By Blood Written Page 17

  All she saw was blue, the deepest blue she’d ever seen before. Water, she thought, wondering what it would feel like to drown.

  And then it came into view, the green and browns of Bonaire, the next island over from Aruba just off the coast of Venezuela. The flight from JFK to Aruba had been on board a 757, a huge, comfortable, and what felt like rock-solid safe jet. When they had disembarked at the Aruba airport and the male flight attendant had smiled and pointed toward the DeHavilland Otter, Taylor had felt the blood drain out of her face.

  “Oh no,” she whispered, grabbing Michael’s arm. “Not that. They’re not actually going to fly over water in that thing.”

  Michael smiled, patted her arm. “It’ll be fine. It’s only about a twenty-minute flight.”

  “Can that stay up for twenty minutes?”

  But it had, and as the pilot lowered the flaps and set the plane up for final approach, Taylor felt herself relaxing even as her stomach rolled with the rapid loss of altitude. The plane was coming in awfully fast, she thought, but then before she knew it, the plane bumped the runway and began slowing. As they slowed to a stop in front of the single building that served as the Bonaire airport terminal, Taylor read the sign that said, WELCOME TO FLAMINGO AIRPORT.

  “Okay,” she muttered. “Anyplace that calls its airport the Flamingo is going to be all right.”

  The twenty or so tourists, most of them clearly divers, climbed down off the plane and were whisked through customs. The Bonaire economy was built on tourism, and everywhere, it seemed, the island was geared to make visitors comfortable. Taylor and Michael stood in line for a cab, and barely a half hour later were checked into their bungalow at the Divi Flamingo, staring out a window arm-in-arm as the sun fell slowly into the Caribbean.

  “It’s stunning,” she said.

  “Seven hours ago, we were freezing our asses off trying to get a cab in a snowstorm,” Michael offered.

  “Hard to believe. It really is a different world, isn’t it?”

  Michael turned and pointed toward the bottle of iced-down Roederer Cristal he’d arranged to be in their room when they arrived. “Thirsty?”

  Taylor smiled. “Kind of early, isn’t it? It’s barely five.”

  Michael walked over to the ice bucket and pulled the bottle out. “Hey, we’re on vacation. Besides, we’ve got a couple of hours before our dinner reservation.”

  “Where are we eating tonight, kind sir?”

  “Ah,” Michael said, gently pulling the foil off the top of the champagne bottle, then carefully unwinding the wire around the cork. “That’s a secret. But I will tell you this: this tiny li’l ol’ island here has over fifty restaurants on it, many of them world-class. And over the next seven days, we’re going to hit as many of them as we can.”

  The champagne was wonderful, the sex afterward as powerful and as intense as anything Taylor had ever experienced in her life, and the dinner exquisite. The first few hours had taken them from a stressed-out midwinter Manhattan frame of mind and put them firmly on island time. It was nearly eleven by the time they left the restaurant, and just before midnight, they found themselves walking alone on a beach with their third bottle of wine of the evening and a couple of glasses. The Caribbean moon was nearly full and low off the horizon, throwing out bursts of silver onto the ocean’s surface that seemed to light up the whole sky.

  Taylor slipped off her shoes and felt the warm sand under her feet. She was sleepy, exhausted, sated, but didn’t yet want to let go to sleep. Next to her, Michael walked silently, shuffling his feet in the sand. She took his free hand in hers and gently guided him toward the water’s edge. The tide was coming in, the water lapping softly against the sand. Taylor dipped her feet in the water and found it surprisingly warm.

  She leaned over and put her head against his shoulders as they walked.

  “Want to sit down and open this guy up?”

  “Sure,” Taylor answered, smiling. “Although I’m not sure how much wine I’m up for. I’m a little tipsy now.”

  Michael eased her over to a small mound of sand just ahead of the water and held her hand as she settled onto the ground. He eased down next to her and set the two glasses in the sand, then reached into his shirt pocket and extracted a corkscrew.

  “It’s amazing,” Taylor said softly as Michael twisted the corkscrew into the neck of the bottle.

  “What’s amazing?”

  The cork came loose with a slight pop, and Michael poured two glasses of red wine.

  “This, all of it. How can it get any better? I mean, this is perfect.”

  Michael lifted a glass in each hand and handed one to her.

  Taylor took it and stared at him over the top of the glass.

  “I don’t know,” he answered after a moment. “I don’t know that it has to get any better. When you’ve reached perfection, that’s as good as it ever has to get.”

  “Great,” she chided. “That means we’ve got no way to go but down.”

  He reached over, clinked her glass gently. “No,” he said seriously. “Never. Never say that. It’s just going to get better in different ways.”

  She lifted the glass and took small sip. The wine was as perfect as the evening had been.

  “How’d I get so lucky?” she asked.

  “I was just asking myself the same question.”

  Michael leaned over and kissed her softly, sweetly, as a cool wind from the sea blew quietly over them.

  The next morning, Taylor and Michael climbed out of bed about a half day earlier than she wanted, but they had an appointment with the dive master. At Michael’s urging, Taylor had signed up for scuba lessons in Manhattan, but had held off on taking her check dive until they got to Bonaire.

  She went through the procedures, the equipment, and a test dive off the beach, followed by a quick quiz with the blond, sunburned Australian who ran the dive operation. The next thing she knew, she was standing in front of a passport camera having her picture taken for her “C” card, which certi-fied her as an open-water diver.

  “Congratulations, love,” he said. “Now let’s do the real thing.”

  She, Michael, and a dozen other divers hauled BCDs-the buoyancy-compensation devices that enabled divers to control the rate by which they ascended or descended-goggles, fins, regulators, and the heavy air tanks on board a thirty-foot dive boat. Taylor had eaten a light breakfast with a little juice and coffee, so was able to hold off the worst of the impending seasickness as the boat pushed through the swells toward open sea.

  An hour later, they were farther north on the leeward side of the island, where the reefs were pristine and untouched, the water barely sixty feet deep and crystal clear. Michael had warned her that the first time she dived in open water, she might feel just a touch of anxiety, of drowning panic.

  “Remember,” he told her as they sat on the side of the boat, preparing to roll backward into the ocean, “don’t forget to breathe, slowly and steadily. When we go in, let’s just float for a couple of minutes until we get adjusted.”

  Taylor already had the regulator clenched firmly in her mouth. She nodded, pulled her goggles down over her eyes, held the regulator with her left hand and the mask with her right. Then she let go.

  It was only a couple of feet from the gunwale to the water, but she felt as if she were falling forever. She hit the water, which suddenly seemed colder, and went completely under.

  Her eyes widened, and for a moment she felt the surge of panic. She bit down hard on the regulator, trying to calm herself, to fight the urge to start paddling and fighting to the surface.

  Then the BCD brought her to the surface and she bobbed there like a cork, her neck and face well out of the water, the heavy metal tank on her back now weightless. She looked around, and Michael was next to her a couple of feet away.

  He brought his hands up like a referee calling a touchdown and then bent his arms into circles and tapped the top of his head with both hands. It was the universal scuba sign langu
age for “I’m okay, how about you?”

  Taylor forced herself to let go of the regulator, then brought her arms out of the water and mimicked his arm motion. She tried to loosen the muscles in her neck and to let her legs go limp beneath her. She looked down and realized it was almost like being suspended in air, sixty or seventy feet above the ocean floor. The water was warming now, her body adjusting, and she felt almost as if she were inside a womb.

  The two floated there for what felt like at least a full minute, then Michael slowly paddled over to her and took the regulator out of his mouth and held it up out of the water.

  “You ready to dive, lady?”

  “I guess so,” Taylor tried to say, but she didn’t take the regulator out of her mouth and it came out as muffled gob-bledygook.

  “I’ll take that at as a yes,” Michael said, slipping the regulator back into his mouth. Then he held up the dump tube off the BCD in his right hand, his thumb on the valve to release the air inside. He nodded. Taylor held her own tube up, her fingers tight, and nodded back. She watched as he pressed the button and his BCD began to hiss softly. As it deflated, Michael’s body sank slowly beneath the surface.

  Taylor anxiously pressed her own valve and felt the BCD

  around her begin to deflate. There was a hissing sound for her as well, and within, it seemed, half a second, her head was slipping beneath the surface into a silent, warm, thick world of blue.

  As her head went under, she realized she’d closed her eyes tightly. Once under water, she forced herself to open them.

  A small puddle of water had formed at the bottom of her mask. She tried to remember the procedure to clear it.

  A few feet way, Michael had let go of his tube and was hovering just below her. He waved at her slowly, his hand fanning back and forth in the water. She waved back, forced a little more air out of her vest, and descended to his level.

  He swam up to her, looked into her eyes through their masks, and reached out for her. He took her two hands in his, squeezed them slowly yet firmly, and she felt herself relax. She was with Michael; she could trust him and she was safe.

  He reached for his relief valve again, held it over his head, held her hand with his free hand, then waited for her to lift her tube. He nodded. They both pushed the button and began sinking. Taylor felt the pressure rise in her ears, then let go of Michael’s hand, held her nose through the mask, and blew air into her ears to equalize the pressure.

  She smiled; it worked. That was the first time she’d ever equalized perfectly the first time. She snaked her hand around and grabbed the lines that held her gauges. She held them up to her mask. They were descending through forty feet. She smiled behind the regulator and held it out to Michael. He looked at it and gave her a thumbs-up.

  Taylor looked down and was surprised to find the coral-encrusted ocean floor coming up toward her. She and Michael put a small burst of air into their vests to keep them off the coral, a few feet above. Michael shifted himself into a prone position, hovering above the ocean floor in a Superman pose. She felt herself smile again, her lips hard on the regulator, trying to remember to breathe slowly and rhythmically. She swam up to him and flattened herself out, then reached over and took his hand. The two began slowly kicking their fins in a scissorlike motion, quietly moving over the seabed plants and coral. A school of bright yellow fish that Taylor didn’t recognize swarmed around them. In the distance, she caught a glimpse of the other divers and remembered that they weren’t alone.

  They swam slowly along, alternating that movement with a still, relaxed drift. They swam in circles, never too far away from the anchor chain. Taylor relaxed, trusting Michael to take care of her, to watch over her. She was glad she’d done this, glad she’d met him, glad she’d taken the biggest chance of her life.

  Taylor realized that at this moment, sixty feet below the surface of the Caribbean just off the coast of Venezuela, in the early part of March, with a man she’d been with barely a month, she was happier than she’d ever been in her life. For perhaps the first time in her life, she was completely happy.

  The last night in Bonaire, Taylor and Michael went to a local place called the Island Cafe for dinner. Michael had done some research into where the locals went when they wanted to celebrate something away from the tourists. They took a cab into Kralendijk, the only real town on the island, and found themselves in a narrow alleyway near the town center.

  The alleyway was dimly lit, crowded with locals, and had a different feel than anyplace else they’d been.

  Michael held her hand and walked ahead of her down the winding alley, taking one wrong turn, backing up, then taking another. The Island Cafe was tiny compared to the other restaurants they’d been to, but the smells coming from the kitchen were exquisite. With all the diving and exploring, not to mention the staying up half the night locked in each other’s arms, they had both lost a couple of pounds. Taylor was ravenously hungry.

  They drank the local beer and ate pastechis, the plump little pastries full of spicy shrimp and meat. They ordered giambo, the thick, spicy okra soup that was sort of like gumbo, only with a twist. They ordered steaks and fish and wine and ate like starved, caged animals for the next hour, almost without talking. When they finished, Taylor leaned back in her chair and stared across the table at Michael.

  “I don’t want to go,” she said simply.

  “I don’t, either. But we have to. We have to get back to the real world.”

  “Why?” she complained. “Why can’t this be the real world?”

  “Because it isn’t,” he said. “I have a book to write and I’m on deadline. You have clients that need you. Joan needs you.”

  “She can’t need me that much. I haven’t had a single call from her.”

  “That could have something to do with the fact that you didn’t tell her where you were going,” Michael said, smiling.

  “Maybe. But she has ways of finding out.”

  “You know she’s champing at the bit for you to get back.”

  “Maybe.”

  Michael leaned forward on the table and took her hands in his, then pulled her toward him.

  “There is one thing we can take with us from the island.

  Something that will make this an even more important week than it’s already been.”

  Taylor looked at him, questioning. “What?”

  Michael squeezed her hands and they suddenly felt cold.

  Taylor looked down at their hands and realized his palms were sweating.

  “What? What’s the matter?”

  “Oh,” he said slowly, “nothing’s the matter. I guess I’m just a little new at this.”

  “New at what?” she said, almost exasperated.

  He let go of her right hand with his left and reached into his pocket. When his hand came back up to the table, it held a small, velvet-covered cube.

  Taylor stared at his hand, stunned. “Wha-”

  Michael let go of her left hand and raised his right index finger to his lips. “Ssshh,” he said.

  “What are you-”

  “Let me,” he said hurriedly. “Please.”

  She was silent for a moment, uncomprehending. “Ever since I met you, Taylor, it’s been like my life has come together. The day I met you is the day I turned the corner. It was the day when everything started to make sense. Suddenly, I know what I want with my life, and I know who I want to spend it with.”

  “Michael, I-”

  Michael’s voice rose just a notch, and he looked directly into her eyes. “Now that you’re in my life, I don’t ever want to take a chance that something might happen and you won’t be. I love you, and I want to be with you and nobody else, ever. I’m through with everything I used to do and used to want. I know what’s important to me now, and now that it’s here, right next to me, I don’t want to ever let it slip away.

  “Taylor, will you marry me?”

  He opened the small ring box and held it toward her.

  Shoc
ked beyond recognition, she stared at it a second before realizing what it was-a beautiful European cut diamond that had to be pushing three carats. It was the largest diamond she’d ever seen up close, even larger than her grandmother’s.

  “My God,” she whispered. And as she finally got what he was saying and asking, her eyes began to fill. She looked up from the box, into Michael’s eyes, and looked at him through a film of tears.

  “Are you sure?” she whispered, her voice barely audible.

  He nodded. “More sure than I can even begin to tell you.”

  She laughed. “A writer at a loss for words. When’s the last time we saw that?”

  She laughed again, louder this time. “Yes, Michael,” she said after a moment, taking the box from him and setting it on the table between them. She took his hands and squeezed them, hard.

  “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  All around them, the other restaurant patrons began clap-ping and cheering.

  CHAPTER 17

  Friday afternoon, Nashville

  Hank Powell slipped his rented Mitsubishi Gallant into the first available space in the public parking garage across from the Nashville Criminal Justice Center and jerked the gearshift into park with a loud crunch. Next to him, Special Agent Fred Cowan, the resident agent who worked out of Nashville under the supervision of the Memphis Field Office, bounced forward and caught himself with his palm on the dashboard.

  “Easy, Hank,” Cowan said. “We’ll make it.”

  “We’re late,” Powell muttered. “I hate being late.”

  “We’ve got a couple of minutes,” Cowan said, climbing slowly out of the car in a manner far too relaxed to suit Powell. “This is Nashville. Everybody gets hosed up in traffic sooner or later.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Powell said, slamming the door and turning for the exit at a near-trot.