Chapter 1

May's noon sun veiled Caroline Parish in bright heat as she watched the waves lapping at the charter boat's hull. For the last nine years she'd worked as a salvage diver, and even jokingly referred to the sea as her office. Working in the intense light, crisp, salty air and the boundless sapphire waters off the coast of Florida usually brought her a sense of peace. She sometimes wondered if she would ever be as happy on land.

This is the last place I want to be today.

Her work came with significant risks; performing a tethered site inspection thirty miles from land without two backup divers could only be called spectacularly stupid. Everyone in the diving community back in St. Augustine would have tried to talk her out of it. Yet while hunting for a notorious wreck with her partner she'd done it a dozen times, and even allowed herself to be persuaded to make one final dive.

After this I can walk away with a clean conscience.

"I know you can only compare the scan to what you see," Richard Ellis said as he strapped the emergency air supply tank onto her back. Tall, lean and tanned to a deep bronze that matched his shaggy hair, he had a handsome surfer's face and soulful brown eyes. "But the reef is only a hundred and forty feet down, right? If you could find just one coin, that will help us prove our claim to the wreck."

Caroline didn't reply as she finished checking her gear. Because of his asthma her partner had never been able to dive, so he had no idea of how dangerous her work could be. Out here the bottom was more likely two hundred feet down, and Rich's need for proof didn't outweigh her need to keep breathing. If she went too deep she risked developing nitrogen narcosis. More than anything, if she saw that greedy gleam in his puppy dog eyes again, she knew she'd call it quits, just as she'd done with their relationship last month after she'd caught Rich cheating.

I never should have gotten involved with a booty junkie.

While her partner liked the ladies a little too much, his real passion had always been hunting sunken treasure. Since boyhood he'd made himself an expert on the 1715 Plate Fleet, twelve ill-fated Spanish ships that had set out four centuries ago from Havana. Unaware that a major hurricane would overtake them, the fleet had been loaded with treasure destined for Spain. Off the coast of Florida the powerful storm had caused eleven of the twelve vessels to sink, killing over two thousand sailors.

Centuries later an ex-chicken farmer from Indiana had found one of the ships, and while he'd ultimately recovered only half of its cargo, it had been worth over four hundred and fifty million dollars. That find had ignited Rich's treasure fever; ever since he'd been researching and hunting for the ships from the fleet that had yet to be found.

I know something about the San Miguel that no one else does, babe.

Last year her partner had somehow gotten his hands on a translation of an obscure medieval journal, one written by a French priest who claimed to have been a passenger on the only ship to survive the storm. That had provided what Rich believed to be important clues as to the fate of the San Miguel, a carrack that had been the fastest vessel in the fleet. The consensus was that the ship had tried to outrun the storm and gone down off the coast near Jacksonville. Yet according to the priest's journal, the San Miguel had suddenly changed course and sailed into the hurricane, trying to plow through it rather than outrun it.

By estimating the position of the observer's ship, the time he'd seen the other vessel, and the speed it had likely been traveling, Rich had determined that the San Miguel had sunk thirty miles off the coast of St. Augustine, some seventy-five miles south of the area everyone else believed the ship had gone down.

No one has found the ship because they've been looking in the wrong place.

Caroline had never had any interest in looting what to her were underwater graveyards. Rich had pointed out that if they were able to find the wreck, she'd become part of history. He'd also offered to make her a full partner and give her fifty percent of the profits from whatever they found, and had even signed a contract guaranteeing that. Wanting to open her own salvage business finally got her to agree; she could use finding the ship as marketing basically forever. Who wouldn't want to hire the diver who'd located and salvaged the San Miguel?

That was before Rich had screwed around on her, of course. Now she just wanted him and his shipwreck fever out of her life.

Caroline's only other problem was knowing that when she bailed on her partner she'd leave him in a very tight spot. He'd put his charter boat business on hold last year to focus on the search. To outfit her with the right gear he'd spent the last of his savings, so she had been paying for their fuel and food every trip. Even if he got a loan, he'd have a very hard time convincing another diver to work alone. He'd grown too paranoid about keeping the wreck location secret to hire a proper crew. Yet if Rich was right about the scans they'd taken, and if the state agreed to give them salvage rights, then they might end up very rich.

All dependent on two ifs, a might, and this one last dive, of course.

"After this trip, we're done," she told him once she'd finished re-checking her gear. "I've accepted a job down in the Keys, and I'm leaving next week." As he started to protest, she finally regarded him. "Please don't tell me again how much you love me. I know you've been screwing every beach bunny in town since Christmas."

Rich made a blustering sound. "Babe, if you ended things because of that blonde you saw me drinking with at the Pelican–"

"Was she the one who left the black lace thong in the laundry hamper, or the fake diamond earring by the phone?" Shutting him up didn't give Caroline a sense of triumph; the whole mess disgusted her. "Look, Rich, we're not married, so it's fine. Like you always say, no blame, no shame. If the wreck is down there, as soon as you get the green light from the state every diver in town will be lining up to work the site. You can just send me a check."

"Of course, I will, babe." He clipped a yellow rope to her harness, and then went over to raise her red and white stripe diver down flag, which signaled to anyone passing that she was in the water. "Be careful, okay?"

She pulled on her helmet, locked it down and breathed in as air started flowing in through the tether. The final test was the flip-down binocular display, which projected an electronic map of the bottom to help her locate the anomaly Rich had found on the pass-over scan he'd done last week. Finally ready, she bowed her head and laced her fingers over the back of her collar ring, silently offering up her usual prayer to the only angel she believed in.

Help me have a good dive, Mama. Make sure my equipment protects me, and my experience guides me, so I can return alive.

Rather than flipping off the side of the charter in a back roll, Caroline stepped over onto the tender platform and dropped into the water to keep her anchor line and tether from tangling. Starting her descent this way also set the tone for the job. As the sea closed over her helmet, Rich, the boat and everything else above the surface stopped mattering to her.

Here, gradually dropping into the deep blue, was her heaven on earth.

The sea seemed bathwater-warm now, but once she passed the thermocline the water temp would drop to frigid. She was glad she'd insisted on Rich providing her with a top-quality heated wet suit along with her deep dive equipment. She planned to leave everything behind for the next diver he'd use to work the site.

"Com check, check, check," Rich said suddenly over her earpiece. "Come back, babe."

"Copy." She frowned, wondering why he was bothering when all she had to do was make one pass and surface. Then she heard the familiar click and whirr of the voice recorder he carried around and used for his endless theories about the wreck. "Are you recording this?"

"We want it to be official for the history books, right?" The false heartiness in his voice sounded odd. "Halfway there yet?"

"No." She couldn't remember him ever once recording their coms chatter on a dive, and glanced up at the bottom of the charter. She didn't like how he kept pushing her to go deep, either; it made her want to call off the whole thing. If she scrubbed now, she'd have to listen to Rich whine about how she'd ruined everything all the way back to the docks. "Unless you want me narked, stand by."

He chuckled. "Yeah, sure. I mean, copy that."

Caroline held onto the anchor line, deliberately slowing herself as she checked her watch. Deep diving not only required specialized gear, air mixes and years of training, but plenty of patience. Out here she also had to be on the lookout for the locals, as plenty of big marine animals liked traveling the warm, food-rich waters of the Gulf Stream. Jellyfish blooms were sometimes a problem, but her suit and gear were designed to protect her from their stings. Sea mammals didn't consider her prey, but dolphins could be aggressive, while killer whales simply got nosy. Most sharks wouldn't bother her unless she bled in the water or messed with them.

As she looked down, the map scan appeared on the flip-down screen with the electronic marks created by vague shadows on the bottom. Expecting to see the shape of an intact ship was the stuff of very bad diver movies; the violence of the hurricane and the immense pressure of the depths had more likely broken the San Miguel into kindling before centuries of tides buried it under tons of silt.

A curve on the map matched up with a barnacled shape at one end of the reef; that had been the thing that had excited Rich so much. Carracks, which in the fourteenth century had been built to be faster than traditional galleons, had a particularly rounded hull at the stern. Two blurs from the scan now looked to her to be the remnant forecastle and aft castle in the configuration that matched the lost ship. That provided the strongest evidence that this actually could be the wreck of the San Miguel.

I should tell him it's a no-go. That would be the ultimate revenge on Rich, to deny him his dream. Good thing she had never been spiteful.

Caroline switched on her waterproof torch and began sweeping the bottom for any sign of debris. She wasn't expecting to see a glint of gold, but after she surfaced, she could truthfully tell Rich she had looked for coins. A humming sound distracted her, and she wrapped her hand around the anchor line before she looked up, only to see the frayed end of the yellow rope drop down in front of her face shield.

"Rich, the anchor line snapped," Caroline said as she grabbed hold of the tether line, and then saw the boat's impeller churning, something that should never happen while she was in the water. "What are you doing? Shut off the engine."

"There's something I didn't tell you." The sound of the recorder clicked off before he added, "That wreck down there is the San Miguel, babe. You're the first one to see it in four hundred years. I really envy you."

Caroline didn't like the tone of his voice, but the coms might be distorting it. "Why wouldn't you tell me that? I didn't need to make the dive."

"Yeah, well, this is where we have to end things, babe. No blame, no shame, right?" He chuckled. "Honestly, in the beginning I liked you a lot. You're gorgeous, and great in bed. Only I was never good enough in the sack for you. Plus that mouth of yours, man, I got tired of that real quick. Didn't anyone ever teach you to be nice?"

What he was saying made absolutely no sense to her at all. "We broke up weeks ago. Why does any of that matter now?"

"I came back yesterday by myself and ran two more scans to confirm the upper deck measurements. They match perfectly." He sighed. "You don't understand what this means to me after all the years of searching. I've put everything I've got in this find. It's gotta be my discovery. Mine alone."

In that moment she knew what he intended. "Richard, don't do this. When we get back I'll tear up the contract and walk away. No one will ever know. I promise."

"I wish I could count on that, babe, but you know me and my trust issues." Rich's voice took on a hard edge as he added, "Not like it's a shocker, right? You said you always expected to die in the water one day."

Her stomach dropped to her heels. "You bastard, don't you dare–"

Caroline's tether jerked as he disconnected her, forcing her to switch over to her emergency air. With forty feet left before she'd reach the surface, she'd never make it in time to grab the tender platform—and just as she'd suspected, the boat's hull shot forward as Rich headed west, leaving her alone and stranded in sea thirty miles from land.

She had never been as alive as she was underwater. Now she was going to die here, alone in the deep blue.

Caroline brokethe surface a few minutes later, where she glimpsed Rich and the boat disappearing at the edge of the western horizon, her diver down flag still fluttering from the rod atop the cabin. Outrage had her shaking so much she made the water around her churn. At the same time, she realized she was on the verge of hyperventilating, and fumbled with the latches on her helmet collar until she could pull it off. To clear her head she took in the air slowly, working through her diaphragmatic breathing exercises until her chest loosened up and her heartbeat finally slowed.

He confirmed the wreck was here yesterday. He brought me out here just to kill me.

Caroline knew how crazy people could get when it came to staking a claim to recovering priceless artifacts. Like winning the lottery, finding lost treasure turned some shipwreck hunters into greedy maniacs. She knew of one salvager who had stiffed his investors and hidden a motherlode of gold coins he'd brought up from a wreck; after seven years he was still sitting in jail for refusing to say where they were.

Some stranger didn't do this to me. Rich and I used to be lovers.

Hindsight really did provide painful clarity. She had been pretty ruthless when she'd dumped him. She'd told him she understood why he couldn't be faithful—even the girls who, unlike her, faked orgasms for him quickly got tired of how lousy he was in bed, so he never could keep a lover for long. No doubt being that blunt had shredded his ego. She also should have guessed from Rich's extreme obsession with the San Miguel that he would want to keep all the gold and glory for himself. He must have figured staging a diving accident as the only way to cancel the contract and pay her back for emasculating him. No witnesses, no evidence and, unless she washed up on shore after she drowned, no body. It really was the perfect crime.

All right, Parish. Time to make sacrifices.

Pulling her knife from her thigh sheath, she saw how badly her hand trembled, and went slowly with cutting her harness loose from the tether. The very last thing she needed to do was nick herself and bleed in the water, which was like advertising herself as a free snack to every predator in the vicinity. Once the tether snapped she let the now-useless lifeline and her connected helmet sink. She had most of the eighty liters of air in her EAS tank left, so it was hard to let that go, but she had to eliminate anything that would create drag on her body.

If she swam west, there was the remote possibility that she could wave down someone. The Coast Guard regularly patrolled the waters offshore, and plenty of fishing and cruising charters hauled around tourists from St. Augustine on day trips. A few serious sport fishermen often came out this far in the Atlantic for blackfin tuna, mahi and wahoo, and the grouper season had just opened. All she needed was one boat.

There's a chance. Not a great one, but a chance.

As Caroline told herself that, she also knew how useless it was to waste all her energy trying to make it back to shore. She was a good, strong swimmer, but she'd never last the entire thirty miles; all she could hope for was ten or fifteen at best—maybe twenty if she stopped to float and rest a few times, and nothing with teeth took an interest in her along the way. If a storm came along, the sea would grow rougher, making it harder on her to keep swimming. Holding off exhaustion would be her primary concern. And if no boats crossed her path...

My body will give out. That's when I'll drown.

She removed her thigh sheath and strapped it to her left forearm, where she could reach her blade faster in the event of a predator encounter. Maybe her luck would bring along a Coast Guard cutter. Once she told them how her partner had left her to die, they could radio ahead to the cops. After Rich was arrested, she could even go public with her story, which the media would love. She'd then notify the Division of Historical Resources at the Florida Department of State, which governed all ocean salvage, and donate the site to them. He could read about them finding the San Miguel while his greedy ass rotted in prison.

That fantasy was all Caroline needed to keep going. "There's going to be all kinds of blame and shame, babe."

Swimming in her wet suit gave her more buoyancy that she would have had in a bikini, and her fins helped her maximize her kicks. Thanks to the streamlining neoprene material she had more side-to-side roll, and longer reach with her arms. Still, after an hour of swimming she figured she'd only crossed three or four miles of ocean. As she took a floating rest, she ran the numbers in her head. Adding in time for rest breaks, Caroline would be swimming for another eight hours before she got near enough to the popular fishing and cruising areas. By then the sun would have set, decreasing her chances of being spotted to almost zero. She'd be swimming alone and exhausted in the dark.

Why are you trying so hard to survive this? Guys like Rich always get what they want, are adored by everyone, and live to be a hundred.

Caroline had learned long ago that she had to fight for everything in life. Her mother, Gina Gataki, had been only eighteen when she'd married Jack Parish, the oil-rig roughneck who had gotten her pregnant. How he would have served as a father no one knew, as he'd died in a drilling accident before Caroline had been born. That had forced Gina to go back to work as a sponge diver to make ends meet. Caroline remembered her mom handing her off to her grandmother at the dock, something she'd done until Caroline had grown old enough to go out with her and her grandfather on the boat. Then Gina had taught her how to swim, and then to free dive, and finally to collect the sea sponges that helped support them and her grandparents.

Don't be greedy, my little star,Gina would say in Greek to her whenever she spent too long underwater. The sea provides us with just enough.

Her mother had insisted Caroline stay home one weekend when she'd had an ear infection, which was the only reason she was still alive. While out on the water Gina and her father had been caught in a sudden storm. The old boat had washed ashore, but their bodies had never been found. Caroline had been sixteen, and that loss had forced her to drop out of school. Working as a sponge diver had allowed her to care for her broken-hearted grandmother until she died a few years later.

Since then, Caroline had been on her own, and she should have kept it that way. Loneliness had coerced her to get involved with Rich even when she'd suspected how spineless and selfish he was. She'd just never imagined her lover resorting to murder so he could claim the glory and treasure of the San Miguel all for himself. It made her sick to think she'd slept with her own killer.

He's only that if I give up and die.

Once she had rested enough, Caroline checked her direction by setting her dive watch to compass mode, and then began to swim west again. The sea remained calm, and she saw no signs of any predators, so she judged she was good for the next hour. The sun beginning its descent and the temptation to keep pushing on got the better of her, and she swam until her muscles began to burn. When she stopped to rest, she noticed for the first time the weight of the waves buffeting her, and her own growing weakness. The effects of the exertion made her want to scream with frustration, but that would only waste energy she needed to stay alive.

No boats appeared anywhere around her; she still couldn't see land.

A cramp in her right shin made Caroline automatically reach down to massage it, and she sank under the water for a moment. The knotting muscle told her that she was becoming dehydrated now, which could prove just as deadly as exhaustion. Nothing was on her side, she thought. Panic danced around the edge of her thoughts like a grinning skeleton, threatening to make her hysterical.

No way am I losing it.

She needed to accept that Rich would very likely get away with murdering her. She doubted anyone had seen them leave the dock; it had still been dark when they'd set out at four a.m. Even if someone had, her partner could make up whatever story he wanted to go along with the doctored recording of the coms. He'd probably already worked that out and had everything rehearsed. Without a body or any witnesses, the police would be hard-pressed to charge Rich with anything.

No one will ever know what really happened to me.

That she would die at twenty-five years old because of lost treasure that she didn't even want seemed horribly unfair. All the people she'd loved had already been taken from her. She'd dropped out of school and sacrificed her dream of becoming a marine biologist just so she could get by and take care of her grandmother. In between dive jobs she'd worked at bars and restaurants to pay the bills. She'd never wanted marriage or kids, but she'd been waiting to find the man of her dreams and fall in love.

I'm alone and tired, but I'm not dead. Not yet.

Caroline surfaced, and gently worked her leg muscles with a slow stretching movement until the cramp eased. When she brushed her wet hair back from her face the side of her hand nudged the tiny pearl earring she'd forgotten to remove before leaving her apartment this morning. Rich had given her the studs for her birthday last November, and joked about how someday soon he'd replace them with something better.

"I never wanted diamonds, you son of a bitch," she muttered.

Without thinking of anything else, she went back to swimming west. All she let into her head was the sea, and how beautiful it was on this calm, sunny day. The taste of salt on her lips made her imagine heading into her favorite beachside bar once she got home. She'd order a tequila sunrise, and maybe some extra-spicy nachos, and buy a shot for the bartender so they could have a toast for her mom. She'd probably kiss the first good-looking guy she saw when she reached shore.

Then she'd go and find Rich.

Hours passed; how many Caroline didn't know. The terrible anger, like her two-beat kicks, sustained her for a good long while. At times she swam under the surface to keep her head from overheating, and alternated between different arm strokes to avoid stressing her shoulders. When she stopped again, she judged from the sun's slant that it was around four in the afternoon. Her breathing had grown labored, and she was struggling again to stave off the anxiety of being stranded so far from land. Her arm and leg muscles burned and knotted as she treaded water and watched the sea, turning to look in every direction.

No boats, no sign of land, no hope.

As she thought of continuing to swim her stomach clenched, and her body sagged in the water. Tears stung her irritated eyes as she reassessed her physical condition. She'd used up almost all of her energy; judging by what was left she wouldn't last another mile or two. If she cramped again, she likely wouldn't be able to stay afloat long enough to work it out. She didn't want to end up floundering and terrified, either. In the end, maybe all that mattered was going out with some dignity. The fastest way to do that was one final deep dive.

Okay, Mama. Time to come and be with you and Papou.

The sweetness of relief spread through Caroline as she began breathing to saturate herself with as much oxygen as she could. Accepting her fate proved a lot easier than fighting it; she even had a kind of strange anticipation of what awaited her. Would it be some sort of afterlife like the church-goers always touted, or plunging into nothingness and going to sleep forever?

She reached down and pulled off her fins, which floated up to the surface. Since she was on the inside of the Florida current of the Gulfstream, they might even make it to shore with the tide. She'd had them custom-made and stamped with her name and phone number, so someone who found them might figure out what had happened to her. Then she thought of her diver down flag, which her partner always forgot to remove after they came back to the docks. Maybe someone would see it and start asking questions. Maybe Rich wouldn't get away with her murder.

Taking what she knew would be her last breath, Caroline dove underwater.

Her weary arms and legs managed to keep working as she swam for the bottom. Caroline knew the pressure was increasing from the weight of it in her ears, but that didn't matter anymore. Nothing really did. It seemed strange that she had never been more alive than she was in this moment of choosing to end everything. Hopefully she'd reach the bottom before she blacked out. The water here proved slightly shallower, and her dive watch showed she was at a hundred and twenty feet when she finally touched silt.

Wow. Nitrogen narcosis had already begun to set in, Caroline realized, as a beautiful euphoria filled her. Was this what it did to you and grandpa, Mama?

Something glittered in a bunch of kelp right in front of her nose, and dreamily she reached out to touch it. Incredibly it turned out to be a gorgeous silver ring with a glittering green stone. She slid it onto her finger, and then held out her hand to admire it.

Do you wish live?a strange man's voice asked inside her head.

Hey, pal, what do you think I've been trying to do all day? A bunch of bubbles poured from her mouth with the chuckle she released. Sorry, I'm being rude to nitrogen-induced hallucinations.

Do you wish live?a woman's voice that sounded a lot like Gina's repeated.

Something made Caroline's eyes grow hot and heavy, and the water began flickering with odd blue and green lights. Of course, I do, Mama, but it's too late for me now.

Caroline closed her eyes, and then gasped out the last of her air as something grabbed her and hurled her up through the water. She was going too fast; decompression sickness would make the nitrogen in her tissues expand and form bubbles, which in her brain would be fatal. She fought against the thing clutching her, and then another set of hands grabbed her and pulled her out of the water.

Nothing tasted as sweet as that first lungful of air.

The two men holding her arms looked as different as night and day. The one on her right seemed towering and paved in hard muscle; he had long, dark red hair, features like a pissed-off prince, and eyes as dark and stormy as the proverbial night. The man on her left was just as gorgeous with his waist length braid of white-blond hair, crystal blue eyes and a face that had probably launched a thousand men's fashion magazine covers. Left guy wore a seamless gray wet suit unlike anything she'd ever before seen; right guy had stolen his bare chest from a gladiator.

In front of her a wide crescent of white sand spread out beneath soaring cliffs, behind which rose huge mountains covered with dense forests. A cloudless blue sky framed everything, making it look like Puerto Rico without all the hotels and shacks, only lightning kept streaking across it. Had the clouds turned invisible? Where was she?

The men didn't say anything as they swam with her wedged between them toward that pristine beach. A third, impossibly handsome man stood on the shore there, also dressed only in a pair of trousers. His eyes did something impossible as the black tattoos covering one of his arms began moving.

That's the nitrogen bubbles in my brain,Caroline thought just before she finally did the sensible thing and blacked out.