Before the phone rang—a stranger named Tomlinson calling—Lydia was on the porch of their beach house. Below were tiki torches that illuminated a private pool. She had been counting money, hundreds and fifties, but stopped when Leonard exited the bathroom and posed in front of the mirror. It made her feel good because he looked good, tanned, with a hint of muscle definition after seven months at her gym near Gainesville. That and some veterinarian magic used to bulk up Angus bulls.
The clinic where she’d worked stocked a big selection.
Prof. Leonard Nickelby would never be mistaken for a bull—or an athlete, for that matter—but try to convince him of that after twelve days in the Bahamas.
“Where’s my brilliant little sea wench?” Leering, he turned, nothing but a towel around his waist.
God, it was hard not to laugh when he said stupid stuff like that. His silliest line was I’ve got the grog if you’ve got the stein, whatever the hell that meant. Well, it meant he was horny, but he was always horny—another change in Prof. Nickelby.
Lydia gave herself credit for the change. Injections of vet-grade testosterone had played a role, but there was no anabolic fakery in the way their bodies meshed. Since losing her virginity at twenty-one, she’d been with only three others, all bigger, younger, although not much younger, but none of them compared to the happy little bald man leering in the next room. The transformation had been so seamless it felt like they’d always been this way. That was not the case. Reassembling the man’s shattered ego had required tenderness—and an objective.
“We have reservations, Leo,” she said, the prelude to a game they played.
“Cancel ’em.”
“What about dinner?”
“Had it yesterday.”
“You’ll be hungry.”
“By tomorrow, who cares?”
“We could do room service.”
“Precisely, my beauty. Then eat later at the bar.”
Lydia, for the first time in her life, felt unexpected moments of being loved, safe, and in control, yet, inevitably, reality yanked her back into a mess of her own design. But Leonard was now ready, his towel on the floor.
Afterward, he lingered in bed while she showered. The bathroom was spacious, marble with gold fixtures, double doors opened wide so they could converse.
“You know, maybe you’re right,” Leonard said from the next room. “Maybe I should get a doctor to take a look at this hand. Doesn’t hurt—not much—but the damn thing still looks swollen.”
His right hand, the one he’d used to hit the charter boat captain five days ago. Leonard was like a kid with a trophy he didn’t want to lose—a child whose timidity had produced scars only on the inside. This was another similarity they shared. Yet something Lydia had not experienced was the methodical humiliation by a spouse. Mrs. Rebecca Nickelby was a hundred pounds overweight and had tried to destroy her husband emotionally and sexually as punishment for her own self-contempt.
Lydia, the armchair shrink, was also a rescuer. How else could she rescue herself? She felt a surge of unwelcome emotion, so turned her face in to the shower before replying, “What’s the problem, prof? Can’t hear you.”
“My damn knuckles. I can’t help thinking about the look on Purcell’s face when I punched him. What the hell’d he expect? I hated to do it, but even my patience has a limit. The big oaf had it coming.”
“Leo the Lion,” she called out. “Yes he did. But honey? Try to keep your temper in check from now on, okay?”
“I didn’t start it. Then the jerk threatens you? Makes me mad just thinking about what else I should’ve done.”
That’s not the way it happened. Leonard had caught Captain Purcell going through a waterproof Pelican case that should have been locked, and probably was. It contained the stolen logbook, their last silver Spanish real, and one extraordinarily beautiful gold doubloon. The stricken look on Leonard’s face, pure terror, as the captain, giant-sized, had stepped toward him. Then smack, like a cornered animal, Leonard had fought back, before fleeing to the stern of the boat.
Purcell had stumbled along in pursuit. Then glowered at them both—that’s all—before Leonard swung another wild fist. Again, the sickening sound of bone on skin. Blood, too. The giant with a bewildered expression, while six of his buddies, watching from the dock, whooped and laughed.
On the ferry to the resort, Staniel Cay, Leo the Lionhearted had vomited, he was so overwrought with nerves, but did it privately. Lydia had pretended to be unaware. Then, after a shower and three margaritas, presto, another transformation. Leonard had rallied on the beach by stripping her naked in moonlight and taking her from behind.
Was this really the same nervous little man? His wolf-like growling had been unexpected. Very sexy, in a way, but it had also scared her. His inflated confidence still did—Capt. Purcell could’ve crushed both their skulls with one bare hand. Lydia had helped create the new Leonard Nickelby. Now the problem was, how to keep him under control and safe?
She exited the shower and selected a towel of Egyptian cotton while speaking through the open doorway. “Point is, we don’t want to draw attention to ourselves. I think the locals got the word loud and clear about who not to mess with. That’s all I’m saying.”
“The coconut telegraph.”
“You don’t need to prove yourself again, prof. What time are we supposed to meet that man?”
“Who?”
“The coin dealer. Or collector. Or whatever he is. I’m still a little miffed you didn’t include me in the decision.”
“There’s a good example, for you,” Leonard said. “Primitive communication is always underestimated. Columbus, in his journals, wrote about the Taino people—Indios, he called them, una gente en Dios, meaning ‘a people of God.’ Why? Because they were naked. Savages, the Spaniards considered them. Isn’t that a laugh from so-called explorers who slaughtered an entire race?”
Professor Nickelby, archaeologist-historian, lectured on until he finally got to his point. “They used drums and signal fires. The Indians along the Florida coast knew about the Spaniards forty years before they actually landed. Now it’s cell phones. Same concept. Did you see the way the security guy looked at me when we checked in? I think they already know. Probably Purcell’s pals—the story of our little fight has spread from here to Nassau.”
The pride the little man felt was obvious.
Lydia stepped out wearing a black sleeveless dress, local pearls, and high heels of raspberry red. She’d paid cash at the resort boutique, an outfit that cost more than the dented Toyota she’d left behind at the airport in West Palm. “The coin dealer, Leo. What time?”
“My god, you look delicious. Come here, I want to show you something.”
The stolen logbook, leather-bound, lay open on a desk. A chart of the Exumas—three hundred islands, most of them deserted—was nearby. “Fitzpatrick is a shrewd old bastard, but the amateurs are all alike in one way. They can’t see the bigger picture. Not just historically, but in terms of hydrogeology. But why am I telling you? You worked for Benthic. Oh yeah, the great Jimmy Jones. Mr. Big Shot Con Man until a few weeks back when his cell mate—”
“I know, I know, let’s not go over that again,” Lydia said. News of Jimmy’s death had catalyzed too many barbs, an equal number of lies, and had led to their only blowup thus far. Jealousy was new to her. Flattering, in a way, but enough already. Her hand massaged the professor’s neck as she seated herself on the arm of the chair. “Show me what you found.”
Leonard hadn’t found anything. He had hijacked an idea and formulated a theory. It was based on two small chunks of ambergris that Capt. Purcell had plucked from the sea. Both were found in shoal areas, as directed by the logbook, but miles apart.
Ambergris was a strange substance. It resembled gray volcanic rock yet floated on the surface like Styrofoam. Profitable—very profitable—because Lydia had insisted on a fifty-fifty split. This was before the “big fight.” God, the stuff stunk, which is why a buyer in Nassau had paid only six dollars per gram, half the wholesale rate. Thirteen pounds equaled almost six thousand grams—$37,400 cash, Bahamian dollars.
It was Capt. Purcell who had stumbled upon the idea. After losing his sixteen grand playing roulette at the Hyatt, he had suggested, “Could be that book of yours is better at finding amber wax than some damn ol’ wreck where there’s sharks and other shit. Me? I don’t like the water.”
Locals called ambergris by several names. Often it was a humorous reference to whale feces.
Leonard was terrified of sharks, too, but had become more assertive after two days aboard the filthy trawler Sandman. “Have I asked you to get in the water? Just punch in the numbers and run the boat like you’re paid to do. There’s a little reef ahead I want to check out.”
“A captain does more than steer,” Purcell had replied, “and he sure don’t take orders. You got something against money? By rights, the way the law of the sea works is, the boat gets a third, the captain gets a third, and that’s what you and the missus shoulda got. Not half.”
“More for you to gamble away, in other words.”
“Whatever I want to do, that’s none of your business. What I’m saying is, let me have a look inside that book, maybe I’ll find us another good amber wax spot.”
This was the first sign of trouble. Leonard had been oblivious, already seeking a connection between wreck sites and coral intersections that had snagged blobs of ambergris.
The results, paid in cash, now lay on the desk of their expensive beach house, far from the main resort.
‘This is what your common treasure hunter types would’ve never figured out,” Leonard said. “I’ll show you.” He re-folded the chart to display only the southern tip of Andros, Staniel Cay, and the leeward rim of Cat Island. Several miles west lay a pair of tiny islands, unnamed. They were joined like beads in a trough called the Tongue of the Ocean.
“Think they’re inhabited?” Lydia asked.
“Doesn’t matter, because we won’t need a dock,” Leonard said. “See how the currents carom toward deep water? Fitz and his goddamn fake GPS numbers. But he was sloppy when it came to magnetometer readings in shallow areas. The same with his notes on triangulation, most in Spanish, but some in English like these spots.”
In pencil, Leonard had drawn arrows to indicate tidal flow where, years ago, Carl Fitzpatrick had marked possible wreck sites. The arrows formed whirlpool vortexes around several reefs.
“Picture a Spanish galleon being beaten to death in a storm. Hydrology, there’s something called the venturi effect. Current accelerates through constricted spaces—imagine water shooting out of a garden hose. Then it explodes in reverse if the flow’s deflected by a reef.” He tapped the chart for emphasis. “Thermoclines—denser water—have an effect, too. In a storm, tidal velocity would have accelerated. See what I’m getting at?”
During her eighteen months working for Benthic Exploration, Lydia had risen from deckhand to Jimmy Jones’s “smart little geek.” Soon, she was his secret adviser that no one else on the project bothered to give a second look. At Jimmy’s insistence, she had tended to his less savory needs as well. The concession had allowed her freedom to learn a great deal about finding small objects on the bottom of a big blue sea.
It had also helped her appreciate Leonard, a man she might be falling in love with—something she hadn’t planned. “I feel dense, Leo. I hate you spending so much time on ambergris when we both know what we really want.”
Their own private island. That was the late-night fantasy they’d chattered about like kids. Somewhere safe. Remote. A sunny place where they could be themselves without apology.
“Working our asses off to find what Fitzpatrick never found in the first place isn’t the only way,” Leonard replied. “You don’t see it, do you?”
She listened patiently while he explained what she already understood. The whirlpool vortexes that positioned sunken objects along a reef also directed floating objects onto a reef.
“Then Capt. Purcell was right,” she said.
“Purcell? Christ, it was a lucky guess. You don’t really give him credit for—”
“That’s not what I mean. What worries me is, Purcell made the connection. Those friends of his watching from the dock when you hit him? They were scary. Gangster-looking. They liked seeing his blood. And, my god, the way they humiliated the man by howling like animals. What if they know?”
“About the logbook?”
“Any of it. The equipment we brought is worth a fortune to people like them. Purcell knows we’re carrying a bundle of cash. And the coins—are you sure he didn’t see them?”
Nickelby wasn’t sure but replied, “How many times do I have to tell you? Yes, they were in the Pelican case, but in their own little box, just like always. Stop being such a nervous Nellie.”
“But he was going through the logbook when—”
“Not in a million years could Purcell or his pals figure out Fitzpatrick’s notes. He’s not smart. But he is smart enough to realize the book’s useless without me beside him to—”
“That’s exactly why I’m worried. And he knows where we’re staying, Leonard.”
The girl seldom used his formal first name. Nickelby, seated, put his arms around her waist and pulled her closer. “How about this? Tonight, if the guy makes a decent offer, we’ll sell the other silver coin and buy our own boat. Something big enough we can live on for a while. There’s one at the marina I liked with a broker’s sign on it. We spend a week or two looking for ambergris and use that money to finance a bigger boat so—” He stopped, aware the girl had gone rigid. “What’s wrong? Don’t worry, I can handle Purcell. His friends, too, if it comes to that.”
Lydia, from where she stood, could see beyond the patio to their private pool below. A man was there, white slacks, white guayabera shirt, his bearing confident like he was there for a reason. “Is that your coin dealer?”
Leonard got up. “Too early. He’s probably some tourist who wandered away from the resort. If you want, I’ll—” He started toward the door as the phone rang, their Bahamian BTC cell, prepaid a month in advance. “Get that, would you?”
She did, and heard a kindly male voice say, “My name’s Tomlinson. Within sixty seconds you’ll not only trust me, you’ll thank me for—”
That’s all she heard because two men wearing masks were waiting when Nickelby opened the door.
Before the feds confiscated it, Benthic Exploration had owned an ocean-going research vessel, the Diamond Cutter. It was outfitted in Norway with twin Storvik four-ton cranes, an instruments bridge right out of Star Trek, and accommodations for sleeping twelve.
A little cabin aft, portside, with a porthole view of the sea, had been Lydia’s home for a year. Sometimes, when the crew was off, it was just her and a maintenance guy or two anchored in a leeward cove where the water was clear and at least twenty feet deep since the vessel drew fifteen.
Spearfishing had become her passion. Few things were more satisfying than sitting down to a meal of fresh snapper she’d stalked and filleted herself an hour earlier.
When the men crashed into the kitchen and slammed Leonard to the floor, stalking fish was far from her mind. But when one yelled, “You got any guns? Better tell us now, lady!” that’s what she thought about—the little pneumatic speargun she’d bought in Nassau. They brandished only a machete and an old scarred baseball bat. Big men, heavy-handed and barefooted, their pants wet up to the crotch, meaning they’d come by boat.
“Why would we?” she responded. “Just tell us what you want, you can have it—anything—but, for god’s sakes, take your damn hands off him.” Amazing how calmly the words came out despite the way she was shaking.
“Anything? That might be good if you was prettier,” the man said. “Kick that damn phone toward me or I’ll beat his head in.” The phone was on the floor where she’d dropped it. Once he’d pocketed the thing, he turned his attention to Leonard. “So you the professor, huh? Mister, you better cooperate and stop your damn fighting. I ain’t that marshmallow Sandman.”
So that’s why they were here.
Lydia said, “Easy, let’s all calm down. Leo, goddamn it, do what he says. We’ve got money. Lots of it. Cash. You can have it all as long as you promise not to hurt us.”
“Leo’s your name?” The men were smiling behind their masks. “Best listen to the lady, Leo. What we hear is, she’s a witch. From her looks, sure enough could be true, aye?” More laughter.
They had Leonard facedown on the floor by then, arms behind his back. She cringed when he tried to kick free and one of the men responded by kicking him hard in the ribs. The whimpering sound he made was child-like. Heartbreaking. Two involuntary steps, she started to charge, then caught herself. “Do that again, I won’t tell you where it is.”
“Say what?” The man with the bat scanned the room and saw the logbook lying open on the desk. He flipped through a few pages. “’Pears to me this here’s part of what we want. And even in a house this fancy, won’t be no problem finding the rest. That big plastic case where y’all folks keep your dive gear, what I might need is the key.” Then to his partner he said, “You got the tape? Find the damn tape while I see if the thing’s too big to float out. Sandman says it’s heavy.”
“Our money’s not in the case,” Lydia said. “Look all you want, you won’t find it. But I’ll show you if you promise—” Leonard drowned her out with threats about his connections at the U.S. Embassy and the Bahamian police. Both men focused on him, but one turned long enough to say, “Yeah, all the money you got. And bring that key, while you’re at it.”
At a robotic pace, Lydia’s raspberry high heels clip-clopped across the lacquered floor into the master suite. From the kitchen, the sound of a thud and another child-like whimper finalized her decision. Sliding doors opened to a porch that circled the house. She kicked off the shoes and ran barefooted while Leonard hollered more threats from inside.
Beyond the railing was the sea and stars, a sizable boat anchored off the beach. No sign of the man dressed in white where tiki torches blazed by the pool. Piled near the outdoor shower was their snorkel gear. The pneumatic speargun was short, easy to maneuver. But it was difficult to load because of a high-pressure piston that powered the spear like a bullet.
The shaft loader was heavy plastic. She braced it between her feet. The spear was stainless steel, the point sharp as a stiletto. The head was attached by wire to a hinged barb that prevented a fish—or anything else—from pulling free once it had pierced flesh.
Click. A pneumatic metal sound confirmed the shaft was locked, powered, and ready. Safety off, she crept to the front of the house, where the door was still open. Light spilled out onto palm fronds. The shadow of a man dwarfed her own shadow as she approached, speargun up, shouldered like a rifle. She risked a quick look. One man was on his knees, facing inside. He was still battling to tape Leonard’s hands, the machete on the floor within reach of the doorway. The man with the bat was standing with his back to the others. She listened to him call toward the master suite, “What the hell’s taking you so long, witchy woman?”
That’s when Lydia appeared in the opening close enough to shoot him in the spine, which is what she hollered. “I’ll shoot you in the goddamn spine if you turn around!” A nonsensical threat since it forced him to spin toward her. The other man turned, too, but not before she’d knelt and snatched the machete away, then lofted it overhead, ready to swing.
“Goddamn, girl, give me that. Hey, easy now . . . What you got there?”
“Speargun,” the man on his knees said softly. He was trying to scoot out of range but was blocked by Leonard, who was on his belly, trying to get to his feet.
“Let him up. Get away from him,” she hollered.
“Not ’til you give me my sword back, I won’t.”
That’s what locals called machetes in the islands—swords—a holdover from pirate times.
Lydia aimed the speargun, the man’s face only five feet away. Then lobbed the machete over the railing without looking to see where it landed. “Go find it if you want the damn thing and get out of here. Not you—” She aimed at the other man. “Not until you drop that damn bat.”
“What if I don’t? One little spear against two of us.” Slowly, he began to move away from a spear that had a range of ten feet, max.
“You idiots, don’t make me do this. I’m giving you a chance. Leave now, we won’t call the police.” She extended the gun at the man on his knees. “Tell him. Tell your buddy. Leave us in peace and—”
Leonard ended that possibility when he lunged, snatched the baseball bat, and tried to roll out of the reach of a man twice his size. It was so unexpected, Lydia froze long enough for the other one to charge from his knees and knock her backward. She clung to the speargun while he pried at her hands, then hit her with something—his fist, no doubt—and it felt like an exploding light in her head.
A hammering sound pierced the haze—pistons of a diesel engine that reminded her of being at sea except the cadence was random. Fleshy thuds were interspersed with yelps, wild profanities. Panicked bare feet thumped wood. More profanity, then Leonard’s face parted the haze. He was above her, wonderful to see in the starlight.
“Lydia, babe . . . are you okay? Let me help you up.”
She was on her feet, a little woozy but not too bad. It took a minute before she was lucid enough to piece together the chaos that had taken place. On the kitchen floor were splotches of red syrup—blood. Blood on Leonard’s face, his hands, and on the bat he now offered her as a cane. “This might help. Can you walk? If that son of a bitch hurt you—”
In the dark yard, a man was crawling, stumbling toward the beach. Another was almost to the water, his bulk visible amid a stand of coconut palms.
“León,” she said, a name she’d never used before. Gave it a regal pronunciation that slipped from her lips as Lee-ON.
It fit. He was pumped up enough to taunt their attackers. “There’s more where that came, buster! Insult my lady again, I’ll . . . I’ll . . . You’ll see. A witch, my ass.”
The man dressed in white—where had he gone?
Lydia’s gaze moved from the swimming pool area to the pools of blood in the kitchen, then to the thief outside, crawling to get away. “Oh dear god, Leo, he’s hurt really bad. How many times did you . . . ? With the bat, I mean.”
“Fuck him, I didn’t have a choice. I hope he fucking dies.” Leonard cupped his head in his hands, the reality of what had happened settling in. “Oh damn, maybe I did.” He paced briefly, then from the railing hollered, “Hey buddy! Are you okay? If you need a doctor, I’m willing to help. No hard feelings, man. What do you say?”
The thief got to his feet, maybe looked back or maybe didn’t—it was too dark to be sure—then stumbled toward the shadows, a glistening wedge of sea beyond.
“Oh Christ, now what do we do? Call the police, I guess. Report them before they—”
“No police,” Lydia said, grabbing his arm. “You were in the right. They would’ve robbed us, maybe killed us, too. We’ve got to make a decision. We can’t stay here.”
“Yeah, could’ve killed us,” Leonard reasoned, pulling away. “Then we have nothing to worry about from the police. Where’s the goddamn phone?”
Only then did she remember a call from someone named Tomlinson. Next, an image of the phone on the floor came into her head. The robber had stuck it in his pocket.
“Thank god, that’s all they took,” she said.
“What, the logbook?” Leonard hurried into the main room. “No, it’s still on the desk where I—”
“The phone. You can stop looking for the phone. Besides, we’ve registered under fake names at every place we stayed. How do you think that will go over if you call the police? Leo, think about the logbook and the coins—Fitzpatrick has had more than three weeks to report the theft, so they’ll know about that, too.”
Leonard wanted to inspect her forehead. He got her under the light, concerned, already close to an emotional meltdown. “You need an ice pack,” he said. Then, in the kitchen, he put his hands on the counter and appeared to sag. “Shit, shit, shit. What if one of them dies?”
“If he dies, he dies,” she responded. “We didn’t ask them to break in with a baseball bat and a machete. The coin dealer you were supposed to meet, is he staying at the lodge or on a boat?” She was worried about the man in white. If he wasn’t behind the attempted robbery, he might misrepresent what he’d witnessed to the police if they showed up.
There was a reason Lydia did not trust the guy.
Leonard was wringing his hands, pacing. “Okay, okay, here’s what we do. I want you to fly back to Florida tomorrow. That’s right, as soon as there’s a flight. Yeah, that’s what we’ll do, then I’ll turn myself in. None of this was your idea. I’ll swear to it. Here”—he opened the fridge and packed a Ziploc with ice—“this will stop the swelling.”
Lydia wanted to kiss the man. She did, had to get up on her tiptoes to do it. “That’s a lie, Leo. This was all my idea,” she said.
It was an admission that required a longer talk, but not now. A tequila and triple sec calmed him while she used a mop to clean the floor. “We need to leave tonight, so let’s check out that boat you said’s for sale. It’s not even ten o’clock, and the music goes until midnight.” Again, she asked about the coin dealer.
“What’s it matter? I ran into the guy while you were napping. He owns a big-ass yacht, so I figured he might be interested. I never said he was a coin dealer . . . How’s your head?”
The ice had helped. “Did you approach him or was it the other way around?”
“Yes . . . No . . . In fact, he came up to me and just sorta started talking. It didn’t seem odd at the time, but now . . . You don’t think—” A spark came into his eyes.
“We’re on the run,” Lydia said. “And, as of tonight, not just from the police. If the boat’s not available, maybe rent a room at the resort and see what happens. No one will bother us with a lot of people around.”
“I want to talk to that coin guy first. Pack your stuff. I mean it—no more discussion.”
León had spoken.
It was the same León who waited until they were at the bar with a couple of rum punches to reflect with a hint of surprise, “You were right. No one seems to know or care what happened, or why I waited this late to ask to see the dock master. But the weirdest part about tonight, Lydia? I’m serious—I don’t remember ever feeling more, you know, alive.”