The Vision

“You’re sounding like a callous son of a bitch, and I know better,” Jack told him. “What you are is so focused on diving that you don’t mind going through women like Kleenex.”

Thor arched a brow. “Yeah? Haven’t seen you settle down.”

“Never knew a woman could keep up—in my generation. They probably existed somewhere. We just didn’t cross paths.”

“I don’t play where I work,” he said softly.

Jack let out a guffaw. “That’s ’cause the one woman on our team is married and an Amazon to boot.”

“Now, who’s being a son of a bitch?”

“Me? I think Lizzie’s great, but she’s all business. Tough as nails, and I think she could take me if we were arm wrestling. And if she couldn’t, well, who the hell would want to mess with Zach?”

Thor shrugged, amused. Lizzie—Elizabeth Green—was not a woman to be taken lightly. She wasn’t an inch shorter than his own six-three. Her husband, Zach, had been a professional basketball player, and between them, they were a daunting pair. Lizzie waged a lot of the company’s battles when they were seeking permits for projects. She could best almost any man. “Lizzie’s tough. And down to earth. She isn’t going to fly off the handle, seeing corpses that aren’t really there.”

“Come on. Everyone’s been spooked by something once or twice.”

“Maybe.”

“And you’re a pile of crap yourself, Thor.”

“You think?”

“You’d have your tongue on the pavement if she crooked her little finger.”

“Yeah? Bull.” He spoke coolly, but he knew he was lying. The nutcase was almost explosively hot. But he hadn’t been lying when he said he didn’t fool around where he worked. Even on a long haul, they put into port somewhere, and that’s where he did his playing. Complications on a job were something nobody needed.

“I call ’em like I see ’em,” Jack said flatly. “No one’s ever accused me of lying.”

“Hell, I’m accusing you right now,” Thor said.

Jack laughed, noticing that Thor was watching the other table again. “Remember, Thor, the mighty can fall,” he said.

“Yeah, yeah. I’ve been hearing that ‘mighty Thor’ shit all my life,” Thor told him, then waved to the bartender, the owner’s son, ordering another round.

“We all looked, Genevieve,” Victor said. “There was nothing there.”

“I’m telling you, I saw a woman’s body,” Genevieve repeated stubbornly, her jaw set. “Look, I don’t know if it was some kind of a joke, or if there’s a real murder victim down there. But I didn’t hallucinate. I saw it.”

Bethany Clark touched Genevieve’s knee. “Hey, honey, all of us see things down there sometimes. It’s the mind playing tricks. The water playing tricks, causing visual distortion.”

“Have another beer,” Victor said dryly. “It will make everything better.”

Genevieve groaned, gritting her teeth. She couldn’t say they hadn’t tried. She had kicked her way to the surface with the speed of lightning. Thankfully, she hadn’t been deep. The moment the woman had opened her eyes and smiled, she had felt such a sense of sheer panic that she had rocketed to the surface, which could have been deadly if she had been down deep. When she’d reached the surface, she had nearly choked on salt water, spitting out her regulator and waving her arms madly.

Marshall Miro, head of their unit, had been on board, and she knew she’d been babbling as he’d helped her out. Victor had surfaced right after her, having seen her ascent. Then Bethany and Alex, not too far distant, had come up, and Bethany had stayed aboard while the others had gone down, searching for the woman’s body. The Seeker, one of their fellow ships, had been in the vicinity, as well. Her crew had gone down, too.

And none of them had seen anything.

Maybe she had imagined the eyes opening, the woman reaching out, but she had seen a body. She just didn’t know what had happened to it.

Unfortunately, she had babbled something about the eyes and the fact that the dead woman had moved, even tried to speak, and now even Bethany, her best friend, thought she was crazy.

She glanced around the small resort in the old-town area of Key West where they were staying. She actually owned a house not even half a mile away that her great-great-however-many-greats-grandfather had built on the island years before the Civil War.

But this place was a local hangout. Jack kept his beat-up old fishing boat here, and there was one slip where three of the area cops kept their boats berthed. They liked to come here just to have coffee, or drinks in the evening.

She’d stayed here on purpose to be able to work this project at the blink of an eye with the others. Their dive boat was right there, where they needed it, along with The Seeker. There was no spa or twenty-four-hour room service, but what it did have was true old Conch charm. The main house had been built in the 1800s. Bungalows had been added right around World War II and were spread out over a sandy beach, and each offered an outside table and chairs on a little individual patio. There was also the tiki bar and “munch house,” as they called it, which opened at seven in the morning and stayed open until midnight or so. The night bartender was the owner’s son, so he kept it open as long as he was having fun. The menu wasn’t gourmet, but it was fresh and delicious.

Despite the fact the divers following her garbled directions hadn’t found a body, Genevieve had insisted on reporting what she had seen to the police—by then calm enough to report the body but not the fact it had seemed to move of its own volition. It had been late when they had actually returned to shower and change and meet here at the bar to dine on fresh fish sandwiches, and the resort’s own coleslaw and potato salad.

“Okay, guys, laugh at me all you want. I saw a body,” she said firmly.

Bethany lowered her sandy head. Victor, Alex and Marshall all stared at one another, trying not to smile.

“Hey, Gen,” Victor teased her. “There’s a lady at the bar who wants to buy you a drink…look—Whoops, no, sorry, you didn’t act fast enough. She’s disappeared.”

Genevieve glared at him through narrowed eyes. She wanted to wring his neck. Of all people to be so taunting…They’d gone through school together. He was a year older, but she’d matured faster, and having a shape in high school had been tantamount to being cool back then. She’d taken him with her to every social event in their adolescent past.

In college he’d finally filled out and grown a few hairs on his chest. He’d grown into his features, as well, and now he was tall, dark and good-looking. They’d never ruined a good friendship by dating, but he could irritate her as thoroughly as if they were a married couple.

“Victor…” she began.

Grinning, he waved a hand. “Yeah, yeah, I know what I can go do with myself.”

“Hey, kid, it will be all right,” Marshall said, but he, too, was still secretly smiling. At least someone was amused, she thought. Marshall was the owner and founder of Deep Down Salvage as well as a local. As a kid, he’d been fascinated by the history of Key West, which was inextricably entwined with tales of wreckers and salvage divers. It was a mixed history. Sometimes they had saved the lives of the poor souls on a ship that came to ruin on the dangerous reefs.

Sometimes, however, they waited like vultures—hoping ships carrying rich cargos would flounder and sink. Such a system had created many a rich man throughout the centuries.

Marshall was at least ten years older than most of their group. He had made his name by working in the northern waters off Massachusetts, doing heavy-duty, cold-water salvage. But Key West was his home, the place he loved. He had used his earnings to come back and open his own company, buy his own boat and equipment, and set up shop. He made a good income, but he was always pleased to work on any historical effort, and he had a tremendous respect for the reefs, the water and the past. Deeply tanned and buff, and dead even with her own height, he kept his head shaven, a look that went oddly well with his almost ebony eyes and dark brows.

Sitting with his feet up, shades on despite the setting sun, he grimaced. “We’ll find out that there was something down there. You know…flotsam and jetsam of some kind.”

Alex hummed a version of The Twilight Zone theme song. “Yeah, flotsam and jetsam with a face and hair,” he teased.

She glared at him, hiking a brow. Alex was from Key Largo, a different world from Key West, since the city of Miami was barely an hour north. He was blond, bronzed and a child of the sea and sun, a graduate in history and a master diver, but she’d shown him secrets of the reefs here that only the natives knew.

“Oh, you—” she said, then broke off in aggravation and rose, taking her beer with her to the little fence that looked out over a deep channel where the resort’s pleasure crafts and fishing boats were berthed.

“Don’t go away mad!” Alex called.

She spun around, shaking her head and forcing a smile as well. “Just wait, my dear, devoted friends! Somewhere along the line, you will get yours. I’m not going away mad, I’m just going away.”

“Hey, don’t be mad at me,” Bethany said.

“I’m not mad,” Genevieve insisted.

She walked on down to the dock, nursing her beer, looking out at the sunset. It was beautiful and tranquil, but she was roiling inside. Why had she been so panicked? She’d twice worked rescue situations that had become retrieval situations, and they had found bodies both times, once after a plane crash in the southern Glades, and once after a boating accident off Key West.