Cutter Cay - 2 Riptide by Cherry Adair

Author:Cherry Adair
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780312371982
Publisher: St. Martin's Paperbacks
Published: 2011-08-29T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

They stayed where they were, hovering in the water, maintaining their position easily and almost silently as the turtle paddled lazily by. Five smalltooth sand tigers cut through a shoal of tiny neon dottybacks. The sharks hovered for a moment in the midst of the swarm of blue, orange, and yellow, then flashed through the shoal and disappeared into the blueness beyond the hulk of the El Puerto. The dottybacks moved as one in a sweep of color in the opposite direction.

Bria did a graceful pirouette to watch them go, the bubbles from her regulator spiraling over her head. Her eyes smiled behind her mask. “Breathtaking.”

Yeah. She was.

The light diminished the deeper they got, turning the underwater world around them into shades of blue. The darkened outline of the wrecks showed up against the light golden-sand seafloor.

The São Juan Poinsat rested a hundred yards away. He took Bria by the Portuguese wreck first. Little remained, so it was hard to tell what it had been. The timbers that hadn’t yet been consumed by worms were burnt and twisted beyond recognition.

“Wow,” Bria said through the microphone in her mask. “What happened to this one?”

“El Puerto carried bomba, ceramic fire pots crammed with flammable material. They’d throw them at the sails and rigging of an enemy ship. So while the Portuguese were firing at the Spanish ship, she was burned beneath their feet.”

“A hideous way to die,” Bria said soberly.

There wasn’t much left of the warship, and he turned her around toward the El Puerto. The once magnificent galleon lay on her port side, at a sixty-degree angle to the sand, bow first. Nick touched Bria’s shoulder, then pointed at the massive gaping holes running the length of her hull. “That’s one of four direct hits below the water line from the Portuguese cannons. She sank fast.”

“Can I touch it?” Her genuine excitement pleased him.

“Sure.”

He followed as she dove down to the wreck and watched as she lightly brushed her fingers along the ragged edges of the hole in the hull. He’d done exactly the same thing when he’d first seen her.

“Do you know if anyone survived?”

“Out of the thirteen hundred people on board the two ships, five were picked up by a fishing boat the next day.”

“That’s good. Good that there were people who could tell what happened. Hopefully they were able to contact some of the families…”

Nick shook his head.

“What?”

“It happened four hundred years ago, in time of war.”

Bria shrugged, giving her fins a little flip that stirred up some of the sediment. “Right. Well I’m sure the families must’ve been relieved to get news. Even if it was bad news.”

“Right,” Nick said dryly.

She reached over and punched his arm. “Cynic.” Bria glanced around, clearly fascinated by the myriad species of fish swimming lazily about. They didn’t seem concerned that they had humans on their home turf.

“There are the guys,” Bria pointed. Burke and Olav were shadowy figures filling their baskets fifty feet away. “Before we head back up, can I see what they found?”

“Sure.

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