Night Diver: A Novel Read Free Page A

first man she had seen in ages who might tempt her out of sexual hibernation had blood the temperature of the ocean one hundred feet down.
    “Sooner begun, sooner ended,” she said under her breath. Then, “Follow me.”
    As she headed for the door to the sunbaked parking lot, she wondered how the British ice cube with the startling eyes would stand up to conditions on a dive ship.
    That’s Larry’s problem.
    And I can’t wait to hand it to him.
    Without looking back to see if the “accountant” was coming after her, she cut through the diminishing clumps of people and headed toward the parking lot.
    Holden found it easy to follow the woman with flame in her hair and beautiful, wary eyes. She had a motion to her walk that brought every one of his male senses to predatory alert. He wondered if she might be a red herring meant to distract him from getting to the bottom of whatever lay beneath Moon Rose’s sketchy accounting and pitiable salvage recovery. The idea appealed—sex was a useful weapon.
    But the more he thought about it, the less likely it seemed. She had been friendly in a casual American way, yet when he had gone into his right-British-bastard routine, she had retreated with a finality that put paid to any flirtation.
    Pity my job requires that I be a stiff prick, Holden thought ruefully, but divers are a hard-shouldered lot. They don’t respect any man who isn’t like them.
    Holden should know. He was one of them.
    Or had been.
    He followed Kate’s gently swaying hips outside where the air was hot, humid, and heavily scented with a mix of tropical plants and petroleum fumes from idling taxis. Violently green shrubs overflowed with pink and purple flowers. Stands of palm trees framed the colorfully painted airport building, filtering sunlight through crisply cut, fanlike leaves.
    The partial shade was short-lived. Holden was sweating before he reached the bleached gray asphalt of the parking lot. While the temperature wasn’t nearly as hot as the deserts of northern Africa, the humidity was an unwelcome blanket. He knew he would stop noticing the humidity after a few hours or days, so he ignored it now. Sweat was a fact of life, like the ache in his thigh or his uncommon eyes.
    “Throw your duffels in the back,” Kate said.
    He eyed the unimpressive transportation. He wasn’t surprised that the doors were unlocked and the windows rolled down. No self-respecting thief would steal the ancient truck. The hood was a different color from the truck bed, the tires were bald, the tailgate was missing, the doors were mismatched, and the whole lot was as faded as the asphalt.
    Kate’s smile was all teeth. “Grandpa only puts money into things that float or dive.”
    Holden lifted both black eyebrows, lowered his bags into the back of the truck near a smallish, rusty toolbox that had been welded to the truck bed. He searched for cargo straps, but the best he could find was a rope that had once seen hard duty at sea. With a few deft knots, he secured the duffels.
    She saw what he was doing, thought about telling him that she wouldn’t be going fast enough to shake anything out, then simply got into the steaming cab and started the engine. After four tries, the engine backfired a cloud of diesel smoke and settled into a reliably uneven rhythm.
    After a few hard bangs with her fist, the glove box opened. The map to the rented house was primitive, but combined with what she had looked up online this morning, she wouldn’t get lost.
    Finally her cheerless guest abandoned his baggage and got into the passenger seat. The truck settled deep into its worn suspension. Surprisingly deep.
    He must be all bone and muscle, she thought. I think his kind of consultant is called a troubleshooter. Real bullets optional.
    “Do you dive?” she asked.
    “Why do you ask?”
    “Because you’re really solid. Divers don’t have much body fat. They burn it off.”
    “Interesting,” he said.
    The call of voices and piercing