Lovely, Dark, and Deep (The Collectors)

by Susannah Sandlin

  Well, that was comforting.

  “Think you can sit up without fainting?”

  “Real men don’t faint.” He struggled up with her help and waited while she made quick work of bandaging his head.

  Jagger’s wounds didn’t need to be restitched, she decided, and after another bandaging job, she finally declared them fit to leave. “Gillian was supposed to bring clothes for you. You’re both still half-soaked, but she must’ve found the others and forgot. They’re in the lantern room.”

  It took a shameful amount of time for both of them to walk upstairs, and they arrived at the top puffing as if they’d done a marathon instead of a slow crawl up two flights of a spiral staircase.

  Cleo followed them, armed with the painkillers Shane had refused to take. He couldn’t afford to be dopey and drugged.

  He stopped inside the door, letting Jagger go around him and straight to Harley. A white bandage circled Harley’s head, and a garden of bruises bloomed across his arms—and probably other places Shane couldn’t see. Between the three of them and their bandages, the room looked like a hospital ward.

  Harley stood with Gillian’s help and wrapped Jagger in a bear hug. Gillian and Shane shared a smile. Harley was, in a lot of ways, as much a father to Jagger as Charlie was to him, and Shane was grateful enough to offer Chevy a handshake. “Thanks for that.” He nodded at Jag and Harley.

  “And for that.” He looked at Son of Tex, who definitely had seen better days. He struggled against his prison of brown duct tape and mumbled against the gag, which looked suspiciously like it had been woven out of Cleo’s bandages.

  “What do we know about him?” Shane sat in the chair Chevy nudged toward him with his heavy work boot. Son of Tex had fallen silent and now watched with dull brown eyes.

  Jagger and Harley deserved to have some time, but Shane motioned Gillian to join them, and she pulled up a chair next to Shane’s.

  Chevy leaned over and handed Shane a wallet and a cell phone. He kept his voice low. “That’s all we found of use. They rented that boat from a local guy looking for a little off-season income. He isn’t in on it; I’ve known him for years.”

  Shane flipped open the wallet to reveal a Texas driver’s license. “Garland Garrison III.” He looked up at Son of Tex. “Well, that’s a mouthful.”

  “He goes by Trey,” Chevy said. “Trey here got downright chatty about hour five of his capture.”

  The guy was in his twenties, with an address in a Dallas suburb. That was about all Shane could glean from the license. The wallet had a dozen credit cards—way more than the number carried by the average bear—and more than a thousand dollars in good old Ben Franklins. A bunch of folded receipts might prove useful, but he’d look at those later.

  Handing Gillian the wallet, he examined the cell phone, nodding when he saw that most of the calls made and received had been to and from “Dad.” He hit the call button and waited a few seconds. From inside the dry inner lining of his dive suit came a buzzing noise and a baritone country singer crooning about cowboys.

  At the sound, Trey’s eyes widened, and he began twisting and trying to talk again.

  “Yeah, I have daddy’s phone. How ’bout that?” Shane leaned back in his chair and unzipped the front of his suit enough to pull out the smartphone in its sleek silver case. An expensive case.

  “Wait.” Gillian leaned forward. “You mean Son of Tex really is the son of Tex?”

  “Yep.” Shane hadn’t taken his eyes off Trey. “Do a web search for Garland Garrison Jr., aka Tex. Let’s see what turns up.”

  She took Trey’s phone and walked around the room. Once she’d found a signal, she sat down and began pressing keys.

  Shane reached over and pulled down Trey’s gag.

  His voice was dry and raspy. “Where’s my father?”

  In his peripheral vision, Shane saw Gillian look up, waiting for the answer. “Someplace very cold and very dark, if he’s lucky.” He turned to Chevy. “Can a middle-aged man who’s been drenched in seawater survive alone overnight on Scaterie this time of year?”

  Chevy bellowed with laughter, creases forming in his cheeks that changed his look from demented alien-hunter to jolly grandpa. “You have style, Mr. Burke, just like old Charlie. I expected you to say you shot the son of a bitch but you at least gave him a chance.”

  Yeah, well, Shane hadn’t been willing to cross the line from self-defense to murder. He sought out Gillian and felt a weight lift when she smiled at him and nodded. He’d worried that she would think him weak if he’d let Tex live or careless if he’d killed the guy without knowing their loved ones were safe.

  When had her approval become so important to him?

  That question he couldn’t answer, so he turned his attention back to Trey, who was sputtering threats. “Wait, wait, wait.” Shane mimicked a zipper across his mouth, and Trey fell silent. “Whether or not we send anyone to save your father depends on what you tell us,” he said. “For example, I’d like to hear about Garland Garrison’s relationship with Secretary of State Weston Flynn.”

  Trey froze. Only for a second, but a second was long enough for Shane to see what he needed. They’d been right. That was the good news. It was also the bad news—how the hell did they call out someone like Flynn? They still needed proof, and he hoped Tex’s phone had it. Between navigating one armed and trying to maneuver through the fog with a blood-gushing wound, he hadn’t had time to take more than a cursory glance at it.

  Gillian rejoined them, her cheeks flushed pink. “Listen to this.” She held the phone toward the light so she could better read the screen. “‘Garland Garrison, known to his friends as Gar, is a third-generation Dallas-area cattle rancher whose claim to fame is the fellow deer-hunting enthusiast who joins him at his ranch for a week each fall: his childhood friend Weston Flynn.’

  “We were right.” She looked up, and her smile faded. Shane gauged that she’d just gone through his own series of thoughts and come to the same conclusion.

  We have his name. We have the tie between Flynn and Tex.

  But how do we prove it? And how do we keep ourselves safe?

  CHAPTER 31

  Gillian closed her eyes and let the mild ocean breeze caress her cheeks, the soft sunlight warming her even though sunrise had been only two hours earlier. The Zodiac zipped along at a good clip, leaving Chevy’s workboat, The Klaatu, anchored off Ragged Rocks Cove. This time, they knew where they were diving, and Cleo steered them between the two massive sunkers, as close as she deemed safe.

  Jagger had remained at the lighthouse with Harley, guarding Trey and under threat from Cleo that if he reopened his wound again, he’d have to endure more stitches. When they’d driven away from the lighthouse this morning, after Chevy had disabled his security and loaded everyone into his pickup, the sounds of Mick Jagger singing “Sympathy for the Devil” had been echoing down the cliffs of Moque Head. Gillian suspected Trey would be well and truly stoned before the morning was done unless Harley put an end to it.

  They’d tried to convince Shane not to dive, but he’d refused to consider sitting it out. Gillian would do her best to keep an eye on his injured arm, but she was glad not to be doing her first deepwater dive alone, and into a cavern, at that. Talk about a recipe for a disaster.

  She and Shane had talked all night, lying in the narrow bed at the lighthouse. Not all talk, of course. Their lovemaking was gentle and slow and lingering, every move made to bring them as close together as possible, for as long as possible. Today, the thirtieth day since Gillian had gotten her first call from Tex, this part of their lives would end. They’d either succeed in the plans they made between kisses, or they’d fail. Failure was permanent. So many things could go wrong, Gillian had lost count. But at least they felt more in control of their future than anytime in the last month. They’d allowed themselves a one-tank dive before setting their plan in motion.

  When the sun began to turn the eastern horizon pink, they dressed in the gear they�
�d managed to save plus what Chevy had managed to get for them in Sydney last night, including Shane’s new drysuit. He’d grumbled because it was red, then grumbled some more when Cleo had bandaged his arm so thickly he compared himself to the Michelin Man.

  Now they were here, and Gillian couldn’t help the excitement that stirred in her gut as she pulled on her mask and fins and checked her BC and weight belt—a little heavier this morning thanks to a small, sharp pickax. Another late-night shopping find from Chevy.

  “Okay, kids. This is as far as I can take you in. I’m dropping anchor.” Cleo pressed the windlass on the back of the Zodiac, and as the heavy iron anchor dropped, Gillian looked at Shane.

  He smiled at her, green eyes crinkling behind his mask. “You ready?”

  She better be. “I’m ready.”

  As soon as the anchor hit bottom, Gillian wedged her regulator into her mouth, clamped one hand over the front to hold it in place and the other on the strap underneath her hood, and thrust her knees toward her chest. It was a perfect roll in. She hit the water flat on her back, with her tank absorbing most of the pressure. Kicking for the surface, she cleared her snorkel and gave the “okay” sign to Shane and Cleo, moving away to give Shane room to enter.

  As soon as he’d entered, surfaced, and given Cleo his okay, they adjusted their buoyancy and followed the line down, side by side. Gillian hadn’t done much diving since the car wreck; it was just one of many things she’d closed off in her compartmentalization of life before Ethan died and life after. She’d thought a lot about Ethan recently, remembering his sunny grin, with her dark eyes and Sam’s auburn hair, with Gillian’s tenacious curiosity and Sam’s ability to find joy in simple things without questioning them. He’d truly been the best of both of them.

  She’d done a lot of thinking about Sam, too, and Shane’s observation that when she talked about the accident, Ethan was the one whose loss she mentioned. She had been angry at Sam, but just as angry at herself. They’d simply married too early, realized they wanted different things, and grown apart. Only instead of the usual progression to divorce and new lives, he’d died and she’d martyred herself to guilt.

  If nothing else, this experience with Tex and Weston Flynn had taught her that life was precious and not something one should give up lightly.

  Shane knocked on her tank to get her attention and motioned for her to follow him with lights on. She flicked on the light attached to her mask and checked her dive calculator. They were near a hundred feet and the rocky bottom was in sight.

  This part of the ocean floor was trickier than the area she’d dived last time, darker and colder even through the drysuit. She stayed behind Shane and to his right, thankful the currents weren’t as big a factor at this depth. He was guiding himself mostly with his right arm and his legs, protecting the left arm. That had been his plan, and so far it seemed to be working.

  He held out his arm with a “stay” motion, and they slowed down. Soon, Gillian saw why: a massive wall of dark rock loomed ahead of them. She couldn’t even see the top of it, much less how they’d get through it to reach Shane’s cavern.

  He pointed to the right, motioned her to go slowly, and swam toward what looked like a vertical crack in the rock wall. Only when they got within a few feet of it and their lights bounced off it together did Gillian realize it was the narrow opening Shane had described. They had found it!

  Shane squeezed through first, then motioned her to come in behind him. Once they cleared the zig-zagged opening, Gillian had to remember to breathe as their lights cast a blue glow onto a sight she’d never even dreamed. The ocean floor here was sandier than that outside the cavern, almost smooth in some places and dotted with small rocks in others. The ever-present kelp hadn’t reached its leathery tentacles here, maybe because it couldn’t get what it needed for sustenance, so the walls were bare but for the cracks and crevices in the rock itself. Overhead, rocky stalactites hung like chandeliers.

  She gasped, releasing a slew of air bubbles, when Shane knocked on her tank again. He grinned; she hated that he’d caught her rubbernecking. On the other hand, it was worth gawking at.

  They’d planned their strategy, going over the pros and cons of splitting up to examine the cavern versus staying together. The need to cover more ground won out, though, and Shane had told her what to look for in the concretions at the base of the rock walls and in the deeper crevices. At least in this confined space, they didn’t have to worry about getting separated.

  Gillian swam to the left of the opening, Shane to the right. She checked her dive computer. They had an hour maximum before heading up, giving them time for decompression stops. As agreed, she looked for places where Shane had already dislodged pieces of metal, pulling out her small pickax and digging out coins. She slipped each one into the liner of her BC, then dug a bit deeper to see if anything more could be gathered quickly. The coins would be their proof, if they needed it, that they’d found the wreckage of The Marcus Aurelius.

  Once she’d gotten in a rhythm, she was able to go fast, not bothering to look at the coins but stuffing them away and moving on. She’d collected at least a dozen when she came upon a coin that wouldn’t dislodge. She moved on—they had plenty, and that one hadn’t look like gold. But something about the shape of it stuck with her. It had been flatter than the other coins she’d pulled out.

  Circling back, she scanned her light along the wall until she found the concretion again. It was only about knee-high, so she crouched on the ocean floor and worked at it with the pickax. When she finally uncovered the edge, her building excitement deflated. The flat edge was bigger than a coin; in fact, it looked like a plate.

  Plates wouldn’t be of much value, but they were often inscribed with a maker or date, so even more than the coins it could prove that this was—or wasn’t—treasure from The Marcus Aurelius. She looked around to see how far Shane had gotten. She was holding her own in terms of progress around the cavern, so a few minutes to dig out a plate might be worthwhile. Proving this was the ship on which Duncan Campbell had died could assure their plan of success.

  Gillian adjusted her light and began to methodically pick at the concretions around the plate, trying not to hit the plate itself. Who knew how fragile this stuff was after so long underwater? Which, of course, was why marine archaeologists were so adamant that treasure not be removed from its watery preservation, especially in deep wrecks where the cold helped protect it.

  So, yeah, she felt guilty as each tap of her pickax pulled away a little bit of history. But not guilty enough to stop. They’d come too far, and there was too much at stake.

  She’d cleared off a good half of the plate when she saw something else wedged against the top of the plate and raised her ax to try and remove it.

  Then she stopped, waving away the water and looking more closely. Two metal objects, not one, touched the plate at different points, and she couldn’t figure out what it might be. She began working around the objects, picking at one solid bit of concretion between them that seemed to be holding this whole part of the structure together.

  Finally, with a series of jerks that caused her breathing rate to rise and probably used up an extra five minutes of gas, she pulled it loose. Her momentum carried her off her feet in a cloud of shell and sand, and she got up slowly, giving it time to settle.

  She waved the drifting particles from in front of her find and stared not at the three-quarters of the plate now exposed, but at the cross that sat on top of it, two of its points resting downward. It was about the length of her hand, and she could see evidence of elaborate metalwork, even after four hundred years of saltwater damage.

  Gillian closed her eyes and forced herself to breathe slowly, to stay calm. They couldn’t waste gas. She spun around to look for Shane, banging her pickax against her tank. He turned, frowned, swam to her, eyebrows raised. She pointed at the wall.

  He swam closer, and she could tell when he saw it. He adjusted his light, then began working at it
with his glove, but not with his pickax. Gillian swam up beside him to see what he was doing—and committed the cardinal sin of divers. She held her breath.

  But they’d found it. With both their lights trained on the cross, his rubbing exposed a stone that held a hint of deep, brilliant red. Ruby or garnet—it didn’t matter which. They’d found it.

  Shane pulled back, staring at their own holy grail, and Gillian found herself mesmerized by it too. A Campbell had likely been the last one to see this thing more than four centuries ago, and now another Campbell, his ancestor, was the first to see it again. But instead of representing the hope of a new life, this cross had caused only pain and fear. Greed for it had driven Duncan Campbell to his grave, and greed for it had threatened to destroy everyone Gillian loved.

  She looked up and found Shane watching her. The question in his eyes was obvious, and they’d talked around its answer all night. It would be her call; he’d been adamant about that.

  “If you find the cross, will you take it?” he’d asked. “And if you take it, will you give it to Weston Flynn?”

  Until now, she hadn’t had an answer.

  * * *

  Back at the lighthouse, Shane and Gillian sat in the lantern room alone. Harley had prepared platefuls of sandwiches that were waiting for them when they returned from the dive, but she’d been too nervous to do more than nibble around the edges. Finding the cross hadn’t given her the feeling she expected. Oh, the initial elation had been there, but they still had the hardest part of the plan to carry out, and she felt the weight of it.

  Finally, Shane had suggested they go to the lantern room and get it done.

  Noon had come and gone a few minutes ago, and the autumn sun shone high overhead. The fog was absent, and for the first time in two weeks, Gillian looked down the cliff at brilliant green water moving with restless energy beneath a clear blue sky. When they’d returned to Main-à-Dieu after their dive, the waterfront had been abuzz with talk of a man’s body that had washed ashore at Scaterie and been found by an early-morning kayaker. The guy had no identification on him. He’d been wearing a life jacket but had hit his head on the rocks, or so the rumors said. And it was one of the guys who’d rented The Breton. The other guy, unaccounted for, had apparently returned the boat to the Main-à-Dieu harbor.