Deep Blue (3 page)

A noise behind them interrupted her answer. She turned to see one of the crew coming down from the wheelhouse, a huge black man in baggy, knee-length shorts and a blue flowered shirt that flapped open in the wind. He had a chest the size of a wine cask and arms that would rival Mike Tyson’s. Hurrying toward them along the deck, he held a cell phone out in front of him.

“It’s for you, boss.”

Reese took the phone and pressed it against his ear. He flicked a look toward Hope, then turned and walked a couple of feet away. He was angry and getting madder by the minute, speaking louder and louder till she could hear his every word.

“Are you insane? We let her write a bunch of articles about this operation and we’re gonna have every amateur treasure hunter within two thousand miles breathing down our necks. This isn’t the States, Talbot, it’s a private island. The only laws here are the ones they make up, and Emperor Eddie won’t be able to provide much protection—legal or otherwise—if we start to have trespassing problems.”

Talbot said something lengthy on the other end of the line.

“This is crazy,” Reese said. Then, “Fine—have it your way. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Reese ended the call and took a deep breath. He handed the phone back to the big black man. “Thanks, King.”

“No problem, boss.”

Reese turned to face her, a scowl on his handsome face. “I guess you’re staying, since Talbot holds the purse strings.” He gave her a perusal that went from her breasts to her toes and sent her hackles up another notch. “But then you probably knew that already.”

Hope clamped down on a nasty retort, and the captain stepped into the breach.

“Why don’t I take the lady down to her cabin?” he suggested, trying to prevent what was fast becoming a mutual dislike.

Reese gave Hope a cold, hard smile. “I’ll take care of it. I want to make sure our
guest
gets properly settled in.”

“I’m afraid there’s one more thing,” Hope said.

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“There’s a photographer coming. I thought he might be here already. His name is Tommy Tyler.”

“Christ.” Reese raked a hand through his dark brown hair. It was neatly trimmed but long enough to reveal a faint curl at the ends. “Is that it? You don’t have maybe a movie crew lined up or something?”

One of her eyebrows arched. “Well, now that you mention it, there might be—” She broke off at the horrified look on his face, satisfied she had given as good as she got. “There’s only Tommy and me.”

Ignoring his obvious relief, Hope reached for her carry-on. Surprisingly, Reese had already picked it up. At least he knew how to behave like a gentleman, though she figured he mostly chose not to.

“This way.” Turning, he gave her his back, which was wide, tanned, and muscled and looked just as good as his front. Hope fell into step behind him, having to hurry to keep up with his long-legged strides.

“Where you from?” he asked, stopping as they reached the ladder leading down to the cabins.

“I live in New York.”

“Yeah? I thought I heard a trace of Boston.”

“I was born there. My family still lives there.”

“New York and Boston. Figures.”

Her teeth clenched together. She took a calming breath. “So what about you?”

“Florida, mostly.”

“Mostly?”

He shrugged those wide shoulders. “I get around some. Officially, I live in Key West at the moment.”

A beach bum. She should have guessed. He certainly looked like one. Then again, there was a hardness in his features, a toughness that made her think that wasn’t completely true.

“From what I’ve seen, it looks like your ship’s very well equipped. Any chance you’ve got a computer on board with a satellite link? I’d like to do a little preliminary research before I start.”

And she had a friend back at
Midday News
who was a major computer whiz. She’d know everything there was to know about Conner Reese and the other members of Treasure Limited by tomorrow morning.

“Yeah, we’ve got one. Brad said to give you anything you need. You can use it—anytime it’s available.”

Something in the way he said it made her wonder if he meant to keep the thing constantly in use. “Thanks.”

They descended the ladder, Reese in front of her, and she tried not to notice the way the long muscles in his legs flexed when he moved. She had never been particularly interested in hard-bodied men. She preferred men with brains to those with brawn. But she had to admit, this guy made her think of sex, something she hadn’t been much interested in for the past couple of years.

Even if he was rude and annoying and not the least her type, it felt kind of good to know she wasn’t completely dead where men were concerned, that perhaps she was coming back to life.

“You can have this cabin. It’s pretty small, but it’s comfortable. We save it for anyone who happens to show up for a visit. I guess that includes you.”

She gave him a too-sweet smile. “I guess it does.” She glanced at the teakwood built-ins, the neatly made bunk. Through the small porthole above the bed, she could see the ocean. A door stood open in the corner, and she got a glimpse of a small, clean bathroom.
Head,
she silently corrected.

“You don’t get seasick, do you?”

“Not usually. Not unless the sea gets really rough.” She didn’t tell him she was wearing half a scopolomine patch, just for the first few days, until she got her sea legs again. She had never really had a problem, but she would rather be safe than sorry.

“We eat in shifts,” Reese said. “You’ll be in the first. King puts food on the table at seven. You can unpack and make yourself comfortable till then.”

“It won’t take me long to unpack. How about a tour of the boat…say, in half an hour?”

He frowned. “This isn’t a yacht, Ms. Sinclair. We’ve got work to do and there isn’t much time for—”

“Now, now—don’t forget what Brad said.”

His eyes darkened. “So it’s Brad, is it? That’s what I figured.”

She knew what he was implying. Her chin went up and her spine went stiff as a board. “I wrote an article about him several years back. Apparently he liked the job I did or he wouldn’t have asked for me.”

“Whatever you say.” But he looked like he thought there had to be more to it than that.

Typical male chauvinist pig.

“What about the tour? Remember, you’re supposed to give me everything I need.”

Those cool blue eyes swept over her and seemed to heat from within. “I could probably manage that. At least I’d be willing to give it a damn good try.”

Her teeth clenched. “I was talking about the boat.”

He gave a long-suffering sigh. “All right. Thirty minutes. I’ll see you up on deck.”

The cabin door closed behind him, and Hope realized her heart was pounding. He could give her everything she needed? Oh, Lord, and he looked like he actually could. It was ridiculous. She didn’t even like the guy. It was just that she hadn’t been with a man since Richard.

She shuddered just thinking about him. Her ex-fiancé was a real bastard. He was also handsome, sophisticated, and intelligent. They had met at a high-society cancer benefit she was covering for one of the fashion magazines, and they had started to date. Over the next few months, she had fallen madly in love with him. Like a fool, she’d believed he was also in love with her.

Richard had proposed and they had moved in together. They were planning to have a family, to buy a place in Connecticut. It was the reason he was always working late, he said. The reason he had to make those weekend trips. The whole time he was lying and cheating, playing her for a fool.

Two weeks before the wedding, she had come back to the apartment early one afternoon and caught him in bed with her best friend, Sherry Winters. Hope had been devastated. Completely destroyed. She had been desperately in love with Richard.

And two months pregnant with his child.

She shook her head, refusing to let her mind drift too far in that direction. She had lost the child she carried, mourned for months, and hadn’t dated since. The guys at the office said she was a real man-hater, and maybe she was.

Conner Reese looked nothing at all like Richard, one of the partners of Wynn, Myers, and Daley, a prestigious Manhattan law firm.

But remembering the smug look on Reese’s face, the certainty in his voice that she had slept her way into getting this assignment, it seemed more than clear they were very much alike.

Conn climbed the ladder back up to the deck and saw Joe Ramirez walking toward him, using a towel to dry the beads of water glinting on his face and chest.

“Who’s the babe?” Joe asked. He was the head diver on the crew, the dive team coordinator, though Conn would be diving, too. As a SEAL, Joe had been one of the best, and he still was.

“She’s one of Brad Talbot’s women. This one happens to be a writer for
Adventure
magazine. Brad probably promised her the story to get in her pants. Must have worked, since she’s here.”

Joe grinned, gouging two deep grooves in his cheeks. “She can bunk in my cabin. I wouldn’t mind a bit.”

“Yeah, I bet you wouldn’t. But I don’t think Talbot would appreciate the competition.”

“Probably not.” He flashed another grin. “Then again, who says Talbot has to know?”

Conn didn’t answer. Joe had a way with women. If he put his mind to it, he could probably have Hope Sinclair in his bed by the end of the week. She couldn’t be much of a challenge—not if Talbot had screwed her.

Conn told himself he didn’t care what Joe did. But he found himself checking his watch to see when Hope would reappear.

“How did it go?”

Recognizing the perfectly modulated voice on the end of the line, Brad Talbot gave in to a satisfied smile. “Reese knows where his bread is buttered. He gave me some crap about the article jeopardizing the search, but he’ll get over it. The girl is out of your hair. She’s off the story and too far away to give you any more trouble.”

“You’re sure about that?”

“I’m telling you, she’s miles from nowhere. She’ll be busy for weeks. You don’t need to give her another thought.”

“Thanks, I owe you one.”

“Hey, no problem.” But as he hung up the phone, Brad was thinking how he might collect the favor. He might not be the kind of savvy businessman his father and grandfather were, but he was no fool. He knew who his friends were.

And he knew how to use them.

Hope finished unpacking. Eddie Markham had generously allowed her to leave some of her clothes in one of the villas. Apparently the place was unoccupied and for sale for a very hefty price tag. She had left her sundresses and sandals and miscellaneous items she didn’t think she would have use for on the boat, taking only shorts, shirts, and tee shirts, a swimsuit, sandals, and her deck shoes.

This was a work boat, after all. She didn’t think she would need anything fancy.

On the other hand, she liked to be prepared.

Which was why she could kick herself for not taking some of the money her grandfather had left her and her two sisters and bought the fancy electronics that a lot of her contemporaries used. Okay, so maybe she was a little archaic, a little resistant to all the new gadgets. She liked taking notes, liked the personal interaction, though she also used a portable tape recorder and she had brought that along.

She did have a Palm Pilot, so she wasn’t completely out of touch. Since she’d started working at the paper, she had been looking at a Blackberry, a wireless, hand-held device for sending and receiving wireless e-mail, surfing the Web, and keeping track of contacts. But the darn things were expensive, and out here she’d need to have a satellite phone in order to use it, and that was something she wouldn’t have much use for back home.

She had left her laptop back at the villa, since she wasn’t sure what kind of power she would have out at sea, and instead brought her AlphaSmart, a lightweight keyboard with a four-line screen that did word processing and ran for a hundred hours on four flashlight batteries.

Thank God she’d be able to use the
Conquest
’s computer to do the Internet work she needed and bring up her e-mail—assuming Reese didn’t purposely keep the machine in use. She made a mental note to break out a little of Grandpa’s twenty thousand she had stashed away and buy what she needed before she started her next assignment.

Hope checked her watch. Time for her tour. She needed to know more about the boat and the equipment aboard, and Reese looked like a guy who knew his end of the business—the operations part, according to Artie Green. She found herself wondering about him, what his background was and how he had gotten involved with Brad Talbot.

Whoever he was, one thing was clear—he didn’t like her any more than she liked him. As she stepped out into the passage, she steeled herself for whatever he might have in store for her when they butted heads again.

Conn checked his watch. Thirty-three minutes. If she didn’t show up in the next two or three, he was heading down to the chart room. Since Hope was a woman, he could count on a good twenty-minute wait. He might as well go down now.

“Mr. Reese?”

The sound of her voice surprised him. He turned as she walked toward him along the deck. The wind whipped her hair away from her face and he noticed the strong line of her jaw. She was pretty. Better than pretty. But there was something about her that warned a man to beware.

Which was fine with him. The last thing he wanted was to get involved with a woman.

“It’s just Conn,” he said. “And you’re almost on time.”

“Yes, I am, and it’s just Hope.”

“Fair enough…Hope.” In concession to her being a woman, he had pulled a white cotton tee shirt over his bare chest. Hope had tied the tails of her gauzy white blouse together to hide the curve of her breasts.

At least they knew where they stood.

“Where would you like to start?” He was eager to get this over, mollify her a little so he could get back to work.

“Tell me about the boat. Eddie Markham said it was eighty feet long, but that’s about all I know.”

“Well, she’s iron-hulled, powered by a pair of twelve hundred-power Caterpillar diesels. The
Conquest
carries five thousand gallons of fuel and a thousand gallons of water. Even at that, you need to keep your showers short.”

He watched her jot down notes on a spiral pad. Not exactly state of the art, but then everyone had his own way of doing things.

“There are two generators on board, one that powers the equipment and one for backup.”

“So I guess it’s okay to use my hair dryer.”

His gaze moved up to the glossy red hair brushing her jaw, not quite touching her shoulders. Man, her hair was gorgeous, sleek and shiny as a seal, and the prettiest dark red shade he’d ever seen.

“Yeah, you can definitely use your dryer.”

“What about the equipment you’re using?” She turned and pointed toward the stuff that was sitting on the deck.

“For starters, that yellow thing with the runners on the bottom is an underwater sled. We can use it to take us down to whatever depth we want. It provides light if we need it, and the prop can serve as a blower.”

She made some more scribbles. “What about the cranes?”

“We’ve got a ten-ton knuckle crane and an eight-ton auxiliary winch. We find something, you can bet we’ll be able to bring it up.”

“Like treasure?”

“If we’re lucky. That
is
what we’re here for.” He looked over at the wheelhouse. “That thing on the top of the boat—that’s the radar bridge. And we use satellite navigation—GPS. We’ve got a couple of dinghies, for safety’s sake, and a fifteen-foot Boston Whaler with a fifty-horse engine we use to get over to the island. A lot of the equipment’s being used in the water. Let’s go down to the chart room and I’ll show you how it works.”

“Great.”

The wheelhouse sat above them, Captain Bob at the helm. Instead, Conn ducked through an open hatch and descended a ladder into the chart room that connected with the bridge through a second set of stairs. He heard Hope’s feet ringing on the ladder behind him, turned to see they were slender and feminine in a pair of white sandals.

“Pretty impressive,” she said as she looked over the row of monitors that relayed the messages received from below.

“The guy in front of the screen is Andy Glass,” Conn said, introducing her to the small, nondescript man wearing spectacles who kept an eye on the monitors. “He’s our engineer. Andy, this is Hope Sinclair. She’s doing an article on the search.”

“Nice to meet you, Ms. Sinclair.”

“It’s just Hope, and same here.” She went back to her perusal of the room, pausing when she reached a television screen projecting a video picture of the reef they were searching and the area around it.

“That’s a boat-deployed video camera. There’s a light mounted on the front so we can see what it sees.”

“And this?”

“Magnetometer. It detects ferrous metals.”

“Iron?”

“Both iron and steel, among other things. The Spanish ships all carried iron cannon, fittings, maybe five or six anchors. An underwater metal detector can find them, which helps us locate the approximate area where the ship went down.”

Hope shook her head, her shiny hair swinging several inches below her jaw. “I’m coming at this all wrong. Usually I’m prepared for an assignment, but apparently someone was in a hurry. They shipped me off without giving me time to do my homework. I need to know exactly what you’re looking for—and why you think you’re going to find it here.”

Conn hesitated. He wasn’t sure how much he was willing to tell her. Damn, Brad Talbot was an idiot. But then he had known that from the start.

“We’re looking for the
Nuestra Señora de Rosa.
She went down with three other Spanish treasure ships in 1605.”

“Four ships sank all at once?”

“That wasn’t uncommon. They didn’t have weather forecasts. They encountered unexpected storms, even hurricanes. About ninety treasure ships sailed every year. Ten percent of those were lost. In a two-hundred-year period, that adds up to around two thousand sunken ships. Only two hundred have ever been found.”

“My God, I had no idea.” Hope sighed. “I need to use your computer. I don’t know enough to do this assignment properly. I need to find out about your lost ship—hell, I need to know what questions I need to ask.”

Conn almost smiled. At least she was being honest. He hadn’t expected that. After all, she was a woman.

“No one’s using the computer right now. Be my guest.”

She seemed surprised at his offer. Obviously she didn’t trust him any more than he trusted her.

“This might take a while,” she said.

“Hey, Talbot’s footing the bill. Since he’s the one who sent you, I guess he won’t mind if you run up his satellite phone expenses.” Of course, if they found the treasure, Talbot’s entire investment would be repaid, plus his share of the profits. Talbot would make out like a bandit.

On the other hand, if they didn’t find the ship or there wasn’t any treasure aboard, the Doormat King would be out several million bucks.

Conn watched Hope walk over to the computer and start clicking away on the keyboard. In minutes she was working on the Internet, digging up information on the Spanish treasure fleets. Conn left her at it. He had a dozen things to do.

And none of them included spending time with one of Brad Talbot’s women, no matter how attractive she was.

It was time for supper. Hope made her way down to the galley in search of something to eat. Her stomach was growling, and it occurred to her she hadn’t had a bite of food since she got off the plane in Jamaica. And what the airline had fed her could hardly qualify as a meal.

Conner Reese came down the ladder a few minutes after she arrived, followed by the captain, Bob Gibson, and a couple of members of the crew she hadn’t met. One of them earned a second glance, a smiling, dark-complexioned man with huge dimples who appeared to be Latino. He was probably in his thirties, even better-looking than Conner Reese—in fact, almost pretty, and equally well-built.

“Hope Sinclair, this is Joe Ramirez, and that’s Pete Crowley. Joe’s head diver—Pete’s part of the boat crew.”

“Nice to meet you,” Hope said.

“Welcome aboard, Hope,” the handsome Latino said, not bothering with formality. Pete Crowley just nodded.

The big black Jamaican, King, began setting food on the table, filling the galley with the aroma of fiery spiced jerked chicken, and rice and peas. She wound up sitting next to Conner Reese, though she wasn’t quite sure how it happened. With three other good-sized men also sitting in the booth, they were fairly well jammed together.

He was wearing the same red swimsuit and white tee shirt he’d had on earlier, and whenever he moved, she could feel the slight abrasion of the dark hair on his legs rubbing against her from calf to thigh. She tried not to notice, thought that she had succeeded, till she glanced over and caught the look on his face. Those blue eyes seemed to burn, and the heat there seared her bones. They were skin-to-skin, and obviously he could feel it, too.

He glanced away and began to concentrate on his food, and Hope did the same, but her appetite had left her. Though her food was only half eaten, when the men finished their meal, she shoved her dish away.

“I think I’ll go down to my cabin.” She rose from the built-in dinette seat. “It’s been a long day and flying always wears me out.” Reese got up so she could slide out of the seat, her body brushing his as she left the table. “I guess I’ll, um, see you in the morning.”

“Yeah, I guess so.” His eyes were hot again. They made her stomach flutter.

“Good night, Hope,” Joe Ramirez said, his dark eyes moving over her in a way that told her exactly what he was thinking. Unlike Conner Reese, he wanted her to read his thoughts, which clearly belonged in the bedroom.

“Good night.”

It was dark outside, still warm and balmy, but it was January and even in the Caribbean, the sun set early. Once she reached the deck, she looked out over the waves toward the island. A few lights sparkled in the area around the Pleasure Island villas, and there appeared to be a small settlement at the south end of the shore. Hope took a deep breath of salty sea air and started toward the hatch leading down to her cabin.

“Have a good night,” an unfamiliar male voice said.

She turned to see Pete Crowley standing not far behind her. She hadn’t paid much attention to him before. Now she saw that he was tall and spare, with rough, deeply weathered skin, black eyes, and a slightly Roman nose.

“You, too,” she said, wondering if he had followed her out of the galley, not liking the thought that he might have. She wasn’t sure what to expect from the men in the crew.

The brief, uneasy encounter reminded her to be wary.

Hope awakened the following morning more rested than she had expected. The gentle lap of waves against the hull had been a powerful sleeping pill, and she had slept later than she meant to. She’d missed breakfast, but at home she rarely ate anything before lunch, just downed several cups of Starbuck’s coffee and went to work.

Coffee sounded heavenly right now. After pulling on a pair of khaki shorts and a yellow tee shirt, applying a dab of makeup and a liberal amount of sunscreen, she grabbed a wide-brimmed straw hat that tied beneath her chin and headed up on deck. The Caribbean sun was brutal, she had learned, having suffered a painful sunburn the last time she was there. She intended to be a lot more careful this time.

On deck, some of the crewmen were already hard at work. She waved and kept walking, then darted into the galley where King was busily cleaning up after the morning meal.

“You missed breakfast,” he chided in the deepest voice she had ever heard.

“I never eat in the morning. But I could sure use a cup of coffee.”

“Always got a pot goin’. You be welcome to a cup.”

“Thanks.” She filled one of the heavy white china mugs and started toward the ladder.

“Ought to eat somet’ing,” King said, his black face glossy with perspiration.

She waved to him over her shoulder. “Coffee’s enough, and this sure tastes good. Thanks again.” Climbing the ladder, she headed for the chart room to see if the computer was available.

She had a lot more work to do, but she wasn’t as ill-prepared as she had been on her arrival. Yesterday, she had printed out a pile of information on the Spanish treasure fleets—fascinating stuff, she had discovered. As Reese had said, the voyages had continued for over two hundred years, carrying untold wealth back to Spain from the New World.