she agreed or not, she’d consider all the angles. “You haven’t changed either,” he murmured.
“I thought the same of you. We’re both wrong. Neither of us have stayed the same. That’s as it should be.” Kate looked away from him, further east, then gave a quick cryof pleasure. “Oh, look!” Without thinking, she put her hand on his arm, slender fingers gripping taut muscle. “Dolphins.”
She watched them, a dozen, perhaps more, leap and dive in their musical pattern. Pleasure was touched with envy. To move like that, she thought, from water to air and back to water again. It was a freedom that might drive a man mad with the glory of it. But what a madness…
“Fantastic, isn’t it?” she murmured. “To be part of the air and the sea. I’d nearly forgotten.”
“How much?” Ky studied her profile until he could have etched the shape of it on the wind. “How much have you nearly forgotten?”
Kate turned her head, only then realizing just how close they stood. Unconsciously, she’d moved nearer to him when she’d seen the dolphins. Now she could see nothing but his face, inches from hers, feel nothing but the warm skin beneath her hand. His question, the depth of it, seemed to echo off the surface of the water to haunt her.
She stepped back. The drop before her was very deep and torn with rip tides. “All that was necessary,” she said simply. “I’d like to look over my father’s charts. Did you bring them on board?”
“Your briefcase is in the cabin.” His hands gripped the wheel tightly, as though he were fighting against a storm. Perhaps he was. “You should be able to find your way below.”
Without answering, Kate walked around him to the short steep steps that led below decks.
There were two narrow bunks with the spreads taut enough to bounce a coin if one was dropped. The galley just beyond would have all the essentials, she knew, in small, efficient scale. Everything would be in its place, as tidy as a monk’s cell.
Kate could remember lying with Ky on one of the pristine bunks, flushed with passion while the boat swayed gently in the current and the music from his radio played jazz.
She gripped the leather of her case as if the pain in her fingers would help fight off the memories. To fight everything off entirely was too much to expect, but the intensity eased. Carefully she unfolded one of her father’s charts and spread it on the bunk.
Like everything her father had done, the chart was precise and without frills. Though it had certainly not been his field, Hardesty had drawn a chart any sailor would have trusted.
It showed the coast of North Caroline, Pamlico Sound and the Outer Banks, from Manteo to Cape Lookout. As well as the lines of latitude and longitude, the chart also had the thin crisscrossing lines that marked depth.
Seventy-six degrees north by thirty-five degrees east. From the markings, that was the area her father had decided the Liberty had gone down. That was southeast of Ocracoke by no more than a few miles. And the depth…Yes, she decided as she frowned over the chart, the depth would still be considered shallow diving. She and Ky would have the relative freedom of wet suits andtanks rather than the leaded boots and helmets required for deep-sea explorations.
X marks the spot she thought, a bit giddy, but made herself fold the chart with the same care she’d used to open it. She felt the boat slow then heard the resounding silence when the engines shut off. A fresh tremor of anticipation went through her as she climbed the steps into the sunlight again.
Ky was already checking the tanks though she knew he would have gone over all the equipment thoroughly before setting out. “We’ll go down here,” he said as he rose from his crouched position. “We’re about half a mile from the last place your father went in last summer.”
In one easy motion he pulled off his shirt. Kate knew he was self aware, but he’d never been self-conscious. Ky
Dean Pitchford
Marja McGraw
Gabriella Poole
C.M. Stunich
Sarah Rayner
Corinne Duyvis
Heleyne Hammersley
George Stephanopoulos
Ruthie Knox
Alyson Noël