The Reef

could see it as clearly as I see you. I know it’s not possible, but I did. So did he.”
    “I believe you,” Matthew said quietly. “Go on.”
    “I watched him dive for it. I was just hovering there in the water.” Her brows drew together, forming a faint line between them. “It was as if I had to be there, had to watch. I’m not explaining this very well.”
    “You’re doing fine.”
    “I watched, waited,” she continued. “He picked it up and held it, and I could see it bleed through his fingers, as if the stone had gone to liquid. He looked up. He looked right at me. I saw his eyes. Then . . .”
    Because she trembled, he stroked her hair. He wanted to gather her close, tell her to forget all of it. But he knew she had to finish. “Then what?”
    “He screamed. I heard it. It wasn’t muffled by the water. It was piercing, terrified. He kept looking at me and screaming. There was fire, everywhere. The light andcolor from it, but no heat. I wasn’t afraid, not at all. So I took the amulet from him and let him go.”
    She stopped on a nervous laugh. “I don’t know—I guess I blacked out. I must have. I must have been unconscious all along because it couldn’t have happened that way.”
    “You were wearing the amulet, Tate. When I pulled you out, you were wearing it.”
    “I must have . . .found it.”
    He brushed her hair back from her face. “And that makes sense to you?”
    “Yes, of course. No,” she admitted and reached for Matthew’s hand. “It doesn’t.”
    “Let me tell you what I saw. When I heard you calling for me, I ran out on deck. VanDyke was in the water. He was flailing around, and yeah, he was screaming. I knew you must be in the water, so I went in.”
    There was no point in telling her that he dived until his lungs had all but burst, had never given a thought to surfacing unless she was with him.
    “When I found you you were on the bottom, lying on your back the way you do when you sleep. And you were smiling. I almost expected you to open your eyes and look at me. I realized when I was pulling you up that you weren’t breathing. It couldn’t have been more than three, four minutes tops from the time you yelled for me to come, but you weren’t breathing.”
    “So you brought me back to life.” She leaned forward, set the cup aside so that her hands were free to frame his face. “My personal white knight.”
    “It wasn’t like Prince Charming. Nothing romantic about mouth-to-mouth and CPR.”
    “Under the circumstances, it beats a bouquet of lilies.” She kissed him gently. “Matthew, one thing. I never called out.” She shook her head before he could protest. “I didn’t call out. But I did say your name in my head when I thought I was drowning.” She laid her cheek on his and sighed. “I guess you heard me.”

C HAPTER 30
    T HROUGH THE BARS of the small cell, Matthew studied Silas VanDyke. Here, he thought, was the man who had plagued his life, taken his father, plotted to murder him and who had nearly killed the woman he loved.
    He’d been a man of power, of far-reaching financial, social and political strength.
    Now he was caged like an animal.
    They’d given him a cotton shirt and pants, both faded and baggy. He wore no belt, no shoelaces, certainly no monogrammed silk tie.
    Still he sat on the narrow bunk as if he sat in a custom-made chair as if the dingy cell was his lushly decorated office. As if he were still in charge.
    But it seemed to Matthew that he had shrunken somehow, that his body looked frail in the oversized prison clothes. The bones of his face had sharpened and pressed skeletally against the skin as if flesh had melted away overnight.
    He was unshaven, his hair matted from seawater and sweat. Livid scratches scarred his face and hands, reminding Matthew of Tate’s desperate fight for her life.
    For that alone he wanted to break through the bars himself, to hear VanDyke’s bones snap in his hands.
    But he made himself stand, and study.
    And he saw that the dignity and appearance of power VanDyke struggled to maintain were stretched over him like thin, fragile glass. The hate was still there, Matthew realized, ripe, alive and burning in his eyes. He wondered if it was enough to keep the man alive, if he could feed on it through all the years he’d be locked away.
    He hoped it would be.
    “How does it feel,” Matthew wondered aloud, “to lose everything?”
    “Do you think this will stop me?” VanDyke’s voice was