The Reef (24 page)

She broke away, throwing her hands up to ward him off when he would have taken her into his arms again. She fought to even her breathing, fought to resist that reckless, compelling light in his eyes.

“You wanted to prove you could still strike a spark between us.” She pressed an unsteady hand to her stomach. “Well, you did. But what we do or don't do about it is my choice, Matthew. And I'm not ready to make a choice.”

“I want you, Tate. Do you need to hear me say it?” He stepped forward, but didn't touch her. “Do you need to hear me tell you I can't sleep at night for wanting you?”

The words, the rough, impatient delivery, spun in her head, swam in her blood. “Maybe I do, but it doesn't
change the fact that I'm taking whatever time I need to decide. I'd have gone anywhere, done anything for you once, Matthew. Once. What I do now, I do for myself.”

He hooked his tensed hands in his pockets. “That's fair enough. Because this time around what I do, I do for myself.”

“This time around.” She gave a quick laugh and pulled her fingers through her tumbled hair. “That part looks the same from where I'm standing.”

“Then you know what you're dealing with.”

“I'm not sure I do,” she said wearily. “You keep shifting on me, Matthew. I'm not sure what's real and what's shadow.”

“This is real.” He cupped a hand behind her neck, lifting her to her toes until their mouths met.

“Yes, that's real.” As she eased away, she let out her breath. “I want to go back now, Matthew. We start early tomorrow.”

 

She really didn't mind the way the teams split so that her father and LaRue worked together, leaving her and Matthew as the second team. She and Matthew had always worked well together under water. After their first dive, she realized they still had the same natural and instinctive communication and rhythm.

The electronic equipment was the most efficient method of locating the
Isabella,
but Tate was grateful to have the chance to dive, to search by sight and by hand as she had learned to do.

Hours of fanning sand didn't bore her. Nor did hauling chunks of conglomerate to the surface for her mother and Buck to hammer apart. As far as she was concerned she was home again, with the fish as both audience and playmates. Every lovely sculpture of coral pleased her eye. Even disappointment was part of the whole. A rusted chain, a soda can might turn a quickly beating heart into a sigh. But it was all part of the hunt.

And there was Matthew, always close at hand to share some small delight with. A garden of sea plants, a grumpy grouper disturbed from his feeding, the bright silver flash
of a fish in flight. If he tended to touch her just a bit too often, she told herself to enjoy it.

If she was strong enough to resist seduction, she was certainly strong enough to resist romance.

The days slipped by into weeks, but she wasn't discouraged. The time here was soothing a need she hadn't realized she'd held inside—to revisit the sea she loved, not as a scientist, an objective observer trained to record data, but as a woman enjoying her freedom, and the companionship of a man who intrigued her.

She examined a formation of coral, fanning sand away. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw Matthew tucking conglomerate into his lobster bag. She started to smile at him, the way she reserved for herself when she knew he wasn't looking. A sharp pain stabbed the back of her hand.

Jolted, she jerked back just as the head of a moray eel retreated into its slitted home in the coral. Almost before Tate could register the insult, and curse her own carelessness, Matthew was there, grabbing the fingers of her wounded hand as blood swirled into the water. The alarm in his eyes pierced through her own shock. She started to signal that she was fine, but he already had an arm around her waist and was kicking toward the surface.

“Just relax,” he ordered the minute he spat out his mouthpiece. “I'm going to tow you in.”

“I'm all right.” But the throbbing pain made her eyes water. “It's just a nick, really.”

“Relax,” he said again. His face was as pale as hers by the time he reached the ladder. Hailing Ray, he began unhooking Tate's tanks.

“Matthew, for goodness sake, it's a scratch.”

“Shut up. Ray, goddamn it.”

“What? What's wrong?”

“She got bit. Moray.” Matthew passed her tanks over. “Help her in.”

“Lord, you'd think I'd been chewed in half by a shark,” she muttered, then winced as she realized what she'd said. “I'm okay,” she hurried on as her mother came rushing over.

“Let me see. Oh, honey. Ray, get the first-aid kit so I can clean this up.”

“It only nicked me,” Tate insisted when Marla pushed her down on a bench. “It was my own fault.” She blew out a breath and watched Matthew pull himself aboard. “There's no need to get everyone in an uproar, Lassiter.”

“Let me see the damn thing.” In a move that had Marla blinking in surprise, he shouldered her aside and took Tate's hand himself. He smeared blood away from the shallow puncture with his thumb. “Doesn't look like it'll need stitches.”

“Of course it doesn't. It's just—” Tate broke off as he snatched the first-aid kit from Ray. The next sound she made was a screech as he doused on antiseptic. “You're not exactly Doctor Feelgood.”

His own blood pressure was gradually leveling as he was able to get a good look at the cleaned wound. “Probably scar.” Annoyance was an easier emotion than fear, so he scowled up at her. “Stupid.”

“Listen, it could have happened to anyone.”

“Not if they were paying attention.”

“I was.”

“You were daydreaming again.”

Ray and Marla exchanged glances as the argument and doctoring continued.

“I suppose you've never taken a bite. Your hands are riddled with scars.”

“We're talking about you.” It infuriated him that those lovely, narrow hands might be marred.

She sniffled, flexed her fingers. The bandage was small, neat and efficient. She'd have swallowed her tongue before saying so. “Aren't you going to kiss it and make it better?”

“Sure.” In answer, he hauled her to her feet. While her astonished parents looked on, he fixed his mouth on hers in a long, hard, demanding kiss.

When Tate could speak again, she scrupulously cleared her throat. “You missed,” she said, holding up her bandaged hand.

“No, I didn't. Your mouth's what needs the work, sweetheart.”

“Really?” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Now you're an expert on what I need?”

“I've always known what you need, Red. Anytime you want to—” Abruptly, he remembered they were a long way from alone. Getting a grip on his temper, he stepped back. “You might want to take a couple of aspirin to take the edge off the pain.”

Her chin was angled like a sword. “It doesn't hurt.” She turned and hefted her tanks.

“Where do you think you're going?”

“I'm going back down.”

“The hell you are.”

“Just try to stop me.”

As her husband opened his mouth, Marla patted his arm. “Let them fight it out, honey,” she murmured. “Looks like it's been simmering awhile.”

“You want me to try to stop you? Okay.” Letting temper lead, Matthew grabbed the tanks out of her hands and heaved them overboard. “That ought to do it.”

For a moment, all Tate could manage was an open-mouthed gape. “You idiot. You ignorant son of a bitch. You'd better get your butt in there and haul my tanks in.”

“Get them yourself, you're so anxious to dive.”

It was a small mistake, turning his back on her. And he paid for it. She launched herself at him. At the last instant, he realized her intent. In an effort to save himself, he shifted. But she dodged. The ensuing crash sent them both over the side.

“Shouldn't we do something, Marla?” Ray asked, as they stood at the rail.

“I think they're doing fine. Oh, look, she almost caught him with that punch. And with her bad hand, too.”

Matthew jerked back from the jab at the last moment. But he didn't quite avoid the fist to his midsection. Even slowed by the water, it earned a grunt.

“Cut it out,” he warned, snagging her injured hand by the wrist. “You're going to hurt yourself.”

“We'll see who gets hurt. Go get my tanks.”

“You're not going down until we're sure you don't have a reaction to the bite.”

“I'll show you my reaction,” she promised and popped him on the chin.

“Okay, that does it.” He dunked her once, then hauled her up with an arm under her chin in a not-so-gentle rescue position. Every time she clawed or cursed at him, he shoved her under again. By the time they reached the ladder, she was wheezing. “Had enough?”

“Bastard.”

“I guess one more good dunk—”

“Ahoy the
Adventure!”

Matthew shifted his grip on her as Buck hailed from the
Mermaid.
She was coming in a good clip from her position to the southeast, where Buck and LaRue had been hunting with the sensor.

“Ahoy,” Buck shouted again from the bridge. LaRue leaned smugly on the rail at the bow. “We got something.”

“Get aboard,” Matthew muttered to Tate and all but carried her up the ladder.

Buck piloted the
Mermaid
neatly alongside, cut her engines. “Sensors picked up a pile of metal down there. Depth finder shows something, too. Marked it with a buoy—southeast, thirty degrees. Jesus, I think we might've found her.”

Tate took a deep breath. “I want my tanks, Matthew.” Her eyes glittered as she turned to him. “Don't even think about stopping me from going down now.”

T
HERE WERE SEVERAL
ways to range a wreck for return to site. Standard methods included angular measurements taken from three fixed objects with a sextant, compass bearings with a nine-degree spread or simply ranging the wreck by using distant objects as gunsights. Matthew had used them all.

Though Buck had employed a simple buoy marker as a practical target, Matthew knew that had its drawbacks. A buoy could sink or drag. Or more important in this case, a buoy could be seen by other interested parties. For the sake of secrecy, he logged the compass bearings, targeted the distant Mount Nevis as a gunsight, then ordered Buck to move the buoy well away from the estimated position of the wreck.

“We'll keep the buoy on line with that group of trees on that point of the island,” he told Ray, passing over binoculars so that his partner could verify position by the point on Nevis.

They stood on the deck of the
New Adventure,
Matthew in his gear, Ray in cotton slacks and polarized glasses. Ray was already busy with his compass, marking the position for his ship's daily log.

“We're not going to moor here.” Matthew swept his
gaze over the sea, noting the pretty catamaran carrying tourists on a snorkeling cruise from Nevis to St. Kitts. The cheerful sound of the ondeck band carried festively across the water. “We'll use the buoy as a line and move inshore toward Mount Nevis.”

While Ray nodded and scribbled the marks, Matthew continued. “Tate can make sketches of the bottom, and we can read them as we go.”

Ray slung the binoculars around his neck and studied Matthew's determined face. “You're thinking of VanDyke.”

“Damn right. If he gets wind of us, he's not going to be able to drop right down on the wreck. He won't know the distances or the landmarks we select, or even if we're diving inshore or offshore of the buoy. That gives him plenty of possibilities to work through.”

“And buys us time,” Ray agreed. “If this isn't the
Isabella
—”

“We'll soon find out,” Matthew interrupted. He didn't want to speculate. He wanted to know. “One way or the other, we take precautions.” He pulled on his flippers as he spoke. “Come on, Red, let's move.”

“I needed to reload my camera.”

“Forget the camera. We're not developing any film.”

“But—”

“Look, all it takes is one clerk passing the word along. Take all the pictures you want, but no film gets sent off until we're finished here. Got the board and graphite pencil?”

“Yes.” Assuming a nonchalantly professional pose, she patted her goody bag.

“Let's dive.”

Before she'd adjusted her mask, he was in the water. “Impatient, isn't he?” She sent a quick smile toward her parents that revealed only a portion of the excitement humming through her. “Keep your fingers crossed,” she told them, and splashed into the sea.

Following his trail of bubbles, she dived deep. Her inner sensor told her when she'd passed thirty feet, then forty. She began to make note of the landscape of the seafloor,
knowing her assignment was to sketch it carefully. Every bed of sea grass, every twist of coral.

With her graphite pencil, she began to reproduce them, meticulously keeping to scale, marking distances in degrees, resisting the urge to add artistic flourishes. Science was exacting, she reminded herself even as she watched the dance of an angelfish duet.

She saw Matthew signal, and waved back querulously at the interruption. Efficient sketches took time and care, and since he was the one who'd insisted on them rather than photographs, he could damn well wait. When the clang of his knife on his tank intruded again, she cursed him mildly then stowed her board and pencil.

Just like a man, she thought. Always come here, and make it now. Once they surfaced, she'd tell him just what she thought of the arrangement. And then . . .

Her thoughts trailed off, went limp as her suddenly numb fingers, as she saw what he was investigating.

The cannon was the lovely pale green of corrosion and alive with colonizing animals. She snatched her camera and recorded it, with Matthew at the mouth. But that didn't make it real. Not until she had touched it with her own hand, felt the solid iron beneath her exploring fingers, did it become real.

Her breath exploded in bubbles when he grabbed her, swung her around. Tate prepared herself for an exuberant embrace, but he was only pointing her toward the rest of the find.

More cannon. This was what the magnetometer had recorded. As Matthew towed her along, she counted four, then six, then eight, spread over the sandy floor in a rough semicircle. Her heart spun into her throat. She knew that cannon often literally pointed to a wreck.

They found her nearly fifty feet south, crushed, battered, and smothered by the drifting sand.

She'd been proud once, Tate thought as she plunged her hand into the sand and felt the soft give of worm-eaten wood. Even regal like the queen she'd been named for. For so long, she'd been lost, a victim of the sea that had come to be a part of its continuity.

Broken, what was left of
Isabella
—for Tate never doubted it was the
Isabella
—was spread over more than a hundred feet of seabed, buried, encrusted. And waiting.

Her hand was steady enough as she began to sketch again. Matthew was already fanning, so she alternated her drawing with quick snapshots while he stuffed small finds into his lobster bag.

She ran out of boards, worked her pencils down to nubs and used every frame of film. And still, her heart thrummed and jittered.

Once in a lifetime, she thought with an ache in her throat, had become twice.

When he headed back toward her, she smiled, delighted that he would think to bring her a token. He gestured for her to hold out her hand, close her eyes. She rolled them first, but obeyed, only to have them spring open again when a heavy disk was dropped into her palm.

Heavy only because she'd been expecting a coin or a button, she realized. The round, biscuit-shaped object weighed no more than two pounds at her educated guess. But her eyes went wider still at that unmistakable and stunning flash of pure and glorious gold.

He winked at her, signaled for her to put the ingot into her bag, then jerked a thumb toward the surface. She started to object. How could they leave when they had just begun?

But of course, there were others waiting. It jabbed her conscience a bit to realize she'd forgotten everything and everyone but what was here. Matthew's hand closed over hers as they kicked to the surface.

“You're supposed to throw yourself at me now,” he told her with a wicked laugh in his eyes that was more triumph than humor. “That's what you did eight years ago.”

“I'm much more jaded now.” But she laughed and did exactly what he'd hoped by throwing her arms around him. “It's her, Matthew. I know it.”

“Yeah, it's her.” He had felt it, known it, as if he had seen the
Isabella
whole, flags flying, as in his dream. “She's ours now.” He had time to give Tate only a quick
kiss before they were hailed. “We'd better go give them the news. You haven't forgotten how to work an airlift, have you?”

Her lips were still tingling from his. “I haven't forgotten anything.”

 

The routine was so familiar. Diving, digging, gathering. Onboard the
Mermaid,
Buck and Marla pounded away at conglomerate, separating pieces of treasure for Tate to examine and record. Each find, from a gold button set with a pink conch pearl to a gold bar a foot long, was meticulously tagged, sketched, photographed and then logged in her portable computer.

Tate put her education and experience to use preserving their finds. She knew that in the fairly shallow Caribbean, a wreck rotted, was further damaged by storm and wave action. The wood would be eaten by teredo worms.

She also knew that the history of the wreck could be read in the very damage it had sustained.

This time, she would see that every scrap brought up was protected. Her responsibility, she felt, toward the past, and the future.

Small, fragile items were stored in water-filled jars to keep them from drying out. Larger pieces would be photographed and sketched under water, then stockpiled on the bottom. She had cushioned boxes for the fragile, such as onion-skinned bottles she hoped to find. Wooden specimens would be left in a bath to cushion against warping in the small tank she'd rigged on the boat deck.

Tate delegated Marla to the position of apprentice chemist. They worked together, with daughter instructing mother. Even artifacts that resisted chemical change were soaked thoroughly in freshwater, then dried. Marla painstakingly sealed everything with a coat of wax. Only gold and silver required no special handling.

It was time-consuming work, but never, to Tate's mind, tedious. This was what she had missed and pined for aboard the
Nomad.
The intimacy, the propriety, and surprise of it all. Every spike and spar was a clue, and a gift from the past.

Ordinance marks on cannonballs corroborated their hopes that they'd found the
Isabella.
Tate added to her log all the information she had on the ship, its voyage, cargo and its fate. Painstakingly, she checked and rechecked the manifests, cross-referencing with each new discovery.

Meanwhile, the airlift was vacuuming off enough sediment to disclose the tattered hull. They dug. She drew. They hauled buckets filled with conglomerate to the surface. Matthew's sonar located the ballast stones before they found them by sight and hand. While Tate worked in the deckhouse and boat deck of the
New Adventure,
her father and LaRue were laboriously searching the ballast for artifacts.

“Honey?” Marla poked her head in. “Don't you want to take a break? I've finished the waxing.”

“No, I'm fine.” Tate continued to add details to her sketch of a set of jet Rosary beads. “I can't believe how fast it's going. It's been barely two weeks, and we just keep finding more. Look at this, Mom. Look at the detail on this crucifix.”

“You've cleaned it. I'd have done that.”

“I know, but I couldn't wait.”

Fascinated, Marla leaned over her daughter's shoulder to run a finger on the heavy, carved silver depiction of Christ on the cross. “It's stunning. You can see the sinew in his arms and legs, count each wound.”

“It's too fine to have belonged to a servant. You see, each decade is perfectly matched, and the silver work is first rate. It's masculine,” she mused. “A man's piece. One of the officers, perhaps, or maybe a rich priest on his way back to Cuba. I wonder if he held it, prayed with it as the ship went down.”

“Why aren't you happy, Tate?”

“Hmm.” She'd been dreaming again, Tate realized. Brooding. “Oh, I was thinking of the
Santa Marguerite.
She was salvageable. I mean the wreck itself could have been preserved with enough time and effort. She was nearly intact. I'd hoped, if we did find the
Isabella,
she would be in a similar state, but she's ruined.”

“But we have so much of her.”

“I know. I'm greedy.” Tate shrugged off the gloom and set her sketch aside. “I had this wild notion we could raise her, the way my team raised the Phoenician ship a few years ago. Now, I have to be content with the pieces the storm and time have left behind.” She toyed with her pencil and tried not to think about the amulet.

No one spoke of it now. Superstition, she supposed. Angelique's Curse was on everyone's mind, as VanDyke was. Sooner or later, she was afraid both would have to be dealt with.

“I'll let you get back to work, dear. I'm heading over to the
Mermaid
to work with Buck.” Marla smiled.

“I'll swim over later and see what you've come up with.”

Tate turned back to her keyboard to log in the Rosary. Within twenty minutes, she was lost in an examination of a gold necklace. Its bird in flight pendant had survived the centuries, the tossing waves, the abrasive sand. She estimated the relic to be worth easily fifty thousand dollars, and efficiently noted it down and began her sketch.

Matthew watched her for a moment, the competent and graceful way she moved pencil over paper. The way the sun was slanting he could make out her ghostly profile in the reflection of her monitor.

He wanted to press his lips to that spot just at the nape of her neck. He wanted to wrap his arms around her, to have her lean back into him, relaxed, easy and just a little eager for his touch.

But he'd been cautious for the last few weeks. Hoping to move her toward him without tugging. Patience was costing him dozens of restless nights. It seemed only when they were beneath the sea that they moved in concert.

Every part of him was aching for more.

“They sent up a couple of wine jugs. One's intact.”

“Oh.” Startled, she looked around. “I didn't hear you come in. I thought you were on the
Mermaid.”

“I was.” But all he'd been able to think about was that she was here, alone. “Looks like you're keeping up with the haul.”

“I get antsy if I fall behind.” She brushed her braid off her shoulder, hardly aware she'd inched away when he sat beside her. But he was aware, and irritated. “I can usually get in several hours in the evening, when everyone's turned in.”

He'd seen the light in the deckhouse every night when he'd restlessly paced his own deck. “Is that why you never come over to the
Mermaid?”

“It's easier for me to work in one spot.” Much easier not to risk sitting in the moonlight with him on his own turf. “By my calculations, we're well ahead of where we were in the same amount of time in our excavation of the
Marguerite.
And we haven't hit the mother lode.”

He leaned over to pick up the gold bird, but was more interested in the way her shoulder stiffened when his brushed it. “How much?”