by Rachel Lee
“I won’t need that,” she interrupted, as her stomach began to burn. “I can’t use that.”
He looked at her, something passing swiftly over his face. “Okay, Okay. You’re right. I thought you could send a message, even if you couldn’t understand the response . . . okay. I’m sorry. Just remember the emergency beacon.”
She nodded. “I will. But I don’t know anything about sailing, or sails.”
“You don’t have to. This boat has an engine. I’ll take us out of the harbor using it, and you can see how it works, okay?”
An engine. She thought she could handle that, and it was a relief, because the ugly, bitter feeling was coming over her again, the resentment of what had been done to her. And she didn’t like it. Because deep inside she knew she was never going to get any better, so it was time to start accepting her lot. Time to start learning to live with it.
She knew that, but she was still having a hard time with it. Part of her wanted to sink into bitter self-pity and never climb out of the hole again. But another part of her, a more adult part she sometimes thought, kept insisting that by doing so she could only cripple herself more.
Instinctively, her hand covered her belly, and she felt the emotional emptiness there. Deafness, she thought, at least managed to distract her from that.
Dugan reached out, taking her hand in his. His touch was warm, comforting, kindly, and it reached past barriers that he couldn’t have crossed any other way. She lifted her eyes slowly to his.
“Are you going to be all right?” he asked.
She nodded, squaring her shoulders. “I’ll be fine.”
Just then there was a loud thud from the deck. They both turned and saw Tam peering into the cockpit.
“Hey,” Tam said, and continued speaking. Because of his moustache, Veronica couldn’t make out his words. She looked at Dugan, who was suddenly grinning. He explained.
“He wants to know if it’s time to start loading.”
Veronica managed a nod, and self-consciously pulled her hand from Dugan’s. She couldn’t afford weakness, she told herself. She couldn’t afford to cling to anything, even something as small as the touch of another human being.
“It’s high time,” she said.
But this time, instead of getting irritated at her, Dugan simply grinned. “Let’s go,” he said.
Work, Veronica told herself. She needed to concentrate on work. She didn’t have room for anything else in her life.
And she didn’t want to.
Chapter 8
Luis Cortes showed up early in the afternoon, just as they were finishing loading.
The magnetometer was the last thing they brought on board because Dugan wanted everything else squared away before he figured out where they were going to put this piece of equipment, along with Veronica’s computer.
It was early afternoon by the time they got around to it. Bringing enough compressed air for several dives a day proved to be quite a few canisters, and they all had to be secured so they wouldn’t roll around. He had to rig a method of confining them, since he didn’t ordinarily dive from this boat.
The metal detectors had to be secured, too, in a cargo locker.
“It’s usually calm around here,” he explained to Veronica. “Good sailing water. But you never know. A little bit of wind from a nearby storm can make it rough, so I don’t want anything rolling around anywhere.”
She nodded her understanding, but still found it a little daunting. She hadn’t considered this either. In fact, she thought disparagingly, she hadn’t thought of much. She had just assumed they’d pile the stuff on board the way she did in her trunk.
But Dugan didn’t take such chances. He’d taken them once, and was never going to do it again. Some unexpectedly rough seas on a sail to Jamaica years ago had taught him the importance of securing things—and he still had the scars to prove it.
He decided to put the magnetometer on the table in the lounge. It was a black box, maybe half the size of most personal computers, with several cables and a couple of probes. The probes would hang out the porthole, trailing in the water, their purpose to measure the minute variations in the earth’s magnetic field that would be caused by an iron deposit, such as a ship’s gun.
He bolted the box to the table, figuring he could always get another tabletop. And they could eat standing up if necessary, but Veronica needed a place to work. This boat didn’t exactly come equipped with office space.
Her laptop he wasn’t worried about. She’d even had the sense to bring a converter so it could run on twelve-volt direct current. When things got rough, she could stash it in the locker under the bench beside the table.
But he was curious about why she needed it.
“Instead of recording the magnetometer readings to chart paper, I’m recording to disk.”
“Sounds good to me.” At least he didn’t have to deal with some fancy kind of printer, too.
And that’s when Luis showed up, just as they finished securing the magnetometer and were discussing whether to get lunch before they sailed.
“Hola!” he called from the dock.
Dugan poked his head out the hatch, then yanked it swiftly back as he recognized the man. “Oh, Christ,” he muttered.
“What is it?” Veronica asked.
“Luis Cortes. The guy I told you about.”
“Oh.” Veronica’s mind began racing. The guy was being too persistent for someone with a casual interest, she thought. From what Dugan said he had told the man, Cortes should have lost interest. On the other hand, maybe Dugan hadn’t done as good a job of putting the guy off as he thought. It wouldn’t surprise her if he overestimated his impact on Cortes. Men had a habit of doing that.
“I’ll go talk to him.” She was out of the cockpit and on the deck before she could really think about what she was going to do. All she knew was she resented this stranger trying to horn in on her exploration.
He was a thin man, not too tall, giving the impression of being rawboned. And his jaw kept moving in the most disconcerting way.
“You want something?” she asked him.
He spoke, and she realized with a sinking stomach that she couldn’t read him. The vowel sounds she could hear didn’t match up with the movements of his lips in any way that made sense to her.
And she stood there with her heart plummeting, paralyzed yet again by her disability. Paralyzed once again with the realization of just how isolated and helpless she really was. Dugan had been making her forget that. He was so easy to read, and even when she couldn’t she wasn’t afraid to tell him so. But how many times was she going to ask this stranger to repeat himself before she totally humiliated herself or he gave up in disgust? Just how helpless did she want to show herself to be in front of an utter stranger?
Her eyes were suddenly burning, and she looked at Dugan. Worse yet, she realized, was that he understood what her problem was. She felt naked. Exposed. Hating it, she turned and hurried down the ladder, passing a startled Tam in the galley, where he was quenching his thirst with some orange juice. He said something that sounded questioning.
She couldn’t understand him, either, because he had a moustache. Giving him no chance to discover that, or remind her yet again of how isolated she was, she pushed past him and disappeared into the aft cabin that Dugan had told her to use.
Then she threw herself facedown on the bunk, grabbing the pillow with her hands, and trying to fight down the rising tide of despair that threatened to drown her.
Sometime later, she heard something from above, heard the boat’s engine begin to thrum, and felt a slight lurch. They were under weigh.
Ten minutes after that, there was a knock on the cabin door. She didn’t answer it, but her silence achieved nothing. She felt someone sit beside her, and she lifted her head to look. It was Dugan.
He reached out and astonished her by stroking her hair. The sensation sent shivers of longing through her, and she bit her lip, resisting the effect of his t
enderness.
“I told him to get lost,” Dugan said. “I told him you’re just taking a vacation and to go bug some treasure salvors.”
She managed a nod, but her throat was so tight she couldn’t speak.
“Are you sure your dad can’t sail with us?”
She shook her head, and spoke thickly. “He’s still too worn-out from the chemo. Being on a boat would exhaust him.”
“Being deaf is a bitch, isn’t it?”
The remark startled her, and all of a sudden all the emotions she’d been battling refused to be subdued any longer. Tears prickled her eyes, then began to run down her cheeks.
“Oh, boy,” Dugan said. For an instant his expression was almost panicked. Then, astonishing her, he reached for her and lifted her until she was leaning against his chest.
Then he held her while hot tears burned her cheeks, and grief stung her throat, while broken, angry words tumbled out of her.
“I am so sick of being alone,” she said, her hand crumpling the front of his polo shirt. “I’m so sick of it.”
He said something, but she wasn’t looking at him so she didn’t know what it was. But she was past caring. The hurt inside her seemed determined to tumble out.
“I’ve been alone my whole damn life! And now I’m deaf, and I’m more alone than ever. I couldn’t talk to that man! I couldn’t talk to him, Dugan. Because I couldn’t understand him. A year ago I’d have been able to go out there and talk to him in Spanish or English without a problem. But now . . . now I can’t read his lips. I can’t really hear him. Which means I can’t do the simplest thing on earth for myself: talk to another human being!”
His voice rumbled in his chest, and it sounded soothing. She didn’t care what he was saying. It didn’t matter.
“My father’s dying, my career’s come to a halt, how am I ever going to teach again? And . . . and . . . I was married. I was married and I loved him, but he couldn’t handle my deafness . . .” A hiccuping sob gripped her, and her words trailed off. She hated the way she sounded. Even in the midst of all the pain she was feeling, she hated the self-pitying way she sounded. But the simple fact was, she was never going to be close to anyone again because she couldn’t talk to people anymore. Her friends avoided her, as if they were embarrassed by her deafness. Her father . . . her father was probably going to die even before she found the mask. She’d never had a mother, at least not one she could remember, and her father had even destroyed that little bit for her by telling her she had never known the woman who had given her life, that the woman she had known about, that he had told her about, had never really existed.
And all the things that made her hurt, all the things that made her angry, all the things she had resolutely been burying these past six months by focusing on this quest, had suddenly ballooned inside her, demanding to be let out. Demanding her attention.
She cried for a little while longer, but not too long. She hated herself for the weakness, and as soon as she could she sniffled her tears into oblivion. Then, wrenching out of Dugan’s embrace because it felt perilously like something she could never have, she threw herself back on the bed and stared up at the ceiling.
Dugan sat beside her for a while longer. After a bit, he reached out and took her hand. She yanked it back. Finally, he called her name. Recognizing the vowel sounds, she looked at him.
“You’re doing pretty damn good for someone who’s only been deaf a year,” he said. “Maybe you need to cry more often.”
“What?”
But he didn’t repeat himself. He seemed to know that she had understood him. “Tam’s at the wheel. Wash your face and come up on deck. It’s a beautiful day for a sail. You wouldn’t want to miss it.”
Then he got up and walked out, leaving her to wonder what he thought of her after her outburst. Then she decided it didn’t matter what Dugan Gallagher thought of her. He was just a guy who owned the boat she was hiring.
But somewhere deep inside, she knew she was lying to herself.
Isolated. The word stuck with Dugan throughout the afternoon. Veronica came up on deck eventually and sat in the stern, watching the islands and water go by. After they got out of the channel into open water, Dugan turned off the engine, and he and Tam sheeted the spinnaker. The sail caught the wind and jerked them forward with a strong lurch, then settled them into a smooth ride over the gentle swells.
God, how he loved to sail!
Isolated. He hadn’t thought of it that way before. He’d known she was deaf, but that was just a bit of difficulty in conversation. He supposed he hadn’t really thought it through. She was isolated, probably in ways he couldn’t even imagine.
Besides, she was communicating so well with him it hadn’t occurred to him she couldn’t do that with everybody. But today had shown him the truth of it. She couldn’t read Tam and she couldn’t read Cortes, and there were probably hundreds of other people out there she couldn’t read either. People she ran into every day.
It struck him that simple things, like a conversation with a cashier, might be fraught with perils for her. What if the cashier looked down while speaking? Veronica might never hear what the person said. How many times a day did she have to explain that she was deaf and ask someone to repeat themselves? And how many times a day did she misunderstand something and get looked at as if she were stupid?
How many times a day did life make her feel inadequate?
He didn’t want to think about it, but when he glanced away from the sun-dappled water to the woman sitting in the stern with her arms protectively folded around herself, he couldn’t help but think about it.
So, to avoid following those paths, which weren’t going to get him anywhere useful, he thought about Luis Cortes.
“We should get that guy checked out,” he said to Tam.
“What guy?”
“The one who came to the boat just before we left. Cortes.”
“Why? He was just curious.”
“That’s the second time he’s been sniffing around what we’re doing.”
“Oh.” Tam rubbed his moustache thoughtfully. “Okay. When we get back. I’ll see what I can find out.”
“Thanks.”
Tam shrugged. “No big deal. So what’s with Veronica?”
“She’s deaf.”
“Deaf? Well, that explains a lot. But she hears you okay.”
“She can read my lips.”
“Well, she can’t read mine, apparently.”
“You have to look right at her when you talk.”
“Cool. Okay, I’ll keep that in mind.”
Tam as usual, Dugan thought. Everything rolled off his back. Dugan envied his attitude. He ought to be letting all of this roll off his back, too. After all, Veronica’s problems were her own.
He couldn’t help thinking about them, though. Including the ones she’d just revealed. Bad enough to be deaf, bad enough to be worried about her career because of it, but utterly unforgivable that her husband had ditched her because she couldn’t hear. The guy was lower than rat shit.
Not his problems, he reminded himself yet again. But that didn’t stop him from feeling an ache when he thought about all that Veronica had been through. He couldn’t quite suppress the urge to go strangle the jerk she’d been married to. Nor could he quite shake the overpowering desire to rattle the bars of the universe and tell it to give this woman a little break here. God, her father, her husband, her hearing, maybe her job . . . Nobody should have to deal with all of that in such a short space of time.
How the hell was she holding it all together?
He glanced back again, and wondered, and couldn’t quite ignore the feeling that there was even more wrong in her life than she’d told him.
After he left the dock, Luis drove back to Old Town. Finding a parking place was, as always, difficult, but he managed to squeeze himself into one. Then he wandered the streets, not really interested in the shops, bars, or restaurants.
He was waiting, just waiting. A
nd he felt better in Old Town than he did elsewhere on Key West. But finally the warmth of the day began to wear on him, and he ducked into a restaurant where he ordered a seafood plate and a bottle of Tecate.
He was beginning to get nervous, he realized. Emilio was waiting for him to find a spy and start getting information. So far he hadn’t managed to do that. And while his trip to the dock this afternoon had been designed to discover just exactly who was working with Veronica Coleridge so he would know who else he could approach besides Gallagher, he didn’t think Emilio was going to be happy with the snail’s pace. Now he knew about Tam Anson, but until he had Anson firmly in his pocket, he hadn’t fulfilled his orders. Emilio could sometimes be an impatient man.
But the primary reason he didn’t want to talk to Emilio was that he was feeling guilty, and he had an almost visceral belief in the man’s omniscience. Which left him wondering why he had been so foolhardy as to call the other interested party. The party he was beginning, within the sanctity of his own mind, to call El Desconocido. The Unknown One.
Except that if Emilio was as much a mind reader as Luis sometimes believed, the sanctity of his mind was anything but, and he was going to be in serious trouble.
Luis simply wasn’t cut out for the role of double agent, and thinking about it was beginning to make him sweat despite the blast of icy air from the vent directly over his head.
Ay Dios, what had he been thinking?
The shrimp, as fresh as any he had ever had, suddenly tasted like sawdust, and he put his fork down, signaling the waiter to bring him another Tecate.
What he needed to do, he decided, was remind himself of why he was doing this. Of what he hoped to gain. Working for Emilio was a good job, of course. He was fairly paid, and he’d seen quite a bit of the world. But what he didn’t like was having to be at another man’s beck and call.
And every time Emilio made him come into that hothouse, knowing full well that he hated it, Luis was reminded that he was little more than a servant.
He had bigger dreams than that. And if this mask was as important as Emilio seemed to think, then it was worth a great deal of money. El Desconocido was probably willing to pay well for it. Much more than Emilio would pay Luis for just doing his job as he always had.