by Elise Noble
CHAPTER 2 - BLACK
CHARLES BLACK LASTED thirty minutes on a sunlounger. Sitting still for any longer than that left him bored. Irritated. On surveillance duty in the field, he could control the twitchiness, tamp it down, but it was always lurking in the background, niggling at him. With Emmy reading peacefully beside him, he tried checking his emails to distract himself, but when the damn phone threatened to overheat in the morning sun, he shoved it under his towel and stood up.
“I’m going for a swim. Join me?”
The sea was right there, calling to him. His time in the Navy SEALs had turned him amphibious. Two or three miles in the open water and he’d be calm again, ready to do whatever else a man was supposed to do on a vacation.
But Emmy didn’t look too enthusiastic.
“We’re supposed to be on vacation. You literally used that word yesterday.”
“And?”
“If I wanted to die of exhaustion, I could’ve done that in Virginia. And I’m already shattered from last night.”
No, they hadn’t made it out for dinner, but he had eaten well.
“Swimming isn’t exhausting.”
“It is when I’m trying to keep up with you.”
“We both need to stay in shape.”
“I’ll give you a blow job if you don’t make me swim.”
Black hesitated. Emmy sucked like an inverted hurricane and took pleasure in a job well done. Which was why he called her bluff.
“You’ll give me a blow job anyway.”
“Dammit, you know me so well. Okay, I’ll go if you agree to let me do nothing all afternoon.”
“Deal.”
“And bring me drinks.”
He wasn’t a fucking waiter. “There are staff here to bring you drinks.”
“That’s not the point.”
Of course it wasn’t. Black liked to be in control. Emmy knew that, and so she pushed the boundaries at every available opportunity. He pretended to be annoyed, but secretly, he enjoyed the challenge. He’d concede on this point, but he wanted something in return.
“Fine. I’ll bring you drinks if you wear a bikini.”
“Sure. I’ll wear a bikini.”
Hmm. That was easy. Almost too easy…
Black’s phone buzzed, and he moved to the shade of a carob tree to check who’d messaged. Nate, his former Navy SEAL swim buddy, checking whether Black would be available for a videoconference with a client the day after tomorrow. He almost answered in the affirmative, but then he thought of Emmy. The whole reason he’d suggested this trip was because the last three times he’d tried to take her out to dinner, work had got in the way. And he’d noticed the tiredness in her eyes this last month. She’d never have said anything, but perhaps Anton Ludovich’s untimely death had been fate’s way of telling them to take a break.
He tapped out a reply to Nate.
Black: Unless it’s an emergency, neither of us is available for anything for the next two weeks.
But Black still needed to swim.
“Ready?” he asked Emmy, sticking his head around the villa’s front door.
“Almost. Where are we swimming?”
“In the laguna?”
“Can’t. The banana boat’s bombing around, and I like my head where it is, thanks. We’ll have to walk over to Baby Bay.”
She stepped out of the bedroom, and Black let out a groan. He hadn’t thought this through, had he? Emmy had gone with a violet two-piece to match her eyes, and that wasn’t the only thing it enhanced. If she ventured out in public dressed that way, he might be forced to murder someone.
He went inside and rummaged through the closet.
“Here. Wear this.”
“A kaftan? Are you fucking kidding me?”
“In case you get sunburned.”
“Bullshit. You wanted me in the bikini—now own it.”
Black made a grab for her because at that moment, he had absolutely no desire to swim but a hell of a lot of desire to fuck his wife. But Emmy sidestepped and darted out the door, leaving him to lock it behind them.
Logically, Black knew Emmy was his. They’d renewed their wedding vows not so long ago, and she’d never cheat. But every time a man’s gaze lingered on her body, he still wanted to dig the asshole’s eyes out with a spoon then lock her in their bedroom so nobody else could look at her.
Did that stop her from flirting? No. Sometimes, he thought she did it deliberately to wind him up. Like now, for example. She grinned as she strode along the beach, and Black stalked behind her like a shadow, glaring at anyone who so much as looked in her direction as they headed for the spit of land on the far side of the laguna.
Think of the water, he told himself, not Emmy’s ass.
They’d first come to Dahab in her early twenties—his early thirties—before they’d invested in the hotel. Black had wanted to dive at the Blue Hole, a sinkhole just a few yards offshore that plunged almost 370 feet into the depths. It had a reputation for being one of the most dangerous dive sites in the world, and it was true that a number of people had lost their lives there—the wall of memorial plaques right before the entrance was a testament to that—but much of the risk could be mitigated with proper equipment and training.
Almost halfway down the Blue Hole, a long arch led out to the open sea. At that depth, with air much denser and the effects of narcosis hovering around the edges of your consciousness, it was all too easy to burn through the contents of your tank and do something stupid. Beyond forty metres—a hundred and thirty feet—was technical diving territory, not recreational, but too many people still attempted the arch on a single tank and without proper backup. Those were the people who died most often.
Black preferred to think of the process as natural selection.
Back then, he and Emmy had dived the arch and spent the next few days exploring the town. Emmy told him she loved the place, and that was why he’d handed over a million and a half bucks when Bob Stewart came up with a crazy plan to renovate a wreck of a hotel. For Emmy. Because until Black met her, love had just been a word in the dictionary. A mythical mix of chemicals that messed with a man’s mind and destroyed his ability to think rationally. Then he’d stumbled into his future wife on the streets of London one rainy evening—or rather, she’d stumbled into him—and she’d stolen his heart as well as his sanity, the mental bitch.
On the other side of the bay, Emmy cannonballed into the sea, then trod water as Black dove in beside her. Perhaps they’d only do one mile today. Half an hour, and he’d have her back in the bedroom where he wanted her.
In the meantime, Black made an effort to enjoy the swim. Stroking lazily through the water with his wife beside him was better than stalking a junior oligarch, and the Red Sea sure was warmer than the places he’d trained in his SEAL days. But that ass…
A quarter mile along the coast, he grabbed Emmy’s hand.
“Let’s go back.”
“You’re quitting already? Are you kidding? I need to do at least another mile.”
“Why?”
“Because of the amount of dinner I want to eat tonight.”
“I can think of another way to burn calories.”
Emmy wrapped her legs around his waist, and his cock hardened instantly.
“And what might that be?”
She released her grip and sank beneath the waves. Black braced for the feel of her lips, maybe the scrape of her teeth, because it wouldn’t be the first time she’d pulled that trick and he knew how long she could hold her breath, but she popped up again almost instantly.
“Shit.”
“What?”
“There’s a group of scuba divers down there.”
Fuck. And now he had a damned daggerboard in his shorts. Emmy was laughing as they took off for the laguna, and he let her set the pace at first, but the sight of her smooth legs didn’t help a certain part of his anatomy, so he soon scooted in front.
How long would it take to get back to the villa? The
y could jog, but then Emmy’s tits would bounce, and— Wait. Why was Bob waving at them from the beach?
Black didn’t know, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know either.
But since Emmy was already heading for the shore, Black followed, mentally rehearsing excuses not to go for dinner with three generations of the Stewart family. Bob was a good friend, Sondra was tolerable, but Black would rather be waterboarded than spend an evening making small talk with Lynn, fiancé number three, and a teenage brat.
“Is there a problem?” he asked his old boss.
“Always so negative.”
“What can I say? People come to me when shit goes wrong, and you’ve got the look of a man who wants something.”
“This isn’t a problem, more of an opportunity. The small boat’s free, so how would you two like to go diving this afternoon?”
Black glanced in Emmy’s direction, and she flicked her gaze towards the villa. Message understood.
“Emmy wants to take the afternoon off. We can dive tomorrow.”
“Both boats are booked by tour groups all day.”
“Then we’ll dive from the shore.”
For a rare moment, Bob hesitated. This was the man who’d led special forces into battle and received the Medal of fucking Honor for bravery, so why did he seem so nervous?
“Uh…”
“So there is a problem?”
“A small issue.”
“Which is?”
“Lynn wants me to drive her and Zena to Sharm el-Sheikh to go dress shopping. I don’t mind paying for the damned outfit, but I’d rather get shot in the gut than go on that trip.”
“And you told them you were taking us diving instead?”
“I might have said that.”
On a regular day, diving came second only to swimming on Black’s list of favourite things to do, but with his schedule otherwise clear and his wife gagging for it, he struggled to muster up the enthusiasm. Emmy managed a smile.
“I hate shopping for clothes too.”
“You’ll go?” Bob asked.
“You owe me the mother of all desserts for this.”
“Ice cream, waffles, chocolate brownies… Just name it.”
“Yeah, that lot’ll do for starters.”
CHAPTER 3 - EMMY
IT TURNED OUT Captain Bob hadn’t been entirely forthcoming about the extent of his deception. When Lynn had questioned him over why, exactly, he couldn’t just send the regular boat captain on our trip, he’d trotted out some bullshit about needing to escort us personally because we wanted to dive deep and the added danger was something only he was qualified to handle. And since Lynn was watching us from the beach bar as we prepped our equipment, we had to go with the whole shebang. Extra tanks, extra-thick wetsuits, and extra backache.
Out of the three of us, only Bob was smiling as he dragged a super-sized picnic cooler on board the Blue Tang. I’d named the boat after a particularly vivid variety of surgeonfish I once saw on a dive, then Disney Pixar released Finding Dory starring, you’ve guessed it, a blue tang, and now everyone thought I watched too many cartoons.
When Bob described the Blue Tang as small, he was talking relatively. She was nowhere near the size of the Stingray, the live-aboard boat that took guests on overnight trips to dive the wreck of the Thistlegorm and explore the waters of Ras Mohammad National Park, but she still catered comfortably to groups of ten divers. The wet area took up the back two-thirds of the main deck with a salon at the front, and the upper deck held sunbeds and a shaded seating area. The galley and engine room were on the lower deck, as well as a sleeping area for emergencies.
“How long are you planning to stay out on the water?” I asked, eyeing up the giant cooler.
“It’s important not to get dehydrated, and I haven’t eaten lunch yet.”
Neither had I, and I was starving, but I also hated eating right before a big dive. Once again, I cursed weddings in general and Lynn in particular.
Black dodged past me carrying yet more air cylinders. With technical diving, redundancy was key. If a recreational scuba diver suffered an equipment failure, they just needed to swim to the surface in a controlled manner, remembering to breathe out slowly as they went so their lungs didn’t rupture as the air in them expanded.
For a technical diver, life wasn’t so simple. Because of the depths involved, decompression stops were needed on the ascent. If your equipment failed without proper backup in place, you had the choice between drowning or surfacing too fast and getting decompression sickness. To avoid that unpleasant decision, we carried two of everything. Two cylinders connected by a manifold, two regulators to breathe through, two air bladders in our inflatable wing, two masks, two computers, two torches, two slates, two knives… Think of a cross between a pack pony and a Christmas tree, and you’ll get the picture.
Now do you see why I wanted to sit on the beach instead?
“So, where are we diving?” I asked. “Ras Abu Gallum? Gabr el Bint?”
Gabr el Bint in the south—its name translated as “Grave of the Girl”—ranked as one of my favourite places in Dahab, but the highlight was the shallow lagoon filled with table coral and pufferfish. Diving there with technical equipment would be the very definition of overkill. Ras Abu Gallum in the north was pretty but twice as far, and I really, really wanted lunch.
“Gabr el Bint’s busy today. Six boats have gone down there already. We could go to Abu Gallum, or…”
“Or?”
“The dive team and I have been working our way along the coast hunting for new dive sites. The old ones are so crowded nowadays, and damage from all the visitors is starting to show. A safari boat from Hurghada pulled over the big coral pinnacle at the Canyon three weeks ago.” He shook his head, frowning. “If they try anchoring there again, I’ll be the one to cut their damn line.”
“Assholes.”
“The tour operators just see the dollar signs. Anyhow, the last time anyone did a full-scale mapping exercise was two decades ago, and that focused on the shallow areas. I want to know what else is down there.”
New reef growth, earthquakes, overfishing—they all changed the underwater landscape. If the Black Diamond dive centre could offer its clients something different, that would give us an edge over the competition, plus it would take some of the pressure off the busier areas.
“Where have you got up to?”
“Next on the list is a spot between the Caves and Shahira.”
Closer even than Gabr el Bint. Perfect. “Great. Let’s go.”
Black rolled his eyes behind Bob’s head because he knew exactly what I was thinking. So what? V-a-c-a-t-i-o-n. Ice cream took priority.
Sweat was rolling off me by the time I got into my wetsuit, and I tore a fingernail trying to work the sleeves up my arms. As you can imagine, when I eventually staggered off the edge of the swim platform, I wasn’t in the best of moods. Black didn’t feel the cold as badly as I did—probably because he had Superman genes—so he’d opted for a thinner wetsuit, and since he stood at almost six feet seven, the equipment didn’t dwarf him as it did me. He stepped into the water smiling.
“Don’t forget the camera,” Bob said, bending on one knee to hand Black his GoPro.
On any other day, we’d have preferred memories to pictures, but since Bob wanted everything recorded for posterity, we’d agreed to film. Cold water seeped into my suit as I descended under the shallow waves.
The reef wall dropped straight into the depths. This site was no good for shore diving because although jumping in from land was a piece of cake, there was no easy exit. Without a boat, the only way out was to scramble up vertical rocks—difficult at the best of times, but almost impossible for a diver weighed down by twenty kilos of equipment.
But with a boat… Yeah, it had potential. The reef wall teemed with life, from anemones to shoals of orange anthias fish, sea stars, moray eels, cleaner wrasse. A turtle shot out in front of me and made me jump. I glanced behind, and of cour
se Black had got that on film—the git was grinning as wide as his regulator would allow. He was happy here in his undersea world, and I suppose that made all the effort worth it.
Ten metres… Twenty… We went through a thermocline, a line in the water where the temperature dropped markedly, and the colours dulled. The brightest fish and corals lived near the surface, where the sunlight was strongest.
A huge grouper swam past in the blue, and Black reached out to squeeze my gloved hand. We’d agreed to go straight down to sixty metres to see what was there, then shallow up slowly, swimming south with the current as we went. Once we surfaced, we’d inflate a bright orange signal tube, and Bob would come to pick us up.
Thirty metres. Forty. The water got darker, and holy fuck, that was the biggest school of barracudas I’d ever seen. The predators of the ocean, although they rarely attacked humans. Why were they there? What were they hunting?
Black, of course, couldn’t resist getting in closer with the camera. The shoal parted, and… Oh, shitting hell. Just one time—one time—couldn’t I have a freaking day off?
Sightless eyes stared back at me, the sockets swarming with tiny shrimp-like creatures. Under a torn T-shirt, tattered flesh hung in ribbons—the remains of the barracudas’ chosen meal—and white glimmers of rib shone in the light from Black’s torch.
I checked one of the computers strapped to my wrist. Forty-five metres down. If the backpack the corpse wore hadn’t snagged on a piece of coral, it would have sunk farther into the depths, another twenty or thirty metres at a guess. Even now, another attack by overly enthusiastic fish could easily dislodge the body. How long had it been there? No more than a week, surely, or there’d be nothing but a pile of bones.
Black shooed barracudas out of the way as I pulled out my dive slate and printed a single word.
FUCK.
Black pointed his thumb upwards: ascend.
Since we’d only been underwater for a few minutes, our decompression stop was short. To avoid damage to the reef, the Blue Tang used a ropeless anchor system that kept the boat in place using GPS rather than a physical anchor, but Bob had hung an actual rope over the stern with depths marked and a pair of oxygen bottles at five metres. Breathing pure oxygen in the shallows reduced decompression time, but deep down, too much O2 caused oxygen toxicity that could kill you. At depth, we used a combination of oxygen, nitrogen, and helium, known as trimix.