Below the Surface (27 page)

“Portside storage under the seat!”

Bree knew she was exhausted and yet energy poured through her, as it had the day she swam through the storm. Sam had taken an angle where they were closing on the boat, but surely two more minutes must have gone by. Why was the yacht coming in earlier than expected? Could they have learned about the bomb?

She tried to concentrate as Sam shouted instructions to her.

“If it is one of my detonator caps—”

“It is!”

“It's actually a form of TNT. It's stable, relatively insensitive to shock, so don't be afraid to pry it off. But do not jimmy the Primacord if it's visible. It will be stuck on the hull by what looks like kid's clay, in a bright color, maybe blue or red. It will have metal end caps and one end will be threaded for insertion of the detonator. For a boat as big as that, they may have used a booster of tetryl.”

“At least that's a fairly new boat. It can't have a lot of barnacles yet to obscure the cap. I'm going to look near the hull, since that's where they blew up
Mermaids II.
”

“Who did?”

“Later. Look! Someone's outside on the deck!” She saw two men, one as tall as Cole. Yes, it was Cole!

Sam buzzed the port side, blowing an air horn she hadn't seen. Bree was screaming but it drowned her out.

Cole saw them. He leaned out. Josh was outside, too. Poor Josh—poor everyone, in about seven minutes.

“Stop the vessel!” Sam was commanding through a bullhorn. “Bomb aboard! Bomb!”

Josh disappeared. It seemed to take forever, and the big waves from the yacht kept pushing them away, but the yacht finally stopped dead in the water.

Dead in the water, Bree thought, as Sam took them closer, under the higher deck of the larger vessel.

“Bomb?” Cole shouted down. “Has Sam changed his mind and told you—”

“He's here to help!” Bree shouted up to him.

Sam reversed their direction and motored them back closer toward the stern. Cole ran along the railing to stay over them. Bree had so much to say to him, but it would have to wait.

“Not much time,” she told Sam as she fitted her mask and stood up to jump in. “Get as far away as you can, just in case.”

“No, I'm backing you up. Just get it off and drop it into the depths, because there's no time to defuse it. You'll do fine.”

The entire world had gone mad. Sam Travers was backing her up and telling her she'd do fine and she believed him. Sam had given her her life back once already. At least that was one good thing to come from this terror.

“Get all the deck lights on!” Sam was yelling through the megaphone to Cole and Josh. “Get everyone up on the decks or front of the ship! And don't let anyone jump off.”

The last things she heard as she descended into the water were, “Bree, be careful!” from Cole and Sam bellowing, “Tell everyone to brace themselves and call the coast guard, just in case…”

Bubbles and her lights gave her vertigo at first, but she righted herself. The sea around her lit up. They must have turned on more deck lights. How far under the surface would Mark have put the bomb?

Her dive light skimmed the newly painted dark blue hull, up and down. It was so shiny she could glimpse a muted reflection of herself, as if Daria dove with her.

How much time left? No one usually knew how much time was left in their lives. Daria had not known, Mark either.

Nothing here at this level. Try the starboard side, the one that would have been toward the dock. Yes, the dock would have sheltered Mark when he planted it.

Time ticking away. At Daria's funeral, the words,
So teach us to number our days that we might have a heart of wisdom…

Everyone's days were numbered. How many would die here if she didn't find the bomb?

Then, there it was. Two small, circular metal things, close together and stuck firmly to the hull. No cord was visible but it had to be here. With her dive knife, she pried the red adhesive off, not touching the detonator or the booster or whatever she was looking at. She'd seen movies where people had to cut the correct colored wires to stop a timer, but this seemed so primitive, so simple.

Yes, one was loose. Despite how cool the water felt, sweat was stinging her eyes within her mask and it was fogging up. Time must be gone. It was going to go off with her right on top of it, but she had to try. Try to save Amelia and Ben so their boys would not be orphans. Save Cole, even Verdugo. Josh, though, when everything came to light, might wish he was dead.

When she got the second metal piece off the hull, Bree let go of her dive knife rather than resheafing it. Then she dropped her dive light so it wouldn't hold her back or bump the pieces. She was trembling so hard she might set them off herself.

She jackknifed and upended, taking the pieces, one in each hand, kicking down, down.

Then she let them go—somehow letting all her fear go, too—and kicked and clawed madly for the surface.

She saw the lights above her and was almost to the surface when a muted boom and a fist of water thrust her upward. The sea roiled, and she thought she was back again at the day this all began, fighting to make it to shore.

Her ears hurt. Then hard hands grabbed her and Sam hauled her up and over the side of his boat as Cole jumped, feetfirst, into the water and clambered on board, too.

Dizzy but delirious with relief and joy, Bree stripped off her mask, while Sam unstrapped her tank. Holding tightly to each other, Cole and Bree sprawled, soaking wet on the floor of Sam's boat, while Sam patted her on the back, saying, “You all right? You all right?”

Despite the fact that she kept shaking, Cole's embrace was rock steady. She was definitely more than just all right.

Two months later

B
ree dived cleanly into the swimming pool on the patio of their new house. Cole knifed in behind her. Though she knew the chlorine in the water would make her eyes burn, she opened them anyway and reveled in the sight of him swimming with powerful strokes beside her, his hair rippling.

They had been married for three weeks but had been back only a few days from a trip to the Cayman Islands. Cole reached out and pulled her against him as they surfaced, rocking the water against the tiles. The pool was a small one, the villa just two bedrooms, but they had their businesses to build and they were insanely happy. Bree and Manny were running Mermaids, and Cole was transitioning out of rare wood paneling to building sloops and teaching others how to build them, too.

“Easier to float in salt water,” he said, “but this is a heck of a lot safer. Nothing to get cut on, no storms, no sharks, no bombs.” He was kidding about not taking risks, since he still dived with her on jobs from time to time, even sometimes with the new guy they'd hired.

She pressed herself against him with her arms around his neck, and he clamped her even harder to him. They always melded perfectly, chest to breasts, hips, thighs, though her feet dangled partway up his calves. He slid his hand along her sleek, arched back and pushed her bikini bottom down to cup her with both hands.

“We've got a while before Ben and Amelia and the boys show up,” he told her, his voice a delicious whisper.

“Mmm. But we've got to finish dinner and put up the Congrats On Your Reelection sign for Ben.”

The election had been three days ago. Marla Sherborne had won back her senate seat by a landslide. Josh had withdrawn from the election. His party had put someone else up to oppose her, but to no avail. Ben had said Josh had turned down an offer to write his story and was starting up a
cachaça
business to produce bottles of caipirinha for a cane company that was in competition with Grand Sugar. Josh had also started divorce proceedings against Nikki, who was awaiting trial in the Collier County jail along with Ric—and Verdugo, for human trafficking. His desire to bring gambling to Southwest Florida had gone down with him.

“Oh, yeah,” Cole said, playing her game as he unhooked her bikini bra. “We've got to set up the snorkeling game for the kids. And wash our hair…”

Bree laughed as they came together. Cole swore when the doorbell rang. “Why is Amelia always early?” he muttered. They both knew if they didn't get out of the pool now, James and Jordan would run around to the back of the villa and look in through the netted cage around the pool. “Batten down the hatches, matey, 'cause the kids are here. Just when I thought I'd make a kid of my own.”

“At least you're not sleeping on the sofa anymore,” she told him, trying to sound normal as she looked for her bikini bottom and bra in the water. Every time Cole DeRoca looked at her that way, touched her, it was as wild as a lightning strike. After being in the water during the distant bomb blast, her hearing and her sight seemed to have returned to normal, but nothing was ever normal with Cole in her life. She would always miss Daria, but her husband completed her, even as her twin sister could not.

Cole threw on a robe and left her scrambling to get back into her suit while he answered the door. He loved the boys and they him. Amelia had even let the two of them take the kids to the Swamp Buggy Races and didn't scold anyone when they came back looking like they'd been playing in the mud. Much of Amelia's efforts were now focused on spreading the word about human trafficking. She'd taken care of the Guatemalan girl the night Cole found her, and she was going to testify against Verdugo at his trial.

Now where was that terry-cloth robe? If Cole had taken it, he'd look like a giant in it. Bree barely made it back into her suit and wrapped a towel around her waist as the kids arrived.

“Aunt Bree, Aunt Bree, can we do that snorkel game now, where we find the coins in the pool?”

Both boys hit into her with hard hugs. “If your mother and dad say so.”

“Not only do we say so,” Amelia said, putting down a tray of cookies and brownies, despite the fact that Bree had told her she'd fix everything this time, “but—ta-da!” she cried, and produced a snorkel and a mask, both of which still sported their price tags.

“You're going to join us?” Bree said, walking over to hug her, however wet she was. Amelia didn't seem to mind. Ben was off in the corner already, talking to someone on his cell, but Amelia didn't seem to mind that, either.

“Leftover desserts from the fund-raiser luncheon,” Amelia said. “And, yes, I want to join you. It's better than fighting, I hear.”

When Cole hustled the boys off to change into their suits, Bree and Amelia stood arm in arm. Amelia had explained everything that had happened the day Daria died. Bree had been furious at first and blamed Amelia for leaving Daria vulnerable to Nikki and Mark. But it was Daria's own mistakes and lies that had made her vulnerable. And perhaps, Bree had told herself, it was the morning sickness from the pregnancy that made Daria slip, not anything Amelia had done. Amelia had believed that Bree would surface soon and, as ever, care for her twin. Bree's conflicting feelings of love and hate toward Amelia had made her understand the torment Amelia had lived with most of her life.

The first month of Amelia's psychiatric appointments, Bree had gone with her. They'd worked through the past. When Bree had hugged her even then, Amelia said she knew that she was loved for sure.

“In the pool,” Cole shouted, clapping his hands as the boys jumped in the shallow end. “Lots of fun things can happen in the pool, and we don't even need to be afraid of getting in the deep end,” he said, with such a funny look at Bree that Amelia laughed.

“I have a feeling we interrupted something,” Amelia said. “Maybe that's really why I want to get in the water. Ben and I have a very nice, big pool, and he's been much, much too busy lately. Maybe the wide-eyed honeymooner can give me a few tips.”

The two of them giggled together, as if they were just silly, happy girls again.

A salsa beat shook the walls of the Garcia Party House in Immokalee. Nearly three hundred people crowded the food tables and the dance floor. This
Mexicana quinceañera
celebration with family and friends touched Bree deeply. She was proud to have been one of Lucinda's financial supporters to help pay for this beautiful party marking a girl's “sweet fifteen” transition to womanhood.

And it turned out that Daria had helped to pay for it, too. Manny had admitted that she had given him money to keep quiet about her pregnancy—and that he had spent it on a partial payment for the party house. Bree and her new junior partner had been through a lot of discussions on how they would run things at Mermaids, and they had come to a much better understanding of each other. Bree felt she'd been in the forgiveness business full-time lately, and was a much better, stronger person for it.

The Salazars had selected a Cinderella theme with pink and white bunting, and a Disney Cinderella, no less, on the five-tiered cake. Cindi—she'd asked Bree to call her Lucinda today—looked half bride, half prom queen in her white gown and upswept hair with her gold tiara.

Manny had said that she'd taken five required hours of pre-
quinceañera
counseling classes at her church about everything from family responsibilities to sexuality and religion. Besides that, the Salazars' meeting with Luke and his family had helped a lot. Manny had thanked Bree for her part in that and for visiting him every day in the hospital while he was recovering from being hit over the head with his own wrench.

“And now,” Manny announced proudly over the tinny PA system, first in Spanish, then English, as his wife and even his ill, rake-thin mother beamed, “you all invited to dance to this Mexican waltz. Its name,
Mi Linda Hijita,
for our non-Latino friends here, means
my beautiful daughter.
”

After Lucinda's teenage supporters demonstrated the steps and everyone applauded, Bree and Cole left their
padrones
table to join others on the dance floor. Luke was partnering Lucinda this time, and she took his hand and led him over to Cole and Bree, dancing cheek to cheek in a corner.

“Thanks for coming, both of you,” Lucinda said. She looked radiant. Luke, bless him, looked proud. “I just wanted to show you this bracelet, Bree. Every
quinceañera
girl gets one, 'cause it stands for the unending circle of life.”

For a moment Bree wondered if Manny had told his family she was pregnant. Bree had shared that with him, not only because she'd need more help soon with the business, but because she didn't want to shut him out as Daria had both of them.

Lucinda went on. “Look close. I put names on the charms of people who are gone, but still with us in our hearts. Here are both my grandpas' names, and I put Daria's here, too, see?”

Bree's eyes filled with tears. Cole's arm came around her waist as if to steady her. Wordlessly, but mouthing
thank you,
Bree hugged Lucinda, before she and Luke danced off together again.

“You okay?” Cole asked. “Want to stay?”

“Of course I do. I don't want to miss what she has planned for Manny next. The look on his face will be worth the price of admission.”

One of Lucinda's friends carried a chair out into the center of the dance floor, and she pulled her father out and sat him down in it. Another friend brought out a huge pillow, which Lucinda sat on at his feet, amidst the puffy softness of her full skirts. The band quieted and, looking up into her father's nervous face, Lucinda said in Spanish, her voice wavering, “I want to especially thank the main man in my life for sticking with me through tough times—and for this happy day and others to come.”

On cue, the band began to play some song Bree didn't know, but it made Manny, macho no more, cry.

Bree turned to Cole and whispered, “I want to especially thank the main man in my life for sticking with me through tough times—and for this happy day and others to come.”

Cole looked as teary-eyed as Manny as he put his arms around Bree and patted her belly. Bree put a hand down to link her fingers with his. She liked to think of her baby inside her, swimming already, safe in her own little sea.