As if on cue, Alita Holloway slinked up the steps, her black hair tucked neatly into a Gold Digger baseball cap, a diving suit barely covering her voluptuous body.
“Awful early for you, Princess,” Lizzie said, narrowing her eyes to look under the bill at the beauty-pageant face. “And with mascara and everything.”
Alita shot her a withering look. “Actually, Lizzie, if you haven’t had breakfast yet, I’ll switch shifts with you.” Her gaze shifted to Con and her dimpled smile deepened. “I’m just dying to go back to that spot where I snagged that chain. I’d love to show you, Con.”
Obviously they’d met already. Which would explain the mascara.
“Fine with me,” Lizzie said. She could get the key back and her dive would definitely be easier without him distracting her. “I prefer afternoon dives in this weather, anyway.”
“Don’t screw with my schedule,” Dave called out. “No substitutions. There’s a science to this, you know.”
They all looked at each other with knowing smiles.
“The science is that Dave is a control freak,” Sam explained to Con.
In the salon, Charlotte Gorman, tucked into the corner of one of the two dining booths, looked up from the chart spread in front of her, a frown of concern forming. “You feeling okay, Lizzie? You look flushed.”
“I’m fine, Char.” As she breezed through the aisle between the tables and headed back to the breakfast buffet, Lizzie reached out and tapped Charlotte’s knuckles. Sam’s wife of less than a year was not only the conservator, making her the one person who would have her hands on every single treasure before it left the ship, she was also the closest thing Lizzie had to a girlfriend on this boat. So the temptation to trust her and even enlist her help was strong, but Lizzie had resisted so far.
For one thing, if Charlotte assisted Lizzie in getting detailed pictures of recovered salvage and in making comparisons to the drawings in Dad’s journal, then Charlotte would be an accomplice, and Lizzie didn’t want to put her in that position.
She also didn’t know her as well as she knew Sam. But, without help from someone soon, her whole plan would fall apart. That could happen any day, on any dive.
So who could she trust?
A soft breath moved the hair against her back, making her splash coffee mid-pour.
“Divemaster Dave says he’s ready for us.”
“I haven’t had my coffee,” she said, turning, bracing for the proximity of Con’s body and the sheer power of his eyes.
“I returned the lab key to its rightful owner.” His voice was little more than a baritone rumble, the very sound of it like a sexy come-on. She glanced at Charlotte, but the other woman was deep into her charts again.
“Thanks for covering for me,” she said softly, lifting her coffee mug to her lips. “Keep up the good work and I might let you have first hands on a gold coin.”
“First hands?” His brow shot up. “I like the sound of that.”
“Let’s go, crew!” Dave popped his head into the salon with a sharp look at Lizzie. “We got a schedule to maintain.”
She threw a wistful glance at the coffee and another at the man who made her miss it. “I hope you know what you’re doing down there, Con. I can’t babysit.” She zoomed out to the deck, where she checked the stern blower while she stepped into her suit. Con came right over to her, zipping up and studying the murky water churning below.
“You ever dive with a blower, Con?” Kenny Brubaker’s sun-kissed curly hair blew around his head in the breeze, but his eyes were blocked by the reflective shades he wore even on cloudy days.
“Not for a while,” Con replied.
Lizzie threw a look at Kenny. Great, a rookie.
“Lemme just give you a primer.” Kenny pointed to the two metal elbow-shaped pipes mounted onto the stern and swung over the prop. “Those are dusting about three feet of sand, and they’ll run the whole time you’re down there. You dive right under them and go to work when you hit the pan-meaning the hard coquina shell under the sand. You’ll have the metal detectors, but stay next to Lizzie while you get the lay of the land down there. We’ll be operating the air hoses and you can signal with them.”
“What’s the system of pulls?” Con asked.
“One pull on your hose means stop the blower. Two means start it up, three means you found something. Four means major find.” Kenny grinned. “We like those the best.”
Lizzie pointed to the air hoses that Dave was readying. “Just remember, we’re down fifty feet and there’s about a hundred feet of line, so feel free to take the tether room. The more we spread out, the better our chances of finding something.”
Con gave her a knowing look. “You really don’t want to dive with me, do you?”
“Just spelling out the guidelines,” she said.
“Stay within sight of each other,” Dave interjected. “Which is close, because it’s bright enough to see a few feet away, but at this time of year, distance visibility is low.” He nudged them toward the dive platform. “Use those detectors, and put your masks to the pan-especially the outer edge, where you’ll have the best luck. If it shines or sparkles or makes that thing ding, we want it.”
Kenny brought the metal detectors over to them. “First one to touch a treasure gets credit in the books, a Gold Digger baseball cap, and the biggest piece of Brady’s celebration cake.”
“That’s ‘first hands,’ I take it,” Con said.
“First hands aren’t important,” Dave replied, humorless as always. “And, just for the record, the second hands are mine or Flynn’s; from there the goods go to Charlotte. We’re not on this dive for caps or cake.”
“I know why we’re here,” Con replied, giving Lizzie a meaningful look.
She pulled her mask down and shimmied to the dive platform, resentment burning. “If you have beginner’s luck, I swear I’ll kill someone,” she murmured.
Con got closer to her. “Who says I’m a beginner?”
“Hookahs in!” Dave hollered. “Let’s get to work, troops!”
Lizzie snapped her hose, checked it, then slid into the icy cold water. A second later, a warm, strong body was next to her, as close to her face as he could be with the air hoses separating them.
She knew it. She’d be wearing him on this dive.
Behind his mask, he winked, took her free hand with his, and pulled her deep into the murky water.
Con hated to dive. He could do it, and had, many times since that bad, black mission in Quezon City. But every time he submerged, he remembered that night, that save, that choice, and what it cost him.
Everything. It cost him fucking everything. So he hated to dive, which was probably one of the many reasons Ms. Machiavelli picked this job as his Bullet Catcher test.
They dropped straight down through the sandstorm blowing under the set of pipes that directed the prop-wash to the bottom. Con kicked through it, heading toward a two-foot-high pyramid-shaped ballast pile. These black stones were proof that they had found a bona fide shipwreck, since the pile of weighted rocks used to center the vessel was probably all that remained of the actual ship. There could be cannon down there and, of course, the cargo.
Lizzie started to swim to the edge of the pan, and he stayed right next to her, still highly suspicious of her, even though there hadn’t been anything incriminating on her phone. The only person she’d been in contact with since she’d gotten on board was Brianna Dare, whom he assumed was a sister, though he hadn’t asked the Bullet Catchers investigative team to verify that yet. Still, he wasn’t about to let his little thief out of his sight underwater.
For one thing, the notebook she was hiding in her room proved she knew exactly which shipwreck they were salvaging. She was his number one target for the moment, which was why he’d subtly convinced the divemaster to let him dive with her.