The Reef

P ROLOGUE
    J AMES L ASSITER WAS forty years old, a well-built, ruggedly handsome man in the prime of his life, in the best of health.
    In an hour, he’d be dead.
    From the deck of the boat, he could see nothing but the clear silky ripple of blue, the luminous greens and deeper browns of the great reef shimmering like islands below the surface of the Coral Sea. Far to the west, the foamy froth and surge of sea surf rose up and crashed against the false shore of coral.
    From his stance at the port side, he could watch the shapes and shadows of fish, darting like living arrows through the world he’d been born to share with them.
    The coast of Australia was lost in the distance, and there was only the vastness.
    The day was perfect, the jewel-clear shimmer of the water, dashed by white facets of light tossed down by the gold flash of sun. The teasing hint of a breeze carried no taste of rain.
    Beneath his feet, the deck swayed gently, a cradle on the quiet sea. Wavelets lapped musically against the hull. Below, far below, was treasure waiting to be discovered.
    They were mining the wreck of the Sea Star, a Britishmerchant ship that had met its doom on the Great Barrier Reef two centuries before. For more than a year, breaking for bad weather, equipment failure and other inconveniences, they had worked, often like dogs, to reap the riches the Star had left behind.
    There were riches yet, James knew. But his thoughts traveled beyond the Sea Star, north of that spectacular and dangerous reef to the balmy waters of the West Indies. To another wreck, to another treasure.
    To Angelique’s Curse.
    He wondered now if it was the richly jeweled amulet that was cursed, or the woman, the witch Angelique, whose power—it was reputed—remained strong in the rubies and diamonds and gold. Legend was that she had worn it, a gift from the husband it was said she murdered, on the day she was burned at the stake.
    The idea fascinated him, the woman, the necklace, the legend. The search for it, which he would begin shortly, was taking on a personal twist. James didn’t simply want the riches, the glory. He wanted Angelique’s Curse, and the legend it carried.
    He had been weaned on the hunt, on tales of wrecked ships and the bounty the sea hoarded from them. All of his life, he had dived, and he had dreamed. The dreams had cost him a wife, and given him a son.
    James turned from the rail to study the boy. Matthew was nearly sixteen now. He had grown tall, but had yet to fill out. There was potential there, James mused, in the thin frame and ropey muscle. They shared the same dark, unmanageable hair, though the boy refused to have his cut short so that even now as Matthew checked the diving gear, it fell forward to curtain his face.
    The face was rawboned, James thought. It had fined down in the last year or two and had lost the childish roundness. An angel face, a waitress had called it once, and had embarrassed the boy into hot cheeks and grimaces.
    It had more of the devil in it now, and those blue eyes he’d passed to Matthew were more often hot than cool. The Lassiter temper, the Lassiter luck, James thought with a shake of his head. Tough legacies for a half-grown boy.
    One day, he thought, one day soon, he would be able to give his son all the things a father hoped for. The key to it all lay quietly waiting in the tropical seas of the West Indies.
    A necklace of rubies and diamonds beyond price, heavy with history, dark with legend, tainted with blood.
    Angelique’s Curse.
    James’s mouth twisted into a thin smile. When he had it, the bad luck that had dogged the Lassiters would change. He only had to be patient.
    “Hurry up with those tanks, Matthew. The day’s wasting.”
    Matthew looked up, tossed his hair out of his eyes. The sun was rising behind his father’s back, sending light shimmering around him. He looked, Matthew thought, like a king preparing for battle. As always, love and admiration welled up and startled him with its intensity.
    “I replaced your pressure gauge. I want to take a look at the old one.”
    “You look out for your old man.” James hooked his arm around Matthew’s neck for a playful tussle. “Going to bring you up a fortune today.”
    “Let me go down with you. Let me take the morning shift instead of him.”
    James suppressed a sigh. Matthew hadn’t learned the wisdom of controlling his emotions. Particularly his dislikes. “You know how the teams work. You and Buck’ll dive this