Risky Business

secrets.” Jonas took a swig from the bottle. “Liz and I are more discreet. Five thousand a drop?”
    Scott waited a beat, then held a hand up, signaling Manchez. “Five. If you want to work as a team, it’s your business how you split it.”
    “Fifty-fifty.” Liz spread her fingers around Jonas’s beer. “One of us goes down, one stays in the dive boat.”
    “Tomorrow night. Eleven o’clock. You come to the shop. Go inside. You’ll find a waterproof case. It’ll be locked.”
    “So will the shop,” Liz put in. “How does the case get inside?”
    Manchez blew smoke between his teeth. “I got no problem getting in.”
    “Just take the case,” Scott interrupted. “The coordinates will be attached to the handle. Take the boat out, take the case down, leave it. Then come back up and wait exactly an hour. That’s when you dive again. All you have to do is take the case that’s waiting for you back to the shop and leave it.”
    “Sounds smooth,” Jonas decided. “When do we get paid?”
    “After you do the job.”
    “Half up front.” Liz took a long swallow of beer and hoped her heart would settle. “Leave twenty-five hundred with the case or I don’t dive.”
    Scott smiled. “Not as trusting as Jerry.”
    She gave him a cold, bitter look. “And I intend to stay alive.”
    “Just follow the rules.”
    “Who makes them?” Jonas took the beer back from Liz. Her hand slipped down to his leg and stayed steady.
    “You don’t want to worry about that,” Manchez advised. The cigarette was clamped between his teeth as he smiled. “He knows who you are.”
    “Just follow the coordinates and keep an eye on your watch.” Scott dropped bills on the table as he rose. “The rest is gravy.”
    “Stay smart, Jerry’s brother.” Manchez gave them both a slow smile. “Adios, señorita.”
    Jonas calmly finished his beer as the two men walked away.
    “You weren’t supposed to interfere during the meeting,” Liz began in a furious undertone. “Moralas said—”
    “The hell with Moralas.” He crushed out his cigarette, watching as the smoke plumed up. “Is that the man who put the bruises on your neck?”
    Her hand moved up before she could stop it. Halfway to her throat, Liz curled her fingers into a ball and set her hand on the table. “I told you I didn’t see him.”
    Jonas turned his head. His eyes, as they had before, reminded her of frozen smoke. “Was it the man?”
    He didn’t need to be told. Liz leaned closer and spoke softly. “I want it over, Jonas. And I don’t need revenge. You were supposed to let me meet with Scott and set things up by myself.”
    In an idle move, he tilted the candle on the table toward him and lit it. “I changed my mind.”
    “Damn you, you could’ve messed everything up. I don’t want to be involved but I am. The only way to get uninvolved is to finish it. How do we know they won’t just back off now that you’ve come into it?”
    “Because you’re right in the middle, and you always have been.” Before she could speak, he took her arm. His face was close, his voice cool and steady. “I was going to use you. From the minute I walked into your house, I was going to use you to get to Jerry’s killer. If I had to walk all over you, if I had to knock you out of the way or drag you along with me, I was going to use you. Just the way Moralas is going to use you. Just the way the others are going to use you.” The heat of the candle flickered between them as he drew her closer. “The way Jerry used you.”
    She swallowed the tremor and fought against the pain. “And now?”
    He didn’t speak. They were so close that he could see himself reflected in her eyes. In them, surrounding his own reflection, he saw the doubts and the defiance. His hand came to the back of her neck, held there until he could feel the rhythm of herpulse. With a simmering violence, he pulled her against him and covered her mouth with his. A flare that was passion, a glimmer that was hope—he didn’t know which to reach for. So he let her go.
    “No one’s going to hurt you again,” he murmured. “Especially not me.”
     
    It was the longest day of her life. Liz worked and waited as the hours crawled by. Moralas’s men mixed with the vacationers on the beach. So obviously, it seemed to Liz, that she wondered everyone else didn’t notice them as though they wore badges around their necks. Her boats went out, returned and went out again. Tanks and equipment were