Lovely, Dark, and Deep (The Collectors)

by Susannah Sandlin

  Interesting that they had eyes all over Bronson but apparently not on The Evangeline. How sloppy of them, whoever “they” were. “I can tell he wants the money. I’m supposed to meet him back in Cedar Key tomorrow at lunch.”

  “Good job.” Yeah, now the SOB sounded jovial. “Close the deal tomorrow; rent a place there so you can keep an eye on him. You now have twenty-nine days.”

  Gillian closed her eyes. Like she could forget that deadline. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Well, of course.” Tex was all too happy to be helpful now that he was getting his way. But what if she couldn’t deliver?

  “What if I get Shane to Canada and he can’t find the wreck? What if it’s just not there anymore—wooden ships get beat up by the waves over the course of four centuries, you know.” Not that she’d known that until today. “Or what if we find the wreck but there’s no cross?”

  Tex paused a long time before answering, and his response surprised Gillian. She’d been expecting a sinister warning about Holly, or Shane, or Viv, or even her sister. Her parents at the gator ranch over in Louisiana.

  “If you do your due diligence and can’t find the Templars’ cross…I don’t know what will happen to you, or those you care about. That will be my employer’s decision. But I can guarantee that if you don’t make every attempt to find it—every attempt, to our satisfaction—those consequences you will not be able to live with.”

  Somehow, Gillian didn’t doubt that.

  CHAPTER 4

  As soon as Gillian had disappeared down the dock, tottering on high heels she clearly wasn’t in full control of, Shane climbed to the flybridge deck atop the pilothouse and watched her progress from a higher vantage point. About three-quarters of the way down the dock, she sat on a vacant bench, staring out at the vessels coming in and out of the marina’s west end.

  He grinned when she took off the sandals. Gotcha.

  A lot of things didn’t add up with Gillian Campbell, including the fact that she threw around so much cash while telling a pile of lies and half-truths. That bothered him more than anything.

  He knew this much. She was trying to give him the impression that she was a rich girl on the hunt for some family bauble, yet she handled that money like Ben Franklin himself was going to bite her. And if this priceless treasure had been at the bottom of the North Atlantic for four centuries, why was she in such an all-fired hurry to get at it now? What exactly was this thing she was willing to pay him big bucks to risk his life for? Because this was not a simple dive. Nothing simple about it.

  Those were the questions he needed satisfactory answers to when he met her for lunch tomorrow. As hard as it would be, he’d have to turn down the goddamned money if she told him more lies.

  “Some girls give me money, some girls buy me clothes…and some guys have all the luck.”

  Shane broke into a grin at the boozy, bluesy sound of his first mate and best buddy Jagger coming from below, butchering yet another Rolling Stones song. He leaned over the flybridge rail. “We need to have a talk, my man.”

  By the time Shane clambered down to the forward deck, Jag had propelled his wiry frame from the dock to the rail without bothering to use the gangway. He slid over the rail in one smooth move, landing on his ass.

  “You’re gonna break something with that trick one of these days. Be different if you were better at it.” Shane gave him a hand up and glanced down the length of the dock. No sign of Gillian from this angle. “How much of my visitor did you see?”

  “Nice ass. Wound a little too tight. Looks like money, though, so my vote is yes.”

  He had no idea. But if Shane was even considering this half-baked treasure hunt, he’d need his first mate. “Better wait until you hear what you’re voting on. Let’s take our girl Evangeline on a run up the coast and back, have a little chat away from the marina. You game?”

  Jagger—or, more properly, Calvin Terrence Mackie Jr., who claimed to be the Number-One Fan of the Rolling Stones—looked at him suspiciously. “I thought you were conserving fuel because you were too broke to buy more.”

  “Yeah, well, that might be changing. I want to talk out some shit, and I don’t want to do it here.”

  He left Jag humming the tune to “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” went down to the engine room, and gave the 480-hp Cummins a quick check. He took care of The Evangeline a hell of a lot better than he took care of himself, as Jagger often reminded him after a binge like last night’s, so she was ready to roll within minutes.

  Back in the pilothouse, he set the course and guided her out of the marina and into open water. “Let’s head up toward Preacher Hole,” Shane said, settling into the pilot’s seat. “Won’t be as crowded as the south coast.”

  “Sounds good. You still got sodas in that cooler?” Jagger went to the back to grab a couple of Cokes, but halted next to the table where Gillian Campbell’s map was still spread out.

  “Don’t tell me the woman wants to charter a Canadian dive. Seriously?” Jagger handed Shane a soda and leaned over to study the map of Nova Scotia. “She came to the right place, I guess. You’re the only one around here qualified to go in those waters.”

  Shane didn’t answer, just pointed the boat’s bow northward and sailed up the coast toward the mouth of the Suwanee River. He found a quiet inlet past the northern edge of the Cedar Key reserve and dropped anchor. “Let’s go on deck.”

  Shane stretched out on his back with Gillian’s map over his face, letting the afternoon sun burn off the last lingering effects of the previous night’s binge. He thought about Jagger’s comment. He probably was the only one around here who’d done any cold-water diving, but it had been a while. He only did enough deep dives now to keep his tec certification current, and it had been at least a decade since he’d done a wreck dive. Around here, the only real technical diving to be done was in underwater caves, and even there the water clarity led to disappointing dives as often as not.

  He wanted Jag’s input; the guy had grown up with Cal Sr., a commercial fisherman who’d worked most of the North American East-Coast waters. “What’s your read on diving that area? You’ve fished the waters up there, right?”

  Jagger sat on the deck next to Shane and grabbed the map. He was lean and tan and not an inch over five nine, no matter what he liked to claim. People who met him looked at the shoulder-length, black hair and the big smile and the Stones’ songs he sang for every occasion, and they invariably underestimated him. The man was smart, and he’d grown up on the water. He could read weather maps and sonar like nobody’s business.

  “My dad fished in this area a lot when I was about middle-school age.” He pointed to the rugged coastline. “We made some runs up around Cape Breton, but mostly stayed down here off Louisbourg. Scaterie Island’s a bitch.” Jagger looked over at Shane. “You know this area has the largest concentration of shipwrecks anywhere in North America? There’s a reason for that. You name a water hazard, man, Nova Scotia’s east coast has it.”

  “Awesome.” Shane had been to the area a couple of times, but not since he quit diving with a partner. “What about solo dives?”

  Jagger wasn’t a diver but he’d handled plenty of dive vessels. “Do you know how deep?”

  He didn’t know jack shit. Not yet anyway. “Not a clue. Shipwrecks tend to happen in shallower water, but the deepwater wrecks are better preserved. We don’t know what kind of conditions we’ll face until we get there and try to locate the ship, unless Gillian has more information than she’s shared so far.” She’d seemed pretty damn clueless.

  “Damn.” Jagger looked out at the clouds gathering to their north, and Shane retrieved the map. Jagger was right; that coastline looked brutal.

  “I’d say a solo dive is doable, but you’d want to go down with a line,” Jagger said. “You know, to haul your ass up when you run out of air. Better yet, break your own rule and dive with a partner, especially if it’s deep enough that you’ll have decompression stops.”

  He
didn’t like diving with a line, especially in a tight space like a cave or a wreck, and a dive partner was out of the question. He dove alone. “We’ll work the details out later.”

  “Hot damn. You’re gonna do it. Need a first mate?”

  Shane grinned. “Always. Now cast your eye on those clouds and tell me if we make a run for it, or we wait it out.”

  As if in answer, a heavy bolt of cloud-to-ground lightning streaked from the dark mass and, with a loud crack, struck something just onshore. The first heavy drop of rain nailed Shane square in the eyeball. “Never mind, weather guy. Let’s ride it out.”

  They raced to the door and managed to get inside with a couple of seconds to spare before the deluge began. “This one’s gonna take a while to play out.” Shane led the way down the interior passage to the salon and galley and rummaged in the cabinets for chips while Jagger stretched out on the gray-and-white-striped cushions that adorned the seats and backs of the benches and booths. Whoever had decorated The Evangeline before foreclosure had done a hell of a job. Good thing, because Shane would be lost in an interior design store.

  He tossed a bag of popcorn to Jagger, who’d already stuffed in earbuds and was singing a slightly off-key version of “Sweet Virginia.”

  Shane took his bag of chips, ambled back along the side passage and cut across to the master suite. With a sigh of contentment, he stretched out on his bed and let The Evangeline rock him into relaxation. He loved this damned boat. Loved the feel of it moving beneath him like a woman, sighing and heaving gently in the restless waters. He loved the way its heavy hull and tight fittings muffled the sounds of thunder and wind and rain to a soothing level. Nothing could touch him here.

  Damn it. If he had to freeze his ass off in a deep-water dive to find the locker of Davey Jones himself, it would be worth it to keep this boat. Funny, a week ago, when he’d first caught wind in the Harley’s gossip mill that the bank was tightening up on its past-due accounts, he’d thought up a bunch of stupid options.

  He could walk away from The Evangeline before they took it from him, and try to pretend the choice had been his.

  He could call his Uncle Charlie up in North Carolina and beg for a loan, and try to pretend he was just making amends for walking out on the man who’d raised him.

  He could shoot his old Marine Corps service weapon one final time and put himself out of his misery. At least with that option, he wouldn’t have to tell himself lies because he wouldn’t be around to hear them.

  Gillian Campbell was a liar, of that much he was sure. Chances also seemed good that whatever she had up her sleeve was illegal. If it involved him taking something from a wreck site in Canadian waters without governmental permission, it sure as hell was illegal and he was implicating himself in God only knew what.

  But it beat his other three options. He still might end up dead, but at least he wouldn’t be dying a coward. A fool, probably, but not a coward.

  The storm played itself out in about an hour, so Shane returned to the pilothouse to take them home, leaving Jagger zoned out in the salon with his earbuds pumping out the Stones loud enough for Shane to recognize the heavy guitar chords of “Hand of Fate.”

  Once in the pilot’s seat, he checked the controls on the navigation panels, glancing out the side window when the sound of an approaching engine reached him, the first he’d heard since they’d arrived at the inlet.

  A boat bearing the seal of the Levy County Sheriff’s Office marine unit buzzed up alongside The Evangeline and idled. What the hell?

  Shane took the steps leading from the pilothouse two at a time, and emerged on the port deck just as a navy-uniformed deputy approached. “Are you Shane Burke?”

  A law enforcement officer knowing your name without an introduction couldn’t mean anything good. “I am. What can I do for you?”

  “Mind if I come aboard?”

  The officer didn’t have to ask, and they both knew it. “Sure.”

  Shane lowered the gangway to the smaller vessel while the deputy stopped in the doorway of the marine-unit cruiser and spoke to someone—another officer, Shane assumed. When the man returned to the gangway, he’d removed his mirrored sunglasses and tucked them halfway into a breast pocket.

  Carrying a clipboard, he crossed over to The Evangeline with more caution than Shane would’ve expected from someone accustomed to working on the water. “I’m Deputy Taylor, Levy County Sheriff’s Office.”

  “Guess you already know my name.” Shane pasted on his friendliest smile. “Is there a problem?” The Evangeline had just gotten her seasonal overhaul a couple of weeks ago, and it had been thorough, as Shane’s empty bank account could attest. No way they were citing him for some glaring safety violation.

  “Depends.” Officer Taylor, a fit-looking fortyish guy with dark hair beginning to gray at the temples, flipped through some papers in his clipboard. “Where are you headed today?”

  None of his business, that’s where, but Shane figured that response probably wouldn’t serve him well. “A friend and I decided to get out of Cedar Key for a couple of hours and ran into the storm. He’s in the back.” He pointed in the direction of the salon. “We were about to head back to Way Key Marina. What’s this about?”

  “We received a call that you might be planning to leave the country without filing a navigation plan.” As he spoke, Deputy Taylor had been scanning the shoreline, but now he looked Shane in the eye. “Maybe trying to move your boat into international waters to avoid foreclosure?”

  Humiliation sent a rush of heat over Shane’s face, and he knew he’d probably turned the color of a freshly boiled lobster. “I didn’t realize my financial situation—and I have twenty-nine more days to bring my loan up to date, by the way—was a legal matter.” At least not yet.

  “It is if you’re headed to Mexico or the Caribbean and haven’t filed a navigation plan or port notification.” The deputy tucked his clipboard under his arm. “We’ve been asked to consider you a flight risk and keep an eye on you. We’ll follow you back to the marina—just to make sure you get there safely, of course.”

  Asked by whom? Ralph the bullfrog?

  The last sentence had been delivered with an excess of sarcasm, and Shane took a closer look at Deputy Taylor. His navy shirt and pants looked blandly official, but he wasn’t wearing a badge. Wasn’t that a requirement? His gun looked real enough, though. “Sure, no problem. Follow us if you want.”

  Shane took a step to the side to get a better look at the smaller boat. The marine-unit decal looked genuine, not that he’d ever seen one this close up. But he didn’t see any radios or diving equipment. A big part of marine law enforcement involved water rescues, which in turn involved diving.

  If this guy was a real deputy, Shane would give up bourbon for a year.

  He took a step closer, wishing like hell his own pistol wasn’t tucked beneath the seat in the pilothouse. “Could I see some identification, deputy? Maybe get a badge number?”

  Was it his imagination, or had the maybe-not-a-deputy Taylor flinched?

  “I don’t think that’ll be necessary, Mr. Burke.” Taylor, or whoever he was, reached down quickly and unholstered his gun. A nice, big forty-five, from the looks of it. Enough to blow a nice, big hole in Shane. “Just don’t even think about leaving Cedar Key until we’re ready for you to go.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” Shane’s shoulders tightened, his hands curling into involuntary fists. Just in case he needed to throw a punch.

  Taylor crossed the gangway back to the smaller vessel, then reached down and shoved the wooden boarding ramp back onto The Evangeline. His accomplice in the boat’s wheelhouse started the motor, and Shane had to strain to hear the words he shouted as the skiff pulled away.

  “Talk to you very soon, Mr. Burke.”

  What the hell just happened?

  EPISODE 2

  CHAPTER 5

  Gillian knocked softly on the door of Vivian’s hospital room and entered at the muffled respons
e that might or might not have been “come in.”

  Vivian held a napkin to her mouth and discreetly spat out whatever she was chewing. “This stuff is for shit. You bring breakfast?”

  After the past twelve hours, it felt good to grin. She held up the Hardee’s bag. “Steak biscuits. You’re lucky they brought you to Williston instead of Ocala.”

  Vivian laughed and snatched at the bag, moaning and clutching her rib cage when she bent over too far. “Damn, that hurts. You are a lifesaver. I was about ready to go back in ICU and be fed from a tube so I didn’t have to eat that crap.”

  Gillian smiled again, but the irony didn’t escape her that Viv had called her a lifesaver when this whole thing was her fault. She had always told Viv everything; Viv was the only one who knew about Ethan, about how she ended up in a trailer in Levy County. She’d stayed up half the night trying to figure out how much to tell Viv and had finally settled on telling her the truth.

  Gillian went to the door and stuck her head out, looking up and down the hall before closing the door to Viv’s room. She’d have locked it if she could. Not that Tex was loitering around the hospital corridors and eavesdropping, but then again he might be.

  When Gillian pulled the chair up to Viv’s bed, her friend quit eating and watched her with a concerned frown that almost broke Gillian’s heart.

  “What’s up with you, chica? I know you were upset about this stupid accident, but I’m gonna be okay—they’re even talking about letting me go home tomorrow. It’s more than that, so talk to me.”

  Gillian took a deep breath and glanced over at the door. She kept her voice low. “It wasn’t an accident, Viv. Somebody tampered with your car.”

  “What? Get out of here. You’re joking with me, except…” Viv’s brown eyes probed Gillian’s face. “Except you’re not joking. Better tell me.”

  “First, you have to promise to keep quiet about this. I mean tell nobody. Not even Jimmy.” Jimmy Ortiz was Viv’s ex-husband, current boyfriend, and possibly future husband, all rolled into one. “I know you don’t like keeping things from him but it’s safer if he doesn’t know.”