by Helen Brenna
Annie worked the area as if she’d never been away from diving. It was hard to imagine that only days ago even the sight of water petrified her. A natural, she moved her hands across the exact objects he would have wanted to examine: a coral growth with too straight a corner, a suspicious clump of sediment, an unnatural sand formation. She worked in tandem with him, and he found himself enjoying her company. In no time, they worked through the first section and moved on to the next. And the next. And the next.
With Annie beside him, the whole diving process took on new meaning, especially with the way her long, athletic legs spread behind her, kicking efficiently. His thoughts strayed. All over her body. Loose strands of hair fanned in watery swirls around her face. The black neoprene hugged her bottom and breasts. He could easily get used to this.
They made their way to the Concha’s main cargo hold’s rotting beams and past a wall of rock on their right with four or five boulders piled in the sand below. Hard to believe Lucy and Michael Miller had died there. It seemed harmless enough.
Jake watched her reaction. She hesitated for a second and moved on. His heart clamped down at the thought of the horror she’d gone through that day. He imagined her holding on to two lifeless bodies, waiting for help, worrying about sharks. No wonder she’d never wanted to see the ocean again.
He had to go along with her in another area, too. This was the strangest shipwreck he’d ever seen. Initially, he guessed the Concha had sunk in an area with relatively swift currents, keeping sediment and coral growth to a minimum. If that’d been the case, the ship’s frame would have eventually disintegrated, or at the very least, been spread out across a large area. Instead, it remained amazingly intact. It was clear the treasure couldn’t be too far away or too deep.
The items they’d found were surprisingly clean. Normally, shipwreck treasures and trinkets were placed in restoration tanks to dissolve sediment. Not so with the Concha. A few rubs and the dates on the coins had been easily discernible. That leather satchel Annie found appeared as if it’d been dropped in the water only a few weeks earlier. It was possible everything had been submerged under layers of sand all these years and a recent storm had uncovered everything. Possible. Not likely.
They searched the first northern quadrant. Only a few feet in and D.W. swung his hands back and forth in an effort to get their attention. Jake swam up from behind Annie to find D.W. holding a small sedimented lump in his left hand. To the untrained eye, it would have looked like a rock. To a treasure hunter, it held the promise of something unnatural covered in layers of silt. The lines were too symmetrical, the squared-off corners too perfect.
This could be something. It looked large enough to have been listed separately on a historical manifest. This might be enough to prove they’d actually found the Concha.
D.W. gently rubbed off some of the grime to reveal a corner of gold. He grinned around his mouthpiece and motioned to head up. “I found something!” he yelled upon surfacing.
“Get out the Concha’s manifest,” Jake added as they swam toward the boat.
Claire met them, holding out her hand to help them aboard. “What is it? Let me see.”
D.W. handed it to Claire and all three divers shrugged out of their equipment. She dipped the find into a bucket and gently worked at the sediment. Simon looked over her shoulder.
Ronny came forward with a binder of papers. “Is it a piece of jewelry?” He flipped through the inventory of items aboard the Concha when it left port out of Veracruz. “I can’t make head or tails out of this listing.”
“Give it to Annie,” Jake said, taking off his flippers. His foot was killing him. “Jewelry’s in the front.” Though it’d taken him weeks, he’d personally dissected a copy of the original manifest and categorized each item to make reference easier. Whatever D.W. had found had to be on there.
“Look for something with rubies.” Claire smiled at Annie. “It’s got a bunch of them.”
“That comes after emeralds.” Barely able to contain himself, Jake went to stand next to Annie to aid in finding the item.
D.W. kneeled next to Claire. “Is that a pin on the back of it?”
“Yeah.” Claire dunked it a few times in clean solution. “It’s a pin. Annie, look for a square-shaped brooch with rubies outlining…something…in the middle…” She trailed off, working on the item’s center. “It’s a cross! A gold cross outlined in rubies.” She showed everyone.
“Here it is!” Annie pointed at an item listed toward the bottom of a page.
His heart pounding, Jake read where Annie pointed. The manifest listing described every detail of D.W.’s brooch. He hooted. “We found it! We found the Concha!” Annie had been telling the truth.
“Yeehaw!” D.W. hauled Claire to her feet and hugged her. Everyone hugged everyone else.
“This calls for a celebration.” Ronny went to the galley and came out with a bottle of champagne and several plastic cups.
Pop! The bottle’s cork exploded into the balmy air to the accompaniment of the entire Mañana crew’s laughter. Bubbly gold liquid foamed over the bottleneck and onto the boat deck, causing additional chuckles.
Ronny refilled the plastic cups. “To the Concha!” He held his cup high into the air.
“To the Concha!” the crew shouted back.
They’d actually found it. Jake couldn’t believe it. After all these years searching along the Florida coastline, they’d found the Concha in the Bahamas. Good thing D.W. had found the brooch. “To D.W.!” he cheered the group on.
“To D.W.!” they responded.
“When can we get that salvage vessel out here, anyway?” D.W. asked. “We’re gonna find so much treasure we won’t know what to do with all of it.”
“I’ll radio Harold in a little bit. He’ll have it out here midmorning.” Jake took another gulp and watched Annie over the disposable cup’s plastic rim. A wide smile graced her sun-kissed face.
“Anyone hungry?” Claire asked. “I made tacos.”
“For your cookin’, Claire-belle, I’d swim through shark-infested waters.” D.W. grasped her hand and did a little jig with her across the deck.
“All of a sudden, I’m starving.” Ronny headed toward the galley. Simon followed, a slight smile on his quiet face.
“How about you, Jake?” Annie looked up at him. Her eyes silently thanked him for not spilling the beans to the crew about the Santidad Cross.
He didn’t deserve anything from her, let alone her gratitude. All the same, he wanted to reach out and hold her close. It’d been a long, emotion-filled day, and he yearned for the feeling of her arms around him. If only diving season were over, and they were alone on the boat.
Instead, finding the Concha would set off a whole new chain of events at OEI. Jake could all but kiss off-season goodbye. He and Claire, not to mention a slew of willing and able divers, would be out here on the salvage vessel through the winter. He was almost beginning to wish they hadn’t found the thing.
Then it hit him, what was really bugging him. He was happy for her, without question. Annie had accomplished her goal and flourished in the process. But this meant she’d be going back to Chicago, back home. She probably couldn’t wait to get to an airport and, in her own words, close the book on this chapter in her life. Close the book on him.
“Are you okay, Jake?” she asked.
No, he wasn’t, and he never would be again.
CLAIRE LEFT THE PARTY behind and stepped out onto the quiet deck. Outside, near the water, she felt closest to Sam, probably because she’d spent so much time with him here. Probably because she’d spread his ashes in the Atlantic, off the Florida coast not far from here.
She leaned out past the rail and said, “Can you believe it, Sam? We finally found it!” She raised her glass, took a sip of champagne and dribbled the rest into the water. “Drink up!”
Jake appeared beside her and leaned on the rail. “Sam’d sure be excited, wouldn’t he?”
“He’d be the las
t one to quit partying tonight and the first one up in the morning.” The smile died on her lips. “I wish he were here to see this, to be a part of it,” she whispered.
“Maybe he is, and maybe he doesn’t care.”
The moment Jake said it, she knew Sam was here, and he didn’t care. “Why is that?”
“Treasure-hunting. The Concha. They were fun diversions for him. You know that.” Jake looked into the water. “He worked harder than most, but you rounded him out. He didn’t live and breathe treasure-hunting.”
“Like you?”
“Like me.” Jake’s smile was sad. “I can guarantee you Sam’s not thinking twice about the Concha.”
This wasn’t Sam’s place. He didn’t belong to this world anymore. Life was going on without him. Day in, day out. Her Sam was gone.
“He always had his priorities right, Claire. Something I never understood.” Jake covered her hand and squeezed, bringing a tear to her eye. “You were his life. Everything to him.”
She cried, and Jake actually drew her into his arms, a brother comforting his sister.
“You had your priorities right, too, Claire. I’m so grateful for how you loved my brother,” he whispered, hugging her tighter. “But it’d kill him all over again to see you like this.” Jake held her long after her tears turned to intermittent sniffles. Finally, he pecked a kiss on her forehead and stepped away. “Let him go.”
“I will if you will,” she challenged.
“I’m working on it.” Jake smiled before he turned and went below deck.
Claire glanced back to the water. She unlatched Sam’s chain from around her neck and pooled it in her hand. “This is it. Okay?” She heard him laugh. Sam was laughing at her. “You shit.” She smiled then and held the chain out over the water. “I loved you.” After dropping the chain into the sea, she watched it fall deeper and deeper until finally disappearing completely.
“Claire?” She heard D.W. ask from behind her. “You all right?”
Amazingly she was.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
FOLLOWING THE EXCITEMENT of finding the Concha, a strange and unexpected melancholy settled over Jake. After eating a quick dinner and taking a shower, he’d planned on spending some quiet time in his cabin checking e-mail and the weather, and getting hold of Harold. He’d hoped making plans to get the salvage vessel out here would shake him out of his slump.
Upon finding a dead battery on his laptop and the radio in his cabin not working, he headed to the helm, deliberately avoiding the crew, especially Annie. He flipped on the transmitter and tried hailing Harold, or anyone for that matter. Unfortunately, the office personnel had left for the day. He could have tried Harold at home, but his mother would be there. The last thing he needed right now was a lecture on the dangers of being on the water during a storm.
Flipping off the radio, he stepped out onto the bow. Rock music blared from the stern deck and the crew was dancing, thankfully oblivious to his absence. Although he didn’t want to join in the festivities, he’d lost interest in being alone in his cabin. The winds picked up. The sky turned into a tumultuous mixture of grays and blacks. They’d have rain to deal with before morning, but aside from Harold hailing him, telling him the Mañana was directly in a hurricane’s path, he wasn’t about to leave this dive site.
He grabbed a set of binoculars and attempted to locate Westburne’s boat. The weasel was bound to hear the ruckus and know they’d found the Concha. Tomorrow, Westburne would probably pull alongside them to get the scoop before heading back to Miami. For now it didn’t matter who on his boat had helped Westburne. Jake would ferret out the truth eventually and fire the traitor, but all’s well that end’s well. The Concha belonged to OEI.
Unable to locate Westburne’s boat, with only hazy and sporadic moonlight illuminating the waters, Jake dropped the binoculars back in the storage compartment and withdrew his gold coin from his pocket. He leaned on the rail, studying it by the Mañana’s running lights, losing himself in its warm glow.
Old Spanish gold. He would never tire of its luster or beauty. After all, nothing compared to gold. Certainly not bronze, not silver, not precious gems. Not even the glow of a woman’s naked skin could make his blood run as hot as it did while unearthing a long lost treasure at the bottom of the sea.
“I’m surprised you’re not guzzling champagne.” Annie’s slightly winded voice pulled Jake back. “I figured you’d be ecstatic after this afternoon.”
“My dad always said, ‘Life’s never better than when you’re on the verge of the discovery of a lifetime,’” he said softly, continuing to stare at the coin. Two days ago, he’d believed that. He lived for those discoveries, each one bigger and more thrilling than the next. Tonight, uncertainty plagued him.
“Do you always keep that coin with you?” She leaned her elbows on the rail next to him.
“Always.”
She smiled, pretty white teeth against skin honeyed by a few days under the Caribbean sun. A champagne flush graced her cheeks. Her hair radiated with golden highlights atop the thick brown layers. How he ever could have thought the color mousy was now beyond him.
In fact, how could he have ever thought of her as Annie Hall? It dawned on him then that the changes wrought in her were not only external. She’d bloomed inside and out during the short time he’d known her. Where there once had been phobias and insecurities, there was now quietly growing confidence and strength. She’d overcome her fear of water and diving, vaulted the boundaries of her world and come out the other side glowing.
But she’d be leaving soon, and from what she’d said, she’d never be coming back. He cleared his throat, glanced into the sky and nodded toward the ominous darkness. “Not a star visible tonight.”
“Nope. Pretty black out there.”
He thought of her diving beside him, so natural and relaxed. “You did good today.”
“Thanks. I remember why I once loved diving so much.”
“Did you put the cross back?”
“It’s gone.” She nodded. “I feel great. I can’t believe I didn’t do this years ago.”
“It’s not the cross, Annie. All this time, you were a fish out of water.” He studied her face.
“My mother used to call me her little dolphin. I loved swimming fast and diving in and out of the water from the boat. That’s why she gave me this charm.” She fingered her bracelet. “She’d call me her trigger fish, too.” She chuckled. “You know the ones with the big, puffy lips.” She puckered her lips, tilting her face toward him. Her gaze reached his and locked. The music faded along with her smile.
Slowly, he reached out to stroke her mouth. He let his fingertips trail inch by inch down her neck and under the spaghetti strap of her tank top. Giving in, he flattened his palm against the bare, hot skin by her collarbone and felt her breath quicken. An ache to move his hand lower and cup the swell of her breast tightened his chest.
He breathed the night air that seemed permeated with her spicy sweet essence, and she swayed toward him. Her eyes locked with his, telling him she wanted him, too. Right here. Right now. One more second, and it would be over. If he took her into his arms, it would be over. If he did anything, it would all be over. He wouldn’t be able to stop. He would take her right on the bow of his boat. With four crew members dancing at the stern.
What was he thinking? Annie wasn’t a one-season, let alone a one-night, woman. He didn’t want her to be. He wanted her to stay on his boat, stay in Miami, and he didn’t have the heart to ask. She’d be miserable here. “Annie,” he whispered. “What do you want?”
“You.”
“You shouldn’t,” he breathed. “I’m a treasure hunter. It’s who I am. You said it yourself. If I’m lucky, we’ll have a little time together before I’m off looking for the next wreck. I can’t offer you more.”
Her chest heaved. She took one step back, stumbling as if snapped from a trance, and his hand fell back to his side.
“You’re right,” she w
hispered and swallowed hard. “Thanks for the wake-up call.”
With one brief hungry look into his eyes, she turned. He followed her progress, watching the gentle sway of her hips in those plain khaki shorts and the breeze picking up the silky strands of her hair. She rounded the corner and was gone.
Idiot! He ran his hand through his hair and cringed. He was a complete moron! He’d had her in the palm of his hand and he’d let her fall through his fingers like sifting grains of sand. No. That wasn’t true. He’d actually rolled her up and thrown her away like a ball of mud.
He dropped his head, knowing he’d done the right thing, wishing he hadn’t. He gave her a few minutes to make it safely to her cabin, all the while cursing himself, before heading below deck.
“Jake,” Ronny called out to him as he rounded the stern.
Reluctantly, he turned back to the group.
“What did Harold have to say?”
“They’re all gone from the office. I’ll call him in the morning.”
Ronny raised his cup. “Come share another toast with us.”
“Yeah! Come on,” the others added.
“Knock yourselves out. I’m bushed.” He headed for the ladder.
By the time he hit the lower deck, she’d disappeared into her own cabin. He stood outside her door, but stopped himself from reaching for the knob. This was her decision. He went into his own cabin, closed the door behind him and leaned against it. With only a porthole’s worth of intermittent moonlight the cabin was nearly black.
He closed his eyes, suddenly feeling very tired. Then he sensed her, heard her whisper-soft breath, saw her shadow by his bunk. “Annie, I can’t do this a second time. Leave without touching me, and we’ll be okay.”
“As soon as you can spare a boat to get me to shore,” she said, as if she couldn’t catch her breath, “I head back to Chicago. For now, all I want is tonight. With you.” He could hear her bare feet padding toward him. “You can give me that. Can’t you?” She leaned against his chest and hesitantly, unsure of herself, pulled him closer to kiss him. Her front teeth clicked guilelessly against his. Uncertain, she drew back. “Sor—”