When I Wake Page 10

  “Can you even get aboard?”

  “Sure. Make her stop moving.” But Tam jumped onto the deck, and even managed to keep his balance. He only staggered two steps.

  Veronica spoke. “He’s drunk.”

  Dugan couldn’t argue with her, so he didn’t say a word.

  Tam peered at her. “I said I’m not drunk.”

  “What is he saying?” she demanded.

  “He says he’s not drunk.”

  Tam squinted. “There’s an echo. I already said that.”

  “Shut up,” Dugan said. “You’re supposed to be helping me load and store supplies and equipment.”

  “Sure. I said I would. I’m here, aren’t I? I just need an hour.”

  “What’s he saying?” Veronica said again.

  “That he’s going to go below, make some coffee and catch a nap while you and I go to the grocery store.”

  “The grocery store?”

  “Why’s she shouting?” Tam asked.

  Dugan ignored him and answered Veronica. “Hell, yes. You want to eat for the next four days, don’t you?”

  Before she could explode, which she plainly wanted to do, he grabbed her arm, urged her up onto the dock, and dragged her toward his truck.

  “Quit pulling on me,” she demanded.

  “Sure.” But he wanted her in the truck with the air-conditioning on and the windows rolled up before she started shouting at him about Tam, because the honest truth was, he didn’t want to spend the next five years being teased about how he’d been bitched out by a woman on the public dock. No way. The tale would be all over town by sunset . . . if it even took that long.

  He revved the engine, waiting for the air to start cooling them.

  “That man is drunk,” Veronica said again. “You can’t fool me.”

  “He sobers up fast. Lots of experience.”

  “What am I supposed to think? I hire two people to do a simple job and the very first day one shows up drunk and the other shows up hungover.”

  “Look, could you hold it down a little. Your voice is cutting through my aching brain like a buzz saw.”

  She glared at him.

  “Listen, it won’t happen again.”

  “It shouldn’t have happened at all.”

  “Hey, it’s an old sailing tradition. You get drunk the night before a voyage.”

  “Considering we’re going to be setting sail every five or six days, this could get to be a real nuisance.”

  “Won’t happen again. I’m considering the entire three months to be one voyage.”

  Her expression was dubious. “What about your friend?”

  “Don’t worry about him. Once we get near to diving, he won’t touch booze. He won’t even be in the same zip code with it.”

  Her brow was knit, as if she were straining to follow him, but finally, to his vast relief, she settled back with a sigh.

  “That had better not,” she said sternly, “ever happen again.”

  “It won’t.” He hoped. He knew he wouldn’t do it again. Unfortunately, he wasn’t a hundred percent certain about Tam. Only ninety-five percent. Well, maybe ninety. Eighty? Hell, he just wasn’t as certain. Period.

  He jammed the truck into gear and headed for the Publix supermarket at the east end of the island. Ordinarily he preferred to stay in Old Town and buy his supplies at the Waterfront market, but considering they leaned primarily toward an interesting collection of imported pastas, organically grown produce and expensive juices, he felt he’d do better stocking the galley at a regular supermarket.

  Besides, it was farther away. Anything that would take a few extra minutes of time was fine by him, because every minute would bring Tam closer to sobriety.

  Veronica didn’t say a thing as they drove along North Roosevelt toward the shopping center. Traffic was stirring as the poor sods who actually lived there headed toward another day of taking care of tourists.

  When he pulled into the parking lot, finding a slot near the door, he set the brake but left the engine running. Swiveling in his seat, he looked at Veronica.

  She was staring steadfastly ahead, every line of her posture saying she was unhappy. Her hearing aids filled her ears, and he found himself thinking how uncomfortable they must be. And he still felt like a real crud for what he had said about her shouting. That had been a truly low blow.

  He touched her arm, trying not to notice how silky her skin felt, trying not to notice how she flinched away from the touch. But she looked at him.

  “I need you to help me pick out the kinds of things you want to eat for the next few days. Tam and I would probably settle for bread, cold cuts, and mustard.”

  She nodded, but didn’t speak.

  Then without thinking, he added, “Something strange happened last night.”

  “What did you say?”

  He realized that he’d glanced away. He did it too often. He also noticed that she was trying to speak more quietly.

  “I said, something strange happened last night.”

  “What?”

  “Do you know a man named Luis Cortes?”

  She shook her head, her brow knitting. “Who?”

  He leaned across her, trying not to notice how good she smelled, and pulled a pad and pen out of the jumbled glove box. He wrote the name on the pad and passed it to her. “Luis Cortes,” he said again. “Do you know him?”

  “No. Who is he?”

  “That’s what I’m wondering. He says he’s from Venezuela.”

  The look of perplexity was on her face again, so he reached for the pad. Apparently she still had some trouble lipreading, especially when it came to things she couldn’t guess from context. He wondered how much of what he said she really heard, and how much she was interpolating. He scrawled, “He comes from Venezuela. Says he’s an archaeologist.”

  She shook her head and passed the pad back to him. “I don’t know him. Why?”

  “I met him last night. He was asking about you.”

  “Me?” She turned her head, and Dugan wondered if she was shutting him out. But after a moment she faced him again. “What did he want to know?”

  “He didn’t exactly ask anything. He just sort of mentioned what you were doing, and that he’d learned about you because of the permits you got. Said he was just generally interested in wrecks.”

  Veronica nodded slowly, indicating she understood him. She didn’t say anything immediately, but fell into a study of her hands. After a minute or so, she spoke, her gaze returning to his face. “What did you think?”

  “Of him?” Dugan shrugged. “I was uneasy. But the questions seemed casual enough.”

  She sighed softly and gazed out the window for a while. When she finally spoke again, she didn’t look at him. “My mother searched for this mask, too. She fell overboard and drowned.”

  “And?” He couldn’t tell if she knew what he said, but she didn’t seem to care because she didn’t even glance at him.

  “The coroner said it was an accident—that she fell, bumped her head, and drowned.”

  “It’s been known to happen.”

  She continued as if she hadn’t heard him. “My father believes she may have been killed.”

  The simple statement rocked Dugan. He stared at her, then looked out the window as if trying to remind himself he was sitting in a truck on dry land in front of a supermarket on another perfectly ordinary Key West day.

  But he didn’t believe it. “He thinks someone killed her?”

  She didn’t answer, and he supposed she hadn’t been able to read his lips, considering he was looking the other way.

  Indignation began to fill him. He turned to face her directly, and found her blue eyes were wide, unblinking. Almost distant. He didn’t like that distance, not when a whole bunch of emotions were bouncing around inside him like a batch of Ping-Pong balls shot out of a cannon.

  “You didn’t tell me this was dangerous!” Which, it suddenly struck him, was a stupid thing to say because diving
and wreck salvage were always dangerous, even when you didn’t drag the possibility of bad guys into it.

  “It’s not,” she said, forgetting her earlier attempts to keep her voice down.

  “Your mother got killed!”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  He shook his head, hardly believing his ears. Miraculously, his hangover was gone, probably driven out by the anger he was feeling. “Look, maybe you’re stupid enough to risk your neck hunting for a piece of gold that somebody is willing to kill for, but I’m not! I’m outta here. Now.”

  He waited, but she didn’t say anything, just continued to look at him with those wide eyes. Anger and frustration seethed in him, but frustration was beginning to get the upper hand. Finally, unwilling to continue this standoff another minute, he said, “Get yourself somebody else, lady. You’re more trouble than I’m willing to take on.” Facing front, he reached to release the brake.

  The touch of her hand stopped him. It was a light touch, but strangely electrifying. He froze, then turned his head slowly to look at her.

  “My mother wasn’t murdered,” she said. “The coroner had no reason to suspect foul play.”

  “Then why did you bring it up?”

  “Because of what you said about this Luis Cortes.”

  “So it crossed your mind that your father might be right.”

  She nodded. “But that was a long time ago, Dugan. Even if my father is right, there’s no reason to think that the same thing could happen after twenty-five years.”

  Probably not. However, life had taught him that lightning could indeed strike twice. “I don’t know about this.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t like this. From what you said, this mask is extraordinarily valuable.”

  “Only from an archaeological point of view. The gold in it couldn’t amount to all that much.”

  “You could say the same thing about a Van Gogh. It’s valuable only from an artistic perspective. Otherwise, it’s just a collection of paints and canvas.”

  He noted she didn’t disagree with him. That didn’t make him feel any better.

  “Are you quitting?” she asked finally.

  “No.” No, he wasn’t quitting, because he couldn’t live with himself if he did. God knew who she might find to replace him. It wasn’t that there weren’t a lot of reputable boat owners and divers on the island, but there were a lot of the other kind too. And there was no way to be sure she didn’t fall in with someone utterly unscrupulous.

  God, he hated being a white knight. It always got him into trouble.

  “Something else,” he said, taking care to be sure that she could read him. “Why do you want to keep this a secret? Wouldn’t it be safer if everyone knew what you were doing?”

  “No. I’ve heard about what happens. There’ll be a whole horde of searchers out there trying to undercut us.”

  She might have a point. Off the top of his head he could think of a number of people who wouldn’t be able to resist the challenge.

  “Okay, okay,” he said finally. “But let’s get a few things clear. You run the search. I run everything else. Because while you may have a clear idea what to look for and where, I’ll bet you don’t know diddly-squat about . . .”

  “Don’t know what?” she interrupted.

  “I’ll bet you don’t know anything about sailing or diving.”

  “Not much,” she admitted.

  “So you leave that to me. Otherwise, there’s going to be blood on the decks before a week is out.”

  He didn’t know if she understood the last part of what he said. Probably not, because she stuck out her hand, and said, “Deal.”

  He wished he believed she was going to be able to stick to it. But he doubted it. She struck him as having exactly the driven, anal-retentive personality that was never going to be able to keep its mouth shut.

  Oh, well, he thought philosophically. It was better than wondering what she was thinking.

  As they walked into the store together, Veronica wondered about Dugan Gallagher. He was more volatile than the men she was accustomed to. More immediate. Whatever he was thinking apparently came out of his mouth. He seemed incapable of subterfuge or caginess. What you saw was what you got, evidently.

  That could be a good thing, she supposed, but it wasn’t going to make him easy to work with. She was still irritated that he was hungover this morning, and she found herself tensing when they passed the beer display, wondering if he was going to insist they had to buy a few six-packs for the cooler on the boat.

  But he passed the display without a second look. Apparently he had meant it when he said he didn’t drink when he was going to dive. And she found herself comparing him to Larry, who had believed that a beer or two after work, and a six-pack on Saturday, was his God-given right.

  Funny, too, how that hadn’t bothered her before the accident. She hadn’t given it a second thought. Ever since that night, however, the mere whiff of beer made her stomach turn over.

  She helped Dugan decide on a menu for the next four days. Lots of canned goods and other staples, and less of things that needed refrigeration. “It’s a small refrigerator,” he explained.

  She was going to be missing salads an awful lot, and getting tired of canned stew. But these were normal deprivations on a dig, and she knew she could live with them. She just wondered why she had thought it was going to be any easier on a boat than in some remote part of the Yucatán.

  Dugan bought far more than three people could possibly eat in a few days. Veronica looked at the mounting pile of cans and bottles, and finally had to say something. “We’re not going to eat all of that before we come ashore again.”

  “No, we’re not,” he agreed. “But I learned a long time ago never to sail without additional provisions. You never know what might happen.”

  She hadn’t thought about that, which in retrospect seemed foolish. There was an awful lot of water out there and even though the seas in this area were heavily traveled, there was no guarantee that another boat would pass within sight. It just wasn’t the same as traveling along a major highway.

  She threw three more cans of bartlett pears in the basket because she loved them. Why not? She was paying for the food.

  Back at the boat they found Tam stretched out asleep on the stern bench.

  “He’s going to get a burn,” Veronica remarked, envisioning all the delays that would cause.

  “Nah,” Dugan answered. “Not possible. His skin is galvanized steel.”

  It took her a few seconds to understand, then, reluctantly, she laughed. “Yeah? I still say he’s going to make some dermatologist wealthy eventually.”

  He apparently appreciated her humor, because suddenly his dark eyes were crinkled in the corners, and his white teeth were gleaming. With a sense of shock, Veronica realized that she found him attractive, especially that smile. Unnerved, she took a half step backward, as if to escape what she was suddenly feeling.

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s stash the groceries. Then I want to show you how to do a few things just in case.”

  “Just what?” God, how she hated asking people to repeat themselves. It was humiliating. Embarrassing. And she was sure every time she did so that it was going to be one time too many and that they were going to get impatient or frustrated. As a rule, she simply avoided dealing with people in order to avoid the entire problem.

  He turned toward her so that he faced her fully. “Come with me,” he said, more slowly. “We’ll put the groceries away.”

  She nodded. She’d already figured out that part because she’d understood “put” and “groceries” and had extrapolated the rest of it.

  “I also want to show you some things about running the boat. In case something happens and you need to help.”

  “Okay.”

  He smiled, as if pleased that she understood, and she suddenly felt like a first grader who was getting a pat on the head. She didn’t like the sensation at all. But mayb
e she had misinterpreted his smile. Even she was becoming aware that she had grown prickly, and apt to read negative things into innocent words and gestures. Even she had begun to realize that she was always on the defensive.

  She followed him down to the galley and unloaded the bags while he put everything away, showing her where it all went. Then he led her up the ladder and into the control center, which he told her was a covered cockpit.

  “Cockpit? Like on a plane?”

  “Yup. Later, when we set out, I’ll show you a little bit about driving the boat, okay?”

  “I can’t do that. I don’t know anything about it. Besides, you’re driving.” The thought of having to do so herself made her distinctly uneasy. Since her deafness, she’d been uneasy about a lot of things, and no longer had the confidence that had once carried her into new situations.

  He held up a finger. “Yes, you can do it. I can show you what you need to know. And yes, I will be driving most of the time. But what if something happens?”

  “What could happen?” She hadn’t even entertained the possibility that she might be alone on a boat in the middle of the water. “Dugan . . . if I have to drive this thing because something happens . . . I’m not going to know how to get home.”

  His mouth twisted. She thought he sighed, but she couldn’t hear it.

  “I’ll show you everything you need to know,” he said. “You’re a smart woman. But you have to know how to take care of yourself out on the water.”

  She nodded, ignoring the whole childish feeling that was coming over her, a feeling of resistance and resentment. It was a mark of what had happened to her that she was feeling this way. A little over a year ago, she would have leapt into this eagerly, and she knew it.

  She didn’t like the change.

  “The radio,” he said. “Here.” He pointed, then looked at her again. “Emergency beacon. You hit this switch . . .” He paused to point. “. . . and it will send an automatic distress signal until the batteries die.”

  She leaned closer and looked at the switch his finger was on. “Okay.”

  His finger moved to the next button, and she hastened to look at him, to read his lips. “This turns the radio on and off. You can leave it on speaker, so you can hear over the loudspeakers, or you can—”