Devil and the Deep (The Ceruleans Book 4) - Julie Ann Walker Page 0,5

the time?” Bran harrumphed, exaggerating a headshake. “It’s sickening.”

Even though Mason muttered an agreement, neither of them meant it. Bran, Mason, and the rest of their teammates were overjoyed that their former CO had met his match and fallen head over heels in L.O.V.E. If any of them deserved happiness, it was LT.

“So we were out spearfishing off the reef,” Olivia said, ignoring them. Bran cocked his head at her twinkling eyes and rosy cheeks. His sixth sense told him something was up.

“When I saw somethin’ that at first just looked like another piece of coral,” LT added, his Louisiana drawl peeking through even though he’d spent most of his formative years in the Keys.

“But it wasn’t coral,” Olivia said, nearly vibrating. Bran imagined he could actually see those wavy cartoon lines rippling through the air around her body.

“No sir.” LT shook his head. “It surely wasn’t.”

“When we broke off the crustaceans, you’ll never guess what we found,” Olivia said.

“Not in a million years,” LT added.

“Not in a bazillion years!” Olivia crowed.

“For chrissakes! What was it?” Alex demanded.

“The hilt of a cutlass!” LT boasted, whipping the artifact from where he’d hidden it behind his back.

For a couple of seconds no one moved, no one dared breathe. Then it was like someone had pressed an ejector button. Bran, Mason, and Alex all scrambled to get a look at the relic balanced in the center of LT’s open palm. The thing was black with corrosion, but its shape and markings were unmistakable.

“Stop shoving, you big lummox!” Alex complained when Mason jostled her. The first two words held just a hint of a lisp, which Bran had noticed grew more prevalent when Alex became agitated.

“Mmmph,” Mason said, bending forward to inspect the hilt.

“Mmmph,” Alex parroted again, rolling her eyes.

“Cut the shit, you two,” LT said. “And while you’re at it, Mason, fire up a kerosene lantern. I want to get some good light on this thing. Alex, you run upstairs and grab the translation of the Santa Cristina’s manifest. Let’s see if I’m lucky or just good.”

Despite the excitement of the find, Bran felt his eyes pulled over to the laptop as if by some invisible force.

Maddy Powers…

Well, at least now he had a valid excuse to forgo a sail to the Dry Tortugas.

More like an excuse to be a lousy, no good fraidycat, an annoying voice whispered. To which he promptly replied Oh, go suck a bag of dicks, why doncha?

Chapter 2

6:21 p.m.…

“Hi!” Maddy waved to the park ranger waiting to greet her as she trudged up the steep beach of Garden Key, the main land mass among the batch of remote islets in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico that made up Dry Tortugas National Park. Tortuga meant “tortoise,” a name given to the islands by Ponce de Leon in the fifteen hundreds. A couple of centuries later, the U.S. tried to make Garden Key useful by building a fort there, but faulty engineering, illness, and the Civil War thwarted that effort, and the structure was abandoned before its completion.

Garden Key was the only place in the Dry Tortugas that was inhabited. If you considered the lonely park ranger who lived in the little cottage on the edge of the beach an “inhabitant.” From what Maddy had read, the park rangers assigned to the island only did three-month stints to ensure the isolation and loneliness didn’t get to them.

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.

Brrr. The things one learned from the movies.

“Hello!” the ranger called, ripping Maddy’s mind away from the scene in The Shining. “Welcome to beautiful Garden Key and the Dry Tortugas!”

As Maddy extended her hand to the young park ranger—the operative word here was young; if the ranger was much more than twenty years old, she’d eat her snorkel gear for dinner—she let her eyes roam over the facade of the unfinished garrison known as Fort Jefferson. Its red bricks stood out in harsh contrast to the aqua waters surrounding it, and the little lighthouse, painted black and perched atop one corner of the hexagonal curtain wall, brought to mind an old sentry, battered by the wind and rain but still standing tall. She couldn’t wait to give the scholarship girls a grand tour tomorrow after breakfast. She’d studied up and knew all the good stories sure to inspire awe in the imaginations of her charges. But for now…

“I’m Maddy Powers,” she said, giving the ranger’s hand a firm shake before turning to watch