Page 44 of Hearts on the Line (The Maverick Key #1)

Maddie

Mark pulls me roughly as we enter the cavern.

Icy water has seeped into every layer of my wetsuit, chilling me and leaving my breaths shallow and shaky.

Instead of using a dry suit and rebreather, I’m diving open circuit with no extra tanks.

But we are wearing full-face masks equipped with comms. Mark’s shadow looms ahead, his flashlight beam cutting through the darkness like a predator’s glare.

“Move,” he orders, pushing me toward the tunnel.

I’d tried to reason with him before this dive, but Mark’s intentions never wavered.

He remains cold, unyielding, and terrifyingly resolute.

He lays a marker and follows an old line.

Now, as I grip the dive line with trembling hands, my chest tightens.

The Grim Reaper stands at the tunnel entrance with his death sentence.

STOP! Prevent your death! Go no further.

Scott’s face flashes in my mind. Will he find my body?

What will that do to him? Stop it, Maddie, you can’t afford to lose it down here.

In front of me, Mark’s flashlight swings erratically, illuminating jagged rock edges.

He’s not an experienced cave diver and it shows in his poor buoyancy control.

But he’s stronger than me and has a very short fuse.

I’m not only fighting to survive the overhead environment.

I’m going to need to fight him if I want to live.

My breath fogs the edges of my mask, and I slow them down. Focus, Maddie. You’ve trained for this.

The tunnel walls press against me as I move deeper, every twist and turn forcing me to angle my body. The limestone scrapes against my right arm and my tank, threatening to destroy my air source. I keep Scott’s face in my thoughts to try to fight back the panic. If I don’t stay calm, I’ll die.

Ahead, my light catches a branching tunnel, its entrance a distinct shape. It’s one of the passages Nathan had marked on his map. My heart pounds as I adjust course, veering toward it. The dive line is covered with algae, but still intact. I grip it and pull myself forward, determined.

“What the hell are you doing?” Mark looks back over his shoulder, his distorted voice crackling through the comms, sharp and angry. “You crazy bitch. You’re determined to kill yourself before I get the chance to do it.”

I don’t respond. Gritting my teeth against my regulator, I push forward, entering the narrow passage.

The walls close in almost immediately, the limestone squeezing against my suit and gear.

I don’t look back. The passage is too tight for Mark to follow easily.

If I get far enough ahead, I might have a chance to hide from him. For a little while.

The small space narrows further, forcing me to exhale sharply and deflate my chest to squeeze through a vertical shaft.

My tank scrapes the rock, and the grating sounds like the screams of a horror movie’s final girl.

Every movement is agonizingly slow. This is the first time I’m doing this.

I have to focus on all the potential scenarios I was taught.

My fingers tremble, but I force them to keep gripping the line.

Stay calm. Breathe slow. One careful move at a time.

Never lose the line.

After pausing in a small chamber with some breathing room, I follow the line through another tunnel.

This tunnel opens into a large chamber, and I gasp as a rush of relief floods over me.

My flashlight sweeps across the space, revealing massive stalactites and stalagmites glimmering in the water.

It’s breathtaking, like stepping into another world.

An auditorium with sub chambers blocked off by huge limestone walls.

I sense Nathan’s presence. His essence is infused into every inch of this place. And the water is warm.

On the cavern floor, artifacts lie scattered in the silt. There are fragments of ceramic pottery and metallic fragments glinting in the beam of my light. My chest tightens. This is Nathan’s discovery, his dream. Thousands of years old.

You did it, Nathan.

I check my gauge, and my stomach twists in fear.

My gas is at 32 percent. I’m way past the rule of thirds.

My breathing quickens despite my attempts to calm down.

I’m consuming even greater amounts of the precious air I need to live.

If I stay much longer, I won’t make it back, regardless of Mark. This is what happened to Nathan.

Mark’s voice cuts through the comms. “Maddie, where are you?” His tone is icy, carrying through the water.

“You’re making this harder than it needs to be.

” I hide behind a limestone wall dividing the chamber, hoping it will provide me some shelter from Mark’s view.

My only hope now is if someone is looking for me and finds me soon.

“Maddie… Maddie. I know you’re in here. There’s nowhere else to go.”

I freeze, every muscle tightening as Mark’s silhouette appears at the chamber entrance. His flashlight slices through the water, illuminating the artifacts. His face has distorted into a wide grimace, his eyes wide with exhilaration.

He laughs, the sound hollow and warped. “Well, look at this. Nathan wasn’t making it up. He found it. Now, where are the little green men?” He flashes his light around the room.

Anger erupts within me, briefly overshadowing my fear. I rush to confront him, my chest rising and falling with emotion. “This isn’t yours, Mark. It never was.”

He swims closer, slowly, his flashlight beam blinding as he moves it to my face. “There you are. You don’t get it,” he sneers. “I don’t care about this old junk. Nathan took everything from me.”

“What are you talking about?” I know exactly what he’s talking about, but I hope the question stalls him.

“Crystal was mine. My future, my family.” Mark’s voice grows more agitated, his words tumbling out. “Nathan poisoned her with his dreams and all his stupid obsessions. I was his friend. His best friend. He knew I loved her and he stole her from me.”

Crying, he continues. “He thought he could just explain to me that they were in love and I’d forgive him… got her pregnant as soon as he could so he could keep her from me. She would have come back to me. She always does.” His eyes are wild. “She will this time, too.”

My stomach twists as I continue to listen to Mark rant. I need to get out of here.

Mark continues, his voice dripping with bitterness. “I made it right. Nathan was stupid, and he trusted me. Thought all was forgiven. He was so worried about that jerk Garrett that he failed to see the real danger was the man he’d stabbed in the back.”

As Mark continues, I start to unspool line from my reel. Carefully, I wrap it into a lasso.

“The stupid fuck had me take him to the Drop, over and over for weeks. He was diving solo. Well, that last time, I ensured his backup system was hosed, and he wouldn’t have the gas he needed in his rebreather. Easy as sin. I left his ass at the Drop.”

I gasp. A vision of Nathan—deep in the Drop, struggling to breathe—flashes through my mind.

“I promised Crystal I’d take care of her and the baby that he put inside her.

It wasn’t her fault or Natalie’s. I married her.

I gave her a real family. I became Natalie’s dad and their breadwinner.

All I asked for was for her to love me, but she never did.

Do you know she still dreams of him? She used to call out his name when I made love to her.

Now she’s stopped letting me touch her at all.

He hasn’t let go of what is mine even after death. ”

“You’re insane!” I yell, my voice trembling. “You killed my brother!”

Mark’s eyes narrow. “You look just like him.” His grin through the mask widens. “I’m going to enjoy killing you, too. Two Carters—in one hole. The island will never forget either of you. One day, they’ll find both of your little skeletons floating in the tunnels. You’ll make someone famous.”

My grip tightens on the spooled line as my panic surges. I can’t out swim him, not here—my mind races. I’m going to die. I try to swim away from him, moving back behind the limestone wall in the cavern’s center.

Mark pulls out a knife, the blade catching the light.

“There’s nowhere left to go. I’m going to kill you now.

It’s time.” He rushes toward me, clumsily kicking up silt along the way.

The room is saturated with dark clouds, bringing our visibility so low I can barely see what’s in front of me.

I can sense his approach and let him get as close as I can before I move.

I wrap the lasso of line around his hand that’s holding the knife.

Before he reacts, I dive below him to wrap more line around his left fin.

He slings his arms wildly in every direction at me.

After I’ve tied as many places as I can on his body, I pull with all my strength to tighten the binds.

He swats at it frantically, trying to cut it, but this causes him to drop the knife.

Both his arms and legs are now impossibly entangled in the yards of line and are forming their own knots like a bunch of necklaces carelessly tossed together.

The more he pulls at the line to loosen it, the tighter the knots become. Entanglement 101. I pick up the knife.

“What the—” His voice is frantic as he becomes impossibly entwined. I have so much hatred for this man who took the closest person in my life away from me. He stole a lover and a father and a genius from the world.

“Cut the fucking line, bitch,” he snaps.

My fingers tighten around the dive knife.

I strap it to my suit. There’s no way in hell I’m going to free him.

An urge for revenge consumes me, and I almost pull off his mask and regulator to end this quickly.

I could take his tanks. But I don’t. Instead, I head back toward the opening we came from.

I tell myself leaving him alive is a small mercy, but I know it’s not.

I leave Mark to meet his fate alone.