She stopped walking, and smiled.
Jay lowered the camera and looked into her eyes. The reflector shields fell, and Sean came walking toward her, taking her by the shoulders, his grin deep, his eyes admiring.
“Fantastic!” he said.
“Oh!” Katie gasped. “That’s brilliant, Vanessa, and you probably got it all right after all these years of us believing that Kitty Cutlass was a murderess!”
“It makes perfect sense,” David agreed.
“But wait—I’m confused,” Zoe said. “You found Dona Isabella’s pendant. That was the first find that you made.”
“Yes—I’m sure she purposely lost that pendant, and someone was supposed to have found it years and years before I did. When salvage divers came out to the wreck, they would believe that the pendant was wrenched from her neck in the struggle. Maybe they wouldn’t find it, but the seeds were planted for her story—the story she wanted people to believe—to come to light. Of course, this is my theory. I’m not sure that I can prove it in any way, and the body is gone now, but from what Dr. Aislinn said when we did have the body, it seems likely that it was Kitty Cutlass,” Vanessa said.
“Oh, Lord, and what a cool bit!” Barry said to her, grinning. “Dona Isabella can be seen as the evil that lurks in the Bermuda Triangle. I love it!”
“After all these years of man being man, war and devastation, I’m sure a lot of evil energy went down in the ocean,” Sean said dryly.
“Evil is in the mind, really, isn’t it?” Jay asked.
“And in idle hands, right?” Zoe asked, grimacing.
“Well, in the mind—and in the hands of those it inhabits, I guess,” Barry noted, grinning. He frowned and stared at Vanessa. “You’re not suggesting that the evil spirit of Dona Isabella came up from the sea to somehow decapitate and dismember Georgia and Travis.”
Vanessa shook her head. “Hey—I just put forth a new theory, that’s all. A theory. We’ve always worked on theories and suppositions.”
“Fascinating,” Bill Hinton said, nodding in thought.
“Creepy,” Barry said.
“Ah, but it’s all in the mind, really, isn’t it?” Jay asked. He looked at Vanessa, frowning. “In an odd way, maybe Dona Isabella was getting her evil revenge. You wrote our script, relying on supposed history and legend. Maybe Dona Isabella wanted it all remembered that way.”
“Why kill Georgia and Travis—if evil ghosts of the past had anything to do with it?” Vanessa asked.
“Hey, I don’t know,” Jay said, shrugging. He rolled his eyes. “Maybe evil spirits demand sacrifices!”
“Human hands committed murder,” Sean said. “Anyway, let’s get back to working on what we’ve begun to find. Light lunch again, and an afternoon dive. That was great footage, Vanessa, great. I loved it. Let’s see what else we can find.”
While lunch was being prepared, Sean went aboard the Conch Fritter, where Liam had been on the computer using his various contacts to try to track the movement of the original film crew in more detail over the last two years when the other two boats disappeared.
“Some of this we knew. Vanessa has been doing commercial shoots. Three of the others, Barry Melkie, Bill Hinton and Zoe Cally, were part of a crew that filmed in the Bahamas. Jay hasn’t done as well as the others. He’s had a few dry spells in there. So really, anyone could have easily been around when the other disappearances occurred.”
“Good to know. I guess it’s still not proof of anything. And I’m still trying to figure out why. Vanessa’s theory on Dona Isabella being in collusion with Mad Miller was fascinating, and rings true, and it had all kinds of motive—for Dona Isabella. I don’t see the motive in the killings now—if, indeed, some of these disappearances were caused by the same murderer or murderers who killed Georgia and Travis,” Sean said, perplexed. “There was no financial gain, not that I can see. The deaths of Georgia and Travis put Jay into financial difficulty. It’s true that the water can be rough around here and that ships have disappeared in the area forever, but other disappearances now might be related. David and I read about the Delphi. It seemed it disappeared into thin air, and the boat was captained by an experienced man. There should have been a distress call, something.”
“You can’t make a distress call if you’re taken by surprise,” Liam pointed out.
“We could still be way off course,” Sean said. “But you’re right. And Carlos thought someone was aboard the boat because he was knocked out—taken by surprise.”
“If we’re not being taken in by Carlos,” Liam said.
“I don’t think we are.” He hesitated. “I think that the man is telling the truth, and that someone with us is guilty. Carlos Roca is convinced someone on the island at the time was involved.”
“We’re taking a leap of faith to believe in Carlos Roca,” Liam noted.
Sean nodded. “Yes and no,” he said softly. “Vanessa has…something. Like Katie. The thing I always wanted to deny. Until Bartholomew. Now I know that things do exist that we can’t see. She has instincts and…something. I trust that something.”
“Let’s hope you’re right,” Liam said.
Everyone wanted to dive that day. Sean, however, didn’t want to leave the encampment alone, nor did he want to leave Ted and Jaden alone to keep guard. In the end, it was agreed both boats would go out that day with Jamie O’Hara remaining topside on his Claddagh and David and Katie remaining topside on the Conch Fritter.
They followed one another going down, but the World War II vessel was a huge hulk, and they split to follow it around in different directions. Vanessa led, bringing her partners around to the gash in the giant hull that had probably caused its sinking. They began to explore the area, Sean turning the camera on the wreck and then the different divers.
Vanessa realized that they were in an equipment room, and she began to study the dials and levers on one side of the wall. She followed them to the sandy bottom, where in some places they were on the ocean floor and in others she heard the metallic clink of the vessel’s flooring. She kept searching the flooring, aware that her fellow divers were near.
She found an uneven patch in the sand and started carefully moving the sand around it. She grew excited as she realized that she had come across something. There was a piece of something that glittered. She moved more sand and realized that one object was laid atop another. She picked up the first and was surprised to see that it was a knife. It wasn’t old; the hilt was wearing and the blade was dull and crusted, but it was a modern diving knife. She slipped it into her belt and looked at the object beneath it. It was long and wedged tightly between the rip in the hull’s floor and the sand.
She looked for the others and saw that Zoe was at a hatch, struggling with the door. She swam toward her just as the door gave.
Vanessa ducked the massive sheet of steel that seemed to have some kind of spring; Barry, shooting ahead of her, did not.
She heard the thud as he crashed, headfirst, into the steel.
He shot back, his regulator falling from his mouth. She realized that he was unconscious and hurried toward him, catching his drifting weight and gripping her backup regulator to force it immediately into his mouth. Zoe shot for her, trying to help, but she was panicking and in the way. Sean let the camera fall, suspended, to his side, shooting toward them. He signaled that they needed to surface, which, of course, they knew.
Decompression time had to be taken, but between them, they kept the air going into Barry’s lungs and bubbles coming out into the water. When they surfaced, Zoe began to shout, drawing David’s attention. He was quickly at the dive platform with Katie, and between them they got Barry’s body on deck, stripped of dive gear and wrapped in a towel.
Sean stood over him and looked the ten feet over to the Claddagh. The other divers were up, and Liam shouted over to Sean. “What happened?”
“Barry took a beating from a spring-loaded hatch,” Sean cried.
“It was my fault. I should have known,” Zoe moaned. She was flustered, fluttering over Barry, trying to touch him, whispering that she was sorry.
“He’s got to get to medical care,” Sean said. “He might have had some oxygen deprivation, though Vanessa got to him quickly.”
“I’ll tie up and take Barry on board the Claddagh. She’s got a bit of speed on your Sunray, Sean. I’ll radio ahead and they’ll be ready for him in Bimini,” Jamie called to him.
“All right,” Sean conceded.
“I can’t believe I did this,” Zoe said.
“Zoe, you didn’t do it—the door sprang right when Barry was heading for it,” Vanessa said. She glanced at Sean and realized that he thought that Zoe’s ministrations might prove to be too much for the poor man. “Barry will be fine. Jamie’s boat is fast. We’ve got him breathing, and he has a weak but steady pulse going.”
“Grab the bumpers,” Jamie called to his crew aboard the Claddagh.
Vanessa and Jay ran to do the same for the Conch Fritter. A few minutes later, Barry was aboard the Claddagh, and it was agreed that David and Katie would go with him while the rest of the crew came aboard the Conch Fritter to head back to the island.
Vanessa watched the Claddagh sail away, and she waved to Katie and David.
She felt a chill.
They would be all right. They had to be all right. They were close to Bimini, it was still daylight and there were three of them aboard with Barry.
She still felt an ominous sense of dread that something horrible would happen before she saw them again. The sea wind suddenly seemed chill, and when she turned away, she felt the strange sting of tears in her eyes.
16
“Barry could die,” Zoe said, watching as the Claddagh disappeared into the horizon.
“He’s not going to die,” Vanessa assured her, giving her shoulders a hug. “It’s going to be fine.”