Damn.
“Please. You can’t be any more dangerous than what I go through on a daily basis.”
I cracked a smirk at that. “That’s adorable.”
Her eyes turned to slits. “Do you realize how dangerous ship exploration is? That I was the fifth preservationist approached about this site because four others weighed the risks as too high to take the project on?”
No shit?
“Yeah,” she said, reading something I gave away from my silent response. “The
Falconer
is at a depth that gives us thirty minutes max before we have to return to the halfway point and either break and gas up again, or break and return to surface. One slip of the mind—which is easy with the magnitude of the ship’s possibilities—and it can be lights out real quick. Not to mention the deterioration occurring throughout the inside, making debris and silt fall a real threat or the fact that the only light on the inside is what we take with us. And don’t even get me started on the trio of tiger sharks that like to do swim-bys.”
The picture she painted only made me want to get to the site quicker. I had a mountain of risks whenever doing my job as well, but this chick? She had such a unique roster of threats it made my mouth water.
Then it was like someone had punched me in the chest and I couldn’t breathe—the picture of Sadie’s life in danger on the reg like that the culprit. What the hell was that about? I’d known her a day, and she could absolutely be exaggerating.
“Have I scared you off yet?” She interrupted my thoughts.
“Nah, darlin’,” I said, shaking my head. “You and I may have different occupations, but danger isn’t new to me.”
“Then you’ll take this seriously? I can’t afford any foul-ups, and even if you refuse to tell me anything about you, I’d really hate to lose you to the sharks.”
I managed to contain my laugh, and she flashed me a soft grin.
Nemo nudged Sadie’s shoulder before standing. “Time to suit up.”
She nodded. “We’re ten minutes out if you want to get dressed.”
I watched her as she walked to a storage compartment forty feet away, where Nemo unloaded suits, tanks, and masks. I darted my eyes back and forth as I stood, wondering where she would run off to change. Didn’t have to wait long.
Sadie slipped her red tank off quickly, revealing a black bikini underneath. Her shorts followed, and I had to clear my throat to loosen the rock that had lodged itself there.
Did she have to look so fucking delicious? I was supposed to destroy the one thing she cared about most in life, and with every word she spoke, and every piece of clothing she shed, she was making all that money look like chump change.
“You good?” she asked, one tanned, toned leg inside her wetsuit.
I blinked a few times and shut my mouth, which I only now realized hung open like a teenaged boy who’d stumbled across a late-night Cinemax show.
I gave her my signature go-to response when I didn’t know what to say or didn’t want to speak—I shrugged. She shook her head and finished getting ready. I kicked my ass into gear and followed suit.
The ship came to a slow halt over what I assumed were the coordinates she’d given Ryan yesterday. I trailed her and Nemo to the edge of the ship, the adrenaline I lived for pulsing in my blood. My heart rate jacked as I watched her fall in backward first, then the kid.
No fear. No hesitation. This woman—she was perfection in a gorgeous package. I didn’t know her well, but it seemed like God had placed her on this island to torture me. Taunt me with a sexy, talented diver who I’d love nothing more to get to know
really
well—only problem was I was hired to
betray
her.
You haven’t even seen her underwater yet. She can’t be that perfect.
But I didn’t need to see it. I could feel it.
I secured my mask over my face, switching the radio channel to the nearest frequency, and glanced at the sky again. Maybe Conner had set this up as payback.
Well played, brother.
I sunk beneath the waves, a familiar, incredible weight pulling me under. Sadie was already thirty feet deep. Of course, she would be fast. If she wasn’t so sweet, she’d be a right pain in the ass. Her strokes were natural as she cut through the water, leaving both Nemo and me far behind without even thinking about it. She had a head start, though, and I was more than ready to catch up.
One arm in front of the other, I used my legs to propel me farther, deeper. I passed Nemo and came close enough to Sadie to touch one of her flippers.
“What took you so long?” Her voice filled the speaker inside my mask, and I hit the push-to-talk button.
“Just because I’m quiet doesn’t mean I’m not a gentleman. It’s customary to give a lady a thirty-second head start.”
I saw her laugh as I caught up to her pace, using every single one of my muscles to do so. Damn she was fast.
“Please.” She rolled her eyes and grinned at me before she really took off. Slicing through the water, penetrating deeper as if it was as easy as running downhill.
I sucked in a sharp breath, the challenge rising in my chest. I pushed harder, faster.
And then I stopped.
The ship . . .
her
ship came into full view as we neared the ocean’s floor. The thing was more massive than I’d imagined, at least four-hundred-feet long.
It had to be one of those freight carriers from WWII that carried tons of supplies and cargo between the island and Europe.
It was pure steel—if not aged with a bit of patina—and teeming with sea life. All manner of creatures—fish, sea turtles, coral
—
swam and grew around it, like it was part of their natural habitat. I suppose, according to Sadie, it was. An elaborate array of plants clung to the ship, colors varying from purple to yellow to fire-orange. If the exterior was this active, I couldn’t wait to see what the interior and all its crevices held.
She hadn’t been exaggerating. The site was incredible and full of potential. I knew that just from a surface scan.
“She’s really something, isn’t she?” Nemo asked as he finally approached my halted position.
I nodded, and remembered how to swim, cutting through the water as quickly as I could to get to Sadie, who waited outside what used to be a side entrance into the ship.
“What do you think?” she asked.
“Incredible.”
She grinned, her pink lips just barely visible through her mask. “Wait till you see inside.”
The excitement in her eyes was matched only by the adrenaline coursing through my veins, but the experience in me squeezed my chest. “How many times you been in?”
It was her turn to shrug. “I’ve lost count.”
I sighed and nodded.
“You don’t need to worry about me. I’ve got as much time under the water as you do.” She winked.
I shook my head. “I wasn’t worried.”
She didn’t buy the lie and seemed content to smirk at me with her eyebrows raised.
I swung my arm toward the entrance; the motion slowed by the pressure from the waters this deep. “We gonna wait out here all day, or are you going to invite me in?”
She jerked her head to the side. “Nemo, same drill as always. Stay exterior and warn us of any unknowns—ships, sharks, and the like.”
“Copy that, boss,” Nemo answered, taking up position near the green, rusting railing of the ship.
“I mean it, Nemo,” she said, adjusting the neon-yellow retrieval line attached to her hip. She let out the slack but kept her eyes trained on him.
“I got it.”
“You do what you did yesterday, and I’ll make sure you don’t dive for a month.”
Nemo raised his hands, the bubbles from his tank framing his body. “I said I got it.”
Sadie nodded, then slipped inside the interior of the ship. She flipped a torch on as I swam in behind her, but it only penetrated a fraction of the darkness.
“Trouble with the protégé?” I asked when she didn’t immediately explain.
“No. He’s a good kid. A great diver. Just wants to sprint when he should jog is all,” she said in a joking tone, knowing full well he could hear every word we said over the radio.
“Sometimes that’s a good thing,” I said, following her much slower pace as she navigated through what looked like an old cafeteria. Overturned tables had rusted to the floor, broken pieces of ceiling material and all manner of plates and bowls flung about the area.
“Sometimes it can get you killed,” she countered.
“True.” I knew that all too well. Conner was always act first think later, and it ended up costing him his life. Well, mostly.
Sadie worked her way toward a long corridor. She cut through the water effortlessly, almost gracefully, and appeared completely at ease. Despite my time under the waves, I still always felt a sinking pit in my stomach the narrower of space I had to swim through, and the interior of her ship was teeming with small spaces. Add the darkness, the corrosion, and the uncertainty of its stability, and it was enough to put all my senses on high alert—I fucking loved the sensation, thrived off of it. But Sadie? She looked like she was . . .
home
.
“How many close calls you have?” she asked, cutting through my thoughts.
“Lost count.” I mimicked her earlier answer. It was the truth, though. I couldn’t name how many times I’d tasted death on the job. I’d grown used to his appearances and damn near welcomed him every time.
“Ever think about quitting?”
“Nope,” I said, reaching out to touch her ankle. She didn’t flinch, like she knew I’d have to maintain contact in order not to lose her in the darkness within the ship.
“You don’t like to expand on things.” She didn’t say it like a question, but as a statement, so I didn’t elaborate. “Makes it wicked difficult to get to know you.”
“I’ve told you—“
“Yeah, yeah.” She let go of her push-to-talk button on her shoulder and took a sharp right into an open interior room. “You get a look at all those sealed doors?” she asked once I’d followed her into the tiny room.
“Yeah. You want in them?” The steel would be a breeze for me to get through, especially if I went for the rusted hinges with my stinger.
“I really do.”
“I’ll get it done. Next dive, though. This one is for me to get a sense of the environment before I cart my tools down here, and I’ll have to hook up my umbilical to your ship up top, as well as get Ryan to run the amps.”
“Of course.” She turned her light toward the center of the room and aimed downward.
The bottom of the room was split, most likely from connection with the ocean floor when it sank. A tangled mass of an almost metallic-blue type of seagrass sprouted upward and swayed from the water’s movements.
“Try not to touch anything, please,” Sadie said, reaching behind her and retrieving a large plastic bag and a silver tool that looked like an oversize pair of tweezers. “This extraction is what I was trying to accomplish yesterday, but your boss cut it short.”
“He’s not my boss.”
“He doesn’t write your paychecks and tell you where to weld?”
I shrugged. “I’m a free agent.”
“You go where the money is.”
“Yeah.”
“Well, I’m glad I have you on pro-bono work then, ‘cause we’re over budget as is. Maintaining the gear, ships, and the lab isn’t cheap.” She carefully moved closer to the plants, and with such grace she barely disturbed them, plucked several pieces out of the ground and slipped them into the bag. After gathering what looked to be a dozen medium strips, she sealed the bag and stored it in the small yellow pouch attached to her weight belt.
“This the superhero plant you talked about last night?” I asked as she moved toward me, floating more than swimming.
She stopped herself by bracing her hands on the doorframe on either side of me. I swallowed hard. She was outfitted in full scuba gear, including a fully covered face mask, and I still could damn near feel the heat from her body so close to mine. What in the actual hell was going on with me?
“Superhero plant. I like that. I’ve been wondering what to nickname during testing.” She grinned. “It’s one of them. I’m sure you noticed the purple algae growing along the exterior?”
“I didn’t realize purple algae existed.”
“It’s rare, a close cousin to red, but it’s packed with more antioxidant properties. Something about the
Falconer’s
ecosystem—from the massive amount of phytoplankton that thrives above its surface to the coral growing in and around it—it’s like a huge hub for accelerative growth, which lets all life around it thrive. If we can harness even a percentage of it”—she glanced around wistfully—“we may be able to give the big diseases plaguing the world a punch they can’t recover from. That is, if I manage to prove it in time.”
I held her gaze, easily getting lost in those deep brown eyes and trying to deny the urge to get inside her head. I could tell from the passion in her words, in the way her breath hitched, the hope of possibility trembling her lips, that she wasn’t selling me a product. She
believed
it. With every piece of that soul of hers; the one I could tell burned brighter than any flame I’d ever held before.
Though I knew from experience, preservationists were the first to wax poetic about their sites. And really, I’d need to stay sharp to make a sound conclusion. She may believe it, but that didn’t make it true, and I needed twelve-million really strong reasons to side with her instead of Slade. The money didn’t matter to me in terms of materials because I had what I needed to live. It mattered to me how many addicts I could help if I spread the funds across rehab centers. But I couldn’t deny the battle raging inside me with every second spent with Sadie—the one that both hoped I would and wouldn’t find her site valuable.
After a few moments of silence, she raised her eyebrows. “We have fifteen minutes left. Want to check out more of the ship? Or are you tired?”
I smirked and glanced down at the tank reader. She was right on the money for air time. I returned my focus to her. “It takes a lot more than this to tire me out.”
I couldn’t be certain, because of the mask, but I swore she blushed again.
“Good. Try to keep up.” She pushed past me, a trail of bubbles momentarily popping in front of my mask from her quick movements. By the time they cleared she was already ten feet ahead of me.