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Shakespeare was surprised when Lei Lu stopped so many times on their way to the plane. He wondered if her GPS wasn’t functioning correctly. Accustomed to orienting himself with the geographic bottom of the ocean, he knew exactly where the plane was located, and she was headed in the right direction.
As soon they reached the sunken airplane, Shakespeare had to tie off the line back to the boat, so he’d passed Lei Lu who seemed to be waiting for something or someone. Perhaps she was going to take her position once everyone else was in place.
After securing the line, he swam to the far side of the plane, his assigned position. Tori and Harper were already underneath the fuselage checking every inch for bombs. Katlin swam in a wide circle about ten feet above the plane, videoing it from every angle. The salvage team divers worked in pairs and seemed to inspect every square inch.
Shakespeare didn’t see Lei Lu. She wasn’t in her assigned position.
He caught sight of her floating near the rope. Her arms and legs were not moving. Hardly any bubbles came out of her regulator.
She was barely breathing.
Something was wrong. His Lei Lu was in trouble.
Shakespeare swam as though her life depended on it. If anything happened to her...his heart squeezed. It hurt as blood pumped harder and faster through the organ. He was not going to lose her.
He grabbed her shoulders and willed her eyes to meet his.
They were closed.
Oh, fuck.
A few bubbles escaped her regulator.
Obviously, it was still working, but maybe there wasn’t enough flow.
He could use his own mouthpiece and they could buddy breathe. As he wrapped his arms around her, their deco tanks clanked so loudly that others looked their way. Lei Lu was completely limp, but she was in his arms.
I’m a fucking idiot. He grabbed the regulator attached to her deco tank, and in a one-two move, yanked her tank regulator out of her mouth and shoved the deco mouthpiece into it. He prayed she hadn’t been inhaling as he made the move.
He squeezed her hard in an attempt to empty her lungs, forcing her to take a breath. Her chest expanded, slightly.
A small stream of bubbles broke free from the regulator and headed toward the surface.
Thank God.
Holding her chest to chest, he could feel her inhale deeper as her whole body seemed to expand. When she exhaled, larger bubbles escaped in an even longer line.
He shoved his mask against hers and watched her eyes blink open. Those chestnut brown irises in the middle of her almond shaped eyes were the most beautiful things Shakespeare had seen in his life.
Her cheeks pinched upward as though she were smiling just before confusion filled her eyes with questions.
Her next breath was even deeper followed by a slow exhale. She tilted her head as though nothing was making sense.
A tap on his shoulder drew his attention away. With sign language, Katlin asked him what was wrong. He quickly answered that he didn’t know but there was a problem with Lei Lu’s tank. He was going to take her back to the surface. Then he made the executive decision; they all needed to go back up. He couldn’t guarantee that the problem was only with her tank and Shakespeare wasn’t going to take any chance with their lives.
With the butt of his knife, he tapped on his tank. Once he had everyone’s attention, he used universal diving sign language. Index finger in the air, he made a circular motion indicating everyone was included, then he gave the thumbs up for everyone to surface.
The salvage divers decided to stay when they learned that it was a tank problem.
Reiterating with the thumbs up sign, Shakespeare looked directly at each diver from his boat and waited for their okay response. All five started slowly swimming up to the decompression stop.
Waiting in twenty-five feet of water was the longest ten minutes of his life, but if there was something wrong with Lei Lu’s tank, she would need a longer decompression. Although her facial color had returned, and she seemed okay, he wasn’t going to take anything for granted. She had collapsed underwater. That was far from normal behavior.
Shakespeare never let go of Lei Lu, even though she tried to pull away several times, assuring him that she was fine. He wasn’t buying it until Nita had completely checked her out.
At the surface, he waved his free hand using the diver in trouble signal. Spitting out his regulator, a hard no in any other circumstance, he yelled, “Grab the DAN bag.”
Nita immediately spun around and headed for the Diver Alert Network emergency kit. Oli and Grace leapt onto the diving platform and together, lifted Lei Lu out of the water and straight into the boat. Shakespeare was only a step behind.
“What do we have?” Nita demanded as Grace stripped Lei Lu out of her gear.
“She was floating limp in the water, barely breathing, eyes closed.” Shakespeare said as he tossed his fins into the clean water bin and padded to stand next to the bench where Nita had Lei Lu lying down. “As soon as I got to her, I put her on her deco tank, and she came around.”
Nita immediately put an oxygen mask over Lei Lu’s face. “Shakespeare, check her equipment. Do you have a gas identification gauge? I want her tank checked. The mix may have been wrong for that deep of a dive.”
The insinuation pissed Shakespeare off. His crew were professionals and his tank filling equipment was top-of-the-line. Then he remembered that Carl had moved tanks from his boat over to theirs. But his other captain had been scheduled for a deep wall dive and those tanks should have been filled for EANx36, the same mixture as he had filled their tanks the night before.
Shakespeare screwed the gas gauge onto her tank then opened the valve. He watched the digital indicator until the numbers stopped.
“No fucking way.” Shakespeare unscrewed the gauge, fanning it in the air to clear the indicator, then reattached it to Lei Lu’s tank. He reopened the valve allowing the air she had breathed underwater to pass through the sensitive filter.
“Oh, fuck.” He’d almost killed Lei Lu. Shakespeare’s ass hit the deck. His hands covered his face as his head slowly turned side to side. No. It couldn’t be.
How could this happen? His mind scrambled through possibilities.
“Shakespeare.” Katlin stood beside him calling his name, obviously not for the first time. “Henry S. Morgan the fifth, look at me.”
The command in her voice made him raise his gaze to meet hers.
“What the fuck is in her tank?” Katlin could be a fierce power of reckoning.
“Carbon monoxide.” He turned the gauge to show her. “Almost thirty percent.”
“Jesus fucking Christ!” Nita bellowed from where she leaned over Lei Lu.
Katlin looked up toward the sun, her chest expanding. She exhaled and returned her gaze to Shakespeare. “I want every tank on this deck tested.”
Oli moved to stand was beside his friend. “This is my jurisdiction and my investigation.”
Katlin crossed her arms in front of her chest. “This is my mission and somehow my teammate almost died. I’m going to find out if it was an accident or on purpose.”
Shakespeare jumped to his feet. “What the fuck? Why would I want to kill Lei Lu? I love her. I want to spend the rest of my life with her.” At his public confession, he dashed to Lei Lu’s side and dropped to his knees. “I promise you, sweetheart, I’m going to find out how this happened. I love you, and the thought of losing you ripped my heart out. When I got to you and your eyes were closed...” He clenched his teeth together to hold in his emotions. “I’ve been on dozens of missions where things went bad, but I’ve never been as scared as I was when I’d reached your limp body.” He pulled her to him, his head on her chest. He held his breath until he heard her strong heartbeat
Lei Lu lifted the clear plastic oxygen mask off her face. “You love me?”
Shakespeare scooped her up in his arms and pressed her to his chest, his mouth next to her ear. “Oh, hell yes. I love you from the bottom of my heart.”
The moment she turned her face toward his, he crashed his mouth on her lips. When they came up for air, Nita stuck her hand between them.
“Put that oxygen mask back on right this minute,” the team doctor demanded. “You have carbon monoxide poisoning, so we have to shove all those gases out of your body. To be honest, your decompression stop and breathing seventy percent oxygen, helped more than anything else.” Nita pointed to the plastic mask. “This is one hundred percent oxygen. You can kiss him later. Breathe now. Long deep breaths trying to force everything out of your lungs.” She shoved the mask back on Lei Lu’s face.
“I’m going to take some blood samples,” Nita announced. “I can’t do much with them here, but I’ll use the hospital’s lab as soon as we get back.”
A big hand clasped over Shakespeare shoulder. “Let the doctor take care of her. We have tanks to test.
As he rose from his knees, begrudging that he had to leave her, it dawned on him that she had not said those important three words back to him. He didn’t care that everybody on that boat knew how he felt about Lei Lu. He loved her. She was the most important thing in his life. She would come around, he believed it in his heart.
Right now, though, he and Oli had to figure out how carbon monoxide got into her diving tank.
An hour later, as they attached the gauge to the last tank, it had become obvious that every tank filled last night in his shop had been tainted with carbon monoxide. Some as little as ten percent to as much as fifty percent. The only tanks containing the standard EANx36 were those slated for Carl’s boat that had been filled an hour before they were loaded onto Shakespeare’s boat. Thankfully, those were the ones used by the first dive team so no one else was exposed.
When the salvage dive team returned topside, Shakespeare explained what happened to Lei Lu.
“I can’t imagine how carbon monoxide got into those tanks.” Lieutenant Danner shrugged. “It would have to be forced into the tank, which makes sense why there were various amounts. Carbon monoxide can kill a human in five minutes, so it seems whoever did this didn’t want to necessarily kill all of you.” The Salvage diver looked at Shakespeare. “Have you pissed somebody off lately?” He glanced at the women. “Is there someone who might want to kill the members of your team?”
Feminine giggles filled the boat.
“That’s a fucking long list,” Nita said just above a whisper.
“Top of that list today would be the Russians.” Katlin paced. “Shakespeare, do you have security cameras on your store?”
“Yeah, but the electricity went out last night, and my gen—" Shakespeare’s gaze flew to Oli. “Was there a power outage near the shop last night?”
Shaking his head, Oli answered, “No. I would’ve been informed.”
“Fuck.” Shakespeare was so angry with himself. Everyone had been concerned about the safety and security of the rental houses, and he’d been so wrapped up in Lei Lu, he never thought the Russians might sabotage his boat, or the dive.
He’d been an idiot. He’d lost all situational awareness, and because of that, Lei Lu almost died.
“This is all probability,” Oli reminded the group. “We have no proof.”
“We need to head back to Grand Turk,” Nita claimed. “I need to get these to the hospital’s lab.”
“I’m concerned there still may be bombs on the airplane.” Harper stepped forward forcing the focus on her. “If the Russians could mess with Shakespeare’s tanks, they could certainly plant bombs around the airplane.”
“We didn’t see any and we were all over that plane.” Lieutenant Danner looked at the rest of his crew. They all shook their heads. “Before we hook up the straps tomorrow, we’ll go through it one more time. Are you coming back to watch us lift the plane?”
“Absolutely.”
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
Affirmative replies came from every person.
The lieutenant looked at the sky. “We have several hours of daylight left, not that it really makes a difference for us, but I think we’ll drain the fuel tanks now.” He was talking as much to his own team as he was to everyone on Shakespeare’s boat.
“We’re going to head in.” Shakespeare glanced at all the tanks. “I’ve got a lot of work to do tonight.” Every tank had to be drained and scrubbed with oxygen. His tank filling station had to be thoroughly inspected. Since the shop was a public space, there was no hope of finding fingerprints, or that the culprits’ prints would be in the system. He and Oli could, though, determine if his shop had been broken into last night.
Shakespeare glanced over at Lei Lu. He could only hope that he would find her in his bed when he finished.
As soon his boat pulled up to the dock, everyone available from the security team met them. Within minutes, all the tanks had been emptied, cleaned, and lined up for refilling. Lei Lu tried to help several times, but everyone made her sit down. Until her blood tests were finished, she wasn’t allowed to do anything strenuous.
Shakespeare, Alex, and Oli inspected every inch of Pop’s Place. It was as though the intruders had the steel key to the deadbolts and the password for the security system.
“I don’t know how to break it to you, Shakespeare, but every man who works for me could have broken in here and done this,” Alex admitted. Then he turned the tables, “You and Oli are also capable of this level of breaking and entering. We were all trained to be experts at stealth. I don’t know why we underestimate the Russians so much. Their training is equal to ours.”
“You’re right.” Shakespeare looked around his shop and felt violated. He’d become complacent on Grand Turk. The world of shadows no longer existed for him once he’d left that fight. Naïveté brought peace.
Now, it was right back in his face.
“I’ve got guards on your place tonight.” Alex slept Shakespeare on the shoulder. “Come on. Let’s go home and get some supper. The salvage crew will start at daylight, so we need to be out there early. It’s going to be a short night.”
Shakespeare called Lei Lu on the short drive home. “Are you resting?” he asked as soon as she answered the phone.
“Drop off Alex and come to your house.” She’d ignored his question. “I have supper here and everyone’s calling it an early night. And before you ask again, Nita said my oxygen level was back to normal and I could resume all activities. In case you’re not getting the message, we can have sex.”
“Thanks for sharing,” Alex called from the seat beside Shakespeare.
Shakespeare chuckled. “Sweetheart, Turks and Caicos is hands-free mobile, just like most everywhere in the world these days.”
“I don’t give a shit if Alex knows we’re going to have sex tonight. I’m sure he and Katlin are going to get it on, too. They’re still making up for the lost time during our last mission.” Lei Lu shot back.
“You got that right,” Alex agreed. “Your team was gone way too long this time. I missed my fiancée, and no telling when Jack the ass will send you back out. We’re going to take advantage of every opportunity offered.”
“I’m almost home, sweetheart. I’ll see you in just a few minutes.” Shakespeare thought about the words he just said. Having someone to come home to every night, a hot supper, a few drinks, great conversation, and most fabulous sex. No, he didn’t want someone, he only wanted Lei Lu.
“Park at your house,” Alex ordered. “I’ll walk to the rental.”
Shakespeare barely remembered seeing Alex meander down the road as the garage door closed. Sprinting into the house, he found Lei Lu in the kitchen pulling two hot plates out of the oven. Although he liked this domestic side of her, being the caveman he was, it was just another facet of the well-rounded woman he loved.
They went to bed early knowing she had to leave Grand Turk around four o’clock in the morning. He made slow, sensual sex to her that night, trying to show her with his body how much he loved her. As they came to, Lei Lu curled into him in her now familiar way, but instead of sleeping, she laid her small hand on his cheek.
“This morning...down there...I was so confused, but the one thing I knew for certain was that I had to get to you. I knew you would save me.” She leaned in closer and kissed him with tenderness. “I love you.” She kissed him again, then caught and held his gaze. “I just didn’t want to make a public announcement of it. What I feel for you is just for you. It’s private.”
Shakespeare leaned in and kissed her. “Just another reason that I love you.”
“I love you, too.” She closed her eyes. “Now go to sleep.”
He didn’t want to fall asleep. He wanted to lie there and feel the heat of her body touching his. He needed to memorize every inch of her gorgeous body.
“Quit staring at me. I set the alarm fifteen minutes earlier than we needed so we could have shower sex and start our day out right.”
Shakespeare kissed her on the forehead. “Good night.” He closed his eyes and couldn’t wait until morning.