Below The Surface. Karen Harper

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СКАЧАТЬ he’d made with his father, the only one he’d helped him build before everything went wrong. Though he was thirty-four now and had been out on his own since he was twenty, sailing still made him feel closer to his dad. Their family tree boasted five generations of boatbuilders, beginning in Portugal, then the Bahamas, onward to Key West, then Sarasota and Naples. Bahamian sloops like this one had once been used throughout the tropics, but now they were like an endangered species. He often dreamed of ditching his luxury yacht interior trade and take a chance on his own boatbuilding. He’d love to build boats like this one again. America had a throwaway culture, but these babies were built to last, even in a storm, though he’d never seen one as quickly fierce as this.

      He tried to set the soles of his running shoes firmly in shifting sand. Both hands on the stern, he shoved. Streamin’ slid her sleek length farther up on the beach. Keeping low, holding the metal anchor by its rope so he didn’t have to touch it, he secured the sloop. Then, his shoes filled with water and sand, he slogged behind the line of mangroves and hunched over, crouched on the balls of his feet. He knew not to lie flat, where you’d have more of your body in contact with the ground if it was hit. Thank God, he’d made it safely out of the gulf, because this was one hell of a howler.

      Bree wanted to just close her eyes and give up. A countercurrent swept through here, maybe a riptide that would carry her away. Despite her silent fear of her toothy companion, she swam on. She could stop moving to see if the shark would go away and to save her strength, but what if she got pushed farther out? What if lightning…or that shark…

      A fierce, elemental terror flooded her; she wanted to scream and scream.

      But then—dear Lord in heaven, was she seeing double? No, there were two of them, two big gray bodies with white underbellies, the dorsal fins knife-edged. The newest bull shark was at least seven feet long, his small, flat eyes staring at her each time he came near the surface. She stopped swimming. Should she just hang still in the water and let herself be taken out to sea? Bulls were aggressive and commotion bothered them. Maybe the rough water would keep their attention off her.

      Was this a sheer, stark nightmare? If lightning or the sharks hit her, they might never even find her body. Had Daria been caught by these devouring depths, too?

      Bree let the current take her for what seemed an eternity, then, when its powerful pull seemed to ease, swam on toward shore again—sharks still alongside. Each time she kicked, each time she pulled her arms through the water or even turned her head to breathe, she feared the jaws of her companions, feared being fried by another lightning strike so close.

      A blast of something hit her hard, jerked her through the next wave. The riptide again? Shark? Jaws of a lightning bolt? She spit out the mouthpiece of her snorkel and screamed.

      Bloodred colors exploded before her eyes, in her head. Something huge lunged at her. Then came only blackness.

      2

      Cole was soaked to his skin. The wind lashed him, and rain stung his shoulders and back through his sopped shirt. The narrow key seemed to shudder with each roll of thunder. Yet, through it all, he thought he’d heard a shriek.

      He lifted his head. It wasn’t just the shrill of wind through the boat’s rigging. Something almost human…

      Squinting into the rain, he peered around the thick patch of mangroves to check on his sloop. Though Streamin’ had listed from the pounding of the surf, she looked all right. But something was sprawled on the beach beside the hull, as if there had been an accident and the prow had hit someone.

      Still keeping low, he went to see what had come in. His breath huffed out as if he’d been hit in the gut; his heart pounded even harder. A woman—it looked like a drowned mermaid!

      No, no, of course not, he told himself as he bent over the sprawled figure. The short-sleeved, full-length, silvery-green wet suit clung to her curves so tightly it looked painted on. It was designed with a fin-and-scale pattern to look as if she had a tail. Long legs, that was all. Her shoulder-length, auburn hair clung to her head. Her graceful, limp arms were in a ballerina pose, as if she would dance. Was she dead?

      Afraid to roll her face up—instinct in case she had spine or head injuries from hitting his boat—he felt for the pulse at the base of her throat. She felt cold and, despite her tan, her cheek and chin looked pale and waxy, almost as if she were a life-size doll. She had a faint pulse, but she was so still he wasn’t certain she was breathing. Carefully, he turned her over, faceup.

      She had marks on her face from a diving mask, but he knew this woman! Or else he knew her sister. She was one of the twins who owned the Two Mermaids Marine Search and Salvage Shop in Turtle Bay, not far from his own business. He’d had an impromptu lunch with one of them—Briana—the day she’d been scraping the hull of the Richardson yacht when he was paneling the salon with Santos mahogany. He’d been going through the divorce then and was only dating his sloop, or he would have called her. Thank God, she was alive, but she might not be soon if she didn’t take a breath.

      Ignoring the slashing rain and continued threat of lightning, he pulled her carefully up out of the slosh of the surf. Hunched over her, just beyond the breaking waves, he started mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He hadn’t done that on anyone since he’d tried to save his father when he’d found him on the floor, and that was too late. What had happened to this woman? Surely she hadn’t been swimming in the storm.

      She seemed slender and small, but he knew she was a vital, strong woman. Come on, baby. Come on back. Breathe for me. Let my lips warm yours, sweetheart. Come on, come on.

      It had amused him, then impressed him, that two women would run such a rough-and-tumble business, especially when their competition across the bay was a gruff, tough guy who pretty much had a monopoly on search and salvage in the area. The women mostly did light salvage, none of the heavy stuff with dredging and demolition like Sam Travers, but search and salvage was always a risky business.

      Come on, baby, I know you’re spunky. Take my breath. Come on, you beautiful little mermaid!

      He started to panic, his sweat mingling with the rain, even in the cool rush of wind. After what seemed an eternity, her mouth moved against his. He stopped and looked down into her face, glazed by rain and gulf water. Her thick eyelashes, plastered to her ashen cheeks, flickered. She frowned and moaned.

      “Hey, mermaid!” he said, feeling like a fool, but he couldn’t remember her last name and wasn’t sure which twin this was. Still, he used the name he knew, one he’d remembered for months now because it had seemed to suit her. It had reminded him of the word brio, for her enthusiasm and verve that time they’d talked and eaten together. He’d felt an instant attraction to her, a surge of desire that he’d tried to control by being overly polite and teasing that day. “Briana?” he said, his voice shaking. “Briana!”

      She slitted her eyes open. “Daria?” she said, and started to cough up water.

      He rolled her over slightly and braced her with one arm around her. One hand held her forehead steady like his mother used to do for him years ago when he threw up. It wasn’t until he saw the burn marks on her limp left wrist, like a big bracelet around her dive watch, that he realized she might have been hit by lightning. He laid her back down on the sand, leaning over her, trying to keep the rain and wind off her with his body.

      “Where’s Daria?” he asked. “What happened?”

      No answer. He gasped when he saw her eyes were dilated, the huge, black pupils eating up the gray-green of the irises, the color of the sea. He had to get her medical help—now. СКАЧАТЬ