Chapter 6: Ninety Feet

"It's not ninety feet for me," I said. "It's a swim."

Jasper looked at me for a long moment.

Then he went out on deck and called his crew.

They came at five the next morning in one pickup with a cooler of boiled peanuts.

Two men who had dived with him for six years.

The big one had a gray ponytail and a laugh.

The younger one had a sunburned nose and a Bible verse from Ida tattooed on his forearm.

"This is Thalia," Jasper said.

"The runaway bride," said the big one.

"The crazy one," said the younger one, and then went red. "Sorry. The TV said."

"The TV says a lot," I said.

The Patience was a flat steel dive barge with a deckhouse, a compressor, a crane arm and a tug engine strapped to her stern.

She smelled of diesel and old rope, and somebody had painted a cross on her wheel.

We went out the creek in the half-dark and under the Ravenel bridge and out past Fort Sumter.

The harbor was still and gray.

The container ships sat in a line offshore, waiting for the pilots.

"Slack tide's at seven ten," Jasper said. "Next ship's through the channel at eight. That's our window."

"How long do you need?" I asked.

"To get down there on the hose, have a look and decompress on the way up? All of it."

"Then I'll go first and find her."

The big one laughed.

Keep reading free with an account. Start Forbidden Game: Seducing the Bride at the Altar from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.