“If you had,” Nick pushed his plate away to indicate that he was finished with his meal, “then everything would have been different. I would have been aware of the possible danger and most likely it would have been you and I in that place together. Who knows what might have happened then.”
“I’ve had worse conflicts before.” Carol took a drink from her glass of wine. She wanted to finish with this subject. In her way. “Right after I graduated from Stanford, I worked for the San Francisco Chronicle. I was dating Lucas Tipton a little at the time that the Warrior drug scandal broke. I used the social contacts I had made through him to obtain a unique slant on the story. Lucas never forgave me. So I’m used to problems. They go with the territory.”
A waiter came by and poured them some coffee. “But now that I have finished apologizing, for the third time,” Carol said pointedly, “I hope we can go back to more important matters. I must tell you, Nick, that I find your Russian plot idea absolutely off the wall. The weakest element is Troy. There’s simply no way he could be a spy. It’s preposterous.”
“More preposterous than a super-alien space vehicle in need of repairs at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico?” Nick countered stubbornly. “Besides, I have a definite motive. Money. Did you see all the equipment he has wrapped up in that computer game?”
“Angie probably makes enough off her royalties in one week to cover all that computer stuff,” Carol replied. She reached across the table and put her hand on Nick’s forearm. “Now don’t overreact, but you know there are some relationships where the woman carries the financial load. I can tell that she loves him. There’s no doubt in my mind that she would offer to help him.”
“Then why did he try to borrow money from me and then Captain Homer on Thursday night?”
“Hell, Nick, I don’t know.” Carol was becoming slightly frustrated. “But it’s irrelevant anyway. I can’t imagine any set of conditions, unless I was convinced that I was going to be killed, that would prevent my going back out there with Troy. Whatever the truth is, it is certainly a sensational story. I’m surprised you are so hesitant. I thought you were an adventurer.”
Carol stared directly across the table at Nick. He thought he saw a flicker of flirtation hiding behind her unwavering gaze. You are one fascinating woman, he thought. And you’re taunting me a little now. I caught your double meaning. He remembered how good he had felt when he held her on the boat in the afternoon. Underneath that aggressive veneer is another person. Beautiful and intelligent. Hard as nails one minute and a vulnerable little girl the next. Nick was certain that any hope he might have of continuing his relationship with Carol was dependant on his helping Troy. She wasn’t interested in men who were not willing to take chances.
“I used to be,” Nick finally replied. He twirled his empty wine glass in his hand. “I don’t know what happened. I guess I got stung a couple of times and that has made me more cautious. Particularly where people are concerned. But I will admit that if I stand back from this situation and imagine myself as simply an observer, I find the whole affair absolutely fascinating.”
Carol finished her wine and put the glass back on the table. Nick was quiet. She drummed her fingers on the tabletop and smiled. “Well,” she said, fixing him with her eyes and picking up her coffee cup, “have you made a decision?”
He laughed. “Okay. Okay. I’ll do it.” Now it was his turn to reach out and touch her arm. “For lots of reasons.”
“Good,” she remarked. “Now that something has been decided, why don’t you help me prepare for my interview with Captain Homer and the crew. How much was the stuff worth that you pulled up from the Santa Rosa? And who was Jake? I must act as if I’m serious about this story.” Carol put her fountain pen tape recorder on the table and turned it on.
“We officially cleared a little over two million dollars. Jake Lewis and I each received ten percent, Amanda Winchester was reimbursed for the expense advance plus twenty-five percent of the profit. Homer, Ellen and Greta kept the rest.” Nick stopped but Carol indicated for him to continue. “Jake Lewis was the only close friend I have ever had as an adult. He was an absolute peach of a person, honest, hard-working, intelligent, and loyal. And completely naive. He fell for Greta like a ton of bricks. She manipulated him completely and then used his love to her own advantage.”
Nick looked away, out the window of the small seafood restaurant, at some seagulls who were soaring over the water in the fading twilight. “The night we came back with the big haul, Jake and I agreed that one of the two of us would always be awake. Even then there was something peculiar in the Homer-Ellen-Greta triangle. At that time they were not yet all living together, but I still didn’t trust them. While Jake was supposedly on watch, Greta balled his brains out. ‘To celebrate,’ he said, when he apologized to me for falling asleep afterwards. When I woke up, more than half of the treasure was gone.”
Anger long buried was seething in Nick. Carol watched him carefully, noting the intensity of his passion. “Jake didn’t give a shit about the money. He even tried to talk Amanda and me out of going to court. That’s the kind of guy he was. I remember he told me, ‘Hey, Nick, my friend, we made two hundred thousand apiece out of this. We cannot prove there was more. Let’s just be thankful and get on with our lives.’ Homer had cheated him and Greta had shit all over him, but Jake still wasn’t pissed. Not much more than a year later, he married a water ski queen from Winter Haven, bought a house in Orlando, and went to work as an aerospace engineer.”
The light was vanishing outside. Nick was deep in a memory, recalling the full measure of his storm of righteous indignation from eight years before. “I’ve never understood them,” Carol said quietly. She switched off the recorder. Nick turned and looked at her, a quizzical frown on his face. “You know,” she added, “the people like your friend Jake. Infinite resiliency. No harbored grudges. Whatever happens to them they just shake off, like water, and go on living. Cheerfully.” It was her turn to feel a little emotion. “Sometimes I wish I could be more like that. Then I wouldn’t be afraid.”
They stared at each other in the soft light. Nick put his hand over hers. And there’s that vulnerable little girl again. He felt a deep emotional longing stirring in his heart. She’s let me see it twice in a single day. “Carol,” he said gently, “I want to thank you for this afternoon. You know, for sharing your feelings with me. I feel like I saw an entirely different Carol Dawson.”
“You did,” she said, smiling and making it clear that her protective shield was going up again. “And only time will tell if it was a huge mistake.” She pulled her hand slowly away from his “For the moment, though, we have other business. Back to the menage a trois. What kind of facility is it that they manage and what do they do there?”
“Excuse me?” replied Nick, obviously confused.
“A friend of mine, Dr. Dale Michaels of the Miami Oceanographic Institute, told me that Captain Homer and Ellen have some kind of high-tech operation here. I don’t remember exactly how he described it — ”
“You must be mistaken,” Nick interrupted. “I have known them for almost ten years and they are never anywhere except in that fancy house of his or onboard the Ambrosia.”
Carol was puzzled. “Dale’s information is always correct. He just told me, yesterday in fact, that Homer Ashford had field tested the institute’s most advanced underwater sentries throughout the last five years and that his reports — ”
“Hold it. Hold it.” Nick was leaning forward on the table. “I’m not sure I’m following you. Back up. This could be very very important.”
Carol started again. “One of MOI’s newest product areas is underwater sentries, robots, essentially, that protect aquaculture farms from sophisticated thieves as well as large fish or whales. Dale said that Homer contributes money for the research and then field tests the prototypes — ”
“Son of a bitch.” Nick was standing up. He was bursting with excitement. “How could I have been so stupid? Of course, of course.”
Now Carol was lost. “Would you mind telling me what’s going on?”
“Certainly,” Nick answered. “But right now we’re in a hurry. We have to go by my apartment to look at an old map and pick up another navigation system for the boat. I’ll explain everything on the way.”