Hell or High Water

by Julie Ann Walker

  Tracy/Stacy/Lacy’s furrowed brow telegraphed her skepticism. “One coin? I thought the Gulf and the Caribbean were littered with old doubloons.”

  “It wasn’t just one piece of eight my father found.” Leo winked. “It was a big, black conglomerate of ten pieces of eight, as well as—”

  “Conglomerate?” asked the brunette with the Cupid’s-bow lips. Tracy/Stacy/Lacy’s friend had given Leo all the right signals the minute Romeo pulled the catamaran up to Wayfarer Island’s creaky old dock and unloaded their guests. It’d been instant sloe-eyed looks and shy, encouraging smiles.

  Okay, and confession time. Because for a fleeting moment when she—Sophie or Sophia? Holy Christ, Leo was seriously sucking with names tonight—sidled up next to him, he’d been tempted to take her up on all the things her nonverbal communications offered. Then an image of black hair, sapphire eyes, and a subtly crooked front tooth blazed through his brain. And just like that, the brunette lost her appeal.

  Which is a good thing, he reminded himself. You’re gettin’ too old to bang the Betties Romeo drags home from the bar.

  Enter Dalton “Doc” Simmons and his nearly six and a half feet of homespun, Midwestern charm. He’d been quick to insert himself between Leo and Sophie/Sophia. And now her gaze lingered on Doc’s face when he said in that low, scratchy Kiefer Sutherland voice of his, “Unlike gold, which retains its luster after years on the bottom of the ocean, silver coins are affected by the seawater. They get fused together by corrosion or other maritime accretions. When that happens, it’s called a conglomerate. They have to be electronically cleaned to remove the surface debris and come out looking like this.” Grabbing the silver chain around his neck, Doc pulled a piece of eight from inside his T-shirt. It was identical to the one Leo wore.

  “And like this,” Romeo parroted, twirling the coin on the chain around his neck like a Two-Buck Chuck stripper whirling a boa.

  Their first day on the island, Leo had gifted each of his men—damnit!…his friends—with one of the coins, telling them their matching tattoos were symbols of their shared past and their matching pieces of eight were symbols of their shared future.

  Leo tipped the neck of his beer toward Doc. “Maritime accretions, huh? You sound like an honest-to-God salvor, my friend.”

  Doc smirked, which was as close to a smile as the dude ever really got. If Leo hadn’t seen Doc rip into a steak on occasion, he wouldn’t have been all that convinced the guy had teeth.

  “But even a conglomerate of coins wouldn’t be enough to guarantee the ship’s location,” Leo added, turning back to the blond. “My father also found a handful of bronze deck cannons. All of which were on the Santa Cristina’s manifest. So she’s down there…somewhere.” He just had to find her. All his friends were counting on that windfall for various reasons, and if he didn’t—

  “But, like you said, your dad tried to find this Christy boat for”—Leo winced. Okay, so the woman seemed sweet. But the only thing worse than mangling the name of the legendary vessel was referring to it as a boat—“like twenty-some-odd years, right?”

  “And Mel Fisher searched for the Atocha for sixteen years before finally findin’ her.” He referred to the most famous treasure hunter and treasure galleon of all time. Well, most famous of all time until he and the guys made the history books, right? Right. “In shallow water, like that around the Florida Keys, the shiftin’ sands are moved by wind and tide. They change the seabed daily, not to mention after nearly four centuries. But with a little hard work and perseverance, you better believe the impossible becomes possible. We’re hot on her trail.” Her convoluted, invisible, nonexistent trail. Shit.

  Doc slow-winked at the woman by way of agreement, twirling the toothpick that perpetually stuck out of his mouth in a circle with his tongue. It must have dazzled poor Sophie/Sophia, because she sucked in a breath before batting her pretty lashes and sidling her lawn chair closer to him. Throwing an arm around her shoulders, Doc turned to wiggle his eyebrows at Leo. Just like the others, Doc was never one to pass up an opportunity to feed Leo a heaping helping of shit. Par for the course considering Leo was…fuck a duck…used to be their commanding officer, a prime target for all their ass-hattery.

  Yeah, yeah, Leo thought, quietly chuckling. So, I pulled the Roger Murtaugh, I’m-gettin’-too-old-for-this-shit bit. And you think I screwed up royally when I turned down what she was offerin’? So, go ahead. Rub it in, you big corn-fed douche-canoe.

  “Why do you need to find that old treasure anyway?” the blond asked. “You have a private island.” She motioned with her beer toward the rippling waters of the lagoon, tipsily splashing suds into the fire and making it hiss. “Aren’t you r—” She hiccuped, then covered her mouth with her fingers, giggling. “Rich?” she finished.

  “Ha! Hardly.” Leo rested his sweating beer bottle against the fabric of his swim trunks. Here in the Keys, shorts and swim trunks were interchangeable—unlike his possible bed partners, apparently.

  Come on, now! Why can’t you get Olivia Mortier out of your head?

  And that was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Or more like the question of the last frickin’ eighteen months. Ever since that assignment in Syria…

  “But if you’re not rich,” the blond insisted, “then how can you”—hiccup—“afford to own this place?”

  No joke, Romeo had better double-time her up to the house and into his bed. One or two more brewskies and she’d be too many sheets to the wind for what the self-styled lothario had in mind for her. Romeo may be a horndog extraordinaire, with more notches on his bedpost than Leo had sorties on his SEAL résumé, but like all the guys, Romeo was nothing if not honorable. If Tracy/Stacy/Lacy was too incapacitated, Romeo would do no more than tuck her under the covers with a chaste kiss on the forehead. And as their SEAL Team motto stated: Where’s the fun in that?

  On cue, Romeo turned to Leo, snapping his fingers, a worried frown pulling his black eyebrows into a V. Leo hid a smile as he reopened the cooler and dug around inside until he found a bottle of water. He tossed it over the fire, and Romeo caught it one-handed. Then Mr. Slam-dunk-ovich made quick work of exchanging the blond’s beer with the H2O. “Try this, m’ija,” he crooned, really laying his accent on thick before leaning over to whisper something no doubt highly suggestive into her ear.

  The blond giggled, obediently twisting the cap off the water bottle to take a deep slug.

  “We don’t own the island, darlin’,” a deep voice called from up the beach. Leo turned to see his uncle coming toward them. The man was dressed in his usual uniform of baggy cargo shorts and an eye-bleeding hula shirt. His thick mop of Hemingway hair and matching beard glowed in the light of the moon, contrasting sharply with skin that had been tanned to leather by the endless subtropical sun.

  Bran Pallidino, Leo’s best friend and BUD/S—Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training—swim partner, had once described Leo’s uncle as “one part crusty sea dog and two parts slack-ass hippie.” Leo figured that pretty much summed up the ol’ coot in one succinct sentence. “My great-great-I’ve-forgotten-how-many-greats-grandfather leased the island for one hundred and fifty years from Ulysses S. Grant.”

  “President Grant?” the brunette squeaked, coughing on beer.

  “The one and only,” Uncle John said, plunking himself into an empty plastic deck chair, stretching his bare feet toward the fire, and lifting a tumbler—filled with Salty Dog, John’s standard grapefruit, vodka, and salted-rim cocktail—to his lips. Ice clinked against the side of the glass when he took a healthy swig. “You may not know this, Tracy,” he said—Tracy. Leo snapped imaginary fingers and endeavored to commit the name to memory—“but ol’ Ulysses smoked ’bout ten cigars a day. And my great-great”—Uncle John made a rolling motion with his hand—“however-many-greats-grandpappy happened to be the premier cigar-maker of the time. In exchange for a lifetime supply of high-quality Cubans, Great-Grandpappy secured the rights to make a vacation home for himself and hi
s descendants on this here little bit of paradise for a century and a half.” Uncle John’s familiar Louisiana drawl—the same one Leo shared, though to a lesser extent—drifted lazily on the warm breeze.

  The Anderson brothers, Uncle John and Leo’s father, James, originally hailed from the Crescent City. Like their father before them, they’d trained to be shrimp-boat captains in the Gulf. But a chance discovery during a simple afternoon dive off the coast of Geiger Key had changed everything. They’d found a small Spanish gunboat equipped with all manner of archeological riches, from muskets to daggers to swords, and the treasure-hunting bug had bitten them hard. The following year, when Leo was just five years old, the brothers moved to the Keys to use their vast knowledge of the sea to search for sunken riches instead of plump, pink shrimp.

  Unfortunately, they never found another haul that could compete with that of the gunboat. Uncle John gave up the endeavor after a decade, settling in to run one of Key West’s many bars until his retirement six months ago. But Leo’s father had continued with the salvage business, splitting his time between jobs and hunting for the Santa Cristina until he suffered a heart attack during a dive. Leo took solace in knowing his old man had died as he’d lived, wrapped in the arms of the sea.

  “Ulysses S. Grant? So that had to have been, what? Sometime in the eighteen seventies?” the brunette asked.

  “You know your presidents, Sophie.” Uncle John winked, taking another draw on his cocktail.

  Sophie, Sophie, Sophie. Leo really should have paid more attention to the introductions. I mean, seriously? What was his problem? If a woman’s name wasn’t Olivia Mortier, it just went in one ear and out the other? For shit’s sake!

  “I teach history at the Girls’ Academy of the Holy Saints High School in Tuscaloosa.” She hooked a thumb toward her friend. “Tracy teaches home ec.”

  Leo nearly spewed his beer. It wasn’t high etiquette, but it was damn close.

  “Ah.” Uncle John nodded sagely. “Well, that explains it. And you’re right. It was in the eighteen seventies.”

  “So then”—Sophie’s lips pulled down into a frown—“you’re kicked out in, what? Five? Ten years?”

  “Eh.” Uncle John shrugged. “We can’t really get kicked out because it was never really ours to begin with. Besides, this crew will have found the Santa Cristina by then.” John had moved out to Wayfarer Island under the auspices of “helping” Leo search for the ship. But really Leo suspected the old codger was just bored with retirement and looking to take part in one last hoorah. “And,” he continued, “they’ll have enough money to buy whatever house or island they want. Am I right, or am I right?”

  “Hooyah!” Doc and Romeo whooped in unison, lifting their beers in salute.

  Leo didn’t join in. He wasn’t a superstitious man by nature, but the ghost galleon brought out the avoid-the-black-cat, throw-salt-over-my-shoulder in him, and he didn’t want to jinx their chances of finding the wreck by treating it like it was a foregone conclusion. He also didn’t like to think that in a few short years he and his uncle would lose the lease on the island that had seen generations of Andersons for spring breaks and summer vacations, for Fourth of July weekends and the occasional Christmas getaway. It wasn’t until Leo arrived with his merry band of Navy SEALs that anyone had attempted to live on the island permanently; it was just too isolated.

  “And speaking of the crew…” Uncle John said. Crew. Leo rolled the term around in his head and figured right. I reckon that’s a label I can work with. “The other half of ’em just called on the satellite phone.”

  Because when Leo said isolated, he meant isolated. The nearest cell tower was almost fifty nautical miles away. Which begged the question: What the ever-lovin’ hell had Tracy and Sophie been thinking to let Romeo sail them out here? They were damned lucky Romeo was a stand-up guy and not some ax murderer. Had Leo felt more obliging, he’d have given the women a well-deserved lecture about the ill-advisedness of hopping onto a catamaran for a four-hour sail with a dusky-skinned gentleman sporting a too-precisely trimmed goatee. But right now, he had more important things to discuss.

  “What’d they say?” he asked his uncle, referring to his three friends who’d spent a week across the pond in Seville, Spain.

  “They said they finished photocopyin’ and digitizin’ the images of the documents in the Spanish Archives yesterday afternoon and sent all the data to What’s-his-name, that historian you’ve been talkin’ to online.”

  Online via the Internet connection Leo had established using the satellite he mounted to the top of the house. Because while he and the guys might’ve been fine to forgo cellular signals, there would have been serious mental and emotional fallout had Mason “Monet” McCarthy not been able to watch his beloved Red Sox play on their lone laptop or Ray “Wolf” Roanhorse not been able to Skype with his bazillion loving relatives back in Oklahoma. And the satellite was one more reason Leo’s savings account and the savings accounts of the others were barely in the black.

  God, we need a salvage gig. A big one. Because they only had enough funds left to fuel the search for the Santa Cristina for two, maybe three more weeks. And that wasn’t going to be enough.

  Of course, before they could start advertising their services, they needed to actually incorporate their fledgling business. Which meant paperwork and opening accounts and coming up with a name for their company. Leo was not happy with Romeo’s suggestion that they should call themselves Seas the Day Salvage. I mean, he enjoyed a play on words as much as the next guy, but, come on now, that was just bad.

  Pushing his cash problems and the long list of things he still needed to accomplish aside, Leo got back to the point at hand. The historian he’d been emailing.

  “Like I’ve told you twenty times before, the guy’s name is Alex Merriweather,” he scolded his uncle, not pointing out that John had no trouble remembering the names of Sophie and Tracy, two women he’d just met—the lecherous old fart. “And he assures me that if there’s anything new to discover in those documents, he’s the man who’ll find it.”

  Treasure hunters die old and broke. It was a saying Leo sure as shit didn’t want to see come true for him and the guys, which meant he was exploring every possible avenue he could. Including hiring an overpriced historian to go through all the old documents that pertained to the hurricane of 1624 and the fate of the Spanish fleet.

  “Hmmph.” His uncle made a face. “I doubt some library nerd is goin’ to be able to tell you anything more than—”

  “So what else did they say?” Leo interrupted, not willing to engage in that argument. Again. “After receivin’ the digitized copies, did Alex gave ’em any indication that—”

  “Hold on there, Leo, my boy.” Uncle John raised the hand not wrapped around his cocktail glass. “Don’t let your mind go runnin’ around like a gnat in a hurricane. First of all, they didn’t go into any detail with me. Second of all, I don’t think they’ve got any details. The sorry sonsofbitches have been stuck on a transatlantic flight all day long. They just landed in Key West a little while ago. They’re goin’ to rack out there for the night and head here first thing tomorrow mornin’. You’ll have to hold your questions until then.”

  Leo sat back in his chair, frustrated by the delay but comforting himself with another long pull on his beer.

  “I need to run to the little girls’ room,” Tracy suddenly announced. “Want to”—hiccup—“come with me, Sophie?”

  After a quick look at Doc, Sophie pushed up from her lawn chair. “Of course,” she said, giving the back legs of her Daisy-Duke-style jean shorts a quick tug. It didn’t do a damn thing to cover the lower curve of her ass cheeks peeking from beneath the frayed denim.

  “I’ll show you the way.” Romeo bolted up from his chair. The guy knew an opportunity to move things along when he saw one. “You coming, vato?” he asked Doc, one black brow raised meaningfully.

  “Be there in a sec,” Doc said. The three of them still seated
around the fire watched, heads tilted, as Romeo herded the women across the sand toward the house. What? They were all healthy, red-blooded, heterosexual males, and the sight of long, tan legs and sweet, heart-shaped derrieres was not something to be missed.

  “Hey, LT,” Doc said, taking the toothpick from his mouth, “if you’ve changed your mind about Sophie, I’ll gladly hara-kiri myself.”

  “You’ll what?” Leo turned away from the view.

  “You know,” Doc snickered. “I’ll fall on my sword so she can, uh, fall on yours.”

  Maybe he really was getting too old, or maybe he just had other things on his mind—not Olivia, not Olivia…okay, probably Olivia—but Leo just couldn’t force himself to feel any enthusiasm about the prospect of another meaningless one-night stand. “Thanks for the offer, even as distasteful as you just made it sound.” He grimaced. “But believe me when I say she’s all yours if you can get her.”

  “Don’t you worry.” Doc winked, pushing up from his seat, throwing the toothpick into the fire, and turning toward the rambling old house. “I’ll get her.”

  Yes, sir, Leo figured Doc probably would. After all, a woman had once told him that Doc was the spitting image of some big French actor. And though Leo hadn’t the first clue who she was talking about, he figured from her dreamy expression that the comparison was meant to be a compliment. “Me and Uncle John will hang out here. Give you all some time to do your wooin’.”

  “If that’s the case, you may be here all night,” Doc boasted. “My wooing has been known to last—”

  “Yeah, yeah.” Leo waved him off. “Get lost, will you? I’m tired of lookin’ at your smug face.” And sure enough, Doc’s expression became even more…well…smug. Leo grinned because he knew just what to say to get rid of it. “Besides, you stay here too much longer and you may give Romeo time to convince dear, sweet Sophie that a little two-for-the-price-of-one action could be lots of fun.”