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18

Haven

Tuesday

F or dinner, Enzo took me to a trattoria tucked away on the outskirts of the city. “The city is very quiet tonight,” he mused. “Even for a Tuesday.”

I nodded. Had I not known any better, I’d have thought we were in a town well off the beaten path.

According to Enzo, this restaurant was known in particular for its zuppa di cozze —fresh mussels in tomato broth. “It’s almost impossible to get a table in here without a reservation months in advance,” he said. “Lucky for us, the owner is a good friend.”

But when we stepped inside, Enzo frowned. It was eight o’clock, yet only two patrons were dining.

A waitress took us to a small, L-shaped booth toward the back of the restaurant, and a few minutes later, she brought us a bottle of wine and an enormous bowl of steaming mussels.

“Thank you for introducing me to your mother,” I said to Enzo, dipping bread crust into the broth. We sat side by side, mere inches apart. “She seemed to think we were a couple. She said it’s been a while since you introduced anyone to her.”

He smirked. “A long time, yes. I moved here a year ago to open the shop.” He pried open a mussel, using his teeth to pull out the flesh. “I really haven’t been interested in dating,” he said. “The shop, my work…they take a lot of time. If I’m being honest, this is my first first date in two years. Maybe more.”

“My record isn’t much better.” I leaned back in the booth, crossing my legs toward him. “I’ve had a lot of first dates, but unfortunately, most of them have been last dates, too. I think I’ve been fishing in the wrong pond. Too many academics and researchers, not enough—”

Heat. I thought of my very first encounter with Enzo, when we’d passed each other on the outdoor stairwell. He’d been busy hauling snorkel equipment, but we’d both done a double take. That chemistry—whatever strange energy field drew strangers together—had been white-hot before we’d even exchanged names.

“Well, just not enough interest to warrant a second date,” I concluded.

We both fell silent. I wondered if we were thinking the same thing— so we’re both single, then —and I took a sip of my wine, acutely aware that Enzo had just shifted his legs another inch toward mine.

“Have you always wanted to own a dive shop?” I ventured, willing myself to think about anything other than the warmth building in the lower half of my body.

He turned toward me. “I grew up very poor,” he said. “After my father passed, my mother and sister and I, we really didn’t have much.” I swallowed, wondering how much he would share about his late sister, Bria. “We lived in a one-bedroom apartment in a rough part of town,” he went on. “Some nights, there was nothing for dinner. Other nights, our mother was gone working. I think she barely covered our most essential needs. Always down on her luck, it seemed. She could never catch a real break.” Enzo frowned, as though this were a tough topic for him.

“Watching her struggle like that, I knew I didn’t want a traditional job. I wanted to work for myself. I’ve always loved the ocean—I started diving with friends when I was fourteen—so I decided I’d own my own scuba shop someday. I started working odd jobs, saving every penny I could.” He smiled proudly. “The shop, the boat—they’re what I worked for. I can only afford one employee right now, but I hope to hire another soon, someone to run the shop so I can do more diving. Today, with you, was my first dive in months. I’ve missed the adventure of it. The adrenaline. The unexpected surprises.”

A pang of melancholy struck me: my father and Enzo would have made the best of friends.

“To me,” Enzo concluded, “the sea means freedom.”

What an incredible perspective, I thought—to not resent his childhood struggles but instead use them as an example of what he didn’t want for his own life.

“I’m proud of you,” I said, daring to give his hand a squeeze. “I’ve only known you for a day, so maybe it’s strange for me to say, but I mean it. I’m proud of you.”

He went silent a moment, glancing down at the table. “I—” He swallowed hard, cleared his throat. “Well, I don’t hear that much these days. Thank you, Haven.” He gave a sad smile. “I wish Bria were here to see it. She always joked that she wanted to go into business with me. I wonder if we’d be working together, here in Positano.”

I was curious about their relationship—which sounded like a good one, given Enzo’s statement just now—as well as what had happened to her. “Your mother said she passed about a year ago?” I asked, as delicately as I could.

He nodded. “Last year, at the end of the London Marathon. She went into cardiac arrest, very near the finish line. My mother was there, standing by as the paramedics loaded Bria onto a stretcher. She died en route to the hospital.”

“I am so sorry,” I said. I’d always considered my dad’s death abrupt, but this was even more so. I ached for Enzo and his mother, the suddenness of it all.

“The worst part,” Enzo went on, “is that even to this day, we don’t know why . They did an autopsy afterward. No sign of heart disease, nothing congenital. They deemed it idiopathic. I made peace with it, eventually. Every day, bad things happen to good people for no reason. But my mother doesn’t see it this way. She is convinced that bad luck trails her like a shadow.”

This explained Savina’s comment earlier today in the olive grove. Sometimes, I feel cursed.

Enzo shook his head and reached for his wine. I sensed he was done—with this topic, at least.

I wanted to bring the conversation back to his mother and Li Galli. Perhaps her fervent opinions were a matter of upbringing. Italians were known for being firecrackers, weren’t they?

“It’s clear your mother feels strongly against Li Galli,” I said.

Enzo nodded. “Ever the worrier. Especially after what happened to Bria. She’s very protective of me now, in a way she never was before.”

“Do the currents around the islets worry you at all? Especially after the yacht incident?”

“The currents don’t worry me, no,” he said. “As for the yacht, they’ll figure out why it went down. Just a matter of time.”

In a corner of the restaurant was a mounted flat-screen TV. A news station played helicopter footage of Mount Vesuvius, panning into a narrow band of steam emanating from one section of the crater. Seeing this, I raised my eyebrows. “Have they gotten worse?” I asked. “The steam vents?”

Enzo followed my gaze, studying the television for a moment. “No. The steam vents have always been there. They’re only showing the footage to get viewers.” He pried open another mussel shell, then caught the eye of the restaurant’s owner standing near the front door and waved him over.

“Where is everyone?” Enzo asked him in English.

The owner pointed to the television. “Scared away.”

The news broadcast flipped over to images of Asher Vice, the influencer who’d died in the recent sinking. The three of us watched in silence as the words La Maledizione Amalfitana came up across the bottom of the screen, followed by a video montage that was taken not from the Li Galli area but from the Bermuda Triangle, east of the Caribbean. The news segment was making a comparison between the two areas and their unexplained phenomena.

After the owner left, Enzo leaned in, swirling his wine in his glass. “Italians love their legends.” He glanced around the empty dining room. “Unfortunately, all of this happening at once is having real implications. I have never seen Positano this quiet.”

The television still showed footage of the steam vents, which reminded me of the oceanography data I’d seen on the news yesterday. “What about the underwater vents?” I asked him. “The carbon dioxide readings that have gotten worse in the last few days?”

I’d known Enzo less than a day, but he seemed pragmatic enough, levelheaded. After all, he didn’t give any credence to the Amalfi Curse, and he’d just said the Li Galli currents didn’t worry him.

His answer, then, alarmed me.

“The underwater readings do worry me somewhat,” he said, “because they’re new—and they can’t figure out what’s causing it.” He tore a piece of bread from the loaf and turned his gaze on me. “You should have a plan in case you need to fly out,” he said. “Just to be safe.”

For all the news broadcasts and chatter I’d seen online, it was this—Enzo’s warning and his sudden somber expression—that scared me the most.

I set my fork down. I’d lost my appetite.

He read the sudden shift in my mood. “Hey,” he said gently. I turned my face to his. “In this very moment,” he said, “we’re safe, right?”

I nodded.

“And we’re enjoying ourselves.”

I nodded. Very much so.

“And we have an entire bottle of wine to drink.”

I couldn’t help but crack a smile at this. “Yes,” I said.

“Then, worry not, my Haven.” He leaned in slowly, eyes on me all the while, and touched his lips to mine. They were softer than I expected, tasting subtly of wine. I leaned into it, gripped by the sensation of free-falling.

After a few moments, he pulled back. “All we’re promised is now,” he concluded.

How very much I needed to hear it. I reached for my wine and gave him a warm smile, terribly glad that despite all we’d both lost in the last year, we were with each other tonight.

***

I woke the next morning with a blazing headache.

After dinner, Enzo and I had holed up in an open-air bar, sipping meloncello and talking for more than two hours. We’d agreed that a morning dive wasn’t in the cards, but an afternoon dive most certainly was.

Now, I turned over in bed, happy to see that he had already messaged. Good morning, Ambrose , he’d texted an hour earlier. How you feeling?

Terrible , I replied. What exactly do they put in meloncello?

Cantaloupe. Sugar. Vodka. All the necessary food groups. A few minutes later, he asked me about our afternoon dive. Come by the shop around four? I’ll get you set up with a new wet suit. 2 mm? 3 mm?

I smiled at his thoughtfulness. 3 mm. That water is COLD.

Gotta toughen you up , he replied.

In spite of my headache, I couldn’t help but laugh. See you then.

A moment later, another text came through, and my smile fell. It was Conrad. Landed in Naples , he said. We need to transfer docs. I’m making my first dive this afternoon—need the site plans asap. Where’s your hotel?

Shit. He was diving this afternoon? I loathed the idea of running into him on the water.

I’d already put him off once. I didn’t want him to come to my villa, so I gave him the name of a café Enzo had mentioned last night, telling him to meet me there in an hour. I showered and dressed, then begrudgingly gathered up everything I’d need to hand over, including a large binder containing the site plans, which I’d printed and marked up in recent months. There were topographic maps riddled with annotations as well as my ideas for surveying the debris field. There were also bathymetric charts, with my analysis of depth, salinity, the composition of the seafloor sediment, and how these factors might impact the location and condition of wreckage.

The charts and site plans themselves—without my analysis—were also on a one-terabyte thumb drive. I tossed that in my bag, along with the documentation and approvals from various Italian authorities, including the coast guard.

But when I was nearly ready to go, I hesitated, looking down at my bag. Did I really owe Conrad the binder? The raw data and site plans were, after all, on the thumb drive. The binder contained my notes, my research, my strategies.

I wavered but a moment before yanking the binder from my bag and tossing it onto the bed. Let Conrad take his own notes, I decided. I was under no obligation to give him months’ worth of my analysis.

When I arrived at the café, Conrad was already there, sipping a black coffee at a corner table. He looked exactly the same as he had at my father’s funeral months ago: sun-soaked, every inch of him a perfect bronze, apart from the rings around his eyes from wearing sunglasses. And a full head of thick gray hair.

He stood to greet me, bringing me in for a hug. I held back a moment before reminding myself that he and my dad had not only been schoolmates but long-standing friends. And that Conrad had once saved my life.

Still, as badly as I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, my guard was up.

“Coffee?” he asked after I took a seat. “On me.”

I shook my head. “No, thanks.” The thought of it now, on a queasy stomach, wasn’t appealing. “I brought everything you need,” I said, withdrawing the thumb drive. I wanted to get this meeting over with.

Conrad didn’t even look at it as I set it in front of him. He kept his gaze on me. “Haven,” he said, and I thought I caught something sad in his eyes—memories, maybe, of the ways things were before my father died: the three of us sharing fresh-catch dinners at a dive bar in Key West. Conrad and my father having one too many beers and belting out the words to “Fly Like an Eagle.” A late-night dive several years ago, all of us searching for bioluminescent plankton and parrotfish cocoons.

I paused, fighting the sudden urge to cry. So much had been lost. “Why didn’t you tell me yourself that you were taking over the project?” I asked. “Why did I have to hear it from Gage?”

“Gage’s foundation is paying for the project.”

“But you’re the new lead. You should have called me yourself. Also, why didn’t you put me on your team?”

“We don’t know what the hell is going on in those waters, Haven.” Reaching into his back pocket, he pulled out his phone. “Look at this,” he said, showing me a web page littered with numbers and symbols. “Hydrothermal vent activity nearby,” he explained. He scrolled down to display a graph, manipulating the axes several times. It was undeniable: the vents had grown markedly more active in the last few days.

“Now, you know I’m not an alarmist,” he continued, “but even working with guys I’ve had in the field for ten, twenty years, well, we’re taking greater precautions than normal. I would never forgive myself if—” Conrad’s voice cracked. “Losing your dad has been tough on me, Haven,” he went on. “Not as tough as it’s been on you, I get that. But not easy, either. Imagine how I’d feel if something happened to you, too.”

Chastened, I leaned back. Maybe I was wrong about him. Maybe this had nothing to do with the treasure and everything to do with keeping me safe. Just as Gage had said.

Now, I almost wished I’d brought the binder of marked-up maps for Conrad.

Almost.

“Here,” I said, placing the thumb drive in his palm. “This has the documented approvals and the information on the boat charter. The site plans, too. Everything you need.”

He gave a nod, his lips pressed tightly together. “Thank you, Haven. We’re gonna do the best we can to get the photos we need.”

“You’re headed out onto the water today?”

He nodded. “This afternoon. Two of my guys are here already.” He checked his watch. “Next one should be landing in Naples anytime. Hope to be on the water midday to do a little preliminary exploration. How about you?” he asked. “Headed home soon, or planning to stay in Positano for a while?”

I hesitated. Only Mal and Enzo knew I was here for the foreseeable future. “I’ll head home,” I said. “Not immediately, but soon.”

It was vague enough.

“Good for you. Might as well do some sightseeing while you’re out here.”

“Yeah,” I said, “something like that.” I gathered my things and stood. “Keep in touch, Conrad.” I paused, part of me wanting to say Good luck , and another part wanting to say I hope your project fails.

I settled with, “Be safe.”

That, at least, was an honest sentiment.

***

By four thirty that afternoon, Enzo and I were on the water again. Given his mother’s dismay about our diving Li Galli, we agreed we wouldn’t tell her about this return trip.

As he drove, I stood next to him at the helm with my arm wrapped around his waist, his arm draped around my neck. Since our first kiss at the restaurant last night, we’d hardly passed a minute without finding some excuse to touch one another. Enzo kept the music low today, and I found myself closing my eyes as I stood next to him, listening to the sound of the boat cutting through the water. Every so often, he planted a kiss on my temple.

As we drove westward, he pointed to one of the nearby bluffs, along the water. “See that staircase there, and the small dock? That’s where my mother keeps her Jet Skis. Looks like she’s out on one of them.”

“Funny,” I said, “because she didn’t really strike me as the water adventure type.”

“She’s got a wild side to her,” he laughed.

He turned back to the helm while I reached for my camera gear: a digital Nikon with dual-grip housing, plus an assortment of strobes, lenses, and filters.

“Wow,” Enzo said, glancing at my scattered equipment. It was far more than any lay person needed. “You really are a professional, aren’t you?”

If only he knew I’d just been yanked from the biggest project of my career. “You’d be surprised what the right filters can do underwater,” I said.

He nodded toward the nearby islets. “Where to today?”

I pulled my binder out of my bag. Earlier, I’d taken a highlighter and marked up one of the maps with the area we’d covered yesterday, making a few notes about depth and the lack of shipwreck debris. “A bit farther north than where we anchored yesterday,” I told him.

“Got it,” he replied. As we closed in on our new dive site, I monitored the depth on his boat’s sonar equipment and cross-checked it against my own nautical maps, pleased to find that they mostly matched. The water had almost no chop; it was as calm as I could have hoped.

“Surface currents are good,” I said. “I’m thinking we go in right about here.” We were smack dab in the middle of the three islets—the eye of Li Galli.

Enzo dropped anchor, raised the dive flag, and began to pull on his own gear. Meanwhile, I affixed a wide-angle lens to my camera and snapped a handheld strobe around my wrist. Once we were ready, we gave each other a quick nod and took a long step off the back of the boat and into the water.

At once, I knew this would be a better dive than yesterday. Not only was the water calm, but I was much warmer, thanks to my thicker wet suit. The visibility was better, too. Even from a couple of meters away, I could clearly read the yellow Cressi logo on Enzo’s wet suit.

I checked my dive watch. We were at fifteen meters, and then twenty, and then twenty-five. I slowed my descent, wary of touching bottom too quickly, and then gasped into my mouthpiece.

Just a few meters below me, protruding from the ocean floor, was the unmistakable form of a ship’s bow. A wreck. Scattered around the debris were enormous segments of wood and oxidized copper sheathing. A long black eel slithered around beneath me, before tucking himself into a tight crevice.

I readied my camera to take a few shots. But suddenly, I heard a soft metallic sound. Enzo was a few meters away, clinking a small metal instrument against his air tank. I followed the direction of his pointed finger and squinted at something solid and dark. Swimming closer, I spotted the object that had caught his attention: the hull of another ship, this one lying on its side like a child’s bath toy, the keel exposed.

I smiled around my mouthpiece: despite being pulled from Project Relic, I’d just discovered my first Li Galli wreckage field.

Still, I wasn’t foolish enough to believe I was anywhere close to discovering the loot my father had spotted. This was only two wrecks of many.

But at least we’d found something .

I quickly strategized. I’d take photos of the wrecks, and then later, I’d load the images onto my computer, comparing them to my father’s grainy images.

As I always did during my dives, I took a moment to slow my breathing. I nearly always returned to the surface with more air in my tank than my dive partners, something of which I was proud. I could only hope that Enzo could make his own tank last, too.

I gave him the underwater signal to stay close, then I began to take photos of both wrecks. I hovered over an area of copper debris near the first wreck; often, the hulls of sailing ships were sheathed in copper beneath the water line to protect them from shipworms and other biological damage. Thankfully, copper was one element that could endure the seabed relatively well for centuries, and it was often this metal that led scientists to shipwrecks in the first place.

I moved next to the second wreck, feeling especially drawn toward the sharp edge of this one’s exposed keel. Clinging to it were thousands of mollusks, a few starfish. Parts of the hull were covered in sea lichen, dull orange in color. I snapped images of everything, as well as a few large holes along the keel.

I searched both wrecks for anything resembling a cannon or a bell, which might be stamped with an identifying maker’s mark. Seeing nothing of the sort, I ventured away from the area in search of more debris, aware that I’d gone through half of my air supply already.

I thought I might lead us farther north, but in the last few minutes, the underwater currents had grown noticeably stronger. Not wanting to swim against the current—this was the fastest way to go through an air tank—I led Enzo east. My frustration at the deteriorating conditions dissipated when, moments later, we discovered yet another pile of rubble. This wreckage looked older: the wooden fragments were largely decomposed and generally more dispersed. It seemed possible this pile contained two, three, even four shipwrecks, tangled and twisted up in one another. On one debris segment, I spotted the number 13 , which was most certainly a draft marking affixed to the hull. These were often made of lead, which was almost impervious to salt water.

Enzo nudged me on the shoulder, and I turned to find him tapping his air gauge. He had 700 psi left. Dammit . We’d have to ascend at 500 psi. Given how quickly Enzo had gone through his air, I gave us five, maybe seven, more minutes underwater.

I took as many pictures as I could from a variety of angles, using the strobe light in places where the ambient light was insufficient. I couldn’t resist snagging a few pictures of the marine life, too: orange polyps clinging to wreckage and swaying in the current; a school of grouper, their silvery skin reflecting the light of my strobe; and a lone green sea worm crawling in the sand.

As we swam through the debris field with only a few minutes left, I found myself expending more effort against the underwater current. I was breathing harder now, not from nerves or excitement but from the effort of trying to keep myself steady as I took pictures. The muscle in my left calf had started twitching; if it began to cramp, I would need to pull off my fin to stretch it out.

Finally, I decided to call the dive. I got Enzo’s attention and gave him the Thumbs-up signal.

Back on the boat, Enzo and I debriefed. He asked if I wanted to drop a line and buoy to find the location more easily when we returned, but I declined. We already had the coordinates, and I didn’t want to give anyone—most of all, Conrad—any overt clues to this exact spot.

I pulled out my binder, furiously jotting down what I remembered about the placement of debris. I recorded the longitude and latitude of our current position, which would be important when I was back at the villa analyzing the site maps on my computer.

“Currents really picked up at the end,” Enzo said, tugging his wet suit off.

I finished making a few notes, then snapped my binder shut and tossed it onto the seat. “My calf almost cramped, trying to swim against it.” I glanced at the ocean, noticeably choppier than it had been forty-five minutes ago when we’d begun our dive.

Enzo offered me a beer from the cooler, which I gratefully accepted before pulling off my own wet suit—cold, stiff, and sodden with seawater. He retrieved a pair of binoculars from a hatch beneath the helm, handing them to me and pointing toward Positano. “Have a look,” he said.

I marveled at the level of detail. I could see children playing on the flat rooftop of a building toward the center of town—a school, maybe, or a daycare—and trellis walls of orange and magenta bougainvillea throughout the village. I spotted Savina’s stairway-to-the-sea, too. She was still out on her Jet Ski.

I was almost ready to hand back the binoculars, but before I did so, I used them to look at a few nearby boats, adjusting the focus knob.

And then, I saw him: Conrad, standing at the front of a nearby dive boat, staring right at me. Through the magnified lens, he looked impossibly close.

“Shit,” I said. “Shit.” I turned to Enzo. “We need to go.”

Before I could explain myself, the driver of Conrad’s boat had throttled the engine. They’d spotted me.

Briefly, I explained to Enzo that one of the guys approaching was a colleague. “Not even a colleague,” I clarified. “It’s complicated. We’re not on the best of terms right now.” I might have said more, but Conrad’s boat pulled up alongside us, its wake tossing our small dive boat back and forth on the water. Enzo wrapped a protective arm around me, keeping me steady.

“Haven.” Conrad pulled his sunglasses off, perched them on his head. “Good seeing you again. Though, I thought you were…sightseeing.” He glanced at the tossed-aside wet suit and dive mask, then he studied my binder for a moment. None of this was damning on its own. But the assortment of expensive camera gear? That was sure to draw some questions.

Quickly, I threw a towel toward the gear, hoping to cover it, but it slipped onto the floor. “You know me,” I said, trying to act nonchalant. “I’d rather go sightseeing underwater than above it.”

Our two boats bobbed parallel on the water only inches apart. Conrad introduced us to his driver, Gio, and a few of his fellow divers—his team, I presumed. They were too preoccupied with readying their gear to greet me.

As Enzo and Gio began to chat in Italian like old friends, I nearly groaned. I’d hoped this encounter would be brief, but Gio had already killed his engine.

Conrad opened his phone, pointing the camera around Enzo’s boat and our immediate vicinity. “See anything good down there?” he asked.

“Not much,” I lied. I squinted in the sunlight. The temperature had warmed in the last few minutes, and I was hot, thirsty, and in need of a shower. Much as I loved the ocean, I hated the way my skin felt sticky after a dive. I felt a headache coming on, too, which occasionally happened after an especially cold dive.

He nodded slowly. “And the photos, they’re for…what now?”

“I always take my camera underwater,” I replied, giving him a small smile. “Worry not, Conrad. I’m not sending my pictures to the software team in the hopes of running the project behind your back.”

He chuckled. “You inherited your dad’s feisty side, Haven Marie.”

It wasn’t the first time I’d heard this. “How’s Project Relic going?” I asked.

“Project Delfino,” Conrad corrected, now pointing his phone toward the water, seemingly taking pictures of the surface. “We renamed it.”

Of course you did.

“So far, so good,” he said. He set his phone on the center console and walked toward a large black case on one of the boat’s seats. He unlatched the top, then pulled out a variety of instruments and handed them to his team members. I recognized a few—high-frequency sonar equipment, and a camera twice the size of mine—but one was completely unfamiliar. It resembled a speaker, or an echo-sounder, nearly a foot in diameter.

I couldn’t resist. “What’s that?”

“Proprietary,” he said, fiddling with a few of the buttons. “A prototype camera.”

“Did HPI loan it to you?” I asked, feeling the heat rising in my neck. “Or Gage Whitlock himself?”

He jerked his head upright, glanced at the people standing around us. “Jesus, Haven,” he muttered under his breath. “Neither. My buddy heads up a tech company.” He paused, looking up at me. “You sure there’s not something else you’re looking for out here?”

He held my gaze just a beat too long.

He knows , I thought to myself. He fucking knows. But how? I still couldn’t accept the idea that my father had told him.

“No,” I said, my mouth dry. I pointed at the black case. “Is it for image-rendering? Photogrammetry?” If so, I’d have been disappointed he didn’t tell me about it in the lead-up to Project Relic.

He shook his head. “Not imagery, no. More like… detecting . It finds anomalies. Inorganic material on the seafloor, for instance. Best for small things, really. Makes that needle in a haystack just a little bit easier to locate.”

I couldn’t believe it. He was saying it without saying it, this brave bastard. The primary goal of Project Relic—or Project Delfino, now—was to photograph wrecks. And shipwrecks weren’t small things .

Conrad was searching for the loot.

“We’ve come a long way from paper and binders,” he went on, motioning his hand toward mine. “Though, I find it curious you didn’t bring that when we met earlier. Anything good in there?”

Dumbfounded, I could only shake my head.

Conrad gave the black case a pat, then tucked his phone into a bag before turning to his fellow divers. “We ready, boys?”

One of the divers grunted in reply and pulled his mask on. I felt sick, knowing they might find something down there that I hadn’t. In this precise location, which I’d inadvertently brought them to.

“Now, remember,” Conrad said loudly to his partners. “No one get into any trouble today. If I have to save your life, you’ll owe me big.”

My throat went dry. I knew exactly what he was alluding to.

Conrad approached the back of his boat, ready to jump into the water. He turned back to face me once more, calling out over his shoulder, “’Round here,” he said, “if I scratch your back, you scratch mine.” He cocked his head. “Best of luck to you, Haven.”

With that, Conrad jumped into the water and slipped beneath the surface.

Under the guise of leading Project Relic-turned-Delfino, he had begun his search for the very thing my father had begged me to find.