She nodded toward his duffel. “You might want to suit up. We’ll be there in less than ten minutes.”
He popped a sharp salute and spun in a tight military about-face toward his gear.
As she dragged the rest of her seven-mil wet suit on, Emma watched Creed closely for any sign of hesitation, ready to pounce if he showed any lack of knowledge of his own equipment.
Regrettably, or maybe fortunately, he slipped into the wet suit as if it was a second skin. A quick check and testing of his regulator, dive computer, tank and mask indicated a proficient knowledge of his equipment.
Darn it. Emma had hoped to rule him out of this trip, claiming inadequate experience with the necessary diving apparatus.
By the time he had booties, fins and BCD strapped on, Emma had to concede the man knew his gear and wore it like he meant it. Much as she wanted, she couldn’t fault him there.
Would he be an idiot in the water? Taking off instead of staying within eyesight of his dive partner? She’d be damned if she’d chase him all over the ocean floor.
This trip was important to her. She really felt as though it could be the one. And so much rode on her finding the Anna Maria. She didn’t need a cocky diver with an attitude swimming off into trouble. “So what’s your story?”
A grin slipped across Creed’s face. “Are you always this direct?”
“I’m a nurse in my day job.” She crossed her arms over her chest. “It pays to be direct.”
He nodded. “A nurse, huh?”
“Yeah, so don’t get stung by a jellyfish or stab yourself with a knife.” She pulled her hair back off her face and secured it with an elastic band at the back of her neck. “I’m off duty, and it will only slow me down.”
“I’ll make a note of that.” He chuckled. “Do you reserve your good bedside manner for the day job?”
“Absolutely.” Emma smiled, loosening up a little. The man had a sense of humor and could give as good as he got. She didn’t want to like him, but when he smiled like he did at that moment, she couldn’t help herself. “If you’re such an experienced diver, why are you out wreck-diving without a partner?”
He shrugged and stared out across the bay. “I could ask you the same.”
“I do it all the time. I live here.” She tipped her head toward him. “Where are you from?”
“Around.”
Evasive as well as handsome, with his thick dark hair and penetrating dark eyes. They still had a few minutes to kill and Emma was good for a few more pulled teeth, so she asked, “Why the interest in the lost boat?”
“Besides the owner being missing and possibly dead? I want to protect the company interest and make sure the boat is in fact at the bottom of the ocean. It could be the owner found the tracking device and chucked it, taking off with the boat.” He crossed his arms. “Why so interested?”
“The more I know about you, the better prepared I am for anything that happens below. So if there’s anything I need to know, spill now.”
His brows rose. “I just need to find the boat.”
Emma opened her mouth to argue, but was interrupted by Dave.
“Get ready,” the captain said. “I’m as close as I can get to your coordinates without becoming a statistic.”
Emma glanced around at the rocks protruding out of the ocean. Sea lions basked in the sun on the smooth ledges. Some slipped off into the water, disturbed by the nearness of the boat.
Dragging her neoprene hood over her head, she tucked her hair beneath, then strapped her fins to her feet and shoved her hands into her gloves. Since she was the one in charge, she snapped the line for the surface marker buoy to her BCD and slipped her arms into the straps, hiking the BCD and cylinder up onto her back. Last but not least she pulled her mask onto her head and positioned it over her eyes, popped the regulator into her mouth and turned to see if her diving partner was anywhere near ready.
He stood fully equipped, mask and regulator in place, waiting for her.
Humph. So he was fast at getting geared up. That didn’t mean he would be a good dive buddy. Emma waddled toward the edge of the boat and grabbed the railing as the boat pitched in the choppy water.
One last thumbs-up to Dave and to Creed, and she back-rolled off the end of the boat to plunge beneath the surface. The water took her breath away, even through the thick neoprene, making her second-guess her decision to use the wet suit versus a dry suit. But once she got moving, her body would warm the water trapped between her and the suit.
As soon as she submerged, she released the surface marker buoy, allowing it to float to the surface where it would mark the divers’ progress beneath as they drifted along the ocean floor. That way Dave would know where to go to pick them up. Emma would make sure they swam away from the rocky protrusions when they were ready for the boat to retrieve them.
As Emma resurfaced, a splash beside her heralded Creed’s entrance into the ocean.
He held on to his mask and regulator as his head broke through the water, and then he gave her a thumbs-up.
Together, they signaled Dave with a thumbs-up and waved.
The captain waved back and set the boat in motion to pull farther out to sea, where he’d wait until Emma indicated for him to come retrieve them from the water.
She checked her dive computer, confident that she had plenty of air for a couple hours, as long as she didn’t have to go too deep. The deeper she dove, the more time she had to save for decompression coming up.
Emma loosened her mask, filled it with seawater, swished it, emptied and fit it snugly over her face. With one last glance at the departing boat and a double check on the surface marker buoy bobbing on the surface, Emma sucked in a gulp of metallic-tasting air and dove beneath the choppy waves. She headed straight for the rocks that had been partially submerged in the waves. Based on her calculations, the Anna Maria had last been seen there before the Devil’s Shroud rolled in that evening over two hundred years ago.
A school of lingcod swam by, their dull gray bodies slipping past like silent shadows.
With nothing but the sound of her breathing and the bubbles rising from each exhalation, Emma basked in the silent underwater world, the ebb and flow of the current less pronounced the deeper she went.
As they neared the bottom and the base of the outcropping, a startling array of sea urchins and anemones colored the moss- and lichen-covered rocks and ocean floor with their spiny bodies. A curious sea lion swirled past Creed, twisting and looping gracefully through the water.
Emma shone her diving headlamp onto the rocks, swimming into what appeared to be a small city of stone sprouting from the seabed.
Creed lagged behind, his own headlamp panning the area all around him.
She waited until he looked toward her, and then Emma urged him to catch up. The wreck of the Anna Maria had to be hidden somewhere among the black rocks, and she was anxious to find it before her
