The Reef

it better?”
    “Sure.” In answer, he hauled her to her feet. While her astonished parents looked on, he fixed his mouth on hers in a long, hard, demanding kiss.
    When Tate could speak again, she scrupulously cleared her throat. “You missed,” she said, holding up her bandaged hand.
    “No, I didn’t. Your mouth’s what needs the work, sweetheart.”
    “Really?” Her eyes narrowed to slits. “Now you’re an expert on what I need?”
    “I’ve always known what you need, Red. Anytime you want to—” Abruptly, he remembered they were a long way from alone. Getting a grip on his temper, he stepped back. “You might want to take a couple of aspirin to take the edge off the pain.”
    Her chin was angled like a sword. “It doesn’t hurt.” She turned and hefted her tanks.
    “Where do you think you’re going?”
    “I’m going back down.”
    “The hell you are.”
    “Just try to stop me.”
    As her husband opened his mouth, Marla patted his arm. “Let them fight it out, honey,” she murmured. “Looks like it’s been simmering awhile.”
    “You want me to try to stop you? Okay.” Letting temper lead, Matthew grabbed the tanks out of her hands and heaved them overboard. “That ought to do it.”
    For a moment, all Tate could manage was an open-mouthed gape. “You idiot. You ignorant son of a bitch. You’d better get your butt in there and haul my tanks in.”
    “Get them yourself, you’re so anxious to dive.”
    It was a small mistake, turning his back on her. And he paid for it. She launched herself at him. At the last instant, he realized her intent. In an effort to save himself, he shifted. But she dodged. The ensuing crash sent them both over the side.
    “Shouldn’t we do something, Marla?” Ray asked, as they stood at the rail.
    “I think they’re doing fine. Oh, look, she almost caught him with that punch. And with her bad hand, too.”
    Matthew jerked back from the jab at the last moment. But he didn’t quite avoid the fist to his midsection. Even slowed by the water, it earned a grunt.
    “Cut it out,” he warned, snagging her injured hand by the wrist. “You’re going to hurt yourself.”
    “We’ll see who gets hurt. Go get my tanks.”
    “You’re not going down until we’re sure you don’t have a reaction to the bite.”
    “I’ll show you my reaction,” she promised and popped him on the chin.
    “Okay, that does it.” He dunked her once, then hauled her up with an arm under her chin in a not-so-gentle rescue position. Every time she clawed or cursed at him, he shoved her under again. By the time they reached the ladder, she was wheezing. “Had enough?”
    “Bastard.”
    “I guess one more good dunk—”
    “Ahoy the Adventure!”
    Matthew shifted his grip on her as Buck hailed from the Mermaid. She was coming in a good clip from her position to the southeast, where Buck and LaRue had been hunting with the sensor.
    “Ahoy,” Buck shouted again from the bridge. LaRue leaned smugly on the rail at the bow. “We got something.”
    “Get aboard,” Matthew muttered to Tate and all but carried her up the ladder.
    Buck piloted the Mermaid neatly alongside, cut her engines. “Sensors picked up a pile of metal down there. Depth finder shows something, too. Marked it with a buoy—southeast, thirty degrees. Jesus, I think we might’ve found her.”
    Tate took a deep breath. “I want my tanks, Matthew.” Her eyes glittered as she turned to him. “Don’t even think about stopping me from going down now.”

C HAPTER 19
    T HERE WERE SEVERAL ways to range a wreck for return to site. Standard methods included angular measurements taken from three fixed objects with a sextant, compass bearings with a nine-degree spread or simply ranging the wreck by using distant objects as gunsights. Matthew had used them all.
    Though Buck had employed a simple buoy marker as a practical target, Matthew knew that had its drawbacks. A buoy could sink or drag. Or more important in this case, a buoy could be seen by other interested parties. For the sake of secrecy, he logged the compass bearings, targeted the distant Mount Nevis as a gunsight, then ordered Buck to move the buoy well away from the estimated position of the wreck.
    “We’ll keep the buoy on line with that group of trees on that point of the island,” he told Ray, passing over binoculars so that his partner could verify position by the point on Nevis.
    They stood on the deck of the New Adventure, Matthew in his