Deadly Engagement

by Elle James

  He shrugged and stared out across the bay. “I could ask you the same.”

  “I do it all the time. I live here.” She tipped her head toward him. “Where are you from?”

  “Around.”

  Evasive as well as handsome, with his thick dark hair and penetrating dark eyes. They still had a few minutes to kill and Emma was good for a few more pulled teeth, so she asked, “Why the interest in the lost boat?”

  “Besides the owner being missing and possibly dead? I want to protect the company interest and make sure the boat is in fact at the bottom of the ocean. It could be the owner found the tracking device and chucked it, taking off with the boat.” He crossed his arms. “Why so interested?”

  “The more I know about you, the better prepared I am for anything that happens below. So if there’s anything I need to know, spill now.”

  His brows rose. “I just need to find the boat.”

  Emma opened her mouth to argue, but was interrupted by Dave.

  “Get ready,” the captain said. “I’m as close as I can get to your coordinates without becoming a statistic.”

  Emma glanced around at the rocks protruding out of the ocean. Sea lions basked in the sun on the smooth ledges. Some slipped off into the water, disturbed by the nearness of the boat.

  Dragging her neoprene hood over her head, she tucked her hair beneath, then strapped her fins to her feet and shoved her hands into her gloves. Since she was the one in charge, she snapped the line for the surface marker buoy to her BCD and slipped her arms into the straps, hiking the BCD and cylinder up onto her back. Last but not least she pulled her mask onto her head and positioned it over her eyes, popped the regulator into her mouth and turned to see if her diving partner was anywhere near ready.

  He stood fully equipped, mask and regulator in place, waiting for her.

  Humph. So he was fast at getting geared up. That didn’t mean he would be a good dive buddy. Emma waddled toward the edge of the boat and grabbed the railing as the boat pitched in the choppy water.

  One last thumbs-up to Dave and to Creed, and she back-rolled off the end of the boat to plunge beneath the surface. The water took her breath away, even through the thick neoprene, making her second-guess her decision to use the wet suit versus a dry suit. But once she got moving, her body would warm the water trapped between her and the suit.

  As soon as she submerged, she released the surface marker buoy, allowing it to float to the surface where it would mark the divers’ progress beneath as they drifted along the ocean floor. That way Dave would know where to go to pick them up. Emma would make sure they swam away from the rocky protrusions when they were ready for the boat to retrieve them.

  As Emma resurfaced, a splash beside her heralded Creed’s entrance into the ocean.

  He held on to his mask and regulator as his head broke through the water, and then he gave her a thumbs-up.

  Together, they signaled Dave with a thumbs-up and waved.

  The captain waved back and set the boat in motion to pull farther out to sea, where he’d wait until Emma indicated for him to come retrieve them from the water.

  She checked her dive computer, confident that she had plenty of air for a couple hours, as long as she didn’t have to go too deep. The deeper she dove, the more time she had to save for decompression coming up.

  Emma loosened her mask, filled it with seawater, swished it, emptied and fit it snugly over her face. With one last glance at the departing boat and a double check on the surface marker buoy bobbing on the surface, Emma sucked in a gulp of metallic-tasting air and dove beneath the choppy waves. She headed straight for the rocks that had been partially submerged in the waves. Based on her calculations, the Anna Maria had last been seen there before the Devil’s Shroud rolled in that evening over two hundred years ago.

  A school of lingcod swam by, their dull gray bodies slipping past like silent shadows.

  With nothing but the sound of her breathing and the bubbles rising from each exhalation, Emma basked in the silent underwater world, the ebb and flow of the current less pronounced the deeper she went.

  As they neared the bottom and the base of the outcropping, a startling array of sea urchins and anemones colored the moss- and lichen-covered rocks and ocean floor with their spiny bodies. A curious sea lion swirled past Creed, twisting and looping gracefully through the water.

  Emma shone her diving headlamp onto the rocks, swimming into what appeared to be a small city of stone sprouting from the seabed.

  Creed lagged behind, his own headlamp panning the area all around him.

  She waited until he looked toward her, and then Emma urged him to catch up. The wreck of the Anna Maria had to be hidden somewhere among the black rocks, and she was anxious to find it before her air ran out.

  As soon as Creed was within twenty feet, Emma swam between two house-size boulders, her feet flipping gently, propelling her ever deeper into the maze.

  As she passed by another boulder twice the size of the first, she stopped, her breath catching in her throat when she glimpsed the outline of something with a sharper edge and straighter lines, not the rounded contours of objects natural to the ocean world. As her headlamp beam played over the object, her excitement waned. It was a boat. Not nearly big enough to be the Anna Maria, nor as old.

  A boat would be underestimating the craft that appeared to be more a luxury yacht, shiny white and fairly new at that. By the looks of it, the craft had been freshly sunk, lacking the barnacles and lichen that quickly laid claim to objects resting on the ocean floor.

  Disappointed, Emma made a mental note of the name on the stern. Pelageya. Emma checked her dive computer. She had sixty minutes left on this cylinder before she’d have to surface. If she wanted to find the Anna Maria, she’d have to move on soon.

  She wondered if this was the boat Creed referred to, and if so, how long Creed would want to investigate the wrecked yacht before they could continue on. Emma glanced behind her.

  The light from Creed’s headlamp reflected off the huge boulders as he swung it right and left. He had yet to focus in on what lay ahead of Emma.

  Emma approached the yacht, making note of the large hole in the port bow. As her gaze panned upward, she caught movement behind the glass portal of the enclosed helm.

  Curious, Emma swam closer and pushed open the door to the cabin. With a quick glance behind her to locate her dive buddy, who was closing in fast, she eased through the narrow opening, careful not to let her tank and BCD get hung up in the confines of the interior.

  As she neared the few short steps up into the helm, her regulator hose snagged on something behind her.

  She reached back to unhook the hose so that she could move on. Unable to pull free, she reached out to the walls in front of her, ready to push back the way she’d come.

  As she laid her palms flat on the smooth surface of the helm’s doorway, it gave way and a bloated face drifted out of the helm, coming straight at her, eyes white-filmed and vacant.

  Emma let out a squeal into her regulator, the sudden appearance of the bloated face igniting her flight instinct. She back-paddled to get away, her clinical side overwhelmed into panic mode.

  Something gripped her ankles and pulled hard, jerking her free of whatever had hold of her and out of the cabin.

  Realizing she was breathing too fast, Emma tried to calm herself, but her head spun and a gray fog threatened her vision.

  Creed’s hands clasped her shoulders in an iron grip, forcing her to focus on him through her mask.

  He tapped her regulator, as a reminder to breathe normally or she’d use up all her air before she could resurface. His gloved thumb and forefinger formed an O for the signal that she was okay.

  Emma’s gaze clung to Creed’s as she fought to slow her breathing and regain control of her senses. When a
t last she could think straight, she motioned for her and Creed to go up. Her heart still pounded hard against her eardrums, drowning out the sound of air moving through the regulator.

  Creed refused to move, pointing toward the yacht.

  Emma shook her head and jabbed a finger upward, wanting to surface immediately, to get away from the floating, ghostlike body she’d seen in the cabin.

  Creed squeezed her shoulders, tapped her chest with his forefinger and signaled okay.

  No, I’m not okay, she wanted to say. As a nurse, she’d seen blood and gore. But she’d never had a body float out at her while diving. The abrupt appearance had thrown her off-kilter, and her pulse had yet to slow to normal.

  Creed pointed to his chest and then to the yacht.

  Emma shook her head, refusing to go back inside the confining space. A shiver rippled across her at the thought.

  Creed’s fingers squeezed her shoulders once more and he swam back into the yacht, leaving her hovering over the deck.

  He better not get stuck. If so, he’s on his own.

  Several minutes passed, each longer than the last.

  A shadow moved over the boat, shifting, swirling, circling, like a...

  Emma glanced up. A great white shark hovered over the boat between rocky bottom and the open sky above. The sea lion that had been swimming along with them had disappeared. Her heart racing, Emma froze, praying Creed would remain inside the yacht until the shark grew bored and swam away. If Creed emerged with the body, the shark could attack, seeking the ready food source.

  The sleek sea creature seemed to know Emma was there and wanted to toy with her as she debated whether to stay put or join Creed in the yacht with the dead man.

  Emma kept an eye on the shark, checked her watch and her air supply several times before Creed finally emerged from the cabin.

  A quick glance upward reassured her that the shark had indeed grown tired of waiting and moved on.

  Creed backed out fins first, his hand clutching the arm of the dead man. Just what a shark might be interested in.

  Emma shivered and looked again, praying the shark truly had moved on and hadn’t swam out of view around a big boulder, intent on backtracking and surprising them.

  A shadow swirled over them. Her heart pounding, Emma glanced up, only to see a school of lingcod blocking the sunlight between rock formations.

  Their best bet was to get out with the body as quickly as possible. She touched Creed’s shoulder and made the hand signal for danger, steepled her hands for shark and circled her finger, then motioned up with her thumb.

  He nodded, his head swiveling in an attempt to find the shark.

  With so many big rocks surrounding them, it would be difficult to see the shark until they swam up on it or vice versa.

  Emma kicked out, moving swiftly through the water, anxious to get away from the shark before it decided they were fair game for lunch.

  Chapter 2

  When Creed had back-paddled out of the yacht’s cabin and turned to face his dive partner, he’d been happy to see Emma had shaken out of her panic. Although she still glanced around nervously.

  Good girl.

  When she’d indicated a shark in the area, he knew how dangerous it could be floating a dead man alongside them. With a brief glance at the body hovering like a specter in the underwater current, Emma kicked off, heading back the way they’d come, probably wanting to get out of the water before the shark returned.

  Creed grasped the dead man’s arm and followed, carefully dragging the man through the narrow crevices until they cleared the maze and swam out into the open. All the while he looked over his shoulder for the shark.

  A school of small shiny fish swarmed around him, pecking at the body. Creed waved a hand to shoo them away, then flipped his fins harder to catch up with Emma.

  They had to get the dead man out of the ocean before the shark decided the dead man and the live one would make easy prey.

  Barely skimming above the ocean floor, a starry skate floated over a patch of strawberry anemones, its wide winglike fins fluttering gracefully. Creed wished he was there for reasons other than investigating a potential terrorist plot. He’d take time to examine the flora and fauna of the Oregon sea life. The job and a looming shark had him kicking hard for the dive boat. Sightseeing was for tourists. He had a job to do.

  Emma stayed ahead of him, the line linking her to the buoy above trailing upward and at an angle behind her.

  She hadn’t been happy about his choice to bring the body up, but he had to determine without a doubt whether or not this was the boat Macias had made contact with and had arranged to meet. The GPS coordinates had been right on. Perhaps the identity of the dead man would help to shed more light on who Macias was involved with.

  The captain had been a fool to hover close to shore in murky, foggy weather like it had been last night. The seas had been rough, a deadly combination with the fog. The hole in the yacht’s hull had probably been caused by running aground on one of the jagged rocks hiding just below the surface. If the occupants had been able to abandon ship, their rubber raft would have been slammed into the rocky coastline.

  Creed made a mental note to check local police reports of bodies washing ashore over the next couple days. If they didn’t turn up soon, there wouldn’t be much left to identify. The creatures of the sea scavenged anything dead, picking the bones clean within minutes in an all-out feeding frenzy.

  Had the cabin door been open, the dead man’s body quite possibly would not still be intact. Hopefully, they’d at least get a decent fingerprint off the victim.

  When they’d traveled the same distance away from the reef as they’d come, Emma motioned for them to ascend. She moved with deliberate slowness, sure to make her rise to the top at the same or slower speed as the bubbles exiting her regulator.

  She moved with grace, her slim legs flexing and bending, her fins gliding through the water with firm strokes.

  Apparently she’d overcome her panic at finding a dead man and had restored her tight control over the dive.

  Creed admired that control. He’d trained with the best as a navy SEAL. Being calm in stressful circumstances meant the difference between life and death when you were in an environment hostile to humans.

  His navy days long past, he hadn’t been diving as often, but he retained everything from the thorough instruction. The importance of paying attention to details had been imprinted in his memory for life.

  As he rose to the surface, the dark waters lightened until he broke through to the sunshine warming the air above. The body bobbed on the surface, bumping against him. This was the part that made Creed wary. Underwater, he could see what was coming. With his head above the surface, anything could swim up to him and he wouldn’t know until it hit him. Sharks normally didn’t skim the surface waving their dorsal fins for all to see. That was what Hollywood fiction was made of.

  To a shark, humans appeared like sea lions, a tasty food source.

  For several long minutes, Emma waved at the boat bobbing in the waves a hundred yards away. Captain Dave sat at the helm, his hat pulled down over his face, napping, for all intents and purposes.

  Creed ducked his head below several times to make sure the shark hadn’t followed. So far so good.

  Emma pulled a whistle from a strap around her neck and blew hard in short sharp bursts.

  Dave’s head popped up, and he stumbled to his feet. In seconds, the boat’s engine revved and the craft made a large circle, heading directly toward them. He drifted to a stop a few yards away.

  Emma was first to reach the dive boat, shaking out of her BCD.

  While Emma readied to get out of the water, Creed kept a vigilant watch for the shark.

  “Whatcha got there?” Dave squinted, then his eyes widened as he
recognized what floated beside Creed. “Holy smokes.”

  “Dave, could you focus here? There’s a shark lurking around here. I don’t plan on dying today.” Emma shoved her BCD toward him.

  Dave leaned over the side and grabbed the gear and then her fins.

  Creed ducked his mask into the water in time to see a large mass swirling below him in tighter and tighter circles, edging upward. “We got company.” He let go of the body long enough to give Emma’s fanny a shove, boosting her up the ladder faster than her hands and feet could keep up. “Go, go, go!”

  Emma scooted up the ladder and fell over onto the deck, stripping off her mask and hood. “Get out of the water, Creed. That shark might decide live bait is better than dead.”

  “Not going without him.” Still treading water with as little movement as possible, Creed waited until Dave lowered a cable attached to a small crane mounted near the rear of the boat, the kind used to lift divers and rescue crafts in and out of the water, when necessary.

  Creed hooked the straps around the dead man’s body and gave a thumbs-up, trying not to wonder where the shark was and if he had time to get himself out of the water.

  The crank engaged, the metal-on-metal sound clanking in the still air as the body rose from the water.

  Emma stood at the side of the boat, bending over the edge, staring into the water. “He’s circling. Creed, get out of there!”

  His pulse thundering in his veins, Creed yanked off his fins, threw them over the side of the boat, then grabbed for the ladder, hauling himself, BCD, tank and all, out of the water.

  Emma grabbed his arm and pulled as a large gray shape angled upward, breaking the surface with a gaping maw of razor-sharp teeth. He snapped at Creed’s heels, missing by inches, then fell back into the water, bumping his nose against the buoy marker still floating nearby.

  Once topside, Creed dropped his gear to the deck and pulled his hood off, shaking water from his hair, sucking in a deep, shaky breath.

  Emma faced him, mouth pinched tight, gray eyes flashing. “Damn, that was close.” She planted her fists on her hips, her lips pressing into a thin line. “What part of ‘I’m in charge’ didn’t you get?”