Her Passionate Protector

by Laurey Bright

  Sometimes he was sure he was right about that, when she snatched her hand away at an accidental touch, a faint flush staining her cheeks, her eyelashes fluttering down as she ducked her head to hide her expression. Or at the rare unguarded moments when her eyes met his and he saw them darken and go wider, her lips parting slightly, the fine skin at her throat subtly moving as she swallowed before she dragged her gaze from his and turned away.

  But those glimpses of susceptibility were so brief and so quickly replaced by her usual cool containment, he wondered if he was fooling himself.

  Sorely tempted to take advantage of the slightest chink in her formidable armor, he knew if he forced the issue she'd retreat into herself completely, like a sea creature hiding in its shell.

  But yesterday he'd instinctively wanted to share the moment of elation when Rogan found the safe.

  At the first taste of her lips he'd almost forgotten what was happening at the bottom of the sea, totally absorbed in the feel of her mouth under his, the intoxicating scent of her skin, the overwhelming desire to haul her into his arms and kiss her properly, drown in the depths of her.

  Short-lived though it had been, the kiss simply confirmed what his body knew perfectly well. Something about Sienna made his blood roar, his heart pound, scorched his senses with an overwhelming need to penetrate the shell that hid her innermost self, to know her in every sense of the word, and certainly in the most intimate way of all. Once wasn't enough. And sex wasn't enough…

  A cloud spread from the horizon, hid the lemon-slice of moon and covered half the stars. A cool breeze made Brodie pull his windcheater closer about his body as he wedged himself farther into the corner.

  A dull thwump from below startled him, and a shudder seemed to pass over the Sea-Rogue, waves slapping at her sides, setting her rocking, the buffers protecting her hull bumping against the barge to which she was tethered.

  Brodie's senses went on high alert, and he stood up, steadying himself against the movement of the boat, looking out at the blackness where the only sign of the ocean was an occasional tiny gleam.

  Rogan, dressed only in shorts, appeared on deck, a flashlight in his hand. "What the hell was that?"

  The shock would have been more obvious down below.

  "Dunno," Brodie replied. "A whale?" A marine giant scratching the barnacles from its back on a handy keel, perhaps. Or maybe somewhere way under the ocean a small earthquake had occurred, a shifting of the seabed sending ripples of disturbance for miles.

  Rogan shone the flashlight on the water that still heaved about the boat. He swore graphically and Brodie looked down into the light dancing on the bubbling swells.

  As they watched, a dozen or so pale, dead fish rose like small ghosts from the depths, and floated, still and bleeding, on top of the water.

  "They wouldn't!" Brodie said. "Right under our noses?"

  "They have," Rogan answered grimly. "No whale. And nothing that was in the wreck would cause this. What's the betting someone's tried to blow the safe?"

  Chapter 8

  « ^ »

  "What sort of idiot…?" Brodie burst out.

  "A greedy one," Rogan said. "I'd say the explosion was a bit bigger than he expected. He might have killed himself if he didn't have the sense to get out of the water before the charge went off."

  He moved the light over the water nearby, but they could see nothing but waves and blackness and the silver gleam of I more fish floating belly-up.

  "Could have damaged the Sea-Rogue too."

  Camille emerged from the companionway, pulling on a jersey over slacks, and asking, "What happened?"

  Rogan said, "We're going to find out."

  No one on the barge seemed to have noticed the explosion. Its sturdy build and its size would have cushioned the effect, and after their underwater exertions the divers probably slept like the dead.

  Sienna appeared looking tousled and apprehensive. They hauled on their gear. Brodie grabbed a second flashlight and the two men went overboard, scanning the Sea-Rogue's hull.

  There didn't seem to be any damage, and they surfaced to reassure the women before finning down to the wreck, among dead fish and floating sand and debris that darkened the water still further. Visibility was almost nil.

  They reached the wreck and made for the stern where the safe was, looking about them for signs of life—or no life.

  Penetrating the swirling dimness as they approached their target, Rogan's light picked up a fresh, gaping hole.

  The light hit the gashed timbers, and a second later a long, bulky black shape shot out of the middle of them—a diver illuminated in the beam.

  Brodie kicked forward, with Rogan right at his heels.

  The other diver swam rapidly away from them but Brodie surged after him, catching at the intruder's fin.

  The man was quick and strong. He kicked out and the flashlight was knocked from Brodie's hand, still looped to his wrist but dangling, the light swinging crazily through the murky water as Rogan too made a grab for the poacher.

  Like an eel, the man eluded their hands, then twisted round. Brodie saw a flash of steel and realized the guy had drawn his diving knife, the curved, serrated blade in his fist arcing through the water, slashing wildly at his would-be captors.

  Raising an arm instinctively to ward off the attack, Brodie felt nothing, but saw a thin trail of red curling in the madly bobbing light, then Rogan was hauling him backward and the other man arrowed away into darkness.

  Seconds later a glimmer of light briefly flickered some distance off and Brodie made to go after it, but Rogan's strong grip on his wrist stopped him, and only when he felt the throb of pain Brodie discovered he was bleeding, his wet suit slashed to halfway up his forearm and a long cut welling red into the water.

  A huge pale shape glided past among the dozens of fish still floating about them, and then another followed the first, making Brodie sweat inside his suit.

  Sharks attracted by the dead fish. With luck they'd be too busy feeding on them to bother the divers.

  Rogan signaled in pantomime a fast ascent. He clamped a hand about Brodie's wound and started upward.

  Very aware that he was bleeding, Brodie concentrated on letting air out of his buoyancy compensator and breathing steadily and slowly outward to avoid bursting his lungs on a nonstop ascent.

  When an undulating gray body curved itself about and began circling, he closed his eyes and prayed as he never had in his life.

  The two men burst through the surface and headed straight up the ladder to the boat.

  On the Sea-Rogue's deck the lights were on, and Camille and Sienna leaned over the rail. Rogan pushed Brodie ahead of him and then hauled himself on board.

  Brodie spat out his mouthpiece and burst into a furious stream of words, most of them unsuited to polite company, at the same time trying to stem the blood flowing down his arm and over his hand and dripping onto the deck. He heard Sienna's sharp intake of breath as Rogan urged him across the deck to the barge, saying, "We've got about two minutes to get ourselves into the decompression chamber. Camille—rouse out Hunk and get him in there with his medical kit while I help Brodie inside."

  "I don't need help," Brodie growled. As if to contradict that, his brain seemed to begin a slow revolution inside his head and he swayed against Rogan.

  Sienna was suddenly at Brodie's side, pulling off the T-shirt she wore, revealing scanty bikini panties and no other covering as she stuffed the T-shirt into a wad and slapped it over the long cut on his arm. "I'll hold it," she told Rogan, "while we get him onto the barge."

  "It's nothing," Brodie said.

  They both ignored him, and he stumbled between them over the rail onto the barge.

  He should be reacting to the sight of Sienna's pretty, bare breasts. Unfortunately when she pressed against him as they steadied themselves on the deck of the barge, his wet suit prevented him from feeling anything.

  The cut was stinging now, and throbbing. No wonder, he thou
ght, with Sienna's surprisingly strong grip still pressing the makeshift pad onto it.

  Things got a bit hazy then because he was concentrating on not throwing up. The consequence of a fast ascent, he supposed, although Rogue didn't seem to be feeling any ill effect. Thank heaven they had recompression facilities. Otherwise it would have been a choice between the sharks or the bends—and either could kill just as surely and nastily as the other.

  At some stage Rogan took over from Sienna and she whisked back to the boat, presumably to get some clothes on.

  Camille must have roused the medic in double-quick time—he entered the chamber with his hair standing on end and wearing a startling pair of black satin boxers patterned with red devils wielding pitchforks. The metal door clanged shut behind him and Brodie closed his eyes. "Hell," he muttered.

  Four hours later Camille and Sienna were having coffee on board the Sea-Rogue when the men returned and changed into jeans. Brodie's arm was bandaged where Hunk had stitched him up. He felt much better, but thought Sienna was paler than usual. Had she sat up waiting for them?

  She was wearing a pareu about her waist, with a fresh T-shirt, and he wondered if she had put on a bra, suddenly remembering her virtually naked body as she tried to staunch the blood from his arm. At the time it had all been something of a blur, but now he recalled the deck light falling on the pert tilt of her breasts, the inward curve of her waist, the cute little unadorned belly button that he had once explored with his tongue, the exact curve of her hips that, unforgettably, he'd been allowed to follow with his hands.

  The picture was so clear he could almost feel what he hadn't been able to through his wet suit, her arms wound about him, the softness of her breast pressing against his body.

  Which reacted predictably. Hastily he sat down at the table, sliding along the banquette Camille had just vacated to go to the galley and lift the kettle.

  "How did you do that?" she asked, handing him a cup of coffee and looking with concern at his arm.

  Rogan said, helping himself to a cup, "He was knifed."

  Sienna exclaimed, "Knifed?" Her cup clattered down.

  Rogan briefly explained, and Sienna was definitely unnaturally pale now. But then, Camille looked sick too. "We have to report it," she told Rogan. "This is serious."

  "By the time anyone gets to us," Brodie said, "the guy could be long gone. We've got no idea who it was."

  Camille said, "Did you see a boat?"

  "No," Brodie admitted. "It's pretty dark out there."

  "Would you know him again?" Sienna asked.

  Brodie grunted. "With a mask and snorkel and hood? Anyway I didn't get a good look at his face—I was watching the damn knife."

  "How much did he get away with?" Camille asked.

  Rogan answered, "Not much, if anything. He wasn't carrying any large amount of loot. Maybe he was just opening the safe so his pals could move in and grab everything."

  "Doesn't make sense," Brodie objected. "They'd have to bring in machinery and there's no way they could keep that secret. I reckon he was working on his own."

  "Yeah," Rogan said heavily. Turning to Camille, he asked, "Did you see anyone up and around when you went to fetch Hunk?"

  "There were heads poking out everywhere when I went in screaming for him."

  "You don't remember who was there—or not?"

  Camille frowned. "It was dark—all I was thinking about was getting the medic on deck. Surely you don't think…?"

  Rogan said, "If the guy down there was working alone and didn't have a boat he'd have to be one of our divers."

  There was a silence around the table until Brodie said, "The team was handpicked. We know all of them."

  Rogan nodded. "Well, they say every man has his price."

  "We're paying them top wages," Brodie complained mildly. "Plus bonuses and a souvenir coin."

  "Against a few gold bars, maybe it doesn't add up to so much."

  Brodie looked down at his coffee. "Tilisi earns more in a week diving than his old man does in a year on the island … but maybe he could be tempted for the sake of his family." Tilisi was probably related to half the population of Parakaeo, and all of them had a claim on him. According to custom, the islander was expected to share everything he got with numerous uncles and cousins as well as his parents and sisters. Which left not so much for him.

  Sienna sat up abruptly. "You think it's Tilisi?"

  "No!" Brodie hunched over his cup. "If Rogue's right—and I hope to God he's not—it could be anyone."

  Olin had complained the other day that what he got for his pictures hardly paid for his camera and equipment. Hunk wanted to make enough money to marry his girlfriend, buy a hotel in the islands and spend his life fishing and diving. Joe had dived on a dozen treasure wrecks for wages and seen investors who never got a foot wet walk away with millions. Maybe he'd got sick of it and thought he deserved more.

  "The engineer?" he said aloud. "D'you think there really is something wrong with the winch, or…" Maybe the guy had been playing for time.

  In the morning the trawler was back.

  Rogan stared across the water at it sailing near the horizon, never out of sight.

  "So maybe that's where our safecracker came from," Brodie said.

  "It would take a damn good diver to find his way in the dark from the trawler to the wreck and back again without giving himself away."

  "She could have come in much closer during the night. Without lights." They hadn't seen any, and in itself that was suspicious, surely. "Our lights were on. All he needed to do was head for them on the surface, then dive to the wreck and use a pocket light to find his way to the safe." Brodie remembered that brief glimmer as the poacher swam away. Shining his flashlight long enough to consult a compass perhaps, and make sure he was headed to the unlit trawler. But using a light too small to have attracted attention if anyone had happened to look over the side of the ketch or the barge while he was planting his explosive. An experienced man could have done it.

  "He can't have gone back to the trawler while he waited for the explosion," Rogan argued.

  "So he had a boat. Or if he surfaced at the other side of the barge and boarded it for a few minutes until it was safe to go back in the water, no one would have seen him."

  "Yeah," Rogan conceded. He thumbed his bottom lip.

  "But if our diver came from the trawler, how did he know about the safe?"

  Rogan was silent for seconds. "How do you think?"

  Brodie's nape prickled, his stomach going hollow. His neck felt stiff as he turned to stare at his friend.

  Keeping his voice low and hardly moving his lips he said, "You mean even if the diver wasn't one of ours, we've got a spy on board."

  "I don't somehow think it's coincidence, the trawler turning up again now."

  "Trust no one?" An acrid taste invaded Brodie's mouth.

  "That's about it. And keep our eyes and ears open. And the control room locked. I don't want any radio messages going out that we don't know about."

  "He could be using a satellite phone."

  Rogan frowned. "Damn modern technology."

  "I suppose," Brodie said after several seconds, "we could search the guys' bags."

  "And start a mutiny? It's too late anyway. If our looter has pals on the trawler he's already contacted them. We'll keep watch tonight. Maybe bring out the guns."

  They were securely locked away, but it paid to keep a couple and know how to use them when at sea in some parts of the world. "You could be right," Brodie said. "We're a hell of a long way from the nearest police station."

  There was no concealing the fact that the safe had been blown, so no point in pretending that Brodie's wound had been some kind of accident. A rumble of anger and a nervous sense of urgency possessed the team. And frustration at the delay caused by the breakdown of the winch.

  Tu radioed that he'd located a new part and the tug was on its way.

  "With a cop on board," Rogan relayed to Brodie
, Camille and Sienna. Camille had insisted he report the attempted theft and the attack on Brodie. The two-officer police station on the island had marshaled its forces to investigate.

  "Meantime," Rogan told Brodie, "we bring up as much as we can by hand."

  To get at the safe the divers first had to clear debris left by the explosion—which explained, Brodie supposed, why the thief had been empty-handed when they discovered him. He hadn't had time to get to the safe itself.

  Rogan and another diver were down when the safe was cleared. It was filled with wooden boxes in surprisingly good condition, most of them quite small but heavy. As the men on board hauled the first one up to the barge the divers accompanied it. Everyone crowded around to watch it being opened.

  There was a stunned silence when the sun glinted on the box's contents. Then a concerted mixture of cheers, whistles and earthy exclamations erupted from the men.

  The gold was in ingots. "Beautiful, beautiful ingots!" Hunk crooned as Brodie lifted one and passed it around for everyone to handle. Even Sienna experienced a moment of awe when she held the gold bar in her palm and turned it over to see the manufacturing marks on it. She handed it back to Brodie and he kissed it before replacing it in the box.

  Since time immemorial gold had been admired and coveted for its undying beauty, becoming the universal symbol of wealth, never losing its seductive luster or its value. It had drawn men in every age to leave home, friends and family and cross the stormy oceans of the world aboard crowded, often unseaworthy ships in search of it, to work themselves to exhaustion in heat and cold, dust and mud, living in the most primitive of conditions while they wrested it from the ground, to risk danger and death for the sake of it—and sometimes to kill for it.

  The underwater safe was crammed with gold—ingots molded in Adelaide from Australian gold, raw nuggets, more bags of gold dust, even sovereigns and a few American eagles. The barge hummed with excitement. The engineer went back to trying to repair the winch with a new determination, and soon announced he'd got it working again.

  "Gold fever," Brodie said later as he and Sienna watched the divers below heaving more boxes into the basket for lifting to the surface. "The guys have got it bad."