LEAD ME ON by Julie Ortolon (best pdf ebook reader TXT) 📗

As soon as Chloe surfaced, they went through their safety checks. Satisfied, he glanced at Allison and gave the thumbs-down signal to tell her they were going under. She nodded and waved as he deflated his vest and sank slowly into the murky brown haze. The salty taste of it slipped into his mouth around the regulator as bubbles gurgled past his face mask.

They swam slowly at a downward angle, following the chain. As Allison had predicted, the water cleared as they descended. It also grew colder. At forty feet, the haze all but disappeared. Enough light filtered down for him to see reasonably well. Even so, he turned on the dive light and hand-signaled Chloe to ask how she was doing. She wiggled her head to pop her ears, puffed a bit of air into her mask to compensate for the water pressure, then signaled back that she was okay. Nodding, he continued toward the center of the cove.

They came upon the ship all at once. One moment there was nothing in the beam of his light but an occasional fish and specks of suspended silt. Then suddenly, there was the bow of a nineteenth-century sailing vessel rising out of a cloud of silt stirred up by careless divers.

He glanced sideways and caught Chloe’s look of excitement before they swam in for a closer look. A carved mermaid greeted them from beneath the jibboom, her face still proud in spite of the cracks of age. Swimming past her, Scott reached out a hand to feel the rough texture of barnacles that covered the ornately carved railing of the forecastle.

They swam up and over the rail as a school of small fish darted through the beam of light in flashes of silver, then turned and dipped out of sight. He swept the light along the broken relic as they floated slowly toward the stern. A single mast had endured, rising at an angle, like a giant cross. Chloe flipped her fins and headed over to explore the crow’s nest as he continued straight ahead.

Reaching the quarterdeck, he saw it lay at an awkward angle, not quite lined up to the bow. Had one of the cannon blasts ripped the vessel in two? Or had it been the explosion of gunpowder in the cargo hold?

His mind conjured images of what that night must have been like based on tales handed down from the surviving crew. Marguerite had sent a message to Jack through a servant, telling him that Henri had found out about them, and that she feared for both her and her daughter’s lives. When the servant told Jack that Marguerite had been badly beaten and locked in her room in the tower, he’d set sail straight for Pearl Island.

Had he thought Henri would let him land? That a man that ruthless would hesitate at murdering a whole crew of men in a jealous rage?

What had Jack Kingsley thought in the instant when he saw the flash of the cannon on the upper balcony, felt the impact shudder through his ship? Scott turned at the wheel and a chill brushed his skin as he passed through a cold spot. He cast his light back over the wreckage, picturing the frantic crew, the black sky filled with violent bolts of lightning.

Kingsley had been helpless to return fire against a house filled with innocent people, Marguerite among them. His first mate had hollered at him to turn away, to try and escape, but he’d held his course, appearing intent on running the ship right onto the beach. Had it been an act of angry defiance from a man used to facing danger, or desperation to reach the woman he loved?

When a second blast ignited the cargo of gunpowder, Kingsley had shouted orders to abandon ship. But rather than join the crew racing for lifeboats, he’d headed toward his cabin. The first mate tried to stop him, but Jack had shouted that he wouldn’t leave without the treasure, a mistake that cost him his life, since the back of the hold exploded as he was racing down the cabinway. The concussion from the blast had killed him instantly.

The first mate dragged his body onto a lifeboat, but many claimed his spirit remained behind. Whether it was trying to reach the riches hidden in his cabin or still trying to rescue Marguerite depended on who told the story.

The fact that he’d been running toward the treasure in his cabin certainly lent credence to the first theory. But what if sentiment rather than greed had sent him into that passageway? What if he’d been going back for the necklace?

Was that it, Jack? Scott silently asked. Did you love her to the point you couldn’t bear to lose even that small part of her?

The cold seeped into his muscles as he tried to imagine what Jack Kingsley had felt, tried to put himself in the man’s place. An eerie ringing started in his ears, drowning out the swoosh of air through the regulator. The water pressure squeezed tighter about his chest as a frightening rush of grief and loss filled him.

And he knew, in that moment, exactly what Kingsley felt, as if the man’s spirit had slipped into his body: a loss so devastating it defied description.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he jerked around as bubbles erupted from his mouth. Chloe’s eyes widened behind her mask, and if he hadn’t been sixty feet underwater, he’d have burst out laughing. Clearly he’d been thinking about ghosts way too much in the last few days.

Chapter 15

Allison remained on the pier for several minutes before she turned and headed up the azalea-lined path to the house. The bulbs she’d planted in the flower beds to either side of the steps were starting to come up, providing a pretty splash of color at the top of the vivid green lawn. If she finished cleaning rooms early enough, maybe she’d have time to