Vanessa wanted to scream but knew she’d choke, spitting out her regulator. She wanted to give a swift kick with her flippers, burst up the few feet to the surface, leave the water and never come near the reef again.
But it went against everything she had been fighting to do!
Maybe she had let it all play on her mind too much; the nightmares were always tearing into her life, and she wasn’t crazy at all, she was simply finding ways to seek and find anything that she could.
The image of the figurehead was probably some other minor clue that went into the fantastic computer of the human brain and manifested in an eerie manner.
She had to believe that, and she had to follow the figurehead, because, so far, it had led her to a mermaid pendant, and it might lead her to…
She couldn’t let it scare her. She had to believe in a logical explanation.
She kicked, and her body surged into the depths rather than surfacing.
She was about fifty yards west of where she had found the locket. She eased more air out of her BCV to settle on the bottom. It seemed that she was near the body, or actual remaining structure of the wreck. Jagged and beautiful coral rose to her right—the drop-off pitched to a hundred feet and then two hundred feet to her left.
She began to move the sand, not knowing what she was looking for. There wasn’t a spark of light—the reflection of the sun on an object—or anything to suggest that she would make a find.
She felt Sean come down near her, concerned—she had made a swift descent, but they were still no more than fifty feet down.
He tapped her shoulder.
She looked at him and smiled, and returned to her task of shifting sand.
Her heart skipped a beat and thundered. After several minutes, she touched something. Something hard.
She turned. She could see Sean’s eyes behind his mask. He was staring at her with great concern. She caught his hand and brought it down to the sand.
He felt what she felt. He still frowned, but he seemed incredulous, as well.
He began working in the sand. She carefully set the shoulder strap of the camera around her and began to dig, as well.
Whatever they had discovered, it was large. A fair amount of work brought them to realize that they had found the top of something. It was about five feet by three, and appeared to go deeply into the sand. With what they had—their hands—they weren’t going to be able to dig it out.
Sean motioned to her that they needed to surface. She nodded.
He went up first on the dive ladder; she knew that he did so should she need help with the weight of her tank. She was good, though, and seldom needed help, but she allowed him to steady her as she climbed up. Katie came aft where they stood, helping each other remove their tanks and vests.
“I was about to come after you,” she said sternly. “David and Jay have been up—they’re in the cabin. David was convinced you knew your air consumption…. I guess you did.”
“We found something,” Vanessa told Katie breathlessly.
“What?” Katie asked.
“Ah—something?” Sean said, smiling.
“As in? A cannon? An anchor? A big fish?” Katie asked, exasperated.
“I don’t know,” Sean said. He went over to the ice chest for water, brought out two and tossed one to Vanessa. “We have to go back down. I have two blowers. I don’t know if it will be enough, but it will definitely help. Whatever it is, it’s buried deep. I honestly think it’s a treasure chest. To the best of my knowledge, gold and jewels have been brought up many times, but treasure chests…I think only one or two have ever come up. This is buried. It’s like it sank into the sand, and because of that, it’s preserved. It’s the right size, and it seems that it was wood, covered in leather. I believe the leather is disintegrating, but the chest is very solid. Lead-lined maybe. I’ve got to tell David.” He paused, turned, took Vanessa’s cheeks between his hands and kissed her quickly on the lips.
Katie stared with surprise.
Sean, oblivious, headed for the cabin.
Katie stared at Vanessa. “I guess you two are getting along all right.”
Vanessa nodded. She felt something at her back and swung around, but no one was there. Katie, watching her, looked guilty suddenly.
“Is everything all right?” Katie asked.
“Yes, of course. This boat just gets…strange drafts, I guess,” she said.
Katie gasped suddenly. “A treasure chest! Do you think he’s right?”
Vanessa shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s something—it’s hard.”
“How did you find it?”
“Digging in the sand.”
“How did you know where to dig in the sand?” Katie asked.
“I don’t know. Something just led me there.”
“Wow. Like…something led you to the mermaid pendant?”
Vanessa shrugged, wishing that Katie wasn’t looking at her so probingly. “I don’t know—I really don’t.”
Katie nodded, frowning. The three men appeared, coming from the cabin. “New tanks, all of us, and two blowers…if it’s heavy, we’re probably going to need some kind of winch and tackle,” David said.
“I think we should go for it now,” Sean said. “This could be the find of the century. All right, the Atocha was probably the find of the century. But…no. We go for it now. We can set up a winch. We’re talking fifty feet down. I have enough rope to set up a winch. Katie may not be able to handle it alone…. Four of us will go down and set it—and someone will come back.”
“We’ll take the blower first?” David asked.
Sean grinned. “Yeah—we’ll make sure we do have something,” he said. “But we do. I know we do. The pendant Vanessa found was real—it belonged to Dona Isabella. Jaden said it’s a beautiful piece. I don’t know exactly what we’ve got—or what Vanessa has. Rule of thumb is twenty-five percent to the state, but every find is subject to maritime law, and we are in Florida waters. Let’s go down—” He paused. “Vanessa? You good for a second dive?”
“Of course.”
Sean secured his portable blowers and checked that they were clean and ready for use, murmuring that it had been a long time since he’d had them out.
Within minutes, they were diving in, one by one, David and Sean carrying the handheld blowers, which looked like vacuum cleaners. Sean had a keen sense of direction and led the way, never glancing at his compass. When they reached the object, David and Jay ran their hands over it.
Sean motioned Jay and Vanessa out of the way and he and David went to work on opposite sides of the object. Little by little, they began to create wedges.
Sand flew in a fury.
Then both turned the blowers off and waited. Sand settled.
And there it was. It still needed a great deal of digging to come free, but it was evident that they had indeed made a discovery.
It was a chest. A pirate’s chest.
A treasure chest.
8
David wound up working with Katie on deck. Vanessa helped, but Jay and Sean seemed to have a system for rigging the rope around the chest, and she hovered within easy call if they beckoned for her assistance. Eventually, the sand was dug out enough; rope was gotten around the chest, and Sean tugged on the rope, letting David know it was time to work the winch.
They guided the chest as it began a slow and careful ascent to the surface.
When they breached the water, there were several hectic moments as they moved as quickly as they could to board the boat, shed their gear and guide the heavy chest aboard, as well.
When they were finished, they all collapsed on the deck. Jay began to laugh; it was contagious. Then there were high fives all around, and David went down and broke out the beer.
“Not to ruin this party, but we still don’t know what we have,” Katie pointed out.
“True,” Sean said. He ruffled his sister’s hair. “It’s treasure. Come on, be a ray of sunshine, huh?”
“I’m not so sure I like treasure,” Katie said, frowning. “Well, it’s Vanessa’s treasure.”
Vanessa shook her head. “It’s a group treasure, whatever it is!” she said.
“You found it,” Katie reminded her.
Sean had gone to the chest. The old, encrusted lock that held it closed was firmly in place. It seemed to be sealed as tightly as if the long-ago owners had welded it shut.
“We can break the lock, but I don’t think that’s going to help. The damned thing is heavy as hell—and it looks like they might have welded it or something. They wanted it to be sealed, watertight,” he said.
“We can take it to Jaden and Ted. They’ll know the best thing to do,” David said.
“They’ll know, yes,” Katie said. “And we should be getting back in. We’re going to lose the sun any minute. And I have to go to work.”
Sean smiled. “Are you afraid of the dark, Katie? You never were. Work! You work all the time. You can be a little late. This is a treasure chest.”
“Yes. I know it’s a chest. I’m so excited. But we’re not going to open it here,” Katie said.
Vanessa realized that she, too, wanted to be back onshore. There was something about the trunk that suddenly made her feel uncomfortable. It was wet, dark with age, still covered in sand, but the lock, encrusted, seemed somehow ominous. She felt ridiculously superstitious. Someone had locked the trunk carefully. They had sealed it.
For a reason.
What the hell was in it?
Yes, it did look like it belonged in a Robert Louis Stevenson novel. Or in Mel Fisher’s museum. It was dome-topped and handsome, even in its current state. Maybe it was just the way Katie was acting.
Vanessa wished that she had never found it.
The strangest thing was that she wasn’t certain she felt the same way as Katie. Katie seemed scared. Vanessa wasn’t certain that she was scared. Yes, yes, she was scared. The chest was…
An instrument…of something else?