Free Devil and the Deep (The Deep Six) by Julie Ann Walker Page A

school, she was the butt of jokes because she was the latest of late bloomers. She didn’t sprout breasts until she was nearly eighteen. And it’s not like they’re anything to write home about even now.
    She thought she would find her tribe in college. But there weren’t many girls—or any , really—who wanted to learn to read centuries’ old scripts. And since she’d never gotten why keg stands were fun, she’d once again found herself the odd man…er…odd woman out.
    Graduate school had proved to be a bit more accepting, filled with academic types who didn’t begrudge her interests in antiquated documents and historical minutiae. But even so, her professors thought she was nuts to waste her time and the integrity of her doctoral dissertation trying to help a bunch of hairy, tattooed guys find a four-hundred-year-old fortune that had eluded treasure hunters for centuries. Her advisor had gone so far as to say, “If you were twice as smart, you’d still be an idiot for throwing in your lot with these men.”
    That hadn’t stopped her from hopping on the first plane headed south. And she’d been surprised by how easy it’d been to convince the guys of Deep Six Salvage not only to let her stay, but to take her word for it when she said she thought they—and everyone who’d come before them—had been looking in the wrong place for the Santa Cristina . They hadn’t called her crazy. They hadn’t batted an eyelash at her youth or inexperience. Instead they’d sat down, listened to her arguments, and trusted her judgment.
    And earlier, when they’d matched the hilt LT and Olivia found with Captain Bartolome Vargas’s cutlass? Well, she’d crowed with victory not because she’d been proved right , but because she’d been beyond relieved that she hadn’t steered these good men wrong. Even now, even scared out of her wits, a smile tilted her lips at the memory of LT swinging her around in a circle while Meat barked happily and L’il Bastard cock-a-doodle-doo -ed from his favorite spot on the porch railing outside the kitchen window.
    It was strange, she realized, but at twenty-seven years old, and with a group of grizzled guys on a remote island, she finally, finally felt like she belonged. And it was killing her that she was twiddling her thumbs while two of those grizzled guys were risking their necks.
    Grrr. Sitting tight, sitting still had never been something she excelled at.
    Maybe I could just sail a little closer. If I don’t use the engines, no one will hear me. Or…the Gulf Stream current blew by this side of the little island, right? And if she remembered correctly from the current map she’d taken a peek at two weeks ago, it should push her closer to Garden Key without her having to do more than pull anchor. By her recollection, the average speed of the current was four miles per hour. She was two miles away. So, in thirty minutes she could be setting foot on the island.
    The idea was beyond tempting. But then what? It’s not like she could help them do…whatever they were doing.
    And speaking of…
    “What are you guys doing?” she whispered, her fear morphing into impatience as the seconds ticked by. She liked the second emotion far better than the first. “And where the frick is that flare, Mason?”
    Mason…
    His name carried on the breeze. Hearing it filled her mind with a dozen familiar and conflicting emotions…

Chapter 6
    7:25 p.m.…
    “Don’t you keep a first aid kit?” Maddy demanded, rummaging through the drawers in the cramped little kitchenette with its green Formica countertops, opening whitewashed cupboards, and coming away empty-handed.
    “Under the bed,” Rick said.
    Their first order of business after they barged into the little cottage was to get on the satellite phone and call in the cavalry. Or at least they’d attempted to make it their first order of business. They’d been thwarted, since the phone was smashed to bits, all its plastic parts and wires