Found at Sea Read online

  Donna drummed her nails on her desk. “I can’t see myself barefoot, pregnant and making cookies for school bake sales.”

  “Don’t forget giving up your job. Neil says it’s too dangerous. Says mine is too dangerous. Everything is too dangerous for women, according to him.”

  “Old traditions die hard, especially when it comes to women. That’s why I got out of the navy. You know, Rory, maybe you should make a play for him.”

  “Just what a good marriage needs—two captains. On different ships, no less. And I can’t see myself housebound and making cookies, either. No, thanks. I’m been on my own too long to be good wife material.”

  “Shame. All that cruise-ship ambience wasted. He’s a nice guy, too.”

  “No argument there. I’m grateful he helped save Jordan. Thank goodness for cell phones.” She’d borrowed one from emergency personnel and used it to call Neil.

  “So Captain Harris stopped a whole cruise ship on your say-so?”

  “No, he stopped it because I’m a personal friend of yours. The man’s insane about you.”

  Donna sighed. “Why can’t I find a modern man insane about me? Instead of a traditional, overprotective—”

  “I’ve got a better question,” Aurora interrupted. “Why can’t the police find Jordan’s attackers?”

  Donna tapped her chopsticks on the edge of her white carton. “I’m working on it. I’ve got some people keeping an eye on Castillo, too...a few of my navy buddies and a cop who owes me a favor. They’re taking turns.”

  “Appreciate it, Donna. You make sure you run a tab on this. I can’t pay you now, but you know I’m good for it.”

  Donna waved her hand in the air. “Hey, I already told you—forget it. You gave me free diving and boating privileges. I’m happy to return the favor. And from a purely selfish point of view, a treasure ship is an exciting change of pace.”

  “The Mexican jail isn’t.” For a moment Aurora’s spirits dropped. Despite her sister’s old resentment and her niece’s arrogance, Aurora loved them both. And Gerald had shown her more kindness than her blood relations ever had. “How did things get so screwed up?”

  Donna took her hand for the briefest squeeze. “We’ll get them out, Rory. You’ll see.”

  “I hope so.”

  “We will.” Donna dug into her carton, the black and jade of the chopsticks gracefully moving. “Pass the sweet-and-sour, would you?”

  CHAPTER THREE

  San Diego

  July 29, 8:00 a.m.

  IN THE SAN DIEGO hotel room he’d occupied since his release from the hospital, Jordan stood before the mirror, carefully studying his body.

  He wasn’t vain about his rugged good looks or the hard muscles most men would kill to have. Too many generations of hardworking Castillo fishermen, too many years as a risk-taking seafarer, ran in his blood for vanity, but Jordan did value his strength. The age-old cliché was no cliché to him: he truly believed the sea was a harsh mistress who discarded weak lovers with cruel disregard for life and limb. Jordan Castillo loved life as much as he loved the ocean-faring lifestyle. He planned to hold on to both, which was why he stood in the hotel bathroom carefully appraising himself.

  Most, if not all, of his vigor had returned, although he was still a little underweight. He could see the slight loss of mass in the broad shoulders and rock-hard pectorals that had spent a lifetime hauling nets, fish, anchors and treasure from the ocean.

  He frowned. Furrows appeared above the dark brown eyes and beneath the mahogany hair. He made a mental note to keep on top of his weight, intending to regain the missing bulk soon—that last ounce of strength could mean the difference between life and death.

  The San Diego sun had quickly replaced the white pallor of an invalid with his usual tan. His skin glowed with health. The arm that had been broken wasn’t his dominant one. Thankfully, both it and his skull had healed well. The doctor promised there’d be no permanent aftereffects, though his arm remained a little stiff, and his memory of the attack and afterward was still hazy. Once he left his hotel and got back to work, he’d be himself again. Unfortunately, his ship, the Lucky Lady, and his crew had berthed in Atlantic waters for a much-needed engine overhaul. Jordan never stinted on safety; however, the timing left much to be desired.

  Jordan gave himself one last look in the mirror before pulling on a shirt. The scar from his recent surgery was red and puckered, but it would eventually smooth and fade like the scar from the knife fight on a dark Portuguese dock, or the raking lines on his shoulder from a broken beer bottle at a rowdy Cuban bar. There were other scars, too, like those from his close call at the San Diego pier. All were now a permanent part of his body and soul.

  Jordan’s lips curved slightly upward. The scars would effectively keep him off the cover of any male swimsuit issue. Not that he cared one iota or ever had. Jordan was his own man, with his own set of rules, his own code of honor. Scars came with the territory.

  During the passing years, the sea had held his undivided attention—until that night at the pier. Until Aurora Collins had saved his life with her beautiful lips against his mouth. He’d tried to contact her, but was told she was south of the border. Where in Mexico, and what was she doing there? And what had she done with the Castillo gold medallion? The woman had vanished, and with her, the location of his ship.

  In the hospital, Jordan had cooperated with the police. They’d assured him Aurora had done the same, but Jordan wanted to speak to her himself. Once discharged, he’d made inquiries about Aurora Collins and the cruise ship on which he’d initially been treated. Even though San Diego was to ships what New York City was to taxis, he’d found her own ship, Neptune’s Bride, and the cruise ship easily enough with the help of police reports. However, the cruise ship was on a run from San Diego to Mexico and was then sailing south to Venezuela. Aurora herself was down in Mexico, traveling by land, not sea.

  The police, who hadn’t found any trace of his attackers or any witnesses, told him he was lucky to be alive and suggested chalking up his experiences to yet another unsolved big-city crime. That left him with scars, a hospital bill and a lot of unanswered questions.

  Jordan knew one thing. He needed to find Aurora Collins before he could get back to business—back to finding the San Rafael.

  I will find the San Rafael.

  His vow had been made ten years ago, when he left the family fishing business forever—or what was left of it after a hurricane moved up the coast to New England and sank the Castillo fishing fleet, killing the Castillo family crew. All the men were gone. Except him.

  Jordan had managed to cling to the wreckage for two days in hurricane-force winds and waves. His father, his grandfather and two older brothers, along with uncles and cousins, were buried in the Atlantic waters they’d loved so well. Their resting place was fitting, even honorable, although not all the widows and younger children had seen it as such.

  After Jordan’s recovery, he and his fiancée, Maureen, had attended the memorial service. Maureen had wept; Jordan had remained dry-eyed. He loved his family passionately and grieved for the dead, but they, like him, knew the risks.

  When Jordan later told Maureen the family’s plans, his fiancée was shocked. The majority of the Castillos wanted to use part of the life-insurance payments to buy another ship so Jordan could go back to sea. They would start with a single salvage ship and move their base of operations to Florida. Salvaging paid good money. Those profits would be used to fund a new Boston fishing fleet sometime in the distant future. Right now, there was neither the cash nor the manpower for more than that. The Castillos were a longtime fishing family; it was their enterprise, their way of life, and eventually they would rebuild. But not yet...

  Maureen had become hysterical. “You saw your family die! You nearly died yourself. And you want to go back to fishing?”

  “Salvaging,” he’d corrected. “We’re going to buy a salvager, not a trawler.”

  “Fishing for treasure, f
ishing for fish...what’s the difference?”

  “I’m the last adult male Castillo. I have an obligation to the family. Without my family to crew, I can’t run a fishing fleet, and to be honest, I don’t have the will for it right now. But I can run a single-boat salvage operation. The payoff could support us all. In ten years or so my nephews—and nieces, if they wish—will be old enough to work our own boats again.”

  “Jordan, you’re only twenty-five. That’s young enough to try something new.”

  “The ocean is all I know.”

  “Do something else,” she’d begged. “Let your family do something else.”

  “It’s all I want. All we want.”

  “Want something else.”

  Jordan knew what he felt inside. Never.

  “I won’t have it, Jordan, do you hear me? I won’t sit and wait to hear if you’ve survived another storm at sea. I did it once. I can’t do it again.”

  “But, sweetheart...”

  “Don’t ‘sweetheart’ me! I can’t live that way any more than your mother could. I won’t be one of these widows here.”

  Jordan had winced. His mother had hated the sea with a vengeance. Maureen claimed that the stress of being married to a seaman had caused her early death. Perhaps it had, but her husband had made no secret about his life or his intentions.

  “She knew who she was marrying,” he’d said.

  “You’ll have to decide who you love more, Jordan, me or some stupid boat,” Maureen had screamed. “You can’t have us both.”

  “Can’t I?”

  “No.”

  Jordan remembered how his indifference had actually frightened her. Her hand covering her mouth, she’d backed away from him. Jordan had left Maureen without a glance.

  The women in his family had tried to explain his situation to Maureen. Castillo survival depended on Castillo money. U.S. insurance companies rarely insured boats older than thirty years. The family had bought insurance only for the crew and the business itself; this was not unusual. The insurance money they’d received could only last so long. It certainly wouldn’t cover a new fleet. Besides living expenses, it had paid for just one salvage boat. Jordan was gambling on a high-stakes return to reestablish the fishing fleet sometime in the future.

  In the ten subsequent years, Jordan Castillo’s salvage business had prospered. He’d successfully recovered both modern and ancient cargo. He’d helped support his family’s widows and put money aside to send his nieces and nephews to school. But as for restoring the family fleet, it hadn’t happened. One boat was all he could afford with the family’s support a necessary drain on his profits. His nephews were still too young to crew, for him or anyone else. Restoring the fleet remained his—their—dream.

  It could happen if he found a Spanish treasure galleon. This particular vessel, the San Rafael, was special. Although most Spanish treasure galleons like the San Rafael had been built in the Philippines, and the ships all sailed from the Philippines to the New World’s gold fields and then to Spain, the obvious similarities ended there.

  The San Rafael was one of the few privately owned treasure galleons. The king and queen of Spain didn’t own her, and no Spanish nobility held investing shares. Jordan himself had the papers to prove that his ancestors, the Castillos, were the sole owners of the San Rafael.

  The Castillo family had settled first in Manila, later in San Diego. After the end of the Spanish New World galleon routes in the late 1700s, the Castillos stayed in business with privately funded ships. They established stable businesses in both locations long before 1809, when the San Rafael went down in a sudden storm. The ship sank somewhere off California’s cold, turbulent waters.

  The Castillos, along with many others, had tried to find it and had finally given up the elusive, often expensive search. Eventually, the ruined family, stranded far from Spain, booked passage on other ships. The older men went home. The younger men sailed west around the Cape of Good Hope to the lucrative lands in Florida and America’s East Coast. A few die-hard treasure hunters sailed south to Brazil and Colombia, back to their once-lucrative gold and emerald mines. As for finding the family galleon, all considered it a lost cause. Except for Jordan, who would never give up.

  There the galleon remained, its exact location unknown for two centuries. To him, the quest for the San Rafael was more than a quest for riches. He cared nothing for personal fame or fortune. His salvage operation earned enough for his family’s immediate needs and kept three generations of Castillos solvent. Whatever was left he preferred to use for his salvage ship and crew, not himself.

  Gold had never been the sole object of his search. The San Rafael was also his personal quest for ancestors, the family heritage of years gone by. Someday, when Jordan had children, he wanted them not only to know their family history; he wanted them to own a piece of it. For the existing Castillo children who now had no fathers, he considered this a sacred charge.

  Jordan wanted tangible evidence that his family had left their mark on the world. While fishing was an honest way of life, it had become unprofitable. The polluted, overfished seas annually yielded less and less, and had, in revenge, taken back everything three generations of Castillos had owned, including the lives of their men.

  Jordan hoped the recovery of the San Rafael might change the family in ways not dependent on bars of silver or gold ropes studded with precious jewels. He hoped to give them back pride—pride in loving the ocean, enough pride that perhaps the younger children, male and female alike, might follow in his footsteps, as he and his brothers had followed in their father’s, and his father’s before him. Right now, the ocean had left the children only a legacy of bitterness and loss.

  The sea owed those Castillo children. The sea owed him.

  Missing were his grandfather’s mementos from the very first Castillo fishing trawler. The pictures of his mother and father’s wedding. Seashells that had been Jordan’s and his brothers’ trophies as children. His grandfather’s favorite fishing pole that had been passed down to him. Of his departed family, he had only two mementos left—the new Bible the chaplain had given him at the funeral with the names of the dead carefully inked in front, and the granite tombstones back in Boston.

  Not much of a legacy to pass on. He needed more. A rusted cannonball or a barnacled piece of wood from the San Rafael would do for a start. Maybe a simple gold medallion with the Castillo family crest.

  If only he could find the San Rafael. He’d searched many times, but without success. It was an impossible quest, unless the beautiful woman who had his medallion had told the truth.

  He reached for the paper torn from the hotel notepad, with the phone number he’d scribbled on it. “A.C. back from Mexico tomorrow. Call to set up meeting.”

  I need to find the woman who claims to own my ship. And me.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Oceanside Harbor,

  Oceanside, California

  July 30, 11:30 a.m.

  ABOARD HER DOCKED SHIP, Neptune’s Bride, Aurora mopped the sweat from her forehead and descended the ladder belowdecks for a drink. She lifted the hinged door of the lazaret, the space between decks used for storage, and pulled out a bottled water.

  Despite the sun’s heat, she’d finished her chores aboard the sixty-foot salvage vessel, which was both her home and her place of business. She had no regular crew, preferring to hire on favorites from the freelance pool of deckhands who worked the harbor. Since freeing Dorian and her family were a priority, Aurora remained docked and the only one on board. She would take no other jobs, hire no other crew...

  Until she signed with Jordan Castillo. This would be their first meeting since his assault. I’m glad Donna offered to arrange this second meeting. No sense letting Jordan’s attackers, whoever they are, find him. Or me.

  Aurora stowed the last of her cleaning supplies. Taking her water bottle, she headed for the captain’s cabin to wash up. To the casual observer, her surroundings seemed basic, almost spartan. On
closer inspection, one noticed the rich brown teak of the charting table picked up in the West Indies, the darker black-brown polished cherry wood of the captain’s desk from Newport News, the mahogany frame of the bunk from the Bahamas and the beautifully streaked cocobolo chest from Hawaii. To Aurora, Nature provided its own grace and style.

  After taking a quick but thorough sponge bath, she reached for a calf-length sundress, which, for her, represented more formal attire. Vivid in color yet utilitarian in its design for boaters, the sundress was appropriate for business in laid-back Southern California. Her kind of business anyway.

  Aurora perched on the edge of the teak table to unbraid her hair and brush it out, then put on a touch of pink lip gloss with sunscreen and rubbed sunblock on her face and shoulders. Sailors these days protected themselves against the sun, unlike the old sea dogs, navigators, seafarers and mariners who allowed themselves to burn.

  He’s an attractive man, she thought suddenly. I’m going to have to be careful to stay on a business footing with him.

  There had been very few special men in her life. One she’d almost married, but in the end she couldn’t bring herself to follow through. He’d wanted her to settle in the suburbs of San Diego and have children—and Aurora didn’t. That had been years ago. She dated occasionally, but the men in her life were buddies and pals from the harbor, like Neil Harris, not soul mates. Aurora finally admitted the truth. She found the ocean more fascinating than any human being she’d ever met, and with her ingrained sense of justice, she couldn’t see herself as a homebound spouse to anyone. She preferred being her own boss; unfortunately, most men wanted it otherwise. And yet, she couldn’t help being fascinated by Jordan Castillo.

  Aurora headed back to the deck and glanced at her watch. If he was like most sailors, who lived their lives based on the tides, he’d be prompt or even early.

  Early it is. She recognized him as he parked his car in front of P dock, and walked toward the locked gate that led to the row of vessels. She hurried down to meet him.