When I Wake

by Rachel Lee

  Dugan’s anger deflated almost before it was born, and he looked at the woman with new interest. Deaf? What a goddamn shame. Not his problem, of course, but when he considered some of the shysters and hucksters around here who might try to take advantage of a deaf woman and her ailing father, he felt something akin to a moral qualm, a feeling so rare that he almost didn’t recognize it.

  “Yeah?” he said.

  “Yeah,” she said.

  Okay, so she was good at the lipreading thing. He looked at Coleridge again. “Just three months?”

  “At this time. After that, we’ll have to reconsider and possibly get different equipment.”

  “You can’t search a whole lot of seafloor in three months,” he said, making a point to look at the woman when he spoke.

  “We can search enough,” she said succinctly, and still too loudly.

  He decided he didn’t like her at all. “It’s your money,” he said finally. Only then did he realize what he had just walked himself into.

  Oh, Christ, the whole damn town was going to be laughing at him. Dugan Gallagher, treasure hunter. He’d rather be called an asshole.

  “One stipulation,” Veronica said.

  “Yeah? What’s that?”

  “Nobody at all is to know what we’re doing. Nobody.”

  He sighed. “Lady, you can’t keep a secret in Key West. It’s impossible.”

  “You’re not to tell anyone,” she repeated. “No one. No information. I don’t care if they know we’re looking for a wreck, but beyond that everything has to be secret.”

  “Well, sure, okay.” Like anybody would be interested anyway. People were always looking for treasure around these parts and coming up empty. No big deal. His reputation could stand it.

  Coleridge spoke. “We need you to find us some more divers. Trustworthy ones. We’ll pay their rate.”

  “Slow down a minute.” He waved a hand and propped his feet back on the desk. “Just searching, right? No dredging or anything.”

  “Not unless we find something.”

  “I’ll have to look into the equipment I’ll need to get.”

  Coleridge nodded. “We’ve already ordered the metal detectors and magnetometer. They’ll be arriving Saturday.”

  “So that’s all you want to do? Sweep the seafloor for metal?”

  “Right now, that’s it.”

  Chickens for the plucking. The phrase crept into Dugan’s mind, and that’s when he knew he absolutely had to do this. Not so he could pluck this pair of chickens, but so that he could keep someone else from doing it. The old guy was nigh unto death, and the woman was deaf. Under those circumstances he couldn’t fall back on the P.T. Barnum philosophy of life. Nobody else might be able to live with him, but he had to.

  “What happens if you find something?” he asked.

  “Then we consider a salvage attempt.”

  Of course. That was obvious, so obvious that asking the question was stupid. “Sure. Okay. So where are we searching?”

  “You don’t need to know that,” Veronica said.

  “Not until we have a contract,” Coleridge added. “Not until we’re ready to go.”

  “Like the state doesn’t already have a record.”

  “The state has a record of a very large piece of water,” Veronica said. “That’s all they have.”

  “And you have a more refined idea?”

  “What did you say?”

  “I asked if you have a better idea where this vessel is in this large piece of water.”

  “Much better.”

  He nodded slowly, wondering if this woman was as crazy as she was deaf. Enunciating with considerable care, he said to her, “Regardless, you do understand that you’re searching for a needle in a huge haystack?”

  “Of course.” She said it dismissively.

  “Well, it’s your money. When do you want to start?”

  “As soon as we sign a contract and get the metal detectors,” Coleridge said. “Saturday or Sunday.”

  Dugan rubbed his chin, thinking about it. In spite of himself, he was intrigued. He’d been thinking about a vacation on his boat, and this would be a kind of vacation, even if he did have to dive. “Water depth?”

  “No more than thirty feet.”

  “Okay. Why the hell not. Just as long as you understand that a three-month search isn’t going to turn up anything except a lot of mud. Cripes, I’m practically fleecing you.”

  Coleridge shook his head. “You can’t fleece someone who is getting exactly what they’re willing to pay for.”

  “Right. I hope you feel the same way three months from now.”

  “We will.”

  Dugan wished he was half so sure.

  Dugan had plenty of time to regret his hasty decision to help the Coleridges. All afternoon and early evening in fact. By the time he saw his last boat back in harbor and cleaned and readied for the next day’s business, he’d had ample time to wonder if P.T. Barnum had been talking about him.

  Feeling like a royal sucker, he strode home through the busy streets, sidestepping crowds of tourists who were having a hell of a good time and drinking a bit too much. Finally he reached his own home, a blessed four blocks from Duval Street, where everything was quiet and dark except for the occasional passing motor scooter.

  He’d bought the house when he’d first arrived, never realizing what a good investment it would turn out to be. It was a Key West original, built sturdily by a ship’s carpenter, and likely to last forever. At the time he bought it, it had been sadly neglected, but it had been exactly the therapy he’d needed to get over Jana. He had no idea how many hours he’d spent working on the place, repairing, repainting, improving, and remodeling the interior. Now he had a showpiece, a white-clapboard house with green tropical shutters, a wide shady porch, and a backyard—a small, Key West backyard—filled with a pool and tropical foliage that made it feel like the most private place on earth. And it was worth far, far more than he had put into it.

  Which was a rather odd thing for a man who’d come to Florida determined to waste his life away in bars. But then, so was the business, which he’d bought from Tam Anson. Tam and he had met up in a bar one night, neither of them really sober. Tam had been bemoaning the fact that his diving business was going belly-up. Dugan, not thinking too clearly, had offered to bail him out. Which was how he’d come to own Green Water Diving, Inc. A piece at a time, anyway. He’d started by buying in as a partner, but as time passed, Tam had wanted less and less to do with it, and had sold the rest of the business to him.

  Now Tam was his tenant, renting the upstairs apartment in the house and working for him intermittently as a diver while he tried to find himself. After eight years, Dugan figured Tam was never going to find himself, and probably wouldn’t pay the rent ever again either.

  Which was okay by Dugan. He’d left his cutthroat ways behind in New York. And he kind of figured he owed Tam something for getting him into the diving business.

  Besides, Tam was a good buddy and kept him from forgetting that he’d come here to lie back, not to rev up to Wall Street speeds. Tam was always ready to party, be it bar-crawling along Duval or taking a boat out to celebrate the sunset.

  Tam was lying in the pool area, reading a copy of Mad Magazine and drinking a longneck. He was wearing blue swim trunks, still damp from the pool, and had a towel slung around his neck. He looked like the perfect beach bum with his sun-streaked blond hair and moustache. There’d been a time when Dugan had envied that look. These days he was content that his dark brown hair was still thick.

  “Hey, what’s up, dude?” Tam asked, looking up from the magazine.

  “Nothing much,” Dugan replied, resisting the urge to ’fess up to his stupidity. He’d get around to that later. “You?”

  “Just hanging around. Thought maybe I’d invite a couple of guys over for poker, but everybody’s busy.”

  That surprised Dugan. Sometimes he thought most of Tam’s friends did nothing exce
pt party. “What about Serena?” Serena was Tam’s current interest, a girl too young to be running around Key West on her own, in Dugan’s opinion, but what did he know? Twenty-one was twenty-one.

  “She went home for a week. Her dad’s sick.”

  “Sorry.”

  Tam shrugged. “It happens. Grab yourself a beer, man, and hop in the pool. Water’s warm.”

  “Funny. Very funny.” Tam knew damn well he’d put in the pool only to enhance the property’s value, and because that particular summer he’d had an overwhelming need to dig a deep hole.

  He went into the house and popped open a Heineken, carrying it back out onto the deck with him, pausing to flip on the yard lights and some reggae on the outside speakers. A golden glow and quiet, upbeat music filled his private tropical paradise.

  The beer did its work rapidly, considering he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. Soon he was relaxing and thinking maybe he hadn’t just made the biggest mistake of his life. There could be advantages to a job that involved sailing around a quiet piece of ocean and diving. Plenty of peace and quiet for one. As long as Veronica Coleridge wasn’t talking all the time. The old man at least would be easy to deal with. The woman he wasn’t sure about.

  Basically, it might be a little more intensive than that vacation he’d been thinking about, but probably not much. How much work could be involved in taking a few shallow dives each day and running a metal detector over the seafloor? Low stress, that’s what it would be, because he didn’t give a damn if the Coleridges found anything at all.

  Yeah, it’d be okay. Three months of sea and sun. Except for the getting wet part, it was his favorite way to spend time.

  So . . . no big deal. And feeling better about it, he didn’t mind telling Tam what he’d done. He was aware that his major failing was his reluctance to admit he’d messed up, but he couldn’t see any good reason for trying to change himself.

  Tam chose that moment to dump the magazine and jump in the pool. A splash went up, and Dugan watched water drops darken his khaki shorts and shirt. Some people, he thought, never grew up. The fact that he was one of them didn’t mean he couldn’t notice it in other people.

  When Tam resurfaced, he grabbed the edge of the pool and shook his wet hair back from his face. “You oughtta come in, dude. Great way to cool down.”

  “No thanks. I’m not hot.”

  Tam gave him a wry look. “Yeah, right. You were a cat in your last life, right?”

  “Maybe. Or maybe I’m one this time around. I just have a good barber.”

  Tam laughed.

  “So, you want a diving job for the next three months?”

  “Taking tourists out? I don’t know.” Tam dropped the beach-bum attitude and grew serious. “You know I’m not that reliable, Dugan. I’ll drive you nuts.”

  “Way I figure it, if you’re on a boat, you’re reliable. This isn’t for Green Water.”

  “No? What then?”

  “Some crazy woman and her dad want to look for a wreck. They figure they can find it in three months.”

  Tam lifted both eyebrows, then hefted himself out of the pool by his arms and sat on the edge dripping. “Three months. You’re kidding, right? Or did they come from Mars?”

  “They think they have a pretty good idea where it’s at.”

  “Yeah. Sure. They’re crazy.”

  “I think I already said that.”

  “I’m agreeing with you.”

  “Ahh.”

  Tam shook his head. “So what exactly do they want us to do?”

  “Use metal detectors. Two divers, one boat, just a search.”

  “Sounds like a vacation.”

  “That’s what I’m thinking.” And, now that he thought about it, feeling a tad guilty, too. Was it any more honest for him to take these people’s money just to protect them from somebody who’d take twice that or more? Or was he just rationalizing the fact that he was a sucker?

  Tam, who hadn’t completely forgotten what he’d learned as a businessman, asked, “You didn’t make any promises, did you?”

  “Hell, no. I even tried to talk them out of it. They said they’d done their research. Well, if you ask me, if they’d done any serious research, they’d know they’re probably never going to find that wreck, even if they spend the next thirty years looking.”

  “Did you see their permits?”

  “Yep. I’m not crazy enough to get into something illegal. It’s all on the up-and-up, Tam.”

  “Then maybe they’re not as crazy as they seem. I hear only a few people get those permits every year, and hundreds try to get them. They must have something going for them.”

  “Maybe. But I figure it’s not my problem. They want one boat and two or three divers for three months for an easy job. Nice money, nice work, no hassle, right?”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  Tam at least wasn’t asking the questions that Dugan was asking himself, such as, How could he be thinking about getting tangled up in something like this when he was already as busy as he wanted to be with the diving business?

  But, he acknowledged, there was still some of the beach bum in him. Still something of the guy who’d wanted to lead a laid-back, hassle-free existence. Something of the man who’d been so singed by a bad marriage that he’d vowed never to get involved in anything serious again.

  And running the diving business was beginning to seem too much like work. Seven days a week. Bookkeeping. Employee problems. The list was endless. He also had not the least doubt that with minimal supervision Ginny could run the business. No problem there. He made a mental note to give her another raise.

  “So,” Tam asked, “what wreck are they looking for?”

  “I haven’t a clue. They’re keeping all the information under wraps.”

  Tam snorted. “Cripes. Like everyone around here hasn’t talked about every wreck and every salvage operation forever. Like anyone around here would give a shit that some new group is going after a wreck. They could come put up banners and nobody would think twice about it.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to look like fools if it doesn’t pan out.”

  “If they’re gonna look like fools, there’s a whole herd of fools running around here.” He shrugged and let it go. Tam wasn’t one to let unanswerable questions trouble him for long. “Three months. Now I’ve heard everything.”

  Dugan nodded, but his thoughts were already drifting on to something else—namely the hunger gnawing his belly. He really needed to eat lunch. But since it was too late for that, he decided to get a pizza. And maybe it was time to call Linda. She was always a good evening of fun. Light fun. She was no more interested than Dugan in getting seriously involved, so their relationship was comfortable for both of them.

  And that was the whole point, wasn’t it? he asked himself. To be comfortable. That was the mistake he’d made with Jana. It had never been comfortable.

  Damned if he was ever going to be uncomfortable again.

  Chapter 2

  “Why don’t you put in your hearing aids?” Orin asked his daughter.

  Veronica didn’t hear him, and he didn’t want to shout. So, finally, he picked up the waterproof case she’d bought to store them in for the trip and carried them to her.

  Her gaze slipped from the window of the cottage they were renting down to the case he held out toward her. She shook her head and looked up in time to read his lips.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I hate them,” she said. She could hear her own voice, barely. It was distant, unformed, and she had to trust that her lips and tongue were doing the right things from memory.

  “They help,” he said. “I want to talk.”

  Reluctantly, she reached for the case and opened it. Inside were the reminders of her disability, and she looked at them with a hatred beyond words. Then, irritably, she snatched them up and inserted them into her ears. Drawing a quick breath, she listened. They were adjusted right.

  And now every sound wa
s annoyingly loud, including the grinding roar of the air conditioner and the hum of the refrigerator in the kitchenette.

  “Thank you,” Orin said.

  To Veronica it sounded like “aaaaa ooooo.” She had to watch his lips to identify the consonant sounds she could no longer hear at all.

  “I don’t understand,” he said, “why you hate them so much, Veronica. They help you hear.”

  “They help me hear everything, Dad. Everything. Right now I can barely hear you over the roar of the air conditioner.” Could barely distinguish his words from the invasion of other sounds.

  He nodded, but she guessed he would never really understand. Would never understand that the amplified noise in her ears was every bit as bad as the silence she experienced without her hearing aids. Would never understand that for her there was no good solution, there was only bad and worse, depending on the situation.

  “What did you want to talk about?”

  “This search.” He had learned to keep his sentences relatively short to make it easier for her to follow him.

  “What about it?”

  “We’re probably not going to find the vessel. Not in three months.”

  She shrugged and wished she could turn her attention back to the window. Watching the top of a palm turn into a dark shadow against the red smudge of the sunset sky interested her more than this conversation. But she no longer had the luxury of looking at something else while she listened to someone speak.

  “Gallagher,” her father said, “was right. You might spend your entire life and fortune searching and never find a thing.”

  “I know that.” But it wasn’t going to stop her. She had nothing else to live for anymore, except vindicating her mother’s quest. She had lost everything else that had mattered to her. Everything.

  “Veronica . . .”

  “Look, Dad, we’ve been all over this. If you didn’t want me to do this, then why the hell did you tell me about the mask and Mother?”

  She must have been speaking even more loudly than usual, to judge by the way he pulled back.