong to me. It doesn’t even belong to them now. It belongs to SeaSearch.”

  “Without SeaSearch, it would never have been found.”

  “I understand that. I do.” Needing to clarify her own feelings, she leaned closer. “What we’re doing here is important, Hayden. The
way we’re doing it is innovative and efficient. Over and above the fortune we’re bringing up, there’s knowledge, discovery, theory. We’re making the Justine, and the people who died with her, real and vital again.”

  “But?”

  “That’s where I stumble. Where will David’s watch go, Hayden? And the dozens and dozens of other personal treasures people carried with them? We have no control over it, because no matter how important our work, we’re employees. We’re dots, Hayden, in some huge conglomerate. SeaSearch to Poseidon, Poseidon to Trident, and on.”

  His lips curved. “Most of us spend our working lives as dots, Tate.”

  “Are you content with that?”

  “I suppose I am. I’m able to do the work I love, teach, lecture, publish. Without those conglomerates, with their slices of social conscience, or eye for a tax write-off, I’d never be able to take time for this kind of hands-on fieldwork and still eat on a semi-regular basis.”

  It was true, of course. It made perfect sense. And yet . . . “But is it enough, Hayden? Should it be enough? How much are we missing by being up here? Not risking anything, or experiencing the hunt. Not having some claim or control over what we do, and what we discover? Aren’t we in danger of losing the passion that pulled us into this in the first place?”

  “You aren’t.” His heart began to accept what his head had told him all along. She would never be for him. She was an exotic flower to his simple, plodding drone. “You’ll never lose it, because it’s what defines you.”

  In a symbolic farewell to a foolish dream, he lifted her hand and pressed his lips to her knuckles.

  “Hayden . . .”

  He could read the concern, the regret and, painfully, the sympathy in her eyes. “Don’t worry. Just a token of admiration from colleague to colleague. I have a suspicion we’re not going to be working together much longer.”

  “I haven’t decided,” she said quickly.

  “I think you have.”

  “I have responsibilities here. And I owe you, Hayden, for recommending me for this position.”

  “Your name was already on the list,” he corrected. “I merely agreed with the choice.”

  “But I thought—” Her brow creased.

  “You’ve earned a reputation, Tate.”

  “I appreciate that, Hayden, but . . . Already on the list, you said? Whose list?”

  “Trident’s. The brass there was impressed with your record. Actually, I got the feeling there was some definite pressure to put you on, from one of the moneymen. Not that I wasn’t happy to go along with the recommendation.”

  “I see.” For reasons she couldn’t name, her throat felt dry. “Who would that be, the moneyman?”

  “Like you said, I’m just a dot.” He shrugged his shoulders as he rose. “Anyway, should you decide to resign before the expedition is finished, I’d be sorry to lose you, but it’s your choice.”

  “You’re getting ahead of me.” It made her nervous to realize she’d been singled out somehow, but she smiled at Hayden. “But thanks.”

  When he left her, she rubbed her hands over her mouth. Where had this spooky feeling come from? she wondered. Why hadn’t she known about a list, or that her name had been on it?

  Turning to her monitor, she clattered keys, eyes narrowed on the screen. Trident, Hayden had said. So she would by-pass Poseidon and SeaSearch for the moment. To find where the power was at any level, you looked for the money.

  “Hey, friends and neighbors.” Bowers strolled in, gnawing on a chicken leg. “Lunch is up, in more ways than one.” He wiggled his brows at Tate and waited for her to chuckle.

  “Give me a hand here, Bowers.”

  “Sure, sweet thing. My hand is your hand.”

  “Just work your magic on the computer. I want to find out who the big backers are in Trident.”

  “Going to write thank-you notes?” Setting his lunch aside, he wiped his hands on his shirtfront and started in.

  “Hmm . . . a lot of layers here,” he murmured after a moment. “Good thing I’m the best. You’re hooked up to the main here, so the data we need’s in there somewhere. Always is. You want board of directors, or what?”

  “No,” she said slowly. “Forget that. Ownership of the Nomad, Bowers, under the corporation. Who owns the ship?”

  “Ownership shouldn’t be tough to find. Not with your friendly technology. SeaSearch owns it, baby. Hold on . . . donated. God, I love philanthropists. Some cat named VanDyke.”

  Tate stared at the screen. “Silas VanDyke.”

  “He’s a big wheel and a big deal. You musta heard of him. Finances a lot of expeditions. We ought to give the man a big, sloppy kiss.” His grin faded when he looked down at Tate’s face. “What’s up?”

  “I am.” She gritted her teeth against the fury. “That son of a bitch put me on here. That . . . Well, I’m taking myself off.”

  “Off?” Baffled, Bowers stared at her. “Off what?”

  “He thought he could use me.” Almost blind with temper, she stared at the artifacts carefully arranged on her worktable. David and Elizabeth’s watch. “For this. The hell with him.”

  Matthew hung up the phone, picked up his coffee. Another bridge burned, he thought. Or maybe, just maybe, the first couple of planks set in place on a new one.

  He was sailing for Hatteras in the morning.

  If nothing else, he mused, it would be a good test of the Mermaid’s seaworthiness.

  The boat was finished, painted, polished and named. He and LaRue had taken her out several times over the last few days on short runs. She sailed like a dream.

  Matthew sat back now, pleasantly tired. Maybe he’d finally done something that would last.

  Even the name had personal significance for him. He’d had the dream again, the one of Tate in the deep, dark sea. He didn’t need Freud to explain it to him. He’d been in contact with Ray often over the last few weeks. Tate’s name had come up, as had the Isabella, and memories of that summer.

  Naturally, it had made him think, and look back, so the dream had come.

  Tate might have been no more than a wistful memory, but the dream had been so immediate that he’d felt compelled to christen the boat for it. Or in a roundabout way, he supposed, for her.

  He wondered if he would see her, doubted it. And letting himself slide into relaxation, told himself it didn’t matter one way or the other.

  The screen door whined open, slammed. LaRue came in with bags of takeout burgers and fries. “You made your phone call?” he asked.

  “Yeah. I told Ray we’d start out in the morning.” Lifting his arms over his head, Matthew linked his fingers and stretched. “Weather looks good. Shouldn’t take us more than three or four days at an easy clip. That’ll give us a chance to shake her down.”

  “I look forward to the meeting of him and his wife.” LaRue dug up paper plates. “He didn’t tell you more about what he found?”

  “He wants me to see it in person.” Suddenly ravenous, Matthew helped himself to a burger. “He’s set on heading out for the West Indies by the middle of April. I told him that suited us.”

  LaRue’s gaze met Matthew’s, and held. “The sooner the better.”

  “You’re crazy going back there.” Face haggard, Buck stepped in from the bedroom. “The place is cursed. The Isabella’s cursed. Took your father, didn’t it?” His gate slow, measured, he came forward. “Nearly took me. Should have.”

  Matthew doused his fries with enough salt to make LaRue wince. “VanDyke took my father,” he said calmly. “A shark took your leg.”

  “Angelique’s Curse caused it.”

  “Maybe it did.” Matthew chewed thoughtfully. “If it did, I figure I’ve got a claim on it.”

  “That thing’s bad luck to the Lassiters.”

  “It’s time I changed my luck.”

  Unsteady, Buck braced a hand on the tiny linoleum-topped table. “Maybe you figure I only care what happens to you ’cause of what’ll happen to me. That a
in’t the way it is. Your father expected I’d look after you. I did the best I could long as I could.”

  “I haven’t needed looking after for a long time.”

  “Maybe not. And maybe I’ve been fucking up when it comes to you, when it comes to me the past few years. You’re all I’ve got, Matthew. Truth is, you’re all I ever gave most of a damn about.”

  Buck’s voice broke, causing Matthew to close his eyes and will away the worst edge of guilt. “I’m not spending the rest of my life paying for something I couldn’t stop, or watching you finish the job the shark started.”

  “I’m asking you to stay. I figure we could start a business. Take tourists out, fishermen, that kind of thing.” Buck swallowed hard. “I’d pull my weight this time around.”

  “I can’t do it.” Appetite gone, Matthew pushed his food aside and stood. “I’m going after the Isabella. Whether I find her or not, I’m picking up my life again. There are plenty of wrecks out there, and I’m damned if I’m going to spend the rest of my life