The Reef

now you do.”
    “That’s right.” He knocked back more brandy. “Now I do.”
    “And for what purpose, Matthew? Underlying it all, thenonsense about spells and witches, I really think that’s what’s eating at Buck.”
    “So, now it’s nonsense.” He smiled a little. “You didn’t always think so.”
    “I used to believe in the Tooth Fairy, too. Listen to me.” With some urgency, she closed her hand over his. “Buck’s not going to feel easy in his mind or his heart as long as the amulet is an issue.”
    “Don’t ask me to forget it, Tate. Don’t ask me to make a choice like that.”
    “I’m not.” She sat back, sighed again. “Even if I could convince you, I have to work on my father, probably LaRue. Even myself.” With a restless movement of her shoulders, she glanced over to the monitor. “I’m not immune to the fascination, Matthew.”
    “You’ve been writing about it.” Intrigued, he nudged at her to get a better look. “Let me read it.”
    “It’s not finished. It’s rough. I was just—”
    “Let me read it,” he repeated, “I’m not going to grade you on it.”
    Huffing a bit because she felt exactly like a schoolgirl facing a quiz, she sat back out of his way.
    “How does this thing work?” he asked after a moment. “I never had much use for computers. How do you turn the page?” Absently, he glanced down as her fingers quickly tapped. “Got it.”
    Thoughtful, he read from beginning to end. “Pretty cut and dried,” he murmured, and put her back up.
    “It’s a paper,” she said testily, “not a romance novel.”
    “Until you read between the lines,” he finished, and looked back at her. “You’ve been giving it a lot of thought.”
    “Of course I have. Everyone has, though nobody talks about it.” With a few expert taps, she saved her file and shut down. “The fact is I want very much to find the amulet, see it myself, examine it. It would be the find of any professional lifetime. Truthfully, it’s been playing on my mind so much that I’ve revised my entire thesis around it.”
    She turned back with a weak smile. “Myth versus science.”
    “What are you asking me, Tate?”
    “To reassure Buck, and I guess to reassure me, that finding it will be enough for you. Matthew, you have nothing to prove. If your father loved you even a fraction of the amount that Buck does, he wouldn’t want you to ruin your life on some useless vendetta.”
    Torn between comforting and convincing, she framed his face in her hands. “It won’t bring him back, give you the years you lost with him. VanDyke’s out of your life. You can beat him if that’s still important to you just by finding the necklace. Let that be enough.”
    He didn’t speak for a moment. The war inside was so familiar he barely registered the rip of battle. In the end it was he who broke contact.
    “It isn’t enough, Tate.”
    “Do you really think you could kill him? Even if you managed to get close enough, do you really believe you’re capable of taking a life?”
    His eyes glinted as they sliced to hers. “You know I am.”
    She shivered as her blood chilled. There was no doubt in her mind that the man looking at her now was capable of anything. Even murder.
    “You’d ruin your life? And for what?”
    He shrugged. “For what’s right. I’ve ruined it before.”
    “That’s so incredibly ignorant.” Unable to sit, she shoved out and paced the room. “If there’s a curse on that damned thing, this is it. It blinds people to their better selves. I’m calling Hayden.”
    “What the fuck does he have to do with it?”
    “I want another scientist here, or at least I want to be able to consult with one. If you won’t find a way to reassure Buck, I will. I can find a way to prove to him that the amulet is just an amulet, and that if and when it’s found, it will be treated as a relic. With the scientific community backing me, that necklace will be put in a museum where it belongs.”
    “You can toss it back into the sea when I’m done withit,” Matthew told her, and his voice was cold and final. “You can call a dozen scientists. They’re not going to stop me from dealing with VanDyke my way.”
    “It always has to be your way, doesn’t it?” If it would have done any good, she would have thrown something.
    “This time it does. I’ve been waiting half my life for this.”
    “So you’ll waste the rest of your life. Not just waste,” she said furiously. “But throw it