“I owe you big time for this Tab,” Buck told her sincerely.
“You owe me nothing except a prime seat at your wedding when it happens,” she quipped back, her lips twitching.
Not if.When.
“Now let me work,” she added.
Buck settled down, his brain going to that nebulous, future wedding.
Yup.After this, he was going to work harder to break down Bobbie’s barriers. Hewantedthat wedding.
Buck and Spencer both stood aside and quietly marveled at just how good Tabbi was at this. It didn’t even take eight minutes of her mumbling and fussing before they were well underway for a second time.
“Heading?” Tabitha asked, once they’d cleared the harbor.
Buck brought up Bobbie’s trajectory on his phone, then slid his device toward Tabitha so she could have a look.
She nodded, set a course, and sent the craft into a smooth dive, eventually bringing them to a depth of approximately two hundred feet for cruising in order to avoid any large ships in the area they might encounter.
“Now all we have to do is wait until we feel the timing is right for us to be overtaking theSmall Dream,” Tabitha told them. “Then I’ll bring us up to around twenty-five feet so we can work on spotting the underside of her hull. Will you know it when you see it, Buck?”
He might. Bobbie’s boat was green, which wasn’t rare, but it wasn’t the norm, either, so he could get lucky.
If everything went smoothly, and Bobbie had lingered at the pier before leaving, considering their relative speeds, they could catch up to her within two hours, which would be somewhere around eight AM.
“I can probably partially judge it by size and color,” Buck elucidated after pondering for another few seconds. “But to be sure it’s her, we’ll need to take a closer look.”
Buck wasn’t keen on surfacing. He didn’t want Bobbie’s brothers to know their sister had back-up. At least not right away.
Border Patrol would lay eyes on Bobbie when she entered Canadian waters no later than eleven AM, which meant Buck and company would have a possible three hours of dogging Bobbie’s boat before they could let their presence be known.
“Then we can only hope the periscope works,” Tabitha told him. “Not that I have anyseriousdoubts. The people who sold her to me took great care of everything.”
Fingers crossed.
It was going to be a long morning.
Not quite twohours into their journey, Tabitha brought the sub up to a depth of twenty-five feet, and they all began scouring the surface above them through the acrylic dome for sight of any boat.
The first one they came across was much larger than theSmall Dream’s thirty feet. The second was a cruising yacht.
Shortly thereafter they avoided coming close to a container ship which looked to be drawing at least forty feet of water, but they stuck around long enough to scan the area nearby to make sure Bobbie wasn’t close.
Ten minutes later, after leaving the freighter behind, they came upon a likely hull in the correct position. Tabitha brought them closer to the surface. “Why don’t you give the periscope a try, Buck? It’s supposedly rated for a twenty-foot reach.”
Although Buck wasn’t well versed in vessels that lurkedbeneaththe sea, he figured he could handle that request. Hewent over to the device, put his eye to the eyepiece, and raised it up electronically until it just broke the surface.
There.The boat in question. He used the focusing mechanism and…
Bingo.
It was the right boat, and the right woman.
Buck’s breath caught.
Bobbie looked so beautiful, in complete control as she gazed off toward the horizon with her dark hair whipping around her. Her skin, even from this distance, looked sea-kissed; her stance powerful and confident.
An ocean goddess, that’s what she was.
