Glided wreckage

Chapter Three

The surface hit like a fist.

Rafael broke water gasping. His mask fogged. His mouth tasted of rubber and panic. He ripped the regulator out and just breathed — open air, salt spray, a sky that had turned from gray to pale yellow while he'd been underground.

Lux surfaced beside him. Quiet. No drama. She'd already removed her mask and was wiping seawater from her eyes with the back of a wet glove.

Neither spoke.

The ladder hung off The Rusty Spoon's port side. She climbed first. He watched her thighs strain. Watched water pour from her suit in sheets. When she reached the deck, she didn't turn to help him up. Just walked to the console and started logging numbers on a waterproof notepad.

Rafael hauled himself aboard. His legs felt borrowed from someone else. The tank on his back weighed twice what it had going down. He fumbled with the straps. Nearly dropped the whole rig.

Still she didn't look.

"Say it," he managed.

"Say what?"

"That I almost died."

Lux capped her pen. Turned. Her expression was unreadable — not cold, not kind. Something in between. The face of someone who'd seen beginners cry and learned not to flinch.

"You didn't almost die," she said. "You hyperventilated and forgot your training. There's a difference."

"I couldn't move."

"You did move. You handed me the dive computer and followed my light out." She stepped closer. He smelled the ocean on her. Salt and something metallic. "That's not freezing. That's surviving scared. Most people can't do it."

He didn't know what to say. So he said nothing.

She pulled the dive computer from her pocket. Held it up. The screen was dead. The casing had a c***k running diagonal from corner to corner. But the backplate — the engraving — was still legible.

M. Costa.

"You want to keep this here," she said. "Or send it to a lab for analysis?"

Rafael stared at the device. Fifteen years. Fifteen years of hiring strangers to swim through dark water while he stayed on the boat, dry and useless. And now here it was. Proof that Mateo had made it to the galleon. Proof that he'd died somewhere inside that tunnel.

"I want answers," he said. "Not souvenirs."

Lux nodded. Tucked the computer into a dry bag. Sealed it. Wrote EVIDENCE on the side with a black marker.

"Lab in Georgetown," she said. "I know a technician who owes me favors. She can pull the memory card if it's still intact."

"How much?"

"Nothing. She's family."

Rafael frowned. "You said you didn't have any."

Lux glanced at her father's photo — still wedged in her waistband, still dry. She'd protected it underwater. He hadn't noticed until now.

"I lied," she said. "People do that around billionaires."

---

The shower was a surprise.

Not because The Rusty Spoon had one — the thing looked like a garden hose attached to a water heater from the 1980s. But because she offered it first.

"You smell like fear," she said, tossing him a towel that had seen better decades. "Wash it off before breakfast."

He stood under the weak spray for ten minutes. Let the hot water burn his neck. Watched rust-colored runoff circle the drain. He didn't think about Mateo. Didn't think about the tunnel. Didn't think about her hand in his, firm and impersonal, the only thing that felt real in all that black.

He thought about nothing.

It was the best he'd felt in years.

---

She made eggs.

Not good eggs. Eggs that had sat in a mini-fridge too long, cooked in a pan that hadn't seen soap since the Clinton administration. She served them on plastic plates with a fork that bent when he pressed too hard.

Rafael ate every bite.

"You're strange," she said, watching him chew.

"You're rude."

"Honest. There's a difference." She pushed her own eggs around. Didn't eat. "The technician's name is Nina. She works out of a garage behind the rum distillery. We go today, before the dive computer degrades further."

"We?"

"You're paying for the rush fee. I'm providing the introduction." She stabbed a piece of egg. Lifted it. Dropped it. "Don't make it weird."

"I don't know how to make things not weird."

"Then shut up and let me do the talking."

He shut up.

---

The garage behind the rum distillery smelled like sugar and solder.

Nina was smaller than Rafael expected. Five feet nothing. Arms covered in tattoos of deep-sea creatures she'd probably never seen in person. She wore safety glasses and a t-shirt that said I FOUND YOUR WRECK in block letters.

She took the dive computer without greeting either of them. Just grabbed the dry bag, ripped it open, and started muttering.

"Pressure damage. Moisture intrusion. c***k in the housing — see here?" She pointed at the diagonal line Rafael had noticed earlier. "Water got in within hours of the dive. Probably fried the board."

"Can you recover anything?" Lux asked.

Nina looked at her. Then at Rafael. Then back at the computer.

"For you? I'll try. For him?" She jerked her thumb at Rafael. "Double price."

"It's already double," Lux said.

"Then triple. He looks like he can afford it."

Rafael pulled out his wallet. Handed her a stack of bills without counting. "There's more if you find data from the last dive."

Nina stared at the money. Then at him. Then back at the money.

"Stay here," she said. "Don't touch anything. And if you sneeze near my workbench, I'm billing you for decontamination."

She disappeared behind a curtain of beaded strings.

Lux leaned against a shelf of broken sonar parts. Crossed her arms. Didn't look at him.

"You didn't have to pay triple," she said.

"You didn't have to bring me here."

"I brought you here because Mateo deserves someone who gives a damn." Her voice cracked on the last word. She looked away. Pretended to study a depth gauge hanging from a nail.

Rafael wanted to touch her. Just her shoulder. Just once. To say thank you in a language that didn't need verbs.

He kept his hands in his pockets.

---

The curtain parted forty-seven minutes later.

Nina held a memory card between her thumb and forefinger. Small. Gray. Unremarkable.

"Last dive," she said. "Date stamp matches the year Mateo went missing."

Rafael's throat closed.

"There's a problem," Nina continued. "The file is encrypted. Old military-grade. Someone didn't want this data read."

"Can you break it?"

"No." She handed the card to Lux. "But I know a guy in Honduras who can. He's expensive, he's scary, and he doesn't like questions."

Lux turned the card over. Her thumb brushed Rafael's as she passed it to him.

He felt the touch everywhere.

"Give me the number," he said.

Nina wrote it on a scrap of receipt paper. He took it. Folded it twice. Slid it into the same pocket as his passport.

Outside, the distillery's morning shift had started. The air smelled sweeter now. Cloying. Almost sick.

Lux walked ahead of him toward the truck she'd borrowed from a neighbor. Her shorts were still damp from the dive. Her hair had dried in tangles.

"Lux."

She stopped. Didn't turn.

"Thank you," he said.

She turned then. Just her head. Just her profile against the rising sun.

"Don't thank me yet," she said. "We haven't found the rest of him."

She got in the truck. Started the engine. He climbed into the passenger seat.

Neither of them put on seatbelts.

The road to The Rusty Spoon wound past palm trees and closed-up shacks. She drove too fast. He didn't complain.

Somewhere behind them, in Nina's garage, the empty dry bag lay crumpled on the floor.

And somewhere in Honduras, a man who didn't like questions waited for a phone call that would change everything.