After toeing off his shoes, Liam plopped down on the beach access bench. He dug his feet in the warm sand as his phone vibrated in the pocket of his khaki shorts. Caller ID said Dane. Since this was definitely not who he was expecting, his answer may have been less than polite. He checked the time on the screen before answering. Nine o’clock.
“What’s up?” Liam asked. “Aren’t you doing the evening cruise?”
“Docking now. What did Willow say?”
Liam sighed. “I haven’t told her yet.”
“What the hell?”
“Her head bartender took the day off. I had tutoring. She had a Turtle Talk thing.”
“Lucky isn’t someone to mess with.”
“I know. I know. I’m waiting for her now. Walking the beach for lights after dark.”
“Right,” Dane said. “It’s Saturday. New crop of tourists day.”
“I’ll tell her tonight.”
“Get your head out of the damned clouds and make her understand, or I’m telling her myself.”
“Get my head out of the clouds? You’re telling her yourself?” Liam rose to his feet. “Don’t threaten me.”
“Liam?” Willow’s voice called from too close.
Dane said barely loud enough for Liam to hear, “She’s standing right behind you, isn’t she? Good luck, man.” And, he disconnected.
“Telling who what? Who is in the clouds?”
The heat growing on his neck traveled over his face. “There’s something I have to talk to you about.” He forced his legs to turn and face her.
She wore shorts that were more of the legging material thing she wore and a shirt that fell off one of her shoulders. Damn, she had the longest legs.
“I’m here,” she said with that bright smile that was contagious. “You’re blushing. Why are you blushing?”
Craning his head from her, he flicked his fingers like he was shooing a fly. “It’s nothing.”
“Turtle Talk was marvelous. I had twenty-four show. I think a few are going to adopt nests.” She stood on her toes and turned her gaze down the beach. “Look at all of those lights on after dark. I swear that Richard Beckett isn’t even trying to lay out rental instructions regarding lights out at dusk. His properties are almost always the ones that—”
“Willow,” Liam said. He took hold of her wrists and pulled her down to the bench.
Her tiny wrists were much like she was—soft and warm, yet strong. Shaking his head, he lifted his gaze to meet hers.
“What is it?” she asked. “You’re scaring me.”
He looked down at his hands, then jerked his arms back, palms out.
“I don’t mean that.” She crossed her arms, took one of his hands, and placed it back on a wrist. “It’s your expression. Is everything okay? Are you okay?”
Liam shook his head once more. “Yes. No.” He bent his head closer to hers. He tried a reassuring smile but wasn’t confident of his delivery. “I want you to listen to me. This is going to sound crazy, but please hear me out. It’s the poem.”
She tried to interrupt. Again. But, he put a finger to her parted lips.
“Please,” he said again. “I want you to listen to me. The wet uncharted? The cornerstone that is Home? The under under? Willow, your brother was obsessed with two things. Running away with Miriam Roberts and Luciana Bezan’s dowry. Dane and I…we think the poem is—”
“A map,” she finished his sentence for him.
Liam squinted his eyes and looked into each of hers, one at a time, as if one might tell him something the other didn’t. “You know?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know anything,” she said, pulling her arms away and standing. With her back to him, she lifted her arms straight above her head, clasped her fingers and stretched before dropping her arms to hug herself. “I figured it out when the six divers who went down with Seth the day he went missing…the day he was murdered…started showing up at Luciana’s.”
“What? Who?” Standing, he took her shoulders and turned her to face him.
“The original six. Or at least the five who aren’t sitting in jail awaiting trial for killing my brother.”
“Not just Lucky,” he murmured, fear gripping him, and he pulled her into him.
She rested her warm cheek on his chest and seemed to melt against him.
“At first it was Richard Beckett,” she said into his shoulder as she wrapped her arms around his back. “It made sense that he would want to see the renovation since he’s a real estate agent. He was curious. That’s all. Then, it was Blake Eaton. Same thing, you know? He owns the only other establishment, other than the Tiki Bar, that has dancing. I thought he was coming to check out the competition.”
He had a hundred questions but was afraid if he stopped her from sharing, she might not start again. Instead, he rested his chin on the top of her head and inhaled. She smelled like peaches and fresh salt water.
“But then, Timothy Hart showed up and even Miriam.”
At that, he pulled away and looked in her eyes. “Miriam?”
“I know, right? I am going to make her a copy. Seth was hers. She should have a copy of the poem. I feel awful for not thinking of it before. And then, I thought, so what?” Her shoulders shrugged again.
He pulled away and ran his hands up her arms and rubbed his thumbs over the bare skin of her exposed shoulder. “So, what?”
“Let them think it’s a map, or know it’s a map, or whatever. Let them look all over the Gulf for the wet uncharted for some imaginary treasure.”
“What if people become dangerous? What if it’s not imaginary?”
Her gaze bore holes through his, but only lasted a short moment before it dropped to his mouth.
“I still don’t care,” she said without taking her eyes from his mouth.
He almost forgot what they were taking about. All of his intellect moved south. A volcano of ideas bubbled beneath his better sense.
Turning his chin away, he patted her twice on the shoulder. Using his body, he guided her so they were side-by-side. He linked their fingers and led her down the darkened beach. He would not take advantage of her. She was out of his league. The wife of his best friend. The widow of his best friend. Of his died-in-the-line-of-duty war hero best friend.
Liam was a high school teacher.
Squeezing her fingers, they headed for the first rental with lights on after dusk. They would figure out Lucky’s motives. The others, too. He would be here for her. For her and Chloe. And that would be enough.
At nine in the morning, Aiden and Sam’s friends were probably still in bed. If the boys had to spend summer days tutored in a course they sucked at, the least Liam could do was take class outside whenever possible.
The sun was high. Small and blazing. There wasn’t a hint of a cloud. Yet, the steady breeze from the Gulf made him give it a perfect island morning rating. Willow doing her Pilates or yoga or something that made him dizzy and confused only helped the rating.
Aiden and Sam sat huddled together on an oversized beach rug, studying the materials he'd brought for this week’s experiment. Positioned far enough away that the boys had their independence, yet close enough for supervision, he sat in his beach chair with Seth’s laptop resting on his thighs. The experiment would be a potato cannon one day, but for today, it was a lesson in creating a decent log. It was August 1, and although concepts and vocab were strong, both of the boys’ logs needed improvement. He had his work cut out for him, and little time left to do it.
The PVC pipes, adapter, coupler, plug, and reducer were already assembled. Since it had been two days since their last tutoring session, the glue had plenty of time to dry. To the naked eye, the cannon would look complete. To anyone in the know, it was clearly missing the ignition, acceleration, and combustion components.
Willow made it damned hard to focus, and since he was already multitasking with the laptop, her distraction was downright cruel. She stood on one leg like a sleeping ibis or great blue heron. As slow as molasses, she lifted her other leg with her arm until the leg was nearly straight up in the air. Was it touching her ear? He found himself craning his head to see if a horizontal view might make more sense.
The boys studied the electrical tape, spark emitter, trigger, and positive/negative leads. The hairspray accelerant and potatoes would have to wait for another day and farther away from humans.
Willow was right. The computer was clean of all pics, which made no sense. No external hard drive had been found in any of Seth’s possessions. What photographer does that?
Liam had already tried over a dozen popular photo sites and couldn’t find an account using Seth’s email address.
Behind Willow’s airborne leg was the sign for the only island drug store. The So Right Convenient Store. The light and height had always been a problem for the turtles during nesting season. How many had wandered toward it at night rather than the Gulf?
Shrugging, he typed So Right photos into the search bar, then began to log in using Seth’s email. As soon as he typed the first letter, the site auto-filled the rest of it. He sat straighter in his beach chair and licked his lips.
Crossing imaginary fingers, he clicked the cursor into the password field, hoping on all hopes that the password would auto-fill as well.
A boom loud enough to shake the ground made him fumble the laptop, barely saving it from a sudden death in the sand. It was followed by loud bellows and cheers and then a dull thump as a potato landed in the sand between the boys and Willow and her, now screaming, yoga class.
The apparently fully assembled potato gun stood frozen and pointed to the sky. A contraband bottle of hairspray and the open bag of potatoes rested on the sand next to the offenders. It was one of Liam’s proudest moments.
“Boys!” Liam yelled while chanting, ‘Keep a straight face. Keep a straight face,’ in his head.
Aiden and Sam stood like statues, their mouths shaped in large Os.
“We swear we didn’t know it would be that loud.” Aiden stood with both arms still around the cannon, hiding the C and the D in his ACDC t-shirt.
Sam lifted his arms in surrender. “Or go that high. Yeah, we swear.”
Looking at the cannon still in hand, Aiden dropped it and lifted his hands as well.
Liam glanced from one side of them to the other. A few beach walkers down a ways. Aside from the freaked out beach yoga class, no one else was around. “You did it. No phones needed.” Down by his side, he gave them a covert fist bump.
“All right.” He stood and, with his hands on his hips, cleared his throat. “I want you to think about the abstract. Purpose, hypothesis, any major findings.”
Sam snorted. “Like potatoes can shoot a thousand yards into the air.”
Liam smiled from ear to ear. “Yeah, like that.”
With the sun straight overhead, it beat blistering waves on Willow’s back. The jeans she always wore when handling larger turtles just made it worse. She used her cooling towel to wipe the sweat from her neck, then tucked the ends into her tank.
In the back of Raine’s pickup, three loggerheads stirred their flippers under the wet beach towels used to keep them cool. The turtles might be large but were still juveniles. No way could she and her big sister lift a full-grown loggerhead.
“Ready?” Raine asked.
Willow checked her grip on the left side of the shell of number four. The stunning shapes of reddish-brown sections on its shell were covered in barnacles, and Willow could see part of a multi-pronged fish hook still imbedded in the thick, wrinkled skin of his neck.
The St. Pete’s turtle hospital generally took care of hooks, but they were over capacity. Damned careless fisherman. So, the marine laboratory south of Ibis agreed to take care of and clean up the turtles.
An intern named Katie pecked on a tablet as Willow widened her stance. Katie couldn’t have been old enough to be legal and was about half the size of Willow’s willowy frame.
“Are you sure I can’t help?” Katie asked in a tiny voice.
Willow’s eyes opened wide. “No. No, but thank you for asking.”
Raine had the other side and counted, “On three. One, two, three.”
Using her legs, Willow hefted her side of the hundred pounds. Its flippers thrashed like mad. Another ten pounds and she and Raine might not be able to do this on their own, and the turtle had at least another few hundred to go before puberty when the gender would be apparent.
Chloe manned the hose, spraying the beach towels that covered the other three in the truck bed, as well as, inadvertently, Willow and Raine. Neither would complain about the refreshing spray, but Katie might. “Be careful, Chloe.”