Glancing around the room then, Doc came to a startling realization.
I’m the last man standing. The only member of my former SEAL Team who isn’t head over heels in L.O.V.E.
Of course, that was because he’d been there, done that.
Got the T-shirt and lost it,he thought miserably.Lost everything, in fact.
As happened anytime his past reared its ugly head, he felt the terrible void that lived in the center of his chest yawn wide. Felt himself falling into it, traveling back in time to a dirt road. To a pair of wide blue eyes. To the girl he’d loved since the eighth grade.
Lifting his right arm, he ran a reverent finger over the delicate flower tattooed on the inside of his wrist. He’d gotten the ink when he was eighteen years old, the day after he proposed. The day after that blue-eyed girl said yes.
But just like his memories of her, the tattoo was beginning to fade. The flower growing fuzzy around the edges. No longer so bright and pure.
And that hurts worst of all.
That she was paling in his mind. That sometimes he went hours, even a whole day, without thinking of her. Withoutmissingher.
Especially recently.
“Sorry! I got stuck in the bathroom. That door lock is like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing.” The last and newest member of their merry band of misfits burst into the computer room, the sides of her windbreaker flapping like a drunken bird.
Her name was Dana Levine and she worked for the FMC—the Federal Maritime Commission. Cami had brought Dana on to bear witness to the salvage since, according to Cami,“We need a Fed who will swear under oath that you guys didn’t touch so much as a single coin of that treasure while the top of the reef was exposed.”
Glad for the distraction from the melancholy turn of his thoughts, Doc watched Dana slip past LT and plop into a chair next to the table that held the conglomerates. She’d been on deck all day and her wild, windblown hair and slightly sunburned nose attested to the diligence with which she’d taken on the role of witness.
Doc would guess her to be somewhere in her mid-fifties. Her bouncy blond curls were interspersed with threads of gray, and there were laugh lines at the corners of her cornflower-blue eyes.
“Okay. Now that everyone’s here, it’s time to talk turkey.” LT’s voice rang with military authority. “We thought we were gonna be able to finish this evenin’, but that’s not gonna happen.”
Doc had pulled the early morning shift at the dive site, so he knew how much work was involved in bringing up the treasure. Knew all about spending hours waving a handheld metal detector over the seabed, waiting for the blinking light to indicate whether he’d found ferrous or nonferrous metals. Knew how tedious the sectioning off and gridding of the area could be, because even though the treasure had been removed from theSanta Cristina,it still had to be excavated in an archeological manner. Knew how slow and painstaking the process was of carefully attaching the treasure to lift bags—the vinyl-coated nylon satchels—that did the hard work of floating the riches to the surface.
He wasn’t surprised his partners hadn’t managed to haul up the last of the booty before they’d been forced to call it quits. No doubt the setting sun had combined with the wave action to make visibility impossible. But hewassurprised to hear LT add, “And to make matters worse, looks like Julia’s gonna hit us after all.”
The hairs on Doc’s arms lifted in warning. “I thought the meteorologists said she was only going to skim us with her outer edges.”
“Apparently she changed her mind and changed directions.” LT made a face. “New projections say she’ll smack us head-on before turnin’ to make landfall somewhere around New Orleans.”
“Fuck,” Mason muttered. The man was a born and raised Bostonian. When hediddeign to speak, it was a safe bet the F-bomb would be involved.
“She’s currently a Category 2, but they’re estimatin’ she’ll be a 3 by the time she reaches us,” LT continued, and Doc gave his earlobe an anxious tug.
As a bona fide landlubber, he’d never gotten comfortable with the tropical storms that crashed through the Straits of Florida and the Gulf of Mexico. Luckily, in the time he’d lived on Wayfarer Island, the biggest hurricane he’d had to weather had topped out at a Category 1.
Even then, he shuddered to remember how the rain hadn’t fallen from the sky so much as it’d been flung through the air like watery missiles that’d pummeled his exposed skin. How his hair had whipped around so violently that it’d stung wherever it’d hit his face.
“How much time do we have?” Bran’s arm tightened around his wife’s shoulders when he asked the question.
“We’ll probably start feelin’ the winds off her leading edges around noon tomorrow,” LT said.
“Which gives us tomorrow morning to finish bringing up what’s left of the loot.” Bran’s concerned expression cleared. “Bada bing, bada boom. Easy peasy.”
Bran was a New Jerseyan and couldn’t help sounding like an extra offTheSopranos.
LT’s jaw muscles worked hard against the gum in his mouth. “There’s no way we’ll be able to outrun the storm inWayfarer IIif we wait to leave until the hurricane is almost on top of us. The ship’s not fast enough. We’ll hafta anchor her on the leeward side of the island and cross our fingers she can ride it out.”
“Um.” Alex raised her hand, her freckled nose wrinkling. “Is that really the best idea? I mean, what if she sinks? The treasure will go down with her.” She frowned. “Not that we couldn’t salvage it again. But for the love of all that’s holy, what a pain in the ass.”
“Which is why I say we sail her to Key West tonight.” LT’s drawl always grew more pronounced when he was working through a problem.
