Chapter Two
905 Words
Rafael slept with his shoes on.
Not out of habit. Out of something uglier. Trust had left him somewhere between the second divorce and the night he watched a hired diver surface with a jawbone that DNA testing later proved belonged to a seventeenth-century sailor. He'd learned to stay ready. Boots laced. Passport within reach. Exit strategy always breathing down his neck.
The couch on The Rusty Spoon smelled like diesel and old cigarettes. Someone had patched a tear in the vinyl with duct tape. The pillow had no case. He lay there listening to the hull creak and told himself he'd made a mistake.
She was trouble. The kind with calloused hands and no patience for his name. He'd met women like her before — broke, beautiful, burning with something they called independence and he called a lawsuit waiting to happen.
But none of them had found La Dama.
And none of them had looked at him like that. Like he wasn't a wallet with legs. Like he was just a man who'd lost something and couldn't admit how much it still hurt.
He sat up at 4:47 AM. The boat swayed. His stomach objected. He'd forgotten he hated sleeping on water.
---
She was already on deck.
No wetsuit yet. Just shorts, a tank top with a faded logo he didn't recognize, and her father's photo tucked into the waistband like a talisman. She stood at the rail, coffee in hand, staring at the same patch of black water from yesterday. Same posture. Same silence.
She hadn't heard him come up.
Rafael leaned against the cabin doorframe and watched. The sunrise hadn't arrived. The world was all grays and bruises. She fit right in.
"You don't sleep," he said.
She didn't flinch. "You breathe loud."
"I was on a couch built for a child."
"You were on my couch. Be grateful I didn't make you sleep with the anchor."
He moved to the rail. Left a careful distance between them. Two feet. Maybe three. Enough to feel like a choice.
"The dive today," he said. "What's the plan?"
Lux finished her coffee. Set the mug down. Turned to face him. Her eyes had dark smudges underneath. She hadn't slept either.
"Plan is we go down, we find the main hull, we see if your brother left anything behind." She paused. "And you don't panic."
"I don't panic."
"Everyone panics their first time below a hundred feet. The light changes. The sound changes. Your brain starts whispering things." She stepped closer. Two feet became one. "You listen to me down there. Not the whispers. Not the dark. Me."
Rafael held her gaze. "And if the whispers are louder than you?"
"Then we surface, and you never come back down. I don't drag dead weight."
She said it flat. No cruelty. Just truth. He appreciated that more than he should.
---
The water was colder than he expected.
Even through the drysuit — his, brand new, purchased last night by an assistant who probably hated him — the chill found the gaps. His wrists. His neck. The soft skin behind his knees. He'd done resort dives before. Warm water. Hand-holding instructors. Fish that looked like they'd posed for a postcard.
This wasn't that.
The descent felt like falling into a mouth. Light withdrew in stages. Blue turned to green turned to gray turned to nothing. His ears ached. He swallowed. Swallowed again. The pressure made his teeth hurt.
Lux stayed close. Not touching. Just there. A shape in the dimness. Her fins moved slow, deliberate. She checked his gauge every few seconds without making it obvious.
He hated that she was right.
At ninety feet, the whispers started.
Turn back. Go up. This is where Mateo died.
Rafael squeezed the dive light until his knuckles protested. Focused on her hand signals. Okay? she signed. He signed back Okay. The lie tasted like salt.
At one hundred twenty feet, the galleon appeared.
She rose out of the murk like a skeleton shrugging off a blanket. Wood beams. Broken railings. A cannon crusted with barnacles, pointing nowhere. The ship had snapped in half when she hit the bottom. The bow section lay tilted, held up by a limestone ledge. The stern had crumpled into itself, ribs exposed like a dead thing picked clean.
Lux touched his arm. Pointed toward an opening in the wreckage. A tunnel. Darker than the water around it.
She swam first. He followed.
---
Inside, the light from their beams bounced off walls coated in silt. Everything moved slow. His breathing echoed in his helmet. The tunnel narrowed. Opened. Narrowed again. He lost track of turns.
Then she stopped.
Her light had found something on the floor. Not gold. Not silver.
A dive computer. Strap rotted away. Face cracked. But the backplate still held engravings.
Rafael reached out. His hand shook.
M. Costa. Emergency contact: R. Costa. Blood type: O negative.
He couldn't breathe.
Lux pulled him back. Signed Slow with her light. Signed Breathe. He sucked air like a drowning man.
She picked up the computer. Slipped it into her pocket. Then she took his hand — not gentle, not romantic. Firm. The way you'd hold someone who might float away if you didn't.
They stayed like that for a long minute. Two divers in the dark. A dead man's watch between them.
She tugged. He followed.
The tunnel started to close.
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