A Coral Kiss Part 27

Amy winced, her expression rueful. "You don't buy that version?"

He lifted one broad shoulder dismissingly. "I'm not sure. It has a certain inherent logic except for the fact that it doesn't tell us how LePage or Vaden or anyone else knew about the box in the first place."

"Details," she scoffed.

"That's what I'm good at," Jed reminded her. "Dull little details."

Amy surrendered to the inevitable. "All right. When do we plan the dive?" She was unaware of the slight s.h.i.+ver that went through her as she accepted that the return to the flooded caves was now imminent.

But Jed felt the tiny tremor. He also saw the bleak determination that replaced the normal warmth in her eyes. He wanted to take her into bis arms and tell her they didn't have to make the dive. He longed to hold her close and a.s.sure her that she was safe, that he could protect her without retrieving the box. But he couldn't make that kind of promise. The evidence of brewing trouble was all around them, and there was no way in h.e.l.l he could ignore it.

Jed came to a halt in the sand and caught Amy by the arms. "Honey, if there was any other way to handle this, I'd use it. Believe me?"

She smiled up at him with a woman's acceptance and understanding. Her fingers touched the side of his face, as light as a graceful strand of seaweed reaching out to caress him underwater. "I believe you, Jed.

We'll do this your way."

Chapter Fifteen.

"Christ, I can't believe you went down into those caves that night with only one dive light. You should have had at least one extra light as a backup. Preferably two. Do you realize what could have happened if the batteries had failed in the single light you had?" Jed paced slowly around the pile of diving equipment he and Amy had laid out on the living room floor. Tanks, regulators, dive lights, line and reel, fins, diving knives, buoyancy compensators and a few other a.s.sorted items were all neatly arranged for his inspection. Two days had pa.s.sed since the Vaden incident.

With typical Glaze attention to detail, he'd already been over every item on the floor twice. He'd made Amy go over everything with him both times and was now starting in on a third inspection. Jed Glaze, it turned out, was a great believer in knowing a diving buddy's paraphernalia as well as he knew his own.

Especially, it seemed, when it came to the business of cave diving. He gave credence to the old axiom that a diver's life could depend on his buddy's equipment.

Amy was torn between amus.e.m.e.nt and the distilled remnants of nightmares as she listened to his admonis.h.i.+ng question. "Trust me, Jed, I was well aware of what might have happened."

"Dive lights fail all the time, just like flashlights."

"I know, Jed."

"Swimming around inside a cave without a light would be like-" He broke off abruptly.

Amy finished the sentence in a surprisingly neutral voice. "Like swimming around inside a tomb. The thought crossed my mind more than once that night, Jed."

"And you went into that cave on a half filled tank of air. No safety margin at all. If something had gone wrong you wouldn't have had a minute's worth of reserve supply."

"I know, Jed."

He muttered something that sounded both violent and disgusted as he bent down to unsheathe the diving knife. "Why the h.e.l.l am I lecturing you? It's not as though you thought you had a lot of choice. But dammit, Amy, you took a h.e.l.l of a risk that night."

"The caves didn't seem a whole lot worse at the time than looking down the barrel of that gun LePage had. It was only afterward that I realized it was the caves that terrified me. I think that after I decided I had to hide the box, I just sort of turned off something in my nervous system for a while. It let me function without thinking about the fear. But afterward I never had nightmares about the gun, only about the caves."

Jed resheathed the knife and crouched down beside her. His gaze was steady and intent. "I can try going in alone. You can wait at the entrance pool. I'll see if there's any chance of finding the box based on your description of where you hid it."

Amy shook her head, committed now. "No. Absolutely not. You're not going into those caves alone. If ever there was a situation that demanded the buddy system, this is it. Besides, I can't tell you for certain how to find the right tunnel. I know I swam past two or three entrances before I finally set the box down inside one. The only thing I remember clearly is a distinct bend in the main pa.s.sageway." She suddenly realized what was probably worrying him. "Afraid I'll panic on you?"

He half smiled and shook his head. "Are you kidding? After the way you handled yourself that night LePage pulled a gun on you? No. You are one gutsy lady. When the chips are down, you're not the kind to panic. I'd trust you at my back any day."

His rough approval warmed her. "That first day when we went diving in the cove I didn't handle myself well."

"It was your first time back in the water after the experience eight months ago. You were bound to be nervous. You did fine when we explored that bomber."

She nodded. "It was easier the second time."

"If you get anxious this time, we'll get out, give you some time to relax and then try again later. There's no rush. The box can't be very far inside the caves. You wouldn't have had the time or the air to have gone far."

Amy took a breath, remembering her fear of running out of air that night. She didn't tell Jed because she knew it would only upset him, but the truth was by the time she returned to the entrance pool that night she had been out of air. She'd barely made it back out of the cave.

"Speaking of air," Jed went on as he got to his feet and resumed his prowling inspection, "we'll stick to the standard safety formula for this kind of diving. We won't use any more than one third of our supply going in. We'll a.s.sume we'll need another third on the way out, which leaves an additional third for emergencies. When either one of us uses up the first third of our air supply, we both turn back.

Understood?"

Amy nodded obediently and then unsuccessfully tried to stifle a small grin. "Why do I get the feeling you're going to be the captain on this dive?"

"Probably because I'm the one who's supposed to be good at details," he retorted. "Now hush up and pay attention."

"Yes, sir."

He ignored her too-obedient tone. "We'll have backups for everything-regulators, lights, the works.

We'll strap the knives to our forearms instead of our legs. Less chance of having them snag on something that way. To cut down on snagging problems we'll reverse the fin straps and tape them. We'll also tape down anything else that might stick out and get caught. The last thing we need is for one of us to get equipment tangled on a projection of some kind inside the caves."

"I understand." Amy glanced at the array of diving gear. "You know, Jed, the thing I worried about most that night was kicking up silt. The visibility was good, I remember that much. The water was very clear, but..."

He nodded grimly. "But the visibility could have gone down to zero in a few seconds if you'd accidentally loosened some silt with a fin or brushed the tank against the ceiling. The stuff could have clouded the water and left you as blind as you would have been if you'd lost the light." He ran his fingers through his hair. "d.a.m.n, Amy, whenever I think about it-"

"Don't think about it. Believe me, I try not to." For a moment she felt as though she were the one who had to push the project forward in the face of an overactive imagination -this time Jed's. "We'll be careful. We'll do everything by the book this time, follow all the rules. Weil play it nice and conservative and we'll put you in charge, how's that?"

"Maybe I ought to do this alone."

"We've already been through that."

He sighed. "You're right. Okay, back to basics. I'm satisfied with the line. It's in good shape, light colored, won't float. We both stay on it at all times, even if the visibility is one hundred percent. If the water clouds up in a hurry and one of us doesn't have hold of the line, we're in trouble."

"Don't worry, I'm not about to let go of the line." Since Jed would be going in first, he would have control of the reel of nylon line they would use. The line would be tied off at the cave entrance and would be reeled out as Jed swam along the corridors. It not only marked the path back to the entrance, it would be the only means of finding the entrance if something went seriously wrong. The one piece of emergency equipment Amy had thought to use on her first dive in the caves was the reel and line LePage had brought along. She had clung to it with a death grip as she'd frantically kicked her way back out to the entrance pool.

Jed sat back on his haunches. "I want you to draw me a diagram of what you can remember about the caves and also what you remember about that little chart you said LePage had with him that night. I don't suppose you kept that map, did you?"

Amy shook her head. "No. I stuffed it into the box with the emeralds and the letters and the photos. It was just one more piece of evidence I was trying to hide. It wasn't very elaborate, Jed. It showed the first few feet of the main entrance tunnel and I think it marked a couple of side tunnels, but that was about all. When Wyman hid the box the first time, he apparently put it close to the pool entrance, just inside the first branching tunnel. At least that's how it looked on that little chart."

"But that's not where you put it when you hid it?"

"No. I wanted to put it as far back in the cave as I dared. I wanted that box to stay hidden forever. It was all I could think about that night." Amy looked at him. "Jed, if we do find it, we've got to destroy everything inside. The letters, the photos, everything."

"We'll take care of the dangerous stuff," he promised. "That's the whole point of this little expedition."

Neither of them mentioned the half dozen emeralds. As far as Amy was concerned, they were inevitably linked with the rest of the box's contents and therefore came under the heading "dangerous stuff." But she wasn't certain Jed viewed them in the same light.

Jed got to his feet once more and walked over to the table he had been using to sketch his latest bird cage design. He picked up a piece of paper and handed it to Amy, along with a mechanical pencil.

"I want you to sketch as much as you can remember about those caves, honey. Start from the entrance.

You said there was a small amount of breathing s.p.a.ce above the waterline just inside the entrance?"

Amy nodded, remembering. She reached for the paper and pencil. "It doesn't extend more than a couple of feet. After that the cave angles downward slightly and it's completely filled with water." She glanced up at him anxiously as she started to draw. "I'm not very good at this kind of thing. Drawing, I mean.

My sense of perspective is poor. The last art cla.s.s I had was in third grade."

"Just do the best you can." He crouched beside her, peering intently at the blank sheet of paper as she started a sketchy rendering of the rocky pool that formed the entrance of the cave.

Amy was painstakingly drawing the dark, yawning mouth when the fragile lead of the mechanical pencil snapped. Patiently Jed took the pencil from her, adjusted the lead and handed it back. Without a word, Amy went back to work. Jed watched her for a moment and then shook his head.

"Don't draw it from that angle. You're trying to sketch it as though you were swimming into it. Give me a cutaway view. You know, from the side." He momentarily took the pencil back from her and showed her what he meant.

"I told you I wasn't very good at his kind of drawing," Amy complained, retrieving the pencil. She started over again, eventually producing a gently sloping corridor that twisted suddenly to the right.

Uncomfortably aware of Jed gazing over her shoulder, she attempted to sketch in what she could remember of the two branching caves she had noted that night.

"How far did you swim before you pa.s.sed the first side cave?" Jed asked.

"I don't remember. I wasn't paying attention to that kind of detail. I just recall seeing the dark opening on my left and thinking that it wasn't far enough. I swam past the second side cave a short time later."

"How much later? A few seconds? A couple of minutes?"

"Jed, I don't remember! I just kept swimming, thinking I had to go deeper into the cave before I hid the box."

"All right, all right, don't get upset."

"I'm not upset," she answered, her anger flaring.

He c.o.c.ked one dark brow in mocking skepticism but said nothing. "Keep going. Do you remember anything else about the caves? Stalact.i.tes? Stalagmites?"

Amy had a fleeting mental image of jagged swords hanging from the ceiling and thrusting upward from the floor. Her mouth tightened. "Yes. The main pa.s.sage was fairly wide but the interior was very jagged and uneven. The caves were formed by lava flows and later filled with sea water."

Jed tapped the paper. "That means we'll have to be extra careful about snarling the equipment or accidentally kicking an obstruction."

Amy went back to her drawing, frowning intently now as she tried to push aside the nightmare images and reduce her recollections to a simple sketch. "After I'd pa.s.sed the second pa.s.sage I knew I couldn't swim much farther. There wasn't a lot of air left in the tank."

Jed's look was grim. "Don't remind me."

"It was shortly after that second side cave that I turned into a third branching cave. The entrance seemed wider than the others. I went a short distance and put down the box, turned around and swam back out."

"You're sure you only pa.s.sed two side pa.s.sages before you swam into the one where you hid the box?"

"I think so, but Jed, you know what it's like in a cave. Darker than midnight. I only had a single light and it wasn't a very big one. It's possible I just didn't notice a couple of small side pa.s.sages. I had no intention of ever trying to get that box back out of the cave. I wasn't exactly trying to chart the place for future reference."

He ignored the sharpness in her voice. "I know. Okay, we'll start searching side pa.s.sages after we've pa.s.sed the two you remember." He straightened, reaching down to tug her up beside him. "Are you ready?"

"As ready as I'll ever be."

He searched her face for a moment, then nodded abruptly without saying anything. He turned to collect the diving equipment that had been set out on the floor.

Amy tried very hard not to look into the depths of the entrance pool as she climbed over the jagged rocks and into the water. But her imagination combined with her too-vivid memories, and out of the corner of her eye she saw the place where LePage's body had lain. Memories of his dead stare illuminated by the light that awful night crowded too close. She shook herself free of them, reminding herself that she had to concentrate on the job at hand. Jed's life as well as her own could easily depend on how alert she was during the dive.

In the full light of day, she could easily see the floor of the rocky pool. Getting into the water wasn't nearly as treacherous as it was at night. But as soon as they put on their fins and swam into the dark, gaping mouth of the cave, the warm, clarifying light of the sun became useless. The darkest of all possible nights was waiting just inside the entrance.

The intensity of the darkness was increased by the fact that one had to swim through it. The water gave the utter blackness another dimension.

The dive lights provided a narrow path through the water, a corridor of visibility that cut a swath of safety through the midnight depths. When Amy glanced to the side, down or back, the lighted path disappeared, leaving only the endless, watery blackness.

Amy kept a firm hold on the nylon line Jed let out from the reel in his hand. The line had been tied off around a rock in the entrance pool and again just inside the pa.s.sageway. Jed paused every so often to tie it off again as he swam. Whenever he had to touch a projection inside the cave he did so gingerly, his cautious movements reflecting his respect for the fragile nature of the cavern surfaces.

Amy listened to the sound of her own breathing and was satisfied with the relatively normal rate. She couldn't deny she was somewhat tense, but she was in control of herself. She tried to a.s.sume an a.n.a.lytical frame of mind, forcing herself to concentrate on the details of the pa.s.sage.

The first thing she realized was that her memory for the cave's details was exceedingly poor. She recalled the jagged teeth of the stalact.i.tes and stalagmites, for instance, but she hadn't remembered that there were so many of them. The cave was wider near the entrance than it had seemed that night in October.

Of course, there was more illumination on this dive. Perhaps that accounted for the different perspective.

Visibility was excellent along the beams of light. Occasionally tiny pale creatures appeared suspended in the alien sun of Amy's dive light. Amy guessed they were small shrimp, or some other sea creature that had adapted completely to the endless night. She knew if she captured one and examined it she would undoubtedly discover it was blind. Senses other than sight were crucial to survival in a world of complete darkness.

Ahead of her Jed paused. Amy slowed, a.s.suming he was going to tie off the line again. Instead he signaled her to swim closer. When she did so he aimed the beam of his light against the left wall of the pa.s.sage. An entrance to another corridor came into view. Jed held up one finger, silently asking if this was the first of the two branching caves Amy recalled. She nodded. Jed turned and began swimming forward again.

Amy flicked the beam of her light down the corridor to her left as she swam past. She suppressed a shudder and heard the regulator record the increased tempo of her breathing. Taking a firm grip on herself she tried to relax. She was still in control.

A little farther on, Jed paused again, this time pointing out a second side cave. Amy nodded and again Jed went forward, the nylon lifeline spinning out behind him.

When Jed paused at a third side pa.s.sage, Amy stared at it uneasily. According to her memory, this should be the one she had gone down that night with the box, but it looked different. The entrance seemed narrower. And where was the bend in the pa.s.sage she thought she recalled? She looked at Jed and conveyed her uncertainty. He acknowledged it and turned into the pa.s.sage. It was just wide enough to admit a diver and his tank. Amy swam in behind Jed.

Beyond the cramped entrance, the cave pa.s.sage broadened to more comfortable proportions. There was room to turn around easily. Amy swung her light in a searching arc, finding nothing familiar. Surely after so many nightmares she should remember the pa.s.sage fairly well. Perhaps it was the wrong one, after all. She could have easily missed seeing the narrow side entrance that night and instead gone on to another branching cave.

She was about to signal to Jed that this wasn't the right cavern when her dive light picked up an odd reflection near the roof of the pa.s.sage. Instead of being able to see the jagged surface of the roof, all she could see was a sort of flat, silvery mirror. On a hunch, she swam up to it, aware that Jed was watching.

Cautiously Amy put her head through the flat reflection and discovered her hunch had been correct. She surfaced to find herself in air instead of water. Jed's light wavered beneath her as he swam to join her.

Amy spit out her regulator and shoved back her mask as Jed surfaced beside her. She was intrigued in spite of herself by the discovery.

"Take a look at this, Jed." She bounced her light off the portion of the cavern that was above water. It wasn't more than ten feet across, but there was a ledge jutting out just above the water line. Amy swam toward it.