by Lee, Rachel
“Damn straight I will.” He stood up and put the glass down on the porch. “I’m getting back to work.”
The brief moments of connection between them were shattered again. Shattered, as usual, by her own inability to keep her mouth shut.
Callie wanted to cry. She just wanted to curl up in a ball somewhere and sob her eyes out until she could cry no more. Instead she picked up the two glasses and went back indoors. She decided she’d try Chase again, then go out and start painting.
Hard work might keep her from losing her mind. Nothing else possibly could.
CHAPTER 12
Chase made his phone calls and didn’t get anything useful. A couple of people said they would check around and get back to him. Since it was daylight, he curled up on the couch and let himself sleep. Sleep was a precious commodity these days.
The nightmares came as always, but somehow in the daylight his body knew they were just dreams, and the panic didn’t set in as strongly. He was able to see the darkness and the demons but felt the terror from a distance.
But there was a difference this time.
He found himself at depth, in the dark, cold water as he always did. In all his other nightmares, though, he’d been alone except for the shadows that were trying to kill him. Nothing at all had been visible.
This time he still felt the lurking things around him, but he could also see the glow of light from his arc lamp. This time he could see the boat he had come to look at. This time he was aware of his diving partner, Bill.
The Happy Maggie lay on her side in the silt, a hole in her bow. He moved toward her, feeling the sea resist, feeling the pressure of nearly six atmospheres working against every movement he made. Things darted in the darkness outside the beam of light. Bill was nearby, and in his earphones he could hear the voice of the dive master. When he answered, his own voice was distorted by the helium in his air mix. He didn’t know if they could understand him on the surface. He could hardly understand himself.
The hands of the sea reached out for him, as they did every time, and he struggled to evade them, but he could hardly move. He heard Bill’s helium-affected voice in the headphones, but couldn’t make out the words. The light he carried seemed to bob wildly, and he could feel something tugging at it, trying to tear it away from him.
Currents, he told himself, but there were strange sounds in the water, sounds that didn’t come from him. He turned his head and could barely make out Bill’s shadowy shape, only slightly more solid-looking than the other shadowy shapes that were coalescing out of the water.
Fear pounded in him, but he tried to ignore it. He was imagining things, he told himself in the dream. Just imagining the feeling that hands were pulling at him, trying to drag him deeper, that fingers of water were plucking at his mask trying to tear it from his head. Just imagining it.
He looked down at the Maggie and saw the boat drifting farther and farther away. Something was carrying him off into the cold dark depths of the sea. He couldn’t breathe. He was suffocating
Chase jerked awake, drenched as always in a cold sweat. He jumped up off the couch, needing the solidity of the floor beneath his feet, needing to move to shake off the nightmare.
Evening was falling, he realized. Golden late-afternoon light was pouring through his windows, announcing the lateness of the hour. He’d slept longer than he had planned to. The phone hadn’t rung. Apparently no one had learned anything.
He had a whopping headache, and he felt sticky from the dream-induced sweat. Deciding to take a swim, he stripped, climbed into his trunks and grabbed a towel.
Christ, he hated those dreams!
Down at the water’s edge he looked across the inlet and could see Jeff on a ladder. Painting? He couldn’t really be sure from here, but the gable of the house was fresh white. He felt a twinge of embarrassment that he hadn’t been there to help the way he’d promised to on more than one occasion.
Christ, he was fucking up everything in his life. Since he’d screwed up that dive, he couldn’t seem to do a damn thing right.
Then he cannonballed off the seawall and sank in the warm water until his butt touched bottom. Coming back up, he knocked the water out of his eyes and started swimming. Across the inlet and back, he promised himself. He could manage that much without letting his fear overtake him.
The other day with Callie had been different, because he hadn’t been alone. But today he was alone, and going into somewhat deeper water—although the inlet was not really that deep. Uneasiness tickled his spine anyway.
He refused to listen to it. It was time, he told himself, to stop listening to his fears. Time to take a grip on life again. Time to be a man about this.
It wasn’t that he was ashamed of being afraid. Fear was a good thing, and a wise man listened to it unless he was certain it had no basis. But being crippled by fear was something else altogether, something shameful, something he never would have believed possible of himself in the past.
He had discovered it was possible, but possible and inevitable were two different things. Reaching inside himself for the can-do stamina and sheer pigheaded arrogance that had gotten him through his SEALs training, he struck out across the inlet
The water embraced him, buoying him as he swam, very different from what he had felt at fifty-seven meters below the surface, where he had been absolutely certain the ocean was going to crush and drown him. And it wasn’t as if he’d never been at those depths before. Hell, he’d been down to nearly three hundred feet. Ten atmospheres of pressure. A man could hardly twitch down there.
Why had it gotten to him so badly this time? And why couldn’t he get over it?
And why had his nightmare changed this time? Was he beginning to remember what had happened? But his dream image of the damage to the boat didn’t match the damage report from Bill. No, he wasn’t remembering. His nightmares were just changing their mode of torment.
He’d always been a strong swimmer, but two months out of the water had slowed him down. By the time he was halfway across the inlet, the only thing he was thinking about was his tiring muscles. That filled him with further disgust. Christ, he’d let himself go to hell.
He pressed on, pausing from time to time to breathe deeply and be sure he expelled all the carbon dioxide from his lungs so he wouldn’t cramp. The inlet wasn’t all that deep, and he could have walked the rest of the way, but he refused to give in. There was only one way to deal with being out of shape.
When he reached the other side and stood up, he found Callie waiting for him with a towel on top of the seawall.
“Are you trying to prove something?” she asked.
He felt stung. “I used to swim that distance and more all the time.”
“Not lately. I saw you out there. I don’t think you were taking frequent rest stops to admire the view.”
He had to laugh. He took the towel from her and scoured his face and hair with it. “I’m out of shape. There’s only one way to get back in.”
“Next time, don’t do it when nobody’s watching. Even you could drown in the five or six feet of water out there if you cramp.”
He slung the towel around his shoulders. “I know how to avoid cramping.”
“Mmm.” Her expression didn’t agree with him. “Come up on the porch. I’ll get you something warm to drink.”
He had the worst urge to tell her to piss off—he wondered if this woman had any idea how bossy she could get?—and just start swimming back, but while he might be a macho meathead, he wasn’t a fool. If he tried swimming back right now, he probably would cramp from the buildup of exertion by-products in his muscles.
“Thanks,” he said, feeling a whole lot of sympathy for Jeff.
Jeff was washing out paintbrushes in an outside sink near a shed. A sink outside was something Chase had never seen before—at least not that he’d noticed—but it occurred to him it would be a really handy thing, especially for a fisherman. There were some things you didn’t want to do inside
the house. And it sure was a great place to wash paintbrushes.
With the towel still draped over his shoulders, he strolled over that way.
“How you doing, Jeff?”
The boy straightened and looked at him. “Could be better.”
“What’s wrong? Apart from the obvious, that is.”
That drew a faint smile to Jeff’s mouth. “Callie. It’s always Callie. I think she’s afraid to let me grow up.”
“I think she’s afraid that the sea is going to take you the way it took your father.”
Jeff nodded as he went back to rinsing the brushes. “Yeah. She’s bound and determined I’m wasting myself, though. Well, I coulda wasted myself worse. Instead of fishing and making some money, I could be out there trolling for treasure.”
“Ahh.” Chase leaned his shoulder against the shed. His legs still felt rubbery, but they were getting better. His hip was shrieking at him, too, but he was determined to ignore it. “Did you tell her that?”
“Sure. I don’t think it made an impression.”
“People very rarely respond well to the ‘if you think it’s bad now, how about this’ approach.”
“I don’t know. All I know is, she’s not going to be happy with me unless I go to college.”
“How do you feel about that?”
“Shit.” Jeff turned and snapped the brush he had just rinsed, flinging water off of it. He snapped it a couple more times, then hung it on a nail over the sink and reached for another brush that was soaking in a bucket full of paint-whitened water. He began running it under the tap, working the water through the bristles.
“Shit?” Chase asked. “Shit what?”
Jeff laughed. “I don’t know. I’m not going to college. I made up my mind about that. I can’t stand being cooped up in a classroom all the time.”
“College isn’t as cooped up as high school.”
“Doesn’t matter. I also don’t like studying things that bore me. That’s a waste. If I want to know something, I go to the library or buy a book. Why should I let somebody tell me what I have to learn?”
Chase wasn’t quite sure what to say because he sensed he might be getting on thin ground. He hadn’t gone to college himself, but had done quite well. At least until lately, and no college education could have saved him from what he was going through. On the other hand, he understood why Callie considered it important.
“The idea of college,” he said carefully, “is to open you up to ideas and possibilities you might never discover otherwise.”
“I don’t see how reading Jonathan Swift or studying sociology is going to help me captain a fishing boat.”
Chase decided to let that go. There was no logical, concrete response he could make to that. Nor was he of the mind that everyone had to have a college education. Besides, if Jeff ever decided he wanted or needed one, it was never too late to go.
“So you’ve thought about treasure hunting?”
Jeff looked up, his eyes suddenly alight. “Oh, yeah. But like I told Callie, it’s not practical. I mean, it costs a ton of money, and there’s no guarantee you’ll ever make a dime.”
Chase was impressed that Jeff had considered the practicality of it. Callie had given him quite a different impression of the boy. He’d expected a heedless dreamer. “Well, most treasure hunters have investors,” he agreed.
“I know. And I don’t know anybody. There’s no way I could get that kind of backing. But Eric and me, we figure we might be able to get enough money eventually to at least take a stab at it. There’s a lot of wrecks like the Atocha out there that have never been found.”
“And a lot of people looking for them,” Chase reminded him.
“Sure. But a lot of people looked for the Atocha before she was found, too.”
“And it took Mel Fisher what… sixteen years or so? Even after he got some really good information out of Spain.”
“But it’s out there,” Jeff said stubbornly. He shook the brush out and hung it on a nail beside the first one, then pulled yet another brush out of the bucket and started rinsing it. “There must be close to fifty wrecks out there that still haven’t been found.”
“Some estimates say only twenty-five. And that’s a lot of area they’re talking about.”
“I know.” Jeff sighed as he worked water through the bristles. “It’s a long shot. Probably one of the longest shots in the world. But man, I’d love to do it.”
“You’d have to do a lot of research on land, too.”
“I know. I’m already doing it. I’ve even got contacts in Spain who are helping with research.”
Chase was impressed. “How’d you do that?”
Jeff suddenly grinned. “The good old Internet.” Then he shrugged. “Well, it’ll be years before I can afford even the most basic equipment I’d need. Then there’s a problem with getting a permit from the state. Only a handful of people are getting them anymore.”
Chase nodded, but his thoughts had drifted to Tom Akers and the Lady Hope. Tom had most of the equipment. And Tom was likely to be interested in something like this, given good information. For the first time in over two months, Chase felt a real spark of excitement.
“I used to think a lot about treasure hunting, too,” he said.
Jeff finished the brush and looked at him with new interest. “Really?”
“Yeah.” But he didn’t want to commit to any more than that, not yet. But even as he had the thought, he realized that this boy needed something more to hope for than an acquittal on murders he hadn’t committed. He needed something good to look forward to. Hell, who didn’t?
“You know,” Chase said, “if you’ve got some time, I could start instructing you on diving. There’s a lot to learn before you even put a flipper in the water, if you want to do it right”
There was no mistaking the light in Jeff’s eyes. “Wow! Great! When can we start?”
Chase shrugged. “Right now if you want.”
When Callie came out of the house a few minutes later with a tray of beverages, she found Chase and Jeff hunkered together on the porch chairs, talking intently about diving. Chase thanked her for the mug of hot cocoa, and Jeff seemed equally pleased by the lemonade she’d brought for him.
“Chase is going to teach me to dive, Callie.”
She saw the eagerness and excitement in Jeff’s eyes, saw the happiness in his smile. Her heart plummeted, and she had the worst urge to start screaming. Teach Jeff to dive? Chase knew how she felt about the sea, he knew how much she wanted Jeff to go to college. How could he possibly do this to her? Diving was even more dangerous than boating!
Then she looked into Chase’s eyes and saw a challenge there, which only confirmed her conviction that he was aware she would be angry about this. Damn him to hell!
Instead of shouting, though, or objecting, she managed a pallid smile and went back into the house. There she sat in the darkening living room in the cool air-conditioning, listening to their muffled voices, hearing the happiness and excitement in Jeff’s tone, and wondered why it had been years since anything she had done for him had made Jeff as happy as he was at that moment.
“Callie?”
The room was dark. Callie stirred and saw her brother’s shadowy figure in the front doorway.
“I’m going to walk Chase back now,” Jeff said. “He’s going to give me a diver’s manual to study.”
“Great.”
“Wanna come?”
She didn’t want to spend another minute in Chase’s company. However, going along might give her an opportunity to put a lid on this new enthusiasm, an enthusiasm that was seriously dangerous. Dropping out of the loop wouldn’t help anything at all. “Sure,” she answered. Reaching out, she turned on a light so they wouldn’t come back to a dark house.
Chase was waiting on the porch, wearing nothing but his trunks. He’d hung the towel she’d given him over the railing to dry.
“You don’t have anything for your feet,” she said. “Mayb
e I should drive you back.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Wait a minute,” Jeff offered. “I’ve got a pair of flip-flops.…” He dashed inside the house and came back with them a minute later.
Chase slipped them on. “Thanks. I never think of flip-flops without thinking of Margaritaville.”
Jeff laughed and sang the stanza. Chase joined him, and Callie found herself tagging along after a couple of Jimmy Buffett wanna-bes through the dark along the path around the inlet.
She was in a terrible mood, and she resented the closeness that had evidently sprung up between Jeff and Chase. She resented their being able to walk along singing at the top of their lungs like a couple of drunken sailors while she followed behind wanting to shake them both.
What was the matter with her? she asked herself. Yeah, there was a lot wrong in her life at the moment, but it was wrong in Jeff’s life, too, and he was doing a whole lot better job of handling it than she was.
And why should she resent the fact that Jeff had found a friend in Chase? There really wasn’t anything about Chase that she could object to—other than his association with the sea and his morbid fear of the dark. Jeff needed a halfway-decent role model, something he hadn’t had since their father’s death.
So what was the matter with her? Did she think she could keep Jeff all to herself? Was that why she’d been difficult about that girl he’d met last night? Because she was terrified someone might take him away from her, the same as she was terrified the sea might do?
God. That was sick.
So maybe that wasn’t true. But somewhere deep inside, she knew that it was. She could feel it in her heart of hearts. She was terrified of losing Jeff, whether to the sea or to his own life. He’d been her anchor and her purpose almost since childhood, and losing him would leave her empty of purpose. Empty of direction.