Night Diver: A Novel

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Authors: Elizabeth Lowell
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it’s worth money,” he said cynically. “So far this job is red ink and frustration. Can you keep us afloat?”
    “I can see about restructuring various old and new debts.” Which never should have been taken on . “With less going out to service debts, you’ll have a chance.” She hesitated, then said, “Don’t sign another contract until you run it by me. Moon Rose can’t survive it.”
    “I’m not the captain.”
    “That’s not what you told Holden.”
    Grandpa resettled the pipe stem in his teeth. “Larry can’t handle that stuffed shirt. I can.”
    She let that go by. “What about the crew? Can Larry handle them?”
    “He hired them.”
    “That’s not an answer.”
    Grandpa bit down on the pipe stem.
    “You’ve worked with divers all your life,” she said. “Are these men honest?”
    “As honest as anyone is.” Then he added impatiently, “Larry has been Golden Bough ’s official captain for five years.”
    “Larry is the best first mate you could ask for and an even better diver,” she said. “But after two minutes aboard, I knew he wasn’t the captain in anything but name.”
    “I’m an old man, Kitty darling. It was never supposed to be this way. But your father died, you left, and Larry stayed.”
    Cold to the soul, tugging at her father’s slack body, screaming “Where’s Mom? When did I lose her? Where’s Mom!”
    Nothing answered but the spray of salt water over the workboat’s gunwale.
    Nothing ever had answered.
    Kate forced memories aside. She couldn’t change the past. She just had to live with it.
    “I’ll do what I can,” she said, “but I can’t help if you know more than I do. I think that Holden Cameron is the kind of man who is sent out when his bosses don’t trust the salvage crew.”
    “So what? If I had the treasure, I’d have taken it and sold it in Venezuela or any other place that wants to spit in the eye of the West. But I’m here, so I don’t have the treasure.”
    “Don’t be so contrary,” she said. “I know you and Larry, but I don’t know the crew. This is serious. Holden was taking pictures of the gold that we just found, as if he suspected it wouldn’t make it up to be cataloged.”
    “God-rotting bureaucrats.”
    “I’m not happy about being on the god-rotting sea, but here I am.” Then she remembered his house in Florida, his collections, and an explanation she really didn’t want to hear. “Grandpa, you aren’t keeping this dive afloat out of your own pocket, are you?”
    He bit down on the pipe stem. Hard.
    And ignored her.
    “That’s your retirement,” she said, “and Larry’s legacy from our parents. Without it, there is nothing for either of you!”
    He looked at the distant horizon where a coy storm was flirting with the future.
    She wanted to scream at him, to shake him, to make him listen. But she couldn’t rage at the man whose eyes were so like her dead father’s. She could only do the best she could with what she had right now.
    “Come with me,” she said. “It’s time to meet with our very own bureaucrat.”
    “I belong up here.”
    “We’re at anchor and you have an alarm set,” she said, pointing to the small inset on the nav screen. “If we drag anchor, the whole boat will know it. Stop stalling.”
    With that, she turned and opened the wheelhouse door, only to find herself looking into Holden’s startling eyes. He was standing on the narrow walkway just to the side of the door.
    “There you are,” he said. “Larry is waiting for us. I told him I would fetch you and your grandfather.”
    How long has he been standing here? she wondered. Could he hear us? Then she remembered the open porthole. Of course he could.
    “A boat is too small a place to keep secrets,” Grandpa said behind her.
    Holden smiled.
    It was nothing like the sexy smile that had startled Kate earlier.

CHAPTER 5
     
    L ARRY HADN’T MOVED from where Holden had left him, head propped on his crossed arms on the long wooden

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