After I Dream

by Lee, Rachel

  Chase’s voice interrupted her thought. “You just remembered something,” he said almost gently. “You looked… sad.”

  “I was just thinking of my dad. He used to say ‘growed up,’ too. I haven’t heard that colloquialism since he died.”

  “My folks always used that expression, too. My dad was always telling me to slow down, I’d get ‘growed up’ soon enough.”

  Callie laughed, feeling her heart lighten a little. “I heard that one, too. But I think Jeff heard it a whole lot more than I did.”

  “Sure he did. You got growed up real fast.”

  She laughed again and realized it was such a relief to laugh, just laugh. It eased the tension in the pit of her stomach that hadn’t left her since Jeff’s arrest.

  “Let’s take the coffee onto the porch,” he suggested when it was ready.

  “Are you sure?” It was dark out there, and she didn’t think he’d been exaggerating his problems.

  “I’m sure. Facing it may not conquer my fear, but the more I face, it the more confident I am that I can.”

  The tropical breeze was balmy and soft. The moon was brighter tonight, silvering the world, and the lap of waves was soothing.

  Callie sat in one of the wicker chairs, far from the swing that hung at the far end of the porch. She could feel the tension in Chase as he took the chair beside her, but she didn’t say anything.

  “A couple of weeks ago,” he said, “I couldn’t even make myself go outside when it was dark.”

  “You’ve come a long way.”

  “I guess. But not far enough. I still have the feeling something’s out there watching and waiting.”

  Callie felt her scalp prickle. “Maybe that’s not such an irrational fear.”

  “Maybe not. It doesn’t seem like it after the last few days. But there was a time when I considered the darkness a friend. Back when I was a SEAL.”

  “I can imagine. Cover of darkness would be a great aid. Why’d you leave the navy?”

  “I got tired of it. Maybe I grew up.” He gave a quiet laugh. “Yeah, that was probably it. As the years start encroaching, playing those games starts to seem pointless. And foolhardy. Of course, not everyone would agree with me.”

  “Foolhardy? What do you call what you’re proposing to do here?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Diving back to The Happy Maggie. That doesn’t strike you as foolhardy?”

  “Not if I’m in control of everything.”

  “Weren’t you last time?”

  He shook his head.

  Callie sat up straighter, feeling the back of her neck prickle again. “Why not? Who else was in control?”

  “There were two dive masters. Required by OSHA, the agency that oversees occupational safety. I’ll bet you didn’t know there are OSHA standards for commercial diving.”

  “No, but it makes sense.”

  “Well, we had a stand-by diver, and somebody to manage communications and so on. Sort of a dive manager. Anyway, I’m not the only person who handled my air tanks. And I didn’t supervise filling them. The standby diver handled that.”

  “Is that unusual?”

  Chase shook his head. “Nope. These salvage dives are big, expensive operations. Everybody’s got a job to do. I checked my equipment, but I didn’t test my tanks. Bill did that for both of us. So somebody else took charge of getting them filled, and Bill tested ‘em before the dive.”

  “So somebody could have put something else in your air tanks?” The thought chilled her to the bone.

  “It’s possible. What I can’t figure is why they didn’t just give me a bad mix. I’d’ve been dead, and it would have been put down to a tragic accident.”

  “My God!”

  “Of course, giving me a bad mix would have left a trail. The way it fell out, I had the narks and that could have happened from helium. Or maybe from that stroke the doctor was talking about. It was all so messed up by me having the bends anyway—I mean they had to put me in the decompression chamber, fill me full of oxygen. By the time I got to a hospital, it was probably anybody’s guess what mixture of air I was on.”

  “But surely somebody checked your tanks?”

  “Bill took ‘em in for analysis.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah. Oh. He could have emptied ‘em and had ‘em refilled by then, for all I know. Things sure look different after all that’s happening.”

  “They sure do.”

  “What made sense before isn’t making sense now.” Chase sighed. “Dollars to doughnuts I had Nitrox in my tanks instead of heliox.”

  “But what would be the point?”

  “To incapacitate me and let Bill falsify the report. Maybe they didn’t want to kill anyone, because the authorities might start looking too closely at what happened. So they give me the narks—which are a common enough problem in diving—I can’t remember a damn thing, and Bill says what they want him to. Except, I don’t think they were expecting me to get as bad as I did.”

  Callie was beginning to feel indignant “Why not? That was a dangerous thing to do!”

  “Admittedly. But most divers have dealt with narks and know how to handle them, at least to some degree. They probably figured I’d get euphoric and would have to be brought back up in the normal way, but I’d probably forget what happened down below. That’s common with narks, not to be able to remember. I don’t think they expected me to go over-the-edge paranoid and try to rip my mask off.”

  “I’m supposed to be excusing them?”

  “No, I didn’t say that. I’m just trying to figure their reasoning. That’s all I can come up with that makes sense. A diver getting the narks raises no eyebrows. A diver getting killed by bad air on a dive for ten million dollars would raise a whole lot of eyebrows.”

  “I guess.” She wished she could get her hands around Bill’s throat. “I’m feeling violent.”

  “Not toward me, I hope?”

  She looked at him, and wished she could read his expression better, but she hadn’t turned on the porch light, so his face was shadowed. “Not at you. At Bill.”

  “Well, he’s already gotten his. And I didn’t tell you this to upset you, Callie. I just wanted you to see why I’d have confidence about making the dive by myself. That’s one of the reasons I didn’t want any help from Bruderson. That would get too many people involved, and offer too many opportunities for something to get fucked up.”

  “I can see that.” She wanted to accept his reasoning and accept his confidence, but fear had a life of its own, and it was clawing at her right now, making her aware that the thought of something happening to Chase scared her at least as much as the thought of anything happening to Jeff. “Can’t you get someone else to do the dive?”

  “Why?”

  “Because then you don’t have to take the risk.”

  He was silent for a while, staring out over the inlet. Callie waited, trying to silence the twisting terror that was beginning to fill her. If she had realized that he might do something this insane, she would never have allowed him to get so close to her and Jeff. She would never have allowed herself to care.

  The realization that she did care for him exploded in her like a thunderclap. God, how had she let that happen? But even as she wondered, she realized that all the while she’d been fighting him and trying to keep him safely away from her emotionally, she had been getting in deeper and deeper until it was too late. She cared what happened to him.

  And now the sea would take him, the way it had taken everyone. The way it was trying to take Jeff. The soothing sound of the gentle waves was no longer soothing. All of a sudden it sounded like evil laughter.

  “I can’t send someone else, Callie,” Chase said presently. “I have to go myself.”

  “Some stupid macho notion, I suppose.” Her tone was bitter, bitter enough that it made her wince at the sound of it.

  “There’s nothing macho about it. It’s something I have to do.”

 
“Right. And what makes you so damn sure you didn’t get the narks from helium? And what if you did? Doesn’t that mean you’re more susceptible, and you shouldn’t do this at all?”

  “I’ve never had narks from helium, Callie. Never.”

  “Until this dive.”

  “It wasn’t helium.”

  “You don’t know that!” Frustrated almost beyond words, she jumped up from her chair and began to pace the porch rapidly. What could she say? she wondered wildly. There had to be something to say to dissuade him from this.

  But all her life no one she had cared about had ever been dissuaded when the sea called. Who was she kidding? Callie Carlson could stamp her feet and yell until the cows came home. She could get down on her knees and weep and beg— and still her men would go to the sea.

  God damn the ocean and God damn men!

  After a bit, she heard Chase rise from his chair and cross the porch to stand behind her. She refused to look at him, even though she longed to turn and throw herself into his arms and beg him to forget this insanity. She’d begged her father to stay home with her and Jeff after their mother died, and he hadn’t listened. She’d begged Jeff not to take to the sea, but it was the only thing he wanted to do.

  Why should Chase be any different? If her father wouldn’t ignore the siren call for his children, why should Chase Mattingly ignore it for the sake of a couple of neighbors?

  She wrapped her arms around herself, feeling cold in a way the night’s warmth couldn’t touch. She wished Chase would go away, just vanish into the night, so she wouldn’t have to know what happened to him.

  She felt his hands touch her shoulders lightly. Tentatively. As if he feared she might consider his touch a trespass. Which she ought to, she thought. She really ought to tell him to get his mitts off her. Except that there was little on this planet she wanted as much as she wanted his touch. She craved it, and no amount of fear could swallow that craving.

  “Calypso…” He said her name softly, so that it almost seemed to be whispered by the breeze. “Such a beautiful name. I love the way it rolls on the tongue…”

  “Don’t get poetic on me, Chase. It won’t work.”

  He answered her with silence. She half expected he would walk away, which was what she wanted, wasn’t it? That’s why she was being such a bitch, wasn’t it? Except that she felt so relieved when his hands remained on her shoulders.

  “I wasn’t getting poetic,” he said. “I don’t have a poetic bone in my body.”

  Not true, she thought. When he talked about the sea he loved, he became poetic.

  His hands tightened a little on her shoulders, and she found herself leaning back into him, feeling the hard wall of his chest against her shoulders. It would have been so easy to relax against him, to ignore all her fears and anger and give in to the feelings he awoke in her so easily.

  But she refused to do that, remaining stiff and unyielding even when he began to massage her shoulders gently.

  “Life’s a bitch,” he said quietly.

  She had to swallow a harsh laugh. Some part of her was unwilling to dispel the mood that was beginning to wrap them in a soft cocoon. “No kidding,” she said just as quietly.

  “Have you ever noticed that every time we don’t want to do something, or swear that we never will, life grabs us by the throat and makes us do it?”

  “Is that your excuse for making this dive? That life is forcing you?”

  “It’s not an excuse.”

  “Sure it is.”

  “No, it’s not.” His hands paused on her shoulders, then resumed their gentle rubbing.

  “It’s an excuse,” she repeated flatly. “No one is forcing you at gunpoint.”

  He sighed. “Calypso, if I don’t do this, I’m going to be a cripple for the rest of my life.”

  “If you do it, you might wind up dead. God, Chase, how are you going to do this by yourself? Can you afford to get a decompression chamber and a boat big enough to carry it? Are you going to hire someone to dive with you? You can’t possibly afford all of that. So what are you going to do? Dive alone? You must be out of your mind!”

  “Maybe I am. God knows I’ve felt like it for a couple of months now.”

  A pang pierced her heart, and with it came one very clear thought: Was she being selfish about this? Her breath caught in her throat, and her heart nearly stopped.

  “Look, I promise you if I feel narks coming on, I’ll come right back up.”

  Somewhere deep inside, she realized he was willing to make a promise to her, and that meant he wasn’t indifferent to her. She held the feeling close even as a small voice in her head said he couldn’t possibly care at all for her, or he wouldn’t be thinking about doing this.

  “You didn’t feel the narks in time on your last dive,” she said finally.

  “I wasn’t expecting them. If you’re looking for them, they can’t creep up on you. Besides… that was different. I’ve never had ‘em hit me like that before.” He sighed. “I wouldn’t be surprised if there was something else in that mixture besides Nitrox.”

  She closed her eyes, feeling a resurgence of horror at what someone had tried to do to him.

  “Anyway, I’m convinced I couldn’t have had a straight mixture of heliox. I’ve never had a problem with the narks on a dive like that as long as my mixture was right.”

  She wanted to believe him, but she was afraid to. Believing him meant too much. It meant approving of the risk he was going to take. She wasn’t ready to do that. Wasn’t ready to invest even that much of herself in something that could wind up hurting her more than anything since the death of her parents.

  “Why?” she repeated. “Why do you have to do this? It won’t prove anything, Chase.”

  “It’ll prove that I can still dive. It’ll prove I didn’t screw up. It’ll prove that Bill lied about everything…”

  “And that’ll do what?”

  “Give me my confidence back. It might even help Jeff.”

  “Oh, come off it. There’s no way it could help Jeff. The only thing that’s going to help him is finding those divers and getting a confession out of them.”

  “If I can prove that Bill lied about the damage to the boat, I can go to the insurance company, Callie. They’ll be as eager to find those divers as you are, and so will the cops. They have a lot more resources than we do. And it might be enough to get the state attorney to drop the case against Jeff.”

  It was a slender hope, but it was one she couldn’t refuse. Never had she felt as torn as she did right then. Frantically, she considered alternatives, trying to find a way to reach the same ends without Chase having to risk his life.

  Nothing occurred to her.

  She opened her eyes and turned to face him. “Chase… get someone else to do it.”

  He shook his head. “If I do that, I might help Jeff, but I won’t help myself.”

  He touched her cheek gently with his fingertips, and she couldn’t help it. She needed that touch so much that she leaned into it, pressing her cheek into his palm. Her eyes closed again, and she fought against a surge of feeling so strong it nearly overwhelmed her. What was happening to her?

  “Calypso,” he said, his voice quiet, husky. “Calypso, if I don’t make this dive, I’ll never heal. I’ll never be whole again. I don’t have to tell you that.”

  She felt his plea all the way to her soul, and wondered why he should be asking for her understanding. Her eyes opened, and she looked up at him. The shadows were deep, but moonlight reflecting off the water caught his eyes and made them silver. “Don’t ask me for that, Chase. Please don’t ask me to approve.”

  After a moment, he nodded and let go of her. The loss of his touch ripped something deep within her, and grief began to fill her. But she couldn’t do what he asked. She couldn’t.

  “I’m going to bed,” he said. “Good night.”

  She stood alone in the night, knowing she had failed him in a very essential way. And it didn’t help to reali
ze that he had asked too much of her. It didn’t help at all.

  Sleeping when it was dark was still beyond Chase. He tried to tell himself he was doing pretty good. After all, he’d just spent a half hour on the porch in the dark with Callie. He still felt the darkness closing in, felt that there were things lurking out there, but at least he was facing the feeling and not letting it get the better of him.

  But the nightmares were something else. What was the point of going to sleep anyway, if he was just going to wake up every few minutes in the grip of a nightmare?

  But it had been a long day, and he hadn’t gotten his usual nap. Sitting in the armchair in the bedroom with the light on, he felt himself nodding.

  And his thoughts kept going back to Callie. The woman was an emotional mess, whether she realized it or not. And he didn’t know why he couldn’t just keep clear of her. Helping Jeff out, helping himself out—none of that had to include getting involved with Callie and her damn prickliness. God, she was a rose with some serious thorns. Every time he thought they were beginning to come to an understanding, she turned all spiky.

  He ought to be glad she’d showed her true colors on the porch just now. He’d been close to wading into dangerous waters with her, and it was best to know beforehand that he couldn’t count on her.

  Of course, with the exception of Tom Akers, when had he ever really been able to count on anyone? Especially a woman? Thoughts of Julia came swimming to the fore, and he sighed. Come on, he thought. I don’t need to dive into those waters tonight.

  The story with Julia was simple, after all. He’d ridden in on his white horse to rescue her, and she’d taken advantage of him. That was the danger in playing the white knight. You laid yourself open to being used.

  At least Callie wasn’t pretending to be all dewy-eyed over him the way Julia had. No, Callie was being up front. She’d probably have sent him to the devil if she could have.

  Callie was no different from the rest, really, except that she wasn’t playing any games. When the going got tough, in Chase’s experience, women tended to bail out. Julia had bailed out on him because navy life was too tough. She had said so. How, she had asked, could he expect her to live like that? The loneliness was too much. Never mind that he’d been lonely, too, when he was away.