The Last Treasure (2 page)

KEY LARGO, FLORIDA

June 25

L
iv bolts upright, her chest squeezed like a fist. She needs a breath, just one, but there's no air, only hollow wheezing. She reaches into the dark and slaps at the nightstand, finding the drawer pull and tugging hard, sending the clutter of shells and hair clips inside it skidding to the edge like unbelted children in a swerving car. When her fingers finally land on her inhaler, she shoves the cylinder into her mouth and sucks in as she depresses the top, relief shuddering through her to feel the rescue of air.

Safe.

She falls back against the headboard, blinking into the black, and waits for her breathing to slow.

Stupid, awful dream. Third time this week. Whit would
surely blame the leftover Thai she devoured shortly before ten, or the cup of mocha chip she indulged in afterward.

Whit
.

She reaches out for the long compass of her husband's sleeping body, but her fingers land on the empty mattress.

She feels for her phone and clicks it to life.

Three thirty-two.

He did return from dinner with Phil Edwards, didn't he?

Or did she just dream the crash of him coming into their bedroom, the groan of the bed when he fell on it, still dressed, the two thumps of his shoes hitting the floor? What about when he rolled against her and reached up under her T-shirt, wanting to make love, then falling asleep before he could get her underwear off?

She scans the dark, listening. The familiar clanging of metal blows through the screens, the telltale clamoring of movement on the boat, then the frothy growl of
Theo
's propellers spinning to life.

Oh God.

She kicks herself free of the sheet and lands on the cool Mexican tile of their bedroom floor, knotting her red hair as she rushes down the hall to the living room. Through the sliders, beyond the line of palms that separate the lanai from the concrete of the dock, she can see him on the upper deck of their thirty-foot dive boat.

She yanks the door open, no time to close it behind her. The humid air clings to her bare legs, a curtain of moisture, as if she's stepped through a giant spiderweb.

“Whit!” she yells as she runs down the steps, terrified he won't hear her over the whir of the motor.
“Whit!”

Miraculously he turns and sees her, a drowsy, pleased smile spreading across his face. He's wearing only a pair of boxers. Her immediate thought:
Please, God, don't let him fall in
. Sober, he is the strongest, surest swimmer she knows; drunk, he will sink like a stone, and with his six-three and two hundred twenty pounds, his rescue will be impossible for her small frame.

“Avast, me beauty!” He swings his glass high, sending a necklace of liquor arching through the dock lights, and her pulse quickens.

He only speaks pirate when there's bad news.

The concrete is damp and prickly under her bare feet. “Whit, what are you doing?”

“I thought I'd take the old girl out for a moonlight ride. Join me?” His blue eyes are wild, wolfish.

“There's no moon,” she says, as if the correction might deter him. “And you're not even dressed.”

“Right you are, lass.” He tugs a faded Marlins cap off the throttle handle and snaps it over his tousled blond hair, giving her a satisfied grin. “Better?”

Terrific.

She rushes onto the boat and climbs the ladder to the flybridge, feeling the tremors of panic soften when she arrives at the helm. This close, she could lunge for the ignition if she had to—but the current of dread still sizzles in the muggy air. A nearly drained bottle of scotch sits by the wheel, the amber
liquid shuddering with the vibration of the engine. He's done something foolish, but what? The possible transgressions race through her:
An impulsive purchase they don't need? The coltish blonde he flirted with at Rachel and Daniel's solstice party? Has he totaled the van . . . ?

Despite his height and sturdy build, her husband looks fragile, like something glued and not yet dried, and it scares her.

She can hear the tremble of uncertainty in her voice. “Love, shut her down and come back to bed. You need sleep.”

“God, I love this boat.” He drops into the captain's chair and swivels around, his expression wistful as he scans the controls. “Do you realize that we could chart our entire life together on this boat, Red? That every moment of significance for us happened right here?”

She nods, nostalgia falling like a shawl over her too, snug and warm. Even now, beneath the diesel fumes, she can still find the scent of rusted metal and warm rubber, the intoxicating smells of a perfect dive.

But when Whit lifts his gaze to find hers, his eyes crackle with lust—it's not their early memories of treasure hunting that he's recalling.

“The first time I kissed you was on this boat,” he says. “The first time I held that gorgeous hair in my hands.” He opens his huge hands and closes them in fists. “Christ, I couldn't get deep enough inside you.”

His eyes slide down her body, drinking her in, and the familiar tug of longing pulls at the space below her stomach, the weight of wanting his words could always coax from her like a fever.

But despite desire, impatience burns. She just wants it over with—wants to know what he's done. Let it be something small, something easily and quickly repairable. They have only two weeks before they are scheduled to begin their next mission in North Carolina, the one Whit has promised will bring them the success their recent salvage missions haven't.

“Whit,
please
.” She's begging now. “What's wrong?”

He spins the chair back around and lands under the glare of the spotlight. For a blissful moment, she thinks the crescent of purple under his right eye is a trick of the night, a reflection from the surface of the canal, and her heart holds for a second before it crashes.

“My God, your face!”

“It's not so bad,” he says cheerfully. “Feel worse for the table.”

“You should be putting ice on it.”

“Good idea.” He slams his tumbler against his eye and winces. “Shit.”

She tries to help guide the glass to the worst of the bruise, but he waves her off. “It was all a big misunderstanding.” His voice is conversational, as if she might actually enjoy this story. “Phil and I were waiting for our beers, and this knucklehead next to us accuses Phil of stealing his seat, so I tried to—”

Phil?
Blood rushes to her forehead. “Whit, please just tell me you didn't let our project archaeologist see you get into a bar fight.”

He squints his uninjured eye. “I don't think he saw much after that unfortunate pop to the side of his face.”

“He got
hit
?”

“It was just a tap, really. I doubt he'll need more than a couple stitches. Serves him right for having such a lousy swing.”

“Whit!” Liv claps both hands over her mouth, sure if she doesn't she will let go a scream that will draw every one of their neighbors out of bed.

They have spent months putting together this salvage project of the
Siren
, a blockade runner buried off the coast of Wilmington that sank with a fortune in her hold, and he has blown it up in a single night. All the pieces they've secured, the beach house in Topsail that is to be their base of operations, already rented. A seventy-eight-foot commercial dive boat, already chartered.

Panic sends her heart into a gallop, thumping hard against her ribs. “What are we supposed to do without an on-site archaeologist?”

Whit tugs off his cap and tosses it behind him. “We'll just hire someone else.”

“Who? There isn't anyone left on the planet who'll put up with you!”

“Then you're stuck with me, lass.” His eyes flash wickedly. “Let's go below and I'll shiver your timbers.”

“Whit—I'm serious!”

“Aye, so be I,” he growls playfully, yanking her into his lap and getting a bite on her neck before she wriggles free and moves for the ladder. “Red, wait.”

She hears the engine go quiet, but she is already back down and across the deck, training her eyes on the water and trying to find focus in the calm surface.

Two weeks. Maybe there is still a chance they can find
someone else to take over the PA role in that time, even on such short notice. It would have to be someone familiar, with a good reputation. Someone who could step right in, no handholding. Someone who could keep Whit straight, keep him coloring in the lines, as Sam used to say—

Sam
.

Gooseflesh flares up her bare arms. She grabs herself and rubs hard, afraid Whit will see the tiny traitorous bumps.

She takes a seat on the bench and waits for him to descend the ladder. “What about Sam?” she asks.

Whit's eyes cool, the teasing cornflower blue darkening to pewter.

“He used to be one of the best marine archaeologists out there, Whit.”

“Until he went back to law school.”

“That doesn't mean he's washed his hands of the field completely.”

Whit stares down at her with disbelief. “Felder left, Red. He left you—he left
us
. He made it clear he wanted out.”

“That was nine years ago. Maybe he's let that all go.”

No wonder he continues to look at her as if she's lost her mind. Sam who believed sentimentality was a character flaw; Sam who could—and
did
—turn off emotions like car engines?

Still she presses on. “Maybe he's forgiven us.”

“Forgiven us?” Whit frowns at her. “What the hell did we ever do to need his forgiveness?”

We fell in love,
Liv wants to say but doesn't—and she doesn't need to. Whit's eyes find hers and flash with understanding.

“We have to at least consider asking him,” Liv says calmly.
“Scrapping this project isn't an option. Not when we're so dangerously close to being in debt.”

Close?
God, who is she kidding? They're already sunk. The fortune they made from the recovery of the
Bella Donna
six years earlier has been bled—not to mention the legal fees they incurred fighting for their fair share of the valuables—and they are hemorrhaging with the cost of this new mission. The
Siren
may have held millions in gold when she sank on her way to Charleston—or so Whit insists. Even if they recover only a piece of that fortune, they'd be on firm ground again.

Whit blows out a hard breath and joins her on the bench, swinging his nearly drained bottle between his knees. “I don't know, Red. There's too much history there.”

“This time would be different,” she says. “This wouldn't be about the
Patriot
.”

“Wouldn't it?” Whit's eyes hold hers, demanding truth. The mystery of the
Patriot
's 1813 disappearance was the thread that had always stitched their lives together—hers, Whit's, and Sam's—from the moment they united as students to find the elusive shipwreck until the day they each went their separate way.

Whit promised her that he'd find the answers Sam couldn't. It had been a fierce and heartfelt vow—the only kind Whit could ever make. He'd even renamed their boat
Theo's Wish
for the wreck's most famous passenger, Theodosia Burr Alston, knowing how attached Liv had become to the lost woman. Whit had sworn not to quit until he and Liv solved the mystery, and proved what they'd always believed, that pirates had seized the
Patriot
and taken Theodosia captive. But thirteen years after their first expedition to search for the lost schooner, life and the pursuit of
treasure have taken them far from their precious investigation, and Liv still doesn't have her answer.

Tears sting the insides of her cheeks. She could tell Whit about her nightmare, make him feel especially guilty for putting all this at risk when he knows she has promised her doctor this will be her last deep dive, but she doesn't want to relive it. And she doesn't have to confess her dream to convince him.

He downs the last of his scotch, wincing as if he's swallowing nails. Around them, the music of night animals stirs in the quiet, the buzz of insect wings, the trill of frogs. Whit's phone sits on the hatch—he scoops it up and begins to type.

“You won't find him that way,” Liv says.

“Watch me.”

She shivers, her hands clasped, toes clenched. She considered searches like this a hundred times, curious as to where life took Sam in the years after he left her. It is the ease that has kept her from looking—knowing how much she could find out, and how quickly.

“He's on the cape,” Whit announces, holding out the phone to show her. “Captain of a dive charter boat.”

Liv takes it, startled. Sam back to dive charters? Is Whit sure it's the same Sam Felder? What happened to his pursuit of maritime law? She scrolls to read all about the captain of the
Flotsam
. There isn't a picture, but there's no question Whit's found him.

She hands back the phone quickly, as if she couldn't care less what has become of Sam Felder, only whether he'll accept their offer, and Whit begins to dial.

“You're calling him now?” she says.

“Why not?”

Her skin warms again, regret surging. She stands, too quickly, and feels light-headed. A wave of guilt quickly steadies her.

In all her disappointment and fear, she's been neglectful too.

“Maybe we should see if there's another time, a
better
time,” she says sheepishly. “Maybe wait till the fall now.”

When she glances back at Whit, he is frowning at her. “What are you talking about?”

She shrugs. “I'm just saying, why rush? We've hit a bump—it happens. Maybe the best thing to do is step back and see if we can't reschedule the project.”

“Red . . .”
His voice deepens. “If this is about your father . . .”