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Excitement ramps up, billowing sails fueled by my sudden hope for the future.

My wreck. And a hot date. Two things to live for. I grin like a fool.Like a fool in love.

“You ready?” Dean smooths a hair away from my face.

Acting on impulse, hope and excitement bubbling inside, I stretch up on the balls of my feet, pressing a quick kiss across his lips.

“I’m ready.” I turn, checking the equipment with the practiced ease of someone who’s done it a million times.

Beside me, Dean does the same. I watch him from the corner of my eye, my body intimately aware of his.

I’m excited. So excited that it doesn’t feel real.

“Buoy’s out?”

“Yes, ma’am.” There’s a smile in his words, but if I look at his dang dangerous lips again, I’ll keep stalling finding out if my wreck is down there, or if… goosebumps pebble across my skin. If the narcotics are.

I slip into the cabin, adrenaline and excitement overriding my fear for once, and pull out my bikini from where Dean thoughtfully put it in the backpack, then pull out my black wetsuit.

Bikinis look great, but pairing wet skin and a nylon weight belt? No thanks.

The wetsuit cuts high on my legs like a one-piece, fitting like a glove, and the reflective taping works like a charm for visibility underwater.

My father bought it for me too, and I pause as I zip it up, wishing he was here. Wishing we were doing this together. With one last look at myself in the mirror, I duck back through the door and onto the deck.

The sun slicks across the surface of the water. Out here, far from shore and closer to the Mexican border, the water isn’t the typical gray-green murk of the gulf. It’s a crystalline blue and turquoise. Visibility should be good. Whatever is down there, we’ll see it.

I tug the tanks over my shoulders, clipping in, heart beating loudly in my ears. “Have you heard anything else from Thompson?”

Dean shakes his head, running a hand through his stubble as he straps on his tanks with the air of a man who’s done it a thousand times. His face is a blank mask, inscrutable.

I bite into my lower lip.

Are his men trustworthy? Dean thinks so. It will have to be good enough for me.

“They’re safe. They know protocol when things get iffy.”

Tension returns to my chest, my stomach tightening. My nerves are haywire, operating on overdrive.

Probably a side-effect of being shot at too many times in a forty-eight-hour time period.

“Okay.” I shuffle to the back of the boat, noting Dean has already lifted the props out of the water.

The long fins snap onto my feet, and I pull my hair back into a tight bun. The mask strap pulls on, and the snorkel flops against my cheek. Dean sits next to me, loosening the straps on his fins with a quiet efficiency that, for some reason, really does it for me.

Hot and competent.

“What’s that look for?” He grins.

A small shrug. “Just hopeful.”

“Ah.”

He doesn’t need to know I’m hopeful about more than theSantu Espiritunow.

“I’m going first.”

“I’m perfectly happy to let you go first.” His gaze runs across my legs. “But, for the record, I don’t mind if we both go at the same time.”