Night Diver: A Novel (15 page)

“Greed is always deadly,” Holden said. “And so very human.”

Word of the emerald went through the ship like a shock wave. Everybody but Volkert appeared to gawk at the valuable bit of crystal and speculate on its worth. Donnelly allowed it for a few minutes, never taking his own eyes off the barrel where the siphon disgorged a continuous stream of sand, silt, and water.

“Go back to work,” Donnelly said without looking up. His hand closed around the emerald, concealing it.

The crew filtered back to wherever they had come from.

Holden barely noticed. He had been watching Kate from the corner of his eye since she had appeared to check out rumors of gems spreading through the ship’s grapevine. She was watching Farnsworth as he closed the raw emerald in a bag and set it in the pail with the other bits that had been collected from the barrel.

“Gold, jewelry, gems, and other valuable items should be entered into a written and photo log immediately,” Kate said. “Then they should go to the ship’s safe and only be removed by someone who signs a receipt for the items.”

Grandpa Donnelly didn’t even bother to answer, but Farnsworth said, “If Holden agrees, I’ll take care of the extra work.”

Holden nodded. “Now that we’ve found a real gem, AO will be reassured by the extra steps.”

“Larry isn’t going to like being awakened to open the safe for every bit of gleam we pick up,” Grandpa Donnelly said. “And I’m not going to leave the barrel until the siphon is off and the bed is empty.”

Kate thought about it, then nodded, rubbing absently at her cheek. Her fingers left a smudge on her skin. “Put everything valuable in one pail and make certain the pail is in the camera’s view at all times. That way we’ll have a record and Larry will get to sleep.”

Farnsworth took an empty pail, put it in the camera’s field, and transferred the plastic packages with valuable goods inside to the pail one at a time, ensuring that each was recorded.

“Thank you,” she said. “I’ll work with Larry on some protocol to sign things into the warehouse ashore. I don’t want anyone to doubt that what comes up from the dive goes directly to our British
partners.
”

Holden heard the emphasis on the last word and hid a smile.

He left Farnsworth and Donnelly to their work and followed Kate down to a storage area where tanks of various compressed gases waited to be used. From the looks of the deck and storage racks, it had a been a long time since the place had had a good scrubbing.

“I’m surprised your face is only a bit smudged,” Holden said.

Like everything else below the deck, the quarters were close and tight, smelling of brine, grease, and sweat in equal parts. Even on tourist vessels, keeping places like this spotless was hardly a high priority. On a working vessel, such areas got wiped down when there was literally nothing left to do.

Holden looked at the grimy lightbulb that barely illuminated the area.

“A good cleaning sounds great,” she said. “You volunteering?”

“I’m not an ensign.”

“And here I thought you were perfect.” She turned away before she grabbed him with dirty hands and pulled him close enough to bite.

Holden surveyed the row of five tall canisters of pressurized gas—oxygen, helium, and nitrogen—waiting to be mixed and locked in scuba rigs. Then he looked at her. He wanted nothing more than to pull her against him and breathe in her scent, feel her soft heat against his body. The hunger burned up the back of his neck and spread across his body.

“How is the inventory going?” he asked, his voice too deep.

She stared back with a hunger that equaled his. “This isn’t inventory. This is damage control. Tanks are low, particularly the nitrogen and oxygen, but really all of them.”

“Leaky valves?”

“Lazy bookkeeping. People haven’t bothered to log out each time they use the tanks. And that helium is expensive.”

“Maybe Volkert’s sneaking up here for a giggle.”

Her lips curved at the thought of Volkert squeezing into the storage room to get high on gas mixtures. “The idea has comic possibilities.”

He smiled slowly. “I don’t envy you sleuthing after missing helium—colorless, odorless, and near weightless. Even Sherlock Holmes would be baffled.”

She watched the line of his lips and remembered how he had looked in the tropical sun by the siphon, with the light from the water rippling off his bronze skin. He was beautiful down to his bones, and his eyes were more compelling than any gem. She wanted to sink into them, into him.

“Kate?” he asked softly, wondering where she had gone in that intelligent mind of hers.

She realized she was holding her breath. She let it out in a soft rush.

“I can’t get the dive hours to jibe with the remaining gas in the storage cylinders,” she said.

“A fair amount of heavy salvage has been floated to the top with cables and balloons,” he said. “Cannons aren’t light. Neither are ingots of metal.”

“If the divers are using expensive air mixes to float iron, I’m going to tear strips off their hides. We have a compressor aboard with a long hose we use to blow up floats for the big stuff. Or we use the balloon lifts that are self-inflating. At least we used to.”

Frowning, she tapped out a quick note on her computer to check with Larry. She hated to bother him, but someone had to keep an eye on supplies, especially the expensive ones. Since no one else was doing it, she would.

A random larger swell caught the ship, changing its motion.

Holden watched Kate closely. Beyond the automatic adjustment of her body to keep the computer stable, she didn’t seem to notice the ship’s motion. No sudden pallor, no tightening of her mouth or shoulders, nothing but a supple shift to accommodate the changed motion.

He smiled.

“What?” she asked, looking up.

“The first day or two aboard, you flinched at every unexpected shift the
Golden Bough
made.”

She looked confused.

“You’re getting past your fear,” he said, touching the smudge on her cheek.

Before she could answer, the light in the storeroom went out and the familiar grumble of the generator went silent.

“Bugger,” he said, dropping his hand. “There goes the power again.”

“Grandpa will fix it.” Even as she spoke, the siphon shut down. “See? He’s on his way.”

“Is he a proper ship’s engineer?”

“For the
Golden Bough,
yes. He could probably take it apart and reassemble it in his sleep.”
Which is very close to what I’d like to do to the lickable man with the dragon eyes.

Her cheek still tingled where he had touched it. Her nipples wanted his touch, too. Not to mention his mouth. She wondered if his nipples were sensitive. Not every man’s were. In fact, most men just went for the finish line like there was a prize for the fastest orgasm.

Male, of course. If the female couldn’t keep up, well, that was her problem.

And I’d better stop thinking about sex.

“ . . . work by flashlight?” Holden asked.

She blinked, had an image of them in the dark, naked, laughing and grappling for possession of the flashlight’s revealing beam. She fought a blush and tried to drag her thoughts away from how Holden’s every movement made her want to find out if his follow-through in bed was half as good as his looks.

Or even a third.

“Flashlight,” she said, her thoughts racing furiously. “Um, I didn’t think to bring one. Did you?”

He shook his head.

She stretched stiffly. “Grandpa will probably fire up the starboard engine to top the batteries off and keep the operation going. Expensive as hell, but at least the lights will work.”

“Take a break and come to the dive center with me,” he said.

“Why?”

“Why not?”

She blinked. “Point to the gentleman. Assuming you are one.”

“In the right circumstances I can be very gentle. Thorough, too.”

Heat shot through Kate. “Not touching that.”

“Pity. We’ll talk more about it at supper—dinner.”

A big engine fired up, adding a pulsing rumble to the air.

“You’re prescient,” he said.

“Experienced on this ship,” she corrected.

“Come to the dive center with me. Your back must be cursing you.”

“What do you want at the dive center?”

“Volkert’s cooperation. With you along, I’m less likely to have to resort to kicking his lazy arse.”

“I doubt it. He made an offer and I declined.”

“A hard offer?” Holden asked sharply.

“There’s not a hard inch on that man.”

Holden smothered a smile. “Don’t be too sure.”

“Gak. Mind bleach.” She shuddered. “I’m sure some women lust for his type, but I really don’t want to think about it. He goes through junk food faster than divers go through oxygen. His snacks are all imported because he hates the cook’s food. And if the dive logs have been updated in the last week, I haven’t found them.”

Holden’s black eyebrows lifted. She sounded ready to tear a strip off Volkert.

Maybe she’ll let me help. Or at least watch.

“Okay,” she said, stretching again, “let’s go see what Volkert has on the screens.”

“While we’re watching, I have a few questions about previous scans done by metal detectors,” Holden said.

“I’ve been curious about them too, but there are things a lot higher on my to-do list.”

Holden really hoped he was one of them. He gestured for her to precede him out of the storeroom.

She tried not to take any extra time brushing by him, but it felt so good she wanted to linger. Every step of the way to the dive center, she could feel him watching her rear.

So she put an extra little swing into her stride.

The narrow hallway was alive with the thrum of power, sending vibrations through every surface. The bulkheads and walls were so close that the sensation of life rushed through them, like resting a palm on the heart of a sleeping dragon, raw power coursing.

Like Holden,
she thought, then tried very hard to think about something else.

Kate opened the door to the communication room, bathing them both in the flickering glow of the dive screens. The insistent thump of electronic music poured out the open door.

The smell of stale food and sweat clung to the room like a bad reputation. An iPod plugged into a small speaker was the source of an incessant electronic beat with a sweet-sinister girl-voice winding through it like a snake.

“Dial it down,” Kate said loudly. “You may be deaf but I’m not.”

Volkert either didn’t hear her or ignored her.

“What in hell is that noise?” Holden asked roughly.

The electronics phased into a hammering digital drumbeat, all bass. Then more singing over it, the words in Dutch or German.

“Die Antwoord,” Volkert said without looking up. “You should get out more.”

“Why? The English invented that electro-pop you’re deafening yourself with.”

“Pity that you English don’t sing in Afrikaans. What do you want?” Volkert crunched on some more chips.

“I’m having trouble syncing up my computer map with the ship’s daily dive record,” Holden said loudly.

“Geen woord gevind nie.”

“Excuse me?”

“Afrikaans for ‘I’m so terribly sorry.’ A bad habit. I used to work tech support for a company based in Johannesburg.”

“Can you get me connected?” Holden asked impatiently. “I’m already on the network, but I keep getting shunted off.”

“Yah, sorry, we got some new procedures that I’m catching up with. And doing my normal job. And trying to fix the mess I found when I came aboard.”

Kate wanted to put her fingers in her ears. Volkert’s whine cut right through Techno-pop and put her teeth on edge. That and the fact that he was ignoring her like grease on the deck.

“The new procedures,” she said clearly, “are the accepted standard for entering and cross-referencing digital files. Remember? It was in your job description.”

Volkert ignored her.

She leaned over him and shut off the iPod. “Maybe that will help you concentrate.”

He gave her a cold-eyed glare. “What do you want?”

She looked at Holden and said, “You first.”

“I have a few questions about the metallurgic scans you’ve been working from,” Holden said. “It appears to me that the data you’re using is rubbish.”

Volkert sighed and pushed a meaty arm across the keyboard. The main screen went from a view of Mingo’s camera to the five-by-five grid of the whole wreck area. Overlaid was a false color map, showing small concentrations of red and yellow here and there, but mostly a faint scattering of blue. “This data?”

“Precisely. Is it current?”

Volkert shrugged. “Current as I’ve got. You should know. It’s the map that the Brit survey team provided us.”

“I recognize it, and its limitations. Why aren’t you running your own surveys?”