Suzanne Mcminn - Deep Blue

“I’ll go to the police. Or the FBI or the CIA or somebody! Surely they can provide protection. Who do you think you are anyway?” she demanded. He was Cade Brock, playboy and treasure hunter, but that didn’t explain everything she’d seen tonight. It didn’t explain the way he’d jumped from that car at Sabrina’s apartment to shoot it out with those gunmen to rescue her, nor did it explain what had happened in that lagoon, unless she’d imagined that part. And surely she had.

The light changed. He had one eye trained on the mirror, watching the road behind as they headed for the bridge connecting Key Mango to the next key.

“You go to the police,” he said, “and your sister’s going to end up in prison for the rest of her life. It doesn’t matter whether Ramiro’s globe can really provide the sort of information they think it can—if she helps a terror group find it, she could end up charged with conspiracy, or worse. You stick with me, and maybe that won’t happen. I don’t want to hurt Sabrina. I want to help her. She’s into something bad, and she’s in it over her head. Whatever game she was playing with these people, they’re tired of it. They weren’t playing tonight.”

“Why do you want to help her?” And why had he thought her name was Tabitha? Why would her sister have been using a false identity? Because she was up to her eyeballs in something illegal.

Oh, God, he could be telling her the truth. She didn’t want Sabrina to end up in prison. And she didn’t want to end up dead. He’d saved her life twice tonight. Maybe he could save Sabrina’s and get her out of this mess before she ended up in jail.

“Are you a friend of hers?” she demanded.

“Something like that.”

Something like that. That wasn’t a real answer.

“What do you want with me?” Maybe—maybe—he was Sabrina’s friend, maybe he wasn’t the man Sabrina had been involved with, but why would he help her, too? “That was fifteen years ago. I don’t know which one of those sites could have been the Santa Josefa.”

“Did you look at those charts again?”

“Yes. I looked at them. They were my father’s original charts. There were ten sites marked.”

“Then you can duplicate them,” he said. “That’s a start.”

“So what if I help you find the globe? What then?”

“I’ll turn it over to the proper authorities.”

Would he? According to what the article had said, he was rumored to live outside the law when it came to treasure hunting. And he couldn’t know it, but he might as well have just asked her to poke a stick in her eye. The last place she wanted to go was back in time to the shipwreck that had stolen her father’s life, broken her mother’s mental health and nearly destroyed her.

But he was telling her it might be the only way she could save Sabrina’s life and keep her out of jail. He was right, she had to pick who she would trust, and she had to pick now. He’d saved her life twice. That had to mean something.

And if it didn’t, then she was about to make a big mistake.

“Shouldn’t government authorities already be involved?” she asked, thinking desperately. “If you know—”

“I know because Tabitha—Sabrina—told me. She wanted to know if I’d pay more for the information to find the globe than they were offering. But you’re right. Authorities will find out, if they haven’t already. Word gets around in the treasure hunting community. That’s why there’s no time. If we’re going to stop this thing, we have to do it now. They’ve got the charts, but they don’t have Sabrina, at least not yet. And I have you.”

She didn’t want to believe Sabrina would really do this, but he had a point. If they brought up the globe, that would be the end of it. No way could she do it on her own. But Cade Brock…

He would have all the means at his disposal. She swallowed the huge lump in her throat. Did she even care what he did with the globe? All she cared about was Sabrina.

“If I help you find the globe, are you going to help me find Sabrina?”

He cut his hard, blue-black gaze on her. “Oh, we’ll find her. I promise you that.”

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