“I know. So you anchored nearby but not where the anchor could disturb the site,” Cole said, when she frowned out over the water.
“Right. The submerged aquatic vegetation—SAV—is very delicate and not doing well. We always joked that our motto for this Clear the Gulf Commission project would be Save Our SAV.”
Her voice trailed off and her eyes took on a faraway look. Was she seeing a scene with her sister? He bumped her shoulder gently, and she seemed to come back from wherever she’d been. He was going to have to stick close to her down there, though she was obviously the more skilled diver.
She went on. “The report we were preparing to give the commission—and the media—next week would not be good news. The poor and declining quantity and quality of the sea grass indicates that the whole marine ecosystem here is still struggling from the increasing industrial and toxic runoff. Too many people means too much pollution, and that extends to the Trade Wreck sea grass meadow, which we’re using as a sort of touchstone and symbol for the health of this entire area of the gulf. And it’s sick.”
“A dire report could mean cutbacks, penalties and political fallout for lots of important people. When the foundation of the marine food chain is screwed up, it’s trouble for every living organism all the way up to humans, and that equates to millions of dollars in fishing, real estate and the tourist trade. Had you told anybody about your findings already?” he asked.
“We weren’t keeping it a secret,” she admitted. “You’re thinking someone might want to warn us or stop us from releasing that? But everyone with interests in those things you just mentioned would want the environment to stay safe. They’d want to know what our report says so the situation can be fixed by concerned citizens, environmentalists, scientists, politicians—everyone.”
“Back to our dive. We can’t search the entire area for a camera.”
“I’m hoping it snagged on either the Trade Wreck or another artificial reef nearby.”
He nodded. “I heard there’s one about three miles off Keewadin, where you came in.”
“Right, the Stone Reef. That one’s not a wreck but limestone boulders. I don’t know if the camera would just go to the smooth, sandy bottom and stay put, or if the tides and currents would move it south until it snagged in one reef or the other.”
“So what’s the Trade Wreck like?”
“It’s a supply ship sunk in the late 1930s, made of wood and metal. It broke apart but what’s there is pretty well preserved.”
“Do you use GPS coordinates to locate the site? I don’t see that equipment on board.”
“Our only GPS is on the bigger boat, but we’ve been out here so much, it’s half instinct and half compass coordinates. You’ll be glad to know it’s ordinarily a safe dive, with no sharks out here. I think the rough water or sudden change in barometric pressure from the storm yesterday stirred them up.”
“I was wondering if you still remembered the sharks. You must have swum with them. Some followed us into shore in the sloop.”
“I don’t want to think about that,” she said, shaking her head. “At least the only big fish usually around the Trade Wreck is a resident grouper Daria and I named Gertie…”
She sniffed hard. Tears welled up in her eyes again, and she bit her lower lip. He wanted to put his arm around her, but he just held on to the rail tight as Manny turned them in a slow circle and killed the motor.
Bree usually felt at one with the sea and completely relaxed during her dives. But not today. She wore a high-volume mask that had more airspace and side ports so she could see sideways without turning her head. She’d worn this old day-Glo-pink wet suit partly because it had a pocket on both upper thighs for a dive knife. She carried two knives, hoping Cole didn’t find that strange and that Manny would keep quiet about how abnormal it was.
But everything was abnormal. She had the worst feeling something evil was lurking underwater. At least she had Cole along. Though she didn’t like to think of Cole as a bodyguard, she felt much safer near him. It was obvious that Josh and Nikki Austin felt that way with their pilot-PR man-bodyguard, so why shouldn’t she admit the same to herself? In ordinary circumstance, the idea of this compelling, virile man guarding her body would be to die for—damn, why had she thought of it that way?
She’d used a plastic sleeve to cover the bandage over her burn and wore her old dive watch on her right wrist. She’d have to call the hospital to ask where the one Daria gave her went, because it might be the last gift…the last…
She turned back to her preparations. They screwed on their pressure gauges and checked the air fill, then hooked up their regulators and sucked on them. Bree heard the familiar hissing of gas and the click of the valves, but so much louder than usual.
They back-rolled over the boat rail and went under in a rising blur of silver bubbles. When the cloud cleared, Bree looked for Cole and saw he was above her with only his big body visible, as if he had been decapitated. He must have stuck his head out of the water to say something to Manny.
Waiting for him to join her, Bree racked her brain to recall if she had looked up at the surface or even over at the anchor yesterday while she took photos, made measurements and took notes. When had Mermaids II left? If a second hull had loomed above, she would not have seen it in the low vis and increasing turbulence, but she should have heard an unfamiliar motor. Or had she been too rushed, too intent and busy to note sounds? Usually, even the bothersome little wave runners zipping here and there made a distinctive sound, and she was good at differentiating motor reverberations, from buzz to hum to roar, depending on the size of the vessel.
Cole upended and kicked down to join her at fifteen feet for their safety stop. They were diving the anchor line, but didn’t hang on to it, just near it. From watching him come down and reverse his position to stay stationary beside her, she could tell he was a good diver.
They hung suspended, facing each other, kicking slowly in unison, barely moving but nearly touching. There was something intriguing and intimate about being here like this with him, hidden, close, almost motionless, suspended as if they lay side by side. Although the vastness of the sea was her favorite place to be, Cole DeRoca made her feel small. She wanted his protection, but the turbulent sensations he stirred in her made her also feel out of control and she could not afford that, especially not now. Find clues, she told herself. Find clues to find Daria.
Through their masks, they looked below toward the two gray, shadowy, separate sections of the fifty-foot wreck. Yet their gazes returned to hold each other. Bree forced herself out of the deceptively peaceful lull. She nodded and they swam down toward the wreck with her leading.
The supply boat, named the Charlotte G. Loher but referred to by most local divers as the Trade Wreck, had sailed out of Tampa bound for Key West with cattle in the pre-highway days of southwest Florida. Caught in a hurricane, it had broken into two sections. The stern had settled on its hull, but the midship and the prow lay on its port side. With several entrances into the interior of the ship, it had long been an attraction for divers, though it was labeled a hazard dive now for its rusted, jagged edges and unstable structure. The twins had a theory that the increasing pollution in the gulf had accelerated the disintegration of its wood and metal. One of the wreck’s bizarre attractions was that occasionally, even now, the skull of a steer would float loose from the innards of the ship to gape eyeless out a porthole in the hull or emerge from the dark entry to a mazelike corridor. The twins had never taken one for a dive trophy, but they knew more than one bar or family room that boasted a skull from the Trade Wreck. Bree realized, too late, that she had forgotten to mention that to Cole.
As the wreck loomed closer in the shifting soup of the sea, they clicked on their lights. Bree startled. She was used to things looking twenty-five per cent larger underwater, but she hadn’t been prepared for the increased brightness even here. Perhaps her heightened perceptivity of sound and light could