Risky Desires (EBOOK)

Chapter 1
Indiana

Standing on the bow of my salvage boat Rhino, I peered through my binoculars, searching the turquoise ocean around me for any nosy bastards. I was a long way from my North Queensland shoreline, and that alone drew attention. Rhino did, too. My boat was big and ugly, but she served her purpose.
The horizon was clear of boats, and I didn’t have to worry about anyone on Kangaroo Island in the distance watching me. The decrepit luxury resort on the private island had been abandoned in the 1980s, and plants and wildlife have been taking over ever since. Other than a movie crew who attempted to film there a few years ago, as far as I was aware, no one even set foot on the overgrown island.
Despite today’s lack of breeze and perfect weather conditions, waves crashed over my destination, Pineapple Reef, with brutal repetition. Three ships had been documented as coming to a tragic end after trying to navigate this treacherous stretch of ocean. I knew this area like I knew the jagged scars across my thigh, and I believed there were many more wrecks scattered across this reef that were yet to be discovered.
I strode to the covered outdoor lounge area I called ‘the hut’ and lifted the comms handset. “Dad! Wake up. We’re nearly there.”
Turning on the kettle, I pulled Dad’s favorite, brown-stained coffee mug from the dish drainer on the sink and added two heaped spoons of Nescafe Blend 43 instant coffee and three sugars. I’d already had two of Dad’s morning heart starters, but the caffeine was yet to kick in.
I throttled back Rhino, and she rode the wave that crashed into her bow like a pregnant elephant. My boat was a clunky beast, designed for hauling up wrecks, not riding waves. Although my salvage equipment was old and rusty, most of it still did its job. The main engine, however, was fifty years old, and I spent half my time trying to keep the damn thing working.
“Dad! Answer me,” I yelled into the comms. Not that it would help. Dad could sleep through an engine blowout, which he’d done twice. Given how drunk he had been last night when I dragged him away from Lucky’s Tavern, he would probably sleep all day. I shouldn’t have let him stay out till midnight, but he rarely ventured off my boat, and I thought it would be good for him to get some other company, rather than just me, his only child, and only living relative.
And, sadly, his only friend.
“Dad, don’t make me come get you.” My threats were pointless. He never woke up this early. Dad was an alcoholic. The last time I’d seen him sober was before my mom was murdered, and nothing I said or did would keep him on the wagon.
Then again, given his guilt over what happened to Mom, maybe oblivion from a bottle was the best option for him.
I dropped one anchor, and as it splashed into the water two hundred yards off Kangaroo Island, I strode toward the open hatch. Rhino pitched and rolled with the mild swell, and I gripped the rusty railing as I climbed down the ladder to the lower deck.
Rhino had weathered a lot of storms over the decades, and they’d taken their toll. My boat was coming to the end of her career. I didn’t even want to think about that. Salvaging was my life, yet I didn’t have much to show for all my hard work other than a rusty old boat, interesting memories that were not all good, and a few nasty scars.
“Dad!” I hollered down the narrow passage. “Get your ass up.”
I’d seen Dad in his boxer shorts way too many times for my liking. Today would be another.
I banged on his door. “Oy. You awake?”
My boat groaned as if protesting my yelling.
I pulled down the handle and stepped into Dad’s tiny cabin. He was on his back, his mouth wide open and his eyes shut.
“Dad!” I marched to the bed and shook his shoulder. “Get up. I need your help.”
Smacking his flaky lips together, he groaned. “Go away.”
I shook him again. “No can do. I told you we had to do this today. Not my fault you drank yourself stupid last night.” I slapped his hairy chest. “Now get up. I’ve thrown anchor, and I need to be in the water in ten minutes.”
He gave me the side eye.
“Ten minutes.” I flared my hands, showing ten fingers. “Got it?”
“Dammit, woman, you’re bossy!”
I chuckled as I turned toward the door. “Someone needs to get you up every day. And today is payday, remember.”
He released a noise like he had an eel in his throat.
I stepped back into the passageway. “I have coffee ready for you up top. Nine minutes, Dad!”
“Give me strength.”
I didn’t care if Dad was nursing a monumental hangover, the window of opportunity to scuba dive at Pineapple Reef did not come around often.
I’d been researching potential wrecks in this section of ocean for years. Even before Dad found my first clue to the ancient wreck I wanted to explore this morning, I knew there would be shipwrecks here. The hidden reef and unpredictable current caused by the island would have caught many inexperienced sailors off-guard.
I poured boiling water into Dad’s mug, gave it a stir, and as I carried the coffee to Rhino’s boxy bow, I peered into the shifting blue and green ocean beyond the deck.
If I was right, hidden amongst the extensive coral bed below was the Siren’s Lure wreck. After departing Sydney on the 2nd of January 1959, the mid-sized coastal freighter bounced along Australia’s coastline, dropping off and picking up passengers and cargo. On January 14th, the Siren’s Lure was hit by a violent cyclone that would have rocked the passengers and cargo like sharks in a bathtub.
I was convinced that the ship hit this reef, about sixty yards away from where I stood, then sank.
The Siren’s Lure was carrying a load of high-priced items destined for the luxury resort on Kangaroo Island—custom-designed furniture, Egyptian cotton sheets, French caviar, but the cargo I had my eyes on was the twelve cases of 1953 Penfolds Grange.
Since that ship sank, Penfolds wines reached legendary status. One bottle from the 1953 vintage alone sold for nearly thirty thousand dollars. Add in the story behind the sinking of the Siren’s Lure, and the price per bottle will skyrocket.
Rich bastards paid good money for shit like that.
That could mean a spectacular payday for us.
Three bottles would be enough to get a new engine on my boat. If the whole lot survived the sinking of that ship, then over eight million dollars worth of wine would be all ours.
I chuckled. I would even let Dad drink a bottle of that shiraz all to himself.
If I found them intact.
That was a big ‘if’ though. The Siren’s Lure probably wasn’t whole when she sank. And for over four decades, brutal currents had battered what was left of the two-hundred-foot vessel.
The chance of finding the wreck, let alone intact bottles of seventy-year-old wine, was minuscule. But taking risks was in my blood, and my diminishing finances meant this was a risk I had to take.
Dad’s hacking cough preceded his arrival on the top deck.
“Finally!” Smacking my hands together, I marched back to him. “Let’s go. Chop. Chop.”
Dad wore faded blue Stubbie shorts and a denim peaked cap. The gray hairs on his chest glistened in the dawn glow. As he ran his hand down his scraggy beard, he squinted across the ocean to the distant island as if trying to work out where we were.
I clicked my fingers in front of his face. “Hey, you with me?”
“I’m here, ain’t I?” His eyes rolled so hard that I wasn’t sure they’d come back.
“Come on, Dad. I need your help.” I shoved the coffee mug into his hands. “Drink.”
I strode to Rhino’s stern with him following.
At the rear dive deck, I stripped down to my bikini and pulled on my 3mm wetsuit. I hated wearing a wetsuit, but I learned the hard way that water-soaked skin was no match for rusty, jagged edges on sunken shipwrecks. The scar on my forehead was nasty, but at least I didn’t have to look at it, unlike the two claw-like scars along my right thigh. They were the result of one of my first rebellious acts against my father.
I’d been eleven years old and adamant that his insistence on me wearing a wetsuit was just because I was a girl. I was wrong. The ancient, rusted cannon I’d scraped against twenty feet below the water had resulted in jagged cuts that required twenty-eight stitches. The same day I got those scars, my mother was murdered in front of me. My stupid rebellion was the reason why we’d stopped that scuba dive.
Those nasty scars were a constant reminder of the worst decision of my life.
Not that I needed reminding. What happened after I was injured would forever stain my childhood memories. But I’d learned from that mistake. Just like I did with all my stupid decisions.
Learning from my mistakes was one of the reasons why I was thirty-three and still single. The only lover I’d ever let into my heart turned out to be a sneaky, lying bastard. I hadn’t even been close to a relationship since I kicked him in the nuts nine years ago.
The occasional one-night stand with a man I would never see again was good enough for me.
“You really doing this?” Dad croaked.
“You know I am,” I snapped. “That’s why we’re here.”
He raised his palm. “Calm down. Just checking.”
I groaned. “Sorry. It’s just . . . we need this find.”
He slurped his coffee. “You say that every time, Indy.”
“Because it’s true. How the hell do you think we can afford to keep this piece of junk going?” I stomped my wetsuit bootie onto the weathered deck. “We need money, Dad.”
He huffed. “You could sell Rhino, you know.”
“Bullshit. Who would buy her? Besides, what else would we do?”
He shrugged his bony shoulder. “I could—”
“Ah, for fuck’s sake, don’t give me that get-a-job bullshit. You can’t even get yourself out of bed each day.”
His face sagged.
I hated my bluntness, but it was the only way to deal with him. Dad was like a dried-up sponge; he could no longer absorb anything.
“I don’t have time for this.”
“Indiana.” He clutched my wrist, surprising me with his strength. “Nothing is worth risking your life.”
“Don’t be so dramatic. I’ll be fine.”
“Maybe I should come with you this—”
“No. I need you up here overseeing the equipment, okay?”
His gray eyes seemed so lost, but they had looked like that since that day he cradled Mom’s lifeless body in his arms.
I rested my hand on the faded tattoo on his bicep.
“Hey, I’ll be fine.” I playfully slapped his arm. “This will be fun. We could find a fucking fortune.”
I unhooked the hundred yards of air hose from the bracket and dropped it onto the weathered wooden deck.
“Or you could find nothing.”
I scowled. “Don’t be such a pessimist.”
I grabbed the metal detector and, trailing my air tube behind me, carried it to the edge of the dive platform.
“Just keeping it real, Indiana.”
“I’ll show you real when I bring up a seventy-year-old bottle of shiraz.”
Dad grinned. “Now that would be nice.”
“Exactly.” I pulled on my gloves and fins.
Dad downed the last of his coffee, put the mug aside, and as he adjusted the cap on his head, his expression changed to serious. Finally, he was focused.
I pulled on my buoyancy vest, clipped it over my breasts, and added some air. “Turn on the compressor. And, Dad . . .?”
His eyes rolled toward me slowly as if every movement hurt. With the hangover he had, his eyeballs probably felt like crap.
“I know,” he said. “Watch the pipes so they don’t get tangled and stay focused.”
“Yes, and do not fall asleep.” It was the last thing I said to him before every dive, but his adherence to the instruction was like playing Russian Roulette.
Dad nodded, and when he pulled the ripcord, the noise from the compressor drowned out any possibility of further conversation.
I put my breather in my mouth, tested the air, then gave Dad a thumbs up signal. Once he nodded, I pulled my mask on, making sure no stray hairs ruined the seal on my face, clutched the metal detector, and took a giant stride overboard. Warm water embraced me, and as I did a quick scan for sharks, I bobbed to the surface.
I gave Dad the okay signal, and then lowered into the water with my lifeline to the surface trailing behind me.
Turning to face the ocean bottom, I dumped the air out of my buoyancy vest and kicked my fins, making a rapid descent. Morning sunshine streaked through the blue in spears of light that gave me excellent visibility of about fifty yards. The thumping beat of the equipment on Rhino faded above, leaving only the sound of my breathing and the swoosh of the ocean barreling over the reef.
Below me, the ocean floor was an aquatic tapestry of color and movement. About thirty yards ahead, waves crashed over the reef, creating a bubble-filled roll as it hurtled over the jagged rocks.
Below the rocks was an underwater cliff that ran perpendicular to the surface. As I aimed for the wall, the surging waves pawed at my body, pushing me back and forth. If I wasn’t careful, I would be swept up in an invisible liquid hand that could smash me against the jagged coral wall.
Other than the few days I’d spent in hospital, I had lived every day of my life on the ocean. I could read the weather and the ocean currents without the gadgets so many sailors relied upon now. Knowing how a storm would affect the ocean or how to make the most of a full moon were my superpowers. I’d learned everything I knew from Dad; he was the best in the business.
Until his grief and alcohol addiction swallowed nearly every brain cell he had.
When his brief moments of clarity returned, I was reminded of just how brilliant he had once been.
A surge in the water kicked me toward the wall, and using the arm of the metal detector, I kept my body from slamming into a mass of fire coral which would give me a fucking painful sting and a rash that could last for weeks. Pushing off, I maintained a distance of four feet from the wall and continued my descent.
I removed my flashlight from my thigh pocket and aimed the powerful beam toward the coral wall, searching for telltale signs of shipwreck debris. Unperturbed by my presence, electric-blue fish darted across my light beam, reflecting sparks off their tiny scales.
Finding sunken vessels was part information, part luck.
The clue that led me to today’s search had started with luck, which had come from the same bar Dad was at last night. Years ago, Dad had been drinking at Lucky’s Tavern on Amber Island when he’d spotted a battered piece of timber on a shelf amongst dusty shipping paraphernalia. Engraved in the timber were the letters en’s Lur. The rest of the letters may have been severed in the original shipwreck, or they were obliterated by years of ocean currents.
Dad had been searching for clues to the location of the missing Siren’s Lure for years. Believing that the piece of timber had to be part of the missing freighter, he stole it.
It was another seven years before I found the fisherman who’d snared that piece of timber with his fishing line, but his sketchy location was as useless as his attempts to get me into bed with him. The stupid bastard thought my invitation to have a drink with him was also an invitation to have sex.
I was pretty sure he would never make that mistake with a woman again. Nor would he forget my swift kick to his balls that he hadn’t seen coming.
Even with his information, it had taken another seven months before perfect weather conditions gave me an approximate two-day window to finally dive down to the site where I thought that piece of timber was found.
My light beam bounced off something shiny amongst the coral, and checking the rolling bubbles swirling through the water, I waited a few seconds, reading the current, before I kicked forward.
Bloody hell. It’s a broken beer bottle. Scowling, I put the bottle into the net bag on my hip and pushed away from the wall again.
With my increasing depth, sunlight waned, and the water grew cooler . . . another reason for a wetsuit. Shadows danced over the seabed below, and schools of brightly colored fish darted between the corals along the wall. Varieties of coral and plant life were the playground for hundreds of vibrant pink, yellow, and blue fish. Keeping my distance from a coarse Staghorn coral that reached out from the wall, I kicked harder.
I’d been lucky enough to find nineteen ancient wrecks since I’d learned to scuba dive when I was a ten-year-old girl. The oldest wreck had been the S. S. Contessa, a sailing vessel that had sunk during a cyclone in 1826. Despite nine passengers and crew surviving after they made it onto lifeboats and weathered the storm, their Schooner went undiscovered until I found it nearly two hundred years later.
It always amazed me that a wreck could go undetected for so long.
Many were never found.
As I reached the ocean floor, a shadow loomed overhead. A pair of black-tip reef sharks hugged the coral wall above me, seemingly unaffected by the surging current. I’d seen my share of sharks, and only one menacing twelve-foot white pointer had given me a fright. These sharks were only three-foot-long babies in comparison.
I checked my dive watch. I’d been in the water for five minutes and was at a depth of thirty-seven feet. I bucked sideways, fighting against the current, and my hip slammed into a massive brain coral. It was like running into a parked car.
Dammit. Clenching my jaw, I used my gloved hand to brush off the coral without breaking it and lowered to the sand. The current was much stronger on the bottom than I’d anticipated, and it took all my strength to maintain a safe distance from the jagged coral and sharp rocks. I settled my breathing down to a steady rhythm as I searched for clues to an ancient wreck.
Battling the strong current, I turned on the metal detector. As the needle on the display sprang to life, I navigated the underwater maze. I swept my scanner over the sand, trying not to snag on the outcrops of coral that were as sharp as knives.
It was much more exhausting than I’d predicted, and within twenty minutes, my frustration overtook my excitement. I wouldn’t be able to stay down here as long as I planned, and the needle on my metal detector hadn’t even flickered.
At a massive clam, I paused to rest. Bubbles spilled from my breather and danced across my mask on their race to the surface. Around me, the maze of coral towers and crevices were all teeming with marine life. My arms ached from fighting the current while trying to keep a methodical sweep with the metal detector.
Another shadow carved through the muted sunlight, and I smiled as a massive manta ray swam overhead. Being underwater gave me a sense of peace that I rarely enjoyed on the surface. On Rhino, there was always something to do: fix something, make something, help Dad. Down here, it was just me and nature.
A white object was lodged inside a vibrant coral formation a few feet away. I swam toward it, and my light beam pierced the shadows. Wedged in a branch of Pocillopora coral, half-covered by years of growth, was a broken dinner plate.
“Yes!” Bubbles burst from my breather with my cheer.
My heart pounded in my ears as I tried to wriggle the china from the rigid cauliflower-like coral. It wouldn’t budge. I pulled my dive knife from the sheath on my thigh, and hating myself for damaging the precious reef, I hacked the robust coral to release its clutches on my prized relic.
The broken plate was a nearly perfect semicircle with a delicate feint blue filigree pattern around the edges and a gold trim. The decoration would have been an exquisite design. The kind that was only seen at fancy restaurants, like the one that had been at the Kangaroo Island luxury resort before it went broke.
This plate had to be from the Siren’s Lure.
I knew it. I fucking knew it.
A massive sense of achievement washed through me as I swept my gaze across the underwater landscape, searching for more debris. Decades of coral had camouflaged every existence of the shipwreck.
Although I desperately wanted to keep searching, I was at the end of my energy resources.
I carefully slotted the plate into the net bag attached to my hip, pulled my GPS surface buoy from my kit, and wedged the anchor between a massive brain coral and a rock about the size of Rhino’s engine.
Pushing off from the sand, I threaded the weighted line out from the GPS, noting the location of the giant clam which would serve as my marker for my next dive after an hour or so rest.
I began my return to the surface, careful not to exceed the speed of my ascending bubbles so I didn’t risk getting the bends. My mind was all over the place as I imagined every lump of coral below me was hiding a piece of the ancient wreck or its priceless cargo.
Did I just find a clue to a massive fortune?
If so, then I needed to get back down here ASAP. I only had two days before the weather turned crap again and made this reef too deadly to explore.
Pausing eighteen feet below the surface, I locked the anchor line and turned on the GPS. The signal synced with satellites to determine the precise location and transmitted that info back to Rhino. Keeping the GPS this deep ensured it wouldn’t get tangled in boat propellors if they were stupid enough to venture into this area, and it also kept my GPS hidden from prying eyes.
With that done, I checked my surface level and continued my slow ascent.
A deep drone thumped through the serenity, and I scoured the twinkling surface above me.
Fifty yards away, a boat carved through the water, aiming straight for Rhino.
Son of a bitch!

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