The Reef

voice was thin with excitement.
    “Could be,” Bowers replied and got to work. “Handle the digitals, Dart. Tate, signal the bridge for full stop.”
    They didn’t speak again for several moments. While the tapes ran, Bowers zoomed in closer and sent the camera on a slow sweep.
    The wreck was teaming with life. Tate imagined that Litz and the other biologists on board would soon be singing hosannahs. With her lips pressed together, she held her breath. Then let it out on an explosive puff.
    “Oh Christ, look! Do you see it?”
    Dart’s answer was a nervous giggle. “It’s the wheel. Look at that honey lying there, just waiting for us to comealong and find her. She’s a side-wheeler, Bowers. It’s the goddamn beautiful Justine. ”
    Bowers halted the camera. “Children,” he said and got shakily to his feet. “At a moment like this, I believe I should say something profound.” He laid a hand on his heart. “We’ve done did it.”
    With one wild hoot, he grabbed Tate and did a fast boogie. Laughter and excitement had tears rushing to her eyes.
    “Let’s wake up the ship,” she decided and dashed off.
    She raced to her own cabin first to rouse a cranky Lorraine. “Get down to Ground Zero, now.”
    “What? Are we sinking? Go away, Tate. I’m busy being seduced by Harrison Ford.”
    “He’ll wait. Get down there.” To ensure obedience, Tate ripped the sheet off Lorraine’s curled, naked body. “But for God’s sake put a robe on first.”
    Leaving Lorraine swearing at her, she dashed down the corridor to Hayden’s cabin. “Hayden?” Struggling with giggles, she pounded on his door. “Come on, Hayden, red alert, all hands on deck, get the lead out.”
    “What is it?” His eyes owlishly wide without his glasses, his hair sticking straight up and a blanket held modestly around his waist, he blinked at Tate. “Is somebody hurt?”
    “No, everybody’s wonderful.” In that moment, she was sure he was quite simply the sweetest man she had ever met. Following impulse, she threw her arms around him, nearly knocking him down, and kissed him. “Oh, Hayden, I can’t wait to—”
    The first shock of his mouth closing hungrily over hers had her going still. She knew desire when she tasted it on a man’s lips, knew need when she felt it trembling in a man’s arms.
    For both of them, she relaxed, lifting a hand gently to his cheek until the kiss played out.
    “Hayden—”
    “I’m sorry.” Appalled, he stepped stiffly back. “You caught me off guard, Tate. I shouldn’t have done that.”
    “It’s all right.” She smiled, laid both hands on hisshoulders. “Really it’s all right, Hayden. I’d say we caught each other off guard, and it was nice.”
    “As associates,” he began, terrified he might stammer. “As your superior, I had no right to make an advance.”
    She suppressed a sigh. “Hayden, it was only a kiss. And I kissed you first. I don’t think you’re going to fire me over it.”
    “No, of course not. I only meant—”
    “You meant you wanted to kiss me, you did, and it was nice.” Patiently, she took his hand. “Let’s not go crazy over it. Especially since we’ve got a lot more to go crazy over. You want to know why I beat on your door, dragged you out of bed and threw myself at you?”
    “Well, I . . .” He pushed at glasses he wasn’t wearing and poked himself in the nose. “Yes.”
    “Hayden, we found the Justine. Now hold onto yourself,” she warned, “because I’m going to kiss you again.”

C HAPTER 12
    T HE DROID DID the work. And that was the problem. A week into the excavation of the Justine, Tate found herself struggling with a vague sense of dissatisfaction.
    It was everything they’d hoped for. The wreck was rich. There were gold coins, gold bars—some of them a full sixty pounds. Artifacts were transferred to the surface in abundance. The droid worked busily, digging, lifting, shifting booty with Bowers and Dart working the controls at Ground Zero.
    Now and again Tate took a break from her own work to watch the monitor and observe how the machine would haul a heavy load in its mechanical arms, or snag a sea sponge delicately with its pincers for the biologists to study.
    The expedition was a complete success.
    Tate was suffering through a profound sense of envy for an ugly metal robot.
    At her station in a forward cabin, she photographed, examined and catalogued the bits and pieces of mid-nineteenth-century life. A cameo brooch, bits