The Reef

between myself and my love. I pray to all the forces of heaven and hell that he who takes this, Etienne’s last gift to me, know strife and pain and tragedy. He who seeks to profit will only lose what is most precious, most dear. My legacy to my murderers and those who follow them is generations of grief.
    Tomorrow they burn me as a witch. I pray they are right, and my powers, like my love, are enduring.
    Angelique Maunoir
    Tate couldn’t speak for a moment. She handed Matthew back the papers and rose to go to the window. The rain had slowed, nearly stopped without her being aware.
    “She was so alone,” Tate murmured. “How cruel for her to be in that cell knowing she would die so horribly in the morning. Still grieving for the man she loved, not being able to feel joy for the child she carried. No wonder she prayed for retribution.”
    “But did she get it?”
    With a shake of her head, Tate turned to see he had risen as well and was standing with her. Her eyes were wet. The words written so long ago tore at her heart. But when Matthew lifted a hand and laid it on her damp cheek, she jerked back.
    “Don’t.” She watched his eyes go flat before she stepped away. “I stopped believing in magic, black or white, a long time ago. The necklace was obviously vitally important to Angelique, a link to the man she’d loved. A curse is a different matter altogether.”
    “Funny, I’d have thought someone who spends her time handling and researching old things would have more imagination. Haven’t you ever picked up something thathad been buried for centuries and felt the punch of it? The power.”
    She had. Indeed she had. “My point is,” she continued, evading, “that I’m convinced. We stick together, beat him together. We do whatever it takes to keep the amulet out of VanDyke’s hands.”
    Matthew acknowledged this with a nod that was much more casual than his jerking pulse. “That’s the answer I wanted. I’d offer to shake on it, but you don’t like me to touch you.”
    “No, I don’t.” She started to step around him, but he shifted to block her. Her eyes went cold. “Really, Matthew, let’s not be any more ridiculous than necessary.”
    “When we start diving, you’re going to have to tolerate me touching you when it’s necessary.”
    “I can work with you. Just don’t crowd me.”
    “That’s what you used to say.” He moved back, gestured. “There’s plenty of room.”
    She took advantage of it and crossed to the door. She shrugged out of the borrowed windbreaker, replaced it on its hook. “I appreciate your showing me the papers, Matthew, and giving me more of the background.”
    “We’re partners.”
    She glanced back. Odd how alone he looked standing there with the wheel at his back and the sea behind him. “So it seems. Good night.”

C HAPTER 17
    S ILAS V AN D YKE WAS extremely disappointed. The reports he’d just read had completely ruined his morning. He tried to recapture some of the charm of the day by having lunch on his patio overlooking the sea.
    It was certainly a spectacular spot, the crash of waves thundering, Chopin soaring from the speakers hidden cannily among the lush spread of his tropical gardens. He sipped champagne and picked at a succulent fruit salad, knowing his companion of the moment would be back from her shopping expedition shortly.
    Naturally, she’d be willing to distract him with an afternoon of sex. But he simply wasn’t in the mood.
    He was calm, he assured himself. Still in charge. He was simply disappointed.
    Tate Beaumont had betrayed him. He took it quite personally. After all, he’d watched her blossom as any of his well-tended blooms. Like a kindly uncle, he’d given her career little boosts along the way. Always anonymously, of course. He hadn’t been looking for gratitude.
    Just loyalty.
    Her work on the Nomad would have catapulted her to the very top of her field. With her looks, her enthusiasm, her youth, she would have outstripped such quietlyrespected scientists as Hayden Deel. Then, when she was at peak, he would have stepped out of the shadows and offered her the world.
    She would have headed his expeditions. His labs, his funding, his finest equipment would have been at her disposal. She would have joined him in his quest for Angelique’s Curse. Since that day eight years before, when she had stood on the deck of the Triumphant, he had known intuitively that she was his link to it. Over the years, he’d come to