Karen Harper - Below The Surface

She turned to face him and found herself staring at the beating pulse in his strong, bronzed throat. He was half a head taller than she, but his broad shoulders made him seem larger than that. His eyes were a rich mahogany hue, framed by long, thick lashes. She could see her reflection there, could almost drown in their depths.

For one crazed instant, she longed to throw herself into his arms and just hold tight, to beg him to take this burden from her, comfort her, let her hide in his strength. But she did none of those things. Tackle a problem head-on, Dad would have said. It was the way she was and Daria, too. But had Daria, out on that boat in those rough waves, tried to take on something—or someone—she could not handle?

“Cole, I know that area and the currents like the back of my hand. I have to do this or I’ll never forgive myself. I’m certain I would feel something if she weren’t…weren’t alive. But I do sense she’s in danger. Call it women’s intuition or a sister’s sixth sense. I just have to go check the dive site.”

“Then I’ll go with you—on one condition. If you begin to feel ill down there or I see anything I don’t like, that’s it, we’re out. And we’re not going to do any kind of wide sweep for the camera if it’s not near the dive site. Promise me,” he said, gripping her upper arms, “because I mean it. I’ll pull you right out of there—again.”

“Yes, all right, I promise. I owe you doubly. I really think God sent you to find me, and to help find Daria.”

“Then I just pray I’m up to pleasing all three of you,” he said and surprised her with a hard hug before he let her go.

While Manny was preparing the skiff and putting air in their tanks and Cole drove to his workshop where he kept his own diving gear, Bree made four quick calls. She phoned the hospital main desk to officially check herself out. They were very upset and said they’d inform Dr. Hawkins immediately, but she hung up before they could page him. Bree knew Amelia would try to stop her from diving, so she called her at home and got her answering machine. That was what she’d hoped for, since Amelia should be picking up Jordan and James from their private elementary school about now. She left her a message that she was feeling much stronger and had decided to come home.

She then phoned the coast guard emergency contact number and, after no news there, the civil air patrol information line. She was disappointed and dismayed to learn her pilot friend, Dave Mangold, was out of town and had not participated in the air search. There was no sign of Daria or their boat, but both organizations would keep her informed.

Informed. She was terrified to get a call from either of them.

Realizing she’d left her mermaid diving suit at the hospital, she donned an old pink spandex wet suit and hurried downstairs. Though she didn’t intend to tell Cole, she felt strange, kind of floaty, but she had to do this and now. Surely, this almost out-of-body feeling was not related to Daria’s fate.

Dad had told them once that, even though he was outside in the waiting room when their mother died in the delivery room, he knew the exact moment when she’d gone because he felt kind of like he’d taken off from the ground. It was so bizarre, he’d said, like the feeling when you ride a roller coaster and go over the highest drop. There was no thrill, only an awed sense of doom. But Bree didn’t want to remember all that, didn’t want to think of that.

As she went to check her desk phone for messages, she heard heavy footsteps and turned to see if Manny or Cole were back. Big, burly Sam Travers, who ran the rival business across the bay, stood in the doorway, not in, not out. He seemed to block out the light and air.

With a bulky build and a face and body hardened by years of physical labor, Sam stood slightly over six feet tall. His hair had been gray for years, and he wore it cut tight to his head, which emphasized his prominent ears and narrowed eyes. Crow’s feet perched at the corners, matching his deep frown lines. Sam had never given in to wearing sunglasses or caps.

Bree recalled from years ago when she and Ted used to hang out together all the time, that his father, now a sixty-four-year-old proud Vietnam War vet, looked angry even when he wasn’t. Since she’d broken up with Ted, though, anger was his perpetual mood around her.

Sam had never been able to forget or forgive that she had broken up with his only child after going steady with him for almost five years, two and a half in high school and then the first two of college. That had started what Sam called a fatal chain of events. But once she was away from Turtle Bay, even though she and Ted were at college just across the state, her world had expanded and Ted’s had not.

He’d been jealous of her new friends and her snorkeling and scuba students, even of the time she spent with Daria. He’d wanted to drive home most weekends, when she had things to do in Miami. He hadn’t really liked college, and she’d thrived there. Maybe he’d become so stridently possessive because his mother had deserted him and Sam while Ted was still in elementary school, but it didn’t do any good to try to analyze him. It just wasn’t working for Bree anymore, but when she’d tried to reason with him, tried to back away, he’d stormed out and joined the marines—the foreign legion, Daria had called it—without even telling Sam.

So while Ted had gone through basic battle training at Paris Island, South Carolina, Sam Travers had begun his war with Bree. He’d blamed her entirely when Ted was killed by a roadside bomb thousands of miles away in Iraq last year. And when he’d been buried with military honors, Sam had exploded at her, telling her to stay away from the funeral, and Daria had gone alone. Things certainly had not gotten better when she and Daria had opened a competitive search-and-salvage shop, though much smaller and more specialized, on Sam’s turf.

Now he stood in her doorway, glaring at her. Ordinarily, she’d be only too happy if she never saw Sam Travers again, but she needed his help.

“Yo,” he said in his usual strident voice, which seemed even louder now. “I was looking for Manny the man, ’cause the TV says you’re still in the hospital. Just wanted to tell him I been out looking for Daria.”

Bree stayed behind her desk. “Thanks for anything you can do. I was going to call you, but I’ve been talking to the coast guard and the air patrol about the rescue efforts.”

“They’re good at talk. You want to find something—in this case, someone—you call Sam. You and I had some bad spots, but I got nothing ’gainst her. I’m going out again.”

Bad spots? she thought. During these past three years after Ted enlisted, Sam had ranted at her, especially when he was drinking, and she’d come to fear him. However much she sympathized with his loss and grieved Ted’s death, she’d even considered getting a restraining order. Ben, her prosecutor brother-in-law, had suggested it, but she didn’t want to admit weakness to Sam, who sometimes seemed right on the edge of becoming a stalker. There were times when she and Daria thought he turned up everywhere.

“I can’t thank you enough for helping,” Bree brazened, though her voice shook. “I know if anyone can find Daria and Mermaids II, it’s you.”

“Yeah, well, bodies might not surface for over a week, but wrecks only give up a trail of bubbles for about twenty-four hours. Time’s awastin’. You facing up to the fact I been using my echo sounder?”

“I’m sure she’s all right…not—the skiff’s not sunk. She put in somewhere. She’s safe, I can feel it.”

“Yeah, I was sure Ted would be all right, too, big guy like that, body armor and all. A well-trained, gung ho marine riding shotgun on an armored tank. Maybe I’m doing this for him, huh, since Daria was his friend, even if you never really were.”