Windswept (3 page)

“After diving to those depths, we’ll have to make decompression stops on the way up. Serious stuff, folks.” Hans’ face went grave, as it did every time he emphasized the point. “If you come up too quickly, you can get hurt.”

Everyone went silent.

“I’ve seen a man die of the bends, and I never want to see that again,” he added, looking each guest in the eye. “So, safety first. We come up nice and slow, all right?”

Eight somber heads nodded in unison. Even Ryan. Especially Ryan, who’d never seemed as serious as he did right now.

Lucky was the only one who didn’t seem to be listening. Mia followed his gaze to another dive launch moored not too far away. A small boat carrying two men, one of whom was going over the side, kitted out like he was going to the center of the Earth. Another camera junkie, probably.

“All right, everybody buddy up and follow me.” Hans pointed. “Stanley and Brenda, check?”

“Check!”

“Marc and Bruno, check?”

“Check!”

“Dirk and Anna, check?”

“Check!”

“Pete, you’re with me.”

Pete gave a double thumbs-up.

“And Ryan…”

Mia felt her stomach sink. She made chopping motions in the air, hoping Hans would catch on.

He didn’t, of course. “Ryan, you can buddy with Mia, who’ll bring up the rear.”

Ryan’s lips barely moved. “Check,” he said, looking like a badass soldier about to march off on a heroic mission that defied all odds.

Which fit, because as it turned out, he was a badass soldier, or had been before becoming a badass New York cop.

She risked another glance in his direction, and damn it, his Mission Impossible eyes were still on her. The scary thing was, they said his mission was
her
.

She steeled her shoulders just like she used to do, staring down a tough opponent before a swim start.
You, mister, are about to meet your match.

Or so she hoped, because her pride couldn’t afford to cave in to him again.

Getting the guests in the water took forever, and Mia suspected the dive would feel torturously long, too. Stanley took ages getting the waterproof housing on his camera. Marc fiddled with the anti-fog in his mask. Pete checked everything three times, just as Hans taught him. Ryan pulled his wetsuit up, and even in skintight neoprene — especially in skintight neoprene — he looked like a sex on a stick.

Hans moved around the launch, checking every regulator, every O ring. Lucky remained at the bow, his restless eyes roving the bay. One after the other, the guests donned their fins and splashed into the sea until it was just her and Ryan alone on the stern platform, squeezed into a tiny space.

“Mia,” he started. “I meant it. I’m sorry.”

She squeezed her lips into a thin line. She’d feel better when the regulator was in his mouth, because the bass in his voice could do wicked things to her resolve.

“Ready for your dive, Mr. Hayes?”

His cheek twitched. Yeah, he got the message.

“Ready if you are, Ms. Whitman.”

“Then jump in already.”
Before I shove you in.

He looked at her for another second — just looked, like he wanted to reach out and stroke her cheek like he used to do. Slow and tender, one finger would trace the curve of her face, then glide back up the length of her jaw to do it again, making her warm all over.

She flushed and stepped back. Way back.

A pained expression flashed across Ryan’s face before he went back to neutral. Then he turned away from her, covered his mask with one hand and the top of his tank with the other, and stepped expertly off the stern.

Navy SEAL. NYPD dive squad. Recent lover.

Mia shook her head at herself. Holy shit.

She fiddled with her mask much longer than she needed to.

“Everything okay?” Lucky asked.

She didn’t need to look up to know he was watching her with concern.

“Fine,” she mumbled into her mask. It was business as usual, right?

She patted her vest in a last check, took the deepest breath of her life, and jumped in.

The water was unusually clear for afternoon, and the sun slanted through the upper layer, splitting into a thousand fingers of light just like it would in a centuries-old cathedral. Mia exhaled slowly as she descended, creating a stream of bubbles that tickled her ear on their way to the surface. They popped among the silver-white wavelets rippling overhead. She spun in a slow circle, taking it all in. Even with the limited peripheral vision of her dive mask, the intense blues and the sideways light seemed endless, a universe of its own. Mia had logged hundreds of dives all over the world, but the sight never failed to fill her with awe.

She continued her slow turn and found Ryan watching her from five feet away. Even underwater and through a dive mask, even with the intense aquamarine of the water, the green of his eyes stood out.

Fine. It would be fine. He was just another dive buddy on just another dive, right?

She curled her fingers in the “okay” signal, and he did the same.

She used to have a fantasy that looked a lot like this, back when they were first getting to know each other. To take Ryan to a tropical island and share the wonders of diving with him. Little did she know he was a diver, too. And not just any diver, but a pro.

This looked just like that fantasy, but it didn’t feel anything like it. There was no joy, no anticipation. Just a gnawing dread.

The group was strung out ahead, some deep, others still working out the pressure in their ears. She caught up with Brenda and spent a minute in quiet support at her side. Usually, that was all it took: steady eye contact and a confident “okay” sign to settle a novice’s nerves. Stanley was wandering off to the right, but Ryan herded him subtly back in, sticking close to the man’s right side.

She could see Ryan’s experience as clearly as she could see Stanley’s lack thereof. Ryan floated sideways in perfect neutral buoyancy, his body completely relaxed. He might have been a lazy Roman, stretched out on a couch and nibbling on grapes. Stanley, on the other hand, bobbed up and down like a bath toy with every clumsy adjustment to his air vest. The bubbles that rose from Ryan’s regulator with each exhale were small and measured; Stanley’s erupted in great bursts, then trickled off.

Hans waited for everyone to regroup at the wreck before giving them the okay to explore sign. Mia followed Brenda and Stanley while everyone else explored around the far side of the sunken freighter. Everyone except Ryan, of course. She wished she could shake him off, but he was her goddamn buddy now.

Her sleek, muscled buddy who moved as effortlessly in the water as he did on land. Or in bed.

Which she was absolutely, positively, not going to think about at a time like this. Or any other time, because it was over between them. Over.

Over, over, over. She repeated the mantra as a parrotfish swam by in a flash of green and blue.

Brenda slowly relaxed into the dive. Stanley doubled back to photograph the view through a porthole in the wreck. Ryan was two strokes ahead, honing in on a colony of pink and green anemones, so Mia backtracked to stay behind Stanley.

She did a slow scan to make sure they hadn’t lost anyone, and a good thing, too, because one diver was heading off in the opposite direction. Bruno? Marc? She couldn’t tell who. Only that the diver was going the wrong way, fast. What had gotten into him?

There was no time to alert Hans or anyone else; she had to act quickly to catch up with the diver and bring him back. She started kicking after the man and cursing inside. What was that idiot thinking, getting so far away from the group?

Mia always prided herself on ending a dive with air to spare, using slow, steady breaths, but this errant diver was forcing her to work hard to catch up. She was going to have a stern word with Bruno or Marc or whoever this was once they got back to the launch.

The bottom sloped away and the man followed it deeper and deeper. She followed with ever more urgent kicks, despite the pressure building in her ears. One hundred and thirty-five feet was fine for recreational divers, but this guy was pushing a hundred and forty-five. She glanced at her dive watch. One hundred and fifty. Christ, what was he after, thundering along like that?

The man was quick, probably thanks to those new model UltraFlow fins she’d been coveting in the pages of the latest dive magazines. She was faster, but it still took long minutes to pull within reach of those fins. About a minute too long, because he was breaking one hundred and sixty feet by then. Getting him back to the group was out of the question now. She’d have to lead him to the surface in a slow, controlled ascent and get him to the dive boat on her own.

Diving is perfectly safe,
her first divemaster used to say.
Only stupidity makes it dangerous.
Case in point: the diver in front of her now.

She kicked into a sprint, grabbed the edge of his vest, and pulled back just hard enough to make sure he got the message. Yeah, she was pissed. Bruno or Marc or whoever it was totally out of line, and he should know it.

A violent burst of bubbles showed his surprise as he spun to face her with wide eyes.

Mia blinked.

Those wide, angry eyes that didn’t belong to Bruno or Marc or anyone else from her group. Neither did the gray vest or blue hooded wetsuit. Who was this guy? What was he doing, diving so deep and on his own?

The eyes flashed with surprise before narrowing on hers, and the stranger huffed through his mouthpiece.
What the hell?

She wanted to huff back. She had every right to ask him that.

He shoved her away. Really shoved, and she was stunned by the brute force of it. Then he twisted, folding his body to grab something near his leg. When he straightened, something silver flashed in his hand.

A knife. A knife slashing toward her in a terrifyingly slow-motion kind of way.

A knife? A dive knife?

Mia screamed into her mask, and it came out in a burst of bubbles. She clawed at the water in an attempt to back away.

Too late — the man grabbed her shoulder with one hand and slashed with the other. A flood of bubbles exploded in her face as the regulator was ripped from her mouth, streaming a curtain of air into the water.

She kicked and flailed, screaming inside. Was he trying to kill her?

The knife slashed again, saying,
Yes. Yes, I am.

She jerked right, a hair away from the jagged blade.

Oh my God, oh my God…

She kicked in reflex, struck him along the ribs, and ripped free. Flailing all four limbs, she backed away from the furious eyes of a madman.

He clutched at the water between them, and between the wild trail of bubbles flying everywhere, she could see the curse in his eyes. Then, with an angry shake of his head, the man jackknifed backward and torpedoed into the indigo depths.

Mia forced herself not to panic. To do what she’d taught countless students over the years: dip one shoulder and reach behind with one hand to retrieve the dislodged regulator and bring it back to her mouth.

With her vision restricted by her mask, all she could do was grope blindly behind her until — salvation! — her hand met the hose and traced it to the mouthpiece. She thrust it back into her mouth and sucked in a lungful of air.

You got this. You got this under control.

But she didn’t have anything under control, and she knew it. Bubbles were shooting up all around her like a whole squad of divers had surrounded her to exhale at the same time. At least the mystery diver was fading out of sight, kicking urgently onward, undeterred.

She glanced down toward her chest, patting at the hoses and her vest. What was wrong with her regulator? Why was it dumping so much air?

She traced the backup regulator and brought it into sight. It kicked and jumped in her hand like a garden hose gone wild, disgorging a steady stream of air.

Her air. Jesus, he’d cut through the hose!

She grabbed her tank display and cupped it in front of her face like a holy relic.

Her air level was halfway down and dropping fast. And here she was, one hundred and sixty feet down.

She looked up. The sun was pale and distant, as it might have looked from a distant planet in the solar system. One hundred and sixty feet was a hell of a long way.

Every instinct told her to shoot for the surface, but she fought the panic down.

It was too far. Shooting to the surface meant death.

Hans’ words echoed in her mind.
I’ve seen a man die of the bends, and I never want to see that again.

She could imagine it all too well. By breathing compressed air, she’d been pumping tiny particles of oxygen into her bloodstream. If she ascended too quickly, those bubbles would steadily expand until they burst inside her. They’d rupture her arteries and kill her in the most horrible way.

She fumbled with the cut end of the hose, trying to stem the flood of pressurized air. Her fingers fumbled to fold it.
Quick! Quick!
But the hose jumped free and sprayed her surroundings with a crazy line of bubbles that might have been pretty if it hadn’t meant her life.

She grabbed at the hose again and kicked upward, fighting back the panic. There was no way the remaining air would last her to the surface. The only safe way up was slowly, making decompression stops along the way. One hundred and sixty feet…she’d need at least two stops along the way.

Jesus, she was going to be Hans’ worst nightmare. Her own worst nightmare. Every diver’s worst nightmare.

Up! Up! Up!
instinct screamed.

Slow!

No, fast! Now!

She dumped a little air out of her buoyancy vest and regretted it right away, watching the bubbles shoot past. God, she was stupid! That was the equivalent of a desert wanderer letting the last drop of water tip out of a canteen.

Think, Mia! Think!

But she couldn’t think. She started kicking upward. Just ten feet, then she’d check her air.

One hundred thirty feet. She stared at the air gauge.