Not in the dangerous, running-out-of-air way. In the way that happened when the world turned so beautiful your body forgot it needed oxygen to survive.
She sat on the top deck, wrapped in a towel as the boat skimmed back to the bay, but in her mind, Jayden still hung suspended in liquid turquoise, the Great Barrier Reef spreading beneath her in a riot of color. Coral formations rose from the sandy bottom—purple and orange and electric blue, brain coral and staghorn and giant clams with lips of iridescent green. A school of angelfish drifted past her mask, their silver bodies catching the filtered sunlight, and she reached out instinctively before remembering look, don’t touch.
It had been a pure, magical first dive, and it helped that beside her, Dakota wore an expression of what seemed like . . . peace.
And with it, something shifted in her chest. A loosening. A letting go.
“You okay?”
She nodded, leaning against his shoulder. She was more than okay. For the first time in days—maybe weeks—she wasn’t thinking about the mission. Wasn’t wondering if the man beside her—or maybe someone on the boat—was secretly planning to kill the president.
She was just . . . here. Present. Alive.
Stop it. He was still a potential threat.
But the voice sounded hollow. Unconvincing. The ocean had stripped away her defenses, and she couldn’t quite remember why she’d needed them in the first place.
The boat hit a wave, and spray blanketed them. She laughed, and he grabbed his towel. “You hungry?”
She nodded and let him pull her up.
The boat’s air-conditioned dining area was a shock after the warmth of the reef. Jayden shivered as the cool air hit her damp skin, her hair dripping salt water onto the vinyl bench.
“Cold?” Dakota slid a towel across the table toward her.
“Freezing. I think they’re trying to preserve us for later consumption.” She wrapped the towel around her shoulders. “Very efficient. Skip the ice—just refrigerate the tourists.”
He laughed. “At least the pasta looks safe.”
The lunch spread was standard tour fare—penne with marinara, Caesar salad, garlic bread that had seen better days. Jayden loaded her plate and dug in. The diving had left her ravenous, the kind of hunger that came from using every muscle in her body to stay buoyant and moving.
Dakota, she noticed, barely touched his food. He pushed a piece of penne around his plate, his eyes fixed on the window where the reef shimmered beneath the surface.
Far away. That’s what he looked like. A thousand miles from this boat, this moment.
“Hey.” She nudged his foot under the table. “You okay?”
He blinked. Came back from wherever he’d gone. “Yeah. Sorry. Just thinking.”
She stabbed a piece of pasta. “What about?”
A pause. He set down his fork. “My grandfather.”
She remembered what he’d told her in Fiji—the regret about never taking the old man fishing one last time. The flies he couldn’t use and couldn’t throw away.
“The fish made you think of him?”
“Everything makes me think of him.” Dakota’s mouth curved, but his eyes stayed sad. “He would have loved this. The reef. The colors. He was the one who told me to go see the world.”
Jayden set down her fork. “Tell me about him.”
Dakota was quiet for a moment. Outside the window, a seagull landed on the railing, ruffled its feathers, and took off again.
“Even when we weren’t at the cabin, he used to take me fishing,” Dakota said finally. “Every Saturday morning, spring through fall. We’d get up before dawn—before my mom was awake, which he thought was hilarious—and take the horses out to this little pond on the edge of his property in South Dakota.”
She could picture it. Flat prairie. A boy and his grandfather in the gray light of early morning.
“The pond wasn’t anything special. Muddy water, a few bass if you were lucky, mostly bluegill the size of your hand.” He smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. “But there was this mist that rose off the water right at sunrise. Like the whole world was waking up and stretching. And my grandfather would sit there in his lawn chair with his thermos of coffee and his tackle box, and he’d just . . . wait. Patient as anything.”
