As so it is, he thought, that we have reached the beginning of the end...
Sneak peek of
Dead in the Water
The Deep Six book 6
Julie Ann Walker
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Chapter 1
Present Day
6:35 PM...
“Have you ever had the urge to tell someone to shut up even when they weren’t talking?”
Dalton “Doc” Simmons frowned at Cami; the toothpick caught between his teeth pointed at the floor. “What the hell? I’m just standing here.”
“And silently calling me dirty names. I can feel you doing it even if I can’t hear you.” Her lips pursed. Lips that were plush, full, and painted a rich, velvety red. “Which is so much worse,” she added. “Because then when I call you out for silently calling me dirty names, it makes me sound crazy.” She narrowed her eyes. Eyes that were dark, heavily lashed, and tilted up at the corners, making her look like she knew a delicious secret.
Hands down, Camilla D’ Angelo was the most beautiful woman Doc had ever met.
Not that he put a whole heck of a lot of stock in beauty. After all, the Hope Diamond was said to be one of the most dazzling gems ever cut, but everyone who’d ever owned it had died a mysterious death. Beauty had a way of hiding what was sinister.
And okay, he wasn’t saying Cami’s loveliness came with a curse or some sort of deep-seated moral turpitude. But he was saying she was a lawyer, so…
“But maybe that’s your goal. To make me sound crazy.” She tapped a ruby-red fingertip on her chin contemplatively. “You’d love to see me wrapped in a straitjacket. Admit it.”
“I’ll admit no such thing.” He shook his head, noting how his blood bubbled with pleasure.
Trading barbs with Cami was…stimulating. Maybe because she was the only woman whose mouth he’d ever been tempted to simultaneously kiss and tape shut.
Although, having once done that first thing, he wasn’t stupid enough to attempt it again. Not because it hadn’t been good, but because it’d been too good. A kiss that’d gone past his lips to sink into a space he’d purposefully kept empty.
An alarming kiss. A dangerous kiss.
A kiss that will not be repeated.
“I wouldn’t wish the indignity of a straitjacket on anyone,” he assured her. “I’m a firm believer in bodily autonomy. So if it’s looking like you’re heading toward some sort of unwilling confinement, please know I’ll put you out of your misery and smother you with a pillow first.”
Her mouth flattened into a straight line. “What a gentleman.”
“I like to think so.” He inclined his head regally.
He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her mouth flattened further, until her red lips disappeared completely. “Apparently, when it comes to sarcasm you’re tone deaf.”
“Oh, no. I picked up what you were laying down. I was just being magnanimous and ignoring it.” She opened her mouth to come back at him with something scathing, no doubt, but he cut her off by adding, “But since you brought it up, let’s address it.” He checked his watch. “By my count, that was two hours of stonewalling silence before you opened the conversation back up with sarcasm. It’s like we’ve been married for ten years or something.”
She shoved a fisted hand on her hip. “You could only dream of being so lucky. And those two hours of stonewalling silence were a direct result of you accusing me of purposefully making your job harder than it has to be.” A fascinating wash of pink stained her high cheekbones. She enjoyed their linguistic tussles as much as he did. “You’ve called me a witch before, but surely you don’t think I’m capable of conjuring up a storm.”
Now both her hands were fisted on her hips as she stood with her legs slightly apart to counter the movement of the decking beneath her feet. The Wayfarer II was a large vessel, with a J-frame crane attached to the aft section and a HIAB hydraulic loader on the bow that kept the ship equally weighted in the water. But the approaching hurricane was beginning to rile the seas around the vessel, making it bob slightly.
“I never called you a witch.” His brow puckered as his teeth and tongue worked the fraying end of the toothpick. A psych major would probably accuse him of having an oral fixation. But Doc would argue his affinity for the wooden sticks was simply habit. One he’d picked up from his old man. “I said you were witchy,” he clarified. “There’s a difference. And I know you’re not responsible for the storm. But you are responsible for us having to wait until the reef was submerged before retrieving the treasure.”
Her smooth brow puckered with frustration. “The law is responsible for that. Not me.”
Admiralty Law, the salvor’s best friend, stated it was finders keepers when it came to recovered goods within state or federal waters. Unfortunately, Captain Bartolome Vargas had removed the treasure from the wreck of the Santa Cristina and hidden it beneath the reef that protected Wayfarer Island’s lagoon from the ravages of the open ocean.
A reef was considered “waters” so long as it was submerged. But if a speck of it peeked above the waves? Well, then it was considered land.
Admiralty Law didn’t apply to land.
“Instead of busting my balls over how tough the last day has been, you should be thanking me for finding the loophole that allows you to keep all of this to yourself instead of having to share it with Uncle Sam or the state of Florida,” Cami continued, throwing out a lithe arm to indicate the treasure that lay piled atop the tables in the ship’s computer room.
One tabletop held a collection of conglomerates, which was what happened to silver coins when they came into contact with seawater. Corrosion and other maritime accretions fused the currency together into rocky looking wads. But Doc knew as soon as they were electronically cleaned, the pieces of eight—coins like the one that hung on a chain around his neck—would be revealed.
Another table was mounded with doubloons. Unlike silver, gold wasn’t affected by its time in the ocean. The doubloons glinted and winked under the artificial light as if they’d been minted the day before.
Then there was a small tabletop displaying swords and daggers, each ceremonial and encrusted with gems. A larger table held religious artifacts, all ornamental and heavily bejeweled. And still another was heaped with uncut emeralds that’d been mined from Columbia nearly four hundred years ago.