by Lee, Rachel
He was laughing at her again, and it irritated her. “Don’t you see? Somebody might have taken that gun to set Chase up specifically so he can’t do anything about The Maggie and the diamonds. If he gets charged with murder, who’s going to believe him about the diamonds?.”
“His fingerprints would have to be on the gun.”
“They probably are, Jeff. They probably are.”
“But they deteriorate with time, Callie. And somebody would have to hold the gun to fire it. Even if they used gloves so they didn’t leave their own prints, that would probably smear Chase’s prints beyond identification. I think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill here.”
“I don’t think so.” She smothered another sigh. “At least three people have already died. Somebody is willing to kill over this. Somebody is willing to wreck lives over this. I don’t put anything past them.”
“Maybe not, but I still think you’re borrowing trouble. We need to just wait and see how this unfolds.”
“Well, I’d do that a whole lot better if Chase would just get back here.”
Jeff’s expression softened. “You’re crazy about him, aren’t you.”
Callie stiffened. “No, of course not. I just want to get this dive over with so you can get out from under the murder charges.”
“Yeah. Right.” He grinned. She threw a pillow at him. He laughed, and despite her frustration and fear, she had to laugh with him.
It had, she realized suddenly, been a long time since she had felt this comfortable with her brother. Maybe giving up her constant fight to change him would actually have some benefits.
He picked up his book again, and Callie sat across from him, watching him in the lamplight as the wind picked up outside. He was growing up, she thought. He really was growing up, and he was actually turning out pretty well— something she’d failed to see before because she hated his career choices.
Maybe she wasn’t such a failure as a mom after all.
The night beyond the windows began to flicker with lightning. Jeff looked up from his book. “If this keeps up, Chase probably won’t be able to dive tomorrow.”
“How come?”
“Seas’ll be rough, if this is a big storm system.”
“Maybe I should check the weather.”
“Won’t make any difference. We’ll have to decide in the morning anyway.” He cocked his head. “I think I hear a car.”
Callie jumped up but Jeff waved her back. “I’ll go out there. We don’t know who it is.”
Callie, who never before in her life had worried about who might be pulling up to her house in a car, suddenly had a fractured feeling, as if the world had changed beyond recognition. This was crazy, she thought, to have to live with this kind of caution. “I’ll go with you.”
Jeff hesitated, then shrugged a shoulder. Apparently he, too, was learning that not everything was worth fighting over.
Callie followed him out the side door, and when she saw Chase climbing out of his Explorer she hit a full run, dashing down off the porch and practically throwing herself into his arms. “I was getting so worried!”
He laughed, his face lighting with pleasure, and swung her around in a circle before he set her on her feet.
“She sure was,” Jeff said from the porch. “I think she wore a path in the living-room floor.”
“Sorry I was gone so long. I had to rent some equipment because most of my stuff is up in Tampa. Then traffic was a bitch on the way back. Two accidents, right where you couldn’t get around them. Nothing serious, but it felt like we crawled for miles.”
Chase started walking toward the house, his arm around Callie’s shoulders, but Jeff stopped him.
“Don’t you think we ought to bring the equipment inside where we can watch it?”
“Good idea. I had the tanks sealed so I’ll know if they’ve been tampered with, but why take a chance.”
The tanks were considerably heavier than Callie expected, and bigger than the ones she frequently saw at the docks on the recreational dive boats.
“Five of them?” she asked. “Why so many?”
“I’m going to wear two of them. Then I’m going to hang one about ten feet down to use when I come back up. When I go this deep I always make it a practice to take a so-called emergency decompression stop at ten feet. Just an extra precaution. Anyway, the deeper you go, the faster you use your air, so I need quite a bit. The two extras are in case any of these leaks overnight.”
It sounded as if he’d thought of everything, Callie reassured herself. There was also an underwater camera.
“I’m taking pictures of whatever I find down there,” Chase said. “It’s not going to turn into a swearing contest between me and a dead man.”
Once they had his gear inside and stowed at one side of the living room, Jeff excused himself. He gave Callie a knowing look that made her blush and turn away quickly so that Chase wouldn’t see it.
But as soon as they were alone, Chase turned her into his embrace and kissed her deeply.
“I missed you,” he said simply.
“I missed you, too,” she admitted shakily. It was a bad thing to miss him with the dive looming over them tomorrow. She didn’t want to think about how she was going to feel if anything happened to him. All she could do right now was hope this was a big storm system so he wouldn’t be able to go tomorrow.
It was appalling to realize how desperately she wanted just one more day before she had to face the terror. Suddenly scared by the depth of her own feelings, she pulled away.
“Hungry?” she asked, her smile brittle.
“I ate on the way back. Thanks.” He looked at her, his expression thoughtful, as if he was trying to decide what her pulling away meant. Then he sat down and began to check his equipment and work calculations.
Outside the storm growled and rain fell. Inside all was quiet and filled with a sense of foreboding.
Finally, Callie could stand it no longer and went to bed alone.
A long time later Chase found her and slipped under the sheet beside her. She went into his arms without protest and clung to him through a night that was far too short.
CHAPTER 19
“I’m going with you.”
Callie stood on the dock and looked at her brother and Chase. They had just finished loading and securing all of Chase’s gear. The day had betrayed her, turning out sunny and calm with no wind other than the usual westerlies. The water was almost as smooth as a mirror.
Chase looked over at her and put his hands on his hips.
Jeff spoke. “You hate the water, Callie. You won’t even go fishing with me because it scares you to death to be out on a boat. You don’t want to make this trip.”
It was true her heart was pounding, and her mouth was dry, but she forced herself to ignore her instinctive terror. “You two are not going alone. If something happens, you might need help. There’s no way I’m staying here.”
Jeff hesitated. “Can you handle it?”
“Hell, yes, I can handle it better than waiting on the point again. I was out on boats with dad when you were still in diapers.”
“That was before Dad died.”
Callie set her chin. “I can handle it.”
“Mainly I’m worried that if you get too frightened, you’ll distract us,” Jeff said.
Callie drew a sharp breath. She hadn’t thought of that. “I’ll be fine,” she said firmly. “I’m far more worried about you two.”
“Let her come,” Chase said, speaking for the first time. “She’ll be fine.”
Ten minutes later, the Lily pulled away from the dock and headed out of the inlet. Callie felt a little queasy as she watched the shoreline fall away, but she forced herself to turn her attention to the sea.
The morning sun glinted off the gentle waves, and the water ranged in color from olive to light green to aquamarine. It was as beautiful as it had always been, but all that beauty held a threat she couldn’t ignore.
She
found herself remembering the times she had come out like this with her dad for the day, and remembered how happy those occasions had always been. Wes Carlson had been a serious commercial fisherman, but that didn’t prevent him from fishing for fun when he had some time, or fishing just to bring home enough to fill the freezer. At an early age Callie had learned to mend the nets, to set them, and to haul them in full of catch.
And she had loved it.
But they had usually headed northeast, to Florida Bay, and they had rarely gone oceanside of the reefs. Even as she tried to recapture the joyous anticipation of her youth, she couldn’t escape the awareness that they were going into deep water, water where the bottom wouldn’t be visible from the surface, water so deep that the light didn’t reach all the way down.
Chase came to stand beside her. “You okay?” he asked.
“I’m fine.”
“You look awfully tense.”
“I haven’t been out on a boat in four years. I’ll relax.”
“I’m sure you will.” Reaching out, he clasped her hand.
“How are you doing?” she asked him.
“I’m scared spitless.”
She looked up at him and saw that he wasn’t joking. She thought it took a very strong man to admit fear so readily. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Wanting isn’t part of it. I have to do it. For Jeff. For me. For you.”
“For me?”
His stormy gray eyes reflected some of the greens from the water. “I don’t want you to be terrified every time I talk about going diving.”
Every time? Would he be diving a lot after this? Was he thinking that their relationship would continue? But she didn’t dare ask, and she didn’t dare think about something so scary. She didn’t know if she had the courage to risk loving someone.
But it was already too late, wasn’t it? How far could she carry this game of denial she was playing with herself? Would it be any easier if she said good-bye to Chase at the end of the day, or if she waited for months or years until life took him away from her?
“This should be fun,” he said. “Banish the clouds from your thoughts. We’re going to have a great day full of sun and sea. Most people would consider this a holiday.”
But she felt his hand tighten around hers, and knew that he wasn’t much calmer about this than she was. He was just pretending better.
“You’re sure you’re up to this dive? It isn’t too soon after your accident?”
“Honey, they decompressed me for days. Then they decompressed me a couple of extra times. If I’ve got any bubbles left in my body, it would be a major medical miracle.”
“But you could have?” Her heart was suddenly in her throat.
“The possibility is so remote it’s not even worth considering.”
Which was not exactly the same as saying there wasn’t any at all. She shifted her gaze back to the sea, trying to deal with the fear that was crawling up her spine.
“Look,” Chase said, “even if I had some bubbles, they wouldn’t cause any problem going down, and I’m allowing extra decompression time on the way back. I’m not only being conservative, I’m being ridiculously cautious, okay?”
She nodded but didn’t trust herself to speak. The sea was looking more threatening by the minute, even though nothing out there had changed. The only thing worse than what she was doing now would have been staying home and wondering.
Finally, she summoned a smile, though, and looked at Chase. “Everything will be fine,” she said firmly.
“Yes, it will.”
The water began to darken as the depth increased, and the farther they got from shallow water, the stronger the waves grew. Nothing threatening, but swells were rolling them gently, and Callie felt herself balancing automatically against the rocking of the Lily.
Chase glanced at his watch. “Not much longer now.”
It was going to be all right. She had to believe that.
“Why don’t you go up on the bridge with Jeff?” Chase suggested. “He’s probably wondering how you’re doing.”
So she climbed up there, ignoring an unexpected sense of vertigo as the ship’s gentle roll was magnified. Jeff looked at her and grinned.
“This is the life,” he said.
She forced herself to return the smile.
“You doing okay?”
“Just fine. I haven’t completely lost my sea legs.”
“Great.” He beamed at her, as if he was just thrilled to have her sharing this with him. She felt a pang for all the times she had turned him down because she hated the sea. Standing beside him now, she realized it really wasn’t so bad. Not bad at all.
Until she turned around and saw Chase pulling on his blue-and-black wet suit. Her heart fluttered wildly, and she gripped the rail until her knuckles turned white.
“We’re almost there,” Jeff said, reading the coordinates off the global positioning system. “I just hope those divers didn’t detach the buoy when they went down for the diamonds.”
“What if they did?” Callie asked.
“Then we’ll never find the damn boat.”
Which would mean Chase couldn’t make the dive. Which would mean they wouldn’t have the evidence to help Jeff. She couldn’t remember ever having felt so torn between desires.
She found herself scanning the water, seeking the buoy, trying not to let all the hatred she felt for the sea rise up in her and drown her in bitterness. But she honestly could not escape the feeling the sea had made all this happen, that for some reason she and Chase and Jeff were all being manipulated to this point in space and time, forced to face their fears and desires head on.
“Callie?”
She looked at her brother.
Almost as if he had read her mind, he said, “You know what terrifies me more than anything else in the world?”
Her chest tightened. “What’s that?”
“Losing this. Not being able to do this ever again. Spending the rest of my life in some stinking jail and never again putting out to sea. I think I could handle anything at all except that.”
She stepped closer to him and slid her arm around his waist. His closed around her shoulders. The rocking of the boat on the swells was almost like being rocked in a mother’s arms. “I’m sorry, Jeff.”
“For what?”
“For trying to take this away from you.”
He looked down at her, blue eyes meeting blue. “You couldn’t take it away from me, Callie. I think you found that out. But it doesn’t matter. I know you were trying to get me to do what you thought was best for me.”
“No, actually, the sad thing is I was trying to get you to do what was best for me. I’m really ashamed of myself.”
He squeezed her. “Don’t be. You’ve been a good mother to me all along. Just consider it a difference of opinion, okay?”
Callie looked up at him and felt pride fill her. Her brother was turning into a remarkable young man.
“There’s the buoy,” he said suddenly.
Callie’s mouth suddenly felt as if it were full of cotton. She didn’t even want to look back at Chase, didn’t want to know how close he was to being ready to go over the side.
The buoy was a small one with a strobe light on top of it. They pulled up nearby, close enough to read the painted warning that the sunken craft was being salvaged, but not close enough to foul them in the buoy line.
“Are they just going to leave that there forever?” Callie wondered.
“I don’t know,” Jeff answered. “I’m surprised the divers didn’t cut it loose after they recovered the diamonds.”
“If that’s what they were doing out here,” Callie said. “We don’t know for sure why they were out here.”
Jeff looked at her. “Don’t say that”
Callie, whose hopes about this were as high as Jeff’s, understood what he was feeling. She was so full of hope and fear right now that it actually hurt.
Jeff cut the engines, then lowered
the sea anchor to slow their wind drift. After a few minutes, he and Chase were satisfied they weren’t caught in a strong current.
“What about that buoy,” Jeff asked. “Why didn’t those divers cut it loose?”
“Probably because it would have been too suspicious,” Chase said. “See that warning on it? That prevents anybody except Maritime from legally salvaging the Maggie. Maritime’s probably leaving it there in case they need to go down to the yacht for additional information during legal proceedings. As for the divers—cutting that buoy loose would be about as good as announcing somebody had been screwing around out here. The best way to leave no tracks was to leave the buoy.”
Chase started to reach for his equipment, then paused and looked at Callie. “I’ll be careful. I promise.”
She managed a nod. “I know you will. I… just come back, Chase.”
Jeff turned his back discreetly to give them privacy, and started fiddling with a boat hook. An instant later Callie was in Chase’s arms, hugging him as if she would never let go.
“It’s okay, Calypso,” he murmured in her ear. “It’s okay, sweetie. I’ve done this hundreds of times. It’s like walking across the street.”
With her face pressed to his chest, she managed a nod. “I know,” she said brokenly. “I know…”
He lifted her chin and looked deep into her eyes. “I’ll be back.” He said the words with a thick accent, reminding her of The Terminator. The unexpectedness of it surprised a broken laugh from her, and made it possible to keep her tears from spilling.
“You better,” she said. “You better.”
He gave her a quick kiss, then let her go.
The first thing he and Jeff did was lower a bar with an air tank and diving weights attached to it. The air supply for the last decompression stop, Callie surmised.
Then Chase pulled on his own tanks and fastened the harness securely. Instead of the diving mask she was accustomed to seeing, he wore a helmet-style mask that covered his head. He picked up the underwater camera, attached its strap to his belt, and gave her one last look.
She had a wild surge of panic and wanted to reach out to stop him, to tell him not to go, but he was over the side before a sound could escape her lips.