Night Diver: A Novel Read Free Page B

cry of birds filled what otherwise would have been the silence following his neutral comment.
    What a fascinating conversationalist, she thought. Boy, is this going to be a fun drive. Let’s see, maybe fifteen minutes to the side of town, and another mile to the rental.
    She shifted gears, let out the clutch, and drove slowly onto the airport road.
    “Is it long to the ship?” Holden asked.
    “Depends on Larry’s dive schedule.”
    “Why?”
    “He’s picking you up at the cottage the company rented for your friend. The rental itself is about a ten-minute walk from the fuel dock, chandlery, and commercial marina Larry uses. This isn’t a big island.”
    The fact that Holden followed her elliptical conversation told Kate he was a lot smarter than the average diver.
    “Malcolm Farnsworth is a contract employee, as I am,” Holden said. “I don’t know the man personally, much less call him a friend.”
    “How unsurprising.”
    Something close to a smile disturbed Holden’s features, but all he said was, “I thought Farnsworth was staying aboard the Golden Bough .”
    She shrugged. “Larry would know. I just got here.”
    “That explains it.”
    She told herself she wasn’t going to ask, but she did. “Explains what?”
    “Pale skin. Hard to maintain in the tropics, unless you only go about at night.”
    “Sorry to disappoint. No vampire blood in the Donnelly family.”
    He looked sideways at her. “How terribly ordinary.”
    “Certainly makes our lives easier. I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a diving vampire.”
    Something that could have been a smile changed the line of Holden’s lips. “Do you know how long it is to the rental?”
    “No. But again, it’s a small island.”
    Five minutes and a lot of greenery went by, broken by occasional brilliant views of the ocean.
    “Is it always this warm here?” he asked.
    “You’d have to ask a tourism minister. I haven’t been here for years.”
    “But you’re one of the diving Donnellys, correct?”
    “I don’t dive anymore.” Her tone of voice didn’t encourage questions.
    Holden thought about pursuing it. Until he had met her in the airport, there had been no mention of anyone called Kate Donnelly being on the payroll or on board the dive ship Golden Bough. He would have to ask the Antiquities Office for more information.
    “Couldn’t take the calloused hands and bad hearing?” he asked. “Or was it the nerve damage that put you off diving?”
    “I was a careful diver. No damage.”
    “You must have quit young.”
    “Young enough.”
    “So you won’t be suffering dysbaric osteonecrosis either,” Holden said. “A wise choice.”
    “I understood about half of that,” she said. “Osteo. Bone. You mean arthritis? A lot of divers end up with it. Grandpa has his share. Are you a doctor?” She glanced at him, then back to the road.
    “Diving can lead to arthritis,” Holden said. “Sometimes it just leads to a joint replacement due to bone death, hence the name ‘osteonecrosis.’ And no, I’m not a doctor, but I know my way around underwater operations. Otherwise I would be rather useless for this job.”
    That this was his first and only civilian job since he’d been injured was a fact that he kept to himself. The people in Antiquities had conferred with the military doctor and deemed him competent to consult on salvage diving, especially as it had been made clear he was to find reasons to shut down the dive. No diving would be expected of him.
    Holden wasn’t unhappy with that. He had been diving enough since the mishap to assure himself that the injury was manageable underwater. Hurt like a bitch, but he could dive.
    Kate slowed to match speeds with a tourist bus. It was painted bright green and looked like a giant beetle crawling around the road. Sticking out of open windows, a scattering of hands waved in the breeze like flowers reaching toward the Caribbean sun.
    As the silence stretched, she decided that being nice