on the lips of the barrel sponge and plate coral above Jason's head. Despite the eighty-foot depth, the tropical sun was bright enough to make an artist's palette of color of the wall, a natural drop that fell into the hazy blue hundreds of feet below.
His artistic eye was oblivious to the spectacular quality of his surroundings. Instead, his attention was focused on something else as he hung motionless over the abyss, concentrating on a small hole in which he could see a spider crab. Though it was small in body, the crustacean's legs and claws were large enough to make a meal for two, a meal of the sweetest meat Jason had ever tasted. He wouldn't taste this one, though, unless he could get it out of its lair. The crab had retreated far enough back that it was out of reach, and Jason had left his spear in the boat. Nothing to do but remember the spot and come back.
That tangle of branchlike black coral would make a good marker, he thought as he flicked his fins and slowly moved on.
His dive watch told him he had still had a good twenty minutes before the pressure of depth presented any danger of the bends.
He watched a leopard ray glide by, its wings rippling in a graceful simulation of flight.
Then he heard it: an angry buzzing like the sound of an electric razor, growing louder. An outboard. Inside his mask, his eyebrows curved into a frown. On an island as sparsely populated as North Caicos, there were plenty of places for the natives to fish without dropping a line on the section of wall he was diving. Surely they could see the boat and would know he was down here. Maybe they'd go on by.
Somehow he doubted it.
As if to confirm his suspicions, he heard a splash and watched an anchor pull its line down to the sandy shelf forty feet above his head as the motor died. Jason waited, expecting to hear the thunk of a sinker on a hand line as it hit the water. He wanted to see where the treble hooks preferred by the locals were hanging rather than risk getting snagged. No fishing line, sinker, or hook was forthcoming.
Strange.
Unless the boat's occupant wasn't fishing. Unless somebody had come out here for him.
He bit the soft rubber of his regulator's mouthpiece in annoyance. There would be only one reason for somebody to come out here after him, and they were supposed to leave him alone for the next three months. Two jobs a year-that was it, the max. It had been only weeks since the affair on St. Bart's.
In fact, it would be fine if they overlooked him for a year or two. The work had paid well enough for him to retire as it was, enough to mandate that he reside someplace with no income taxation. His employer managed to satisfy the IRS by means Jason felt were best not inquired into, but sheltering his income where he lived was his responsibility. Hence his present residence. He had built the house as a vacation home, an excuse to claim residence in a tax haven. Now it was where he lived, had been home since his life had been turned upside down and shaken out as though the gods were emptying a paper bag. Ever since…
He pushed the thought out of his mind and glared up at the hull of the newly arrived boat. Well, if they were determined to intrude on his dive, they damn well could wait until he finished.
Maybe that crab was back on the edge of its hole.
A pair of passing jack rolled shiny button eyes at him in curiosity.
Twenty minutes later, Jason reached the surface and tossed the crab into his boat, followed by his flippers and weight belt. From the water he could see Pangloss, barking wildly, back into the stern, as far as the dog could get from the wildly thrashing crustacean. Pangloss hated crabs. His irrepressible curiosity had led to more than one painful experience involving the creatures' massive claws. Regardless, the dog insisted on joining Jason on dives, running into the water with baleful howls every time Jason tried to leave him ashore. Apparently barking at dolphins and seagulls was sufficient compensation for sitting in the boat for an hour while Jason probed the wall for lobster or crab.
Jason climbed into the twelve-foot Boston Whaler, his back intentionally toward the small craft rocking next to his in the gentle swell.
On the horizon he could see a sportfisherman. A charter from nearby Providenciales, Jason guessed, some rich dude paying a grand or so a day to troll for marlin even though the big-billed fish weren't expected in the area for months yet. The sun shot a brilliant reflection from something on board, perhaps the glass of a porthole, a woman checking her makeup in a mirror. There was something that didn't fit, something not quite right about that boat. What His thoughts were interrupted by a voice that had the musical lilt of the islands in it. ''Lo, Jason! You don' looks like you glad to see me.'
Jason loosened the straps and slid out of the backpack tank harness before he turned toward the other boat. He was facing a black man whose age was indeterminate but whose disposition was always as bright as the smile he wore. It was annoyingly difficult to remain waspish around such cheerfulness, and Jason felt guilty for keeping the man waiting. He was, after all, only the messenger.
'I'm always glad to see you, Jeremiah. It's just you always bring bad news.'
His mood undiminished, Jeremiah nodded. 'Dat be right, I 'spose. But mon, you don' keeps no phone in yo' house; how else folks gonna get a'holt of you?'
Jason restrained a tart comment that the absence of a phone was fully intended to discourage contact. 'I had a phone, Jeremiah, I'd never get to see you, now, would I?'
Jason was grinning in spite of himself. Jeremiah's smile was as contagious as the plague. As North Caicos' representative of the island's postal system, as well as UPS, FedEx, and DHL, he took his duties seriously. If a customer had paid for personal delivery, Jeremiah would see to it the service was performed as requested. Besides, occasional deliveries provided an excuse to visit with the constituency of his seat on the island's governing council.
Jason held out a hand and leaned over toward the deliveryman's boat. 'Okay, give it to me and I'll sign for it.'
Grateful he wasn't going to get any trouble from the reluctant recipient, Jeremiah handed over a cardboard envelope, using his other hand to rub Pangloss's nose. 'I 'spect you be goin' like always when the package come.'
Jason nodded absently, tearing the cardboard open. Inside was a Hallmark card, an invitation to a child's birthday party filled in for three days from now. Someone at the home office had a sick sense of humor.
It took Jason twenty minutes to navigate the convoluted, unmarked passage through the half-mile reef of fang- toothed coral that ringed the shallow lagoon in front of his house, tie off the Whaler to the buoy, and wade ashore with Pangloss splashing behind.
His house consisted of two structures elevated above potential flood tides by stilts. Between the buildings was a wooden walkway roofed with bougainvillea vines.
Pausing at the bottom of a flight of steps, Jason used a length of hose to wash sand from his feet while Pangloss lapped at the stream of cool, fresh water. Finished, both man and dog climbed stairs up to the building that served as kitchen/living room/studio. Years of island living had taught Jason the benefit of exposing as many surfaces as possible to potential breezes, as well as the wisdom of segregating light-requiring daytime activities from sleeping quarters that could be closed off against the tropical sun.
Inside, Jason ignored the panorama of golden beach and turquoise sea to glance again at the child's invitation in his hand. He had rarely been to the company's office. Most previous assignments, never more than one or two a year, had been hand-delivered. Idly, he wondered why the change. He tossed the card onto a table and looked out of the tinted glass that formed the building's front wall.
The houses's exposure to sea and sand had not been entirely for aesthetic purposes. The height of the walkway above the pancake-flat terrain gave him a 360-degree view of any possible approach. In front was the lagoon and its silent sentries of coral that would tear the bottom from any craft unfamiliar with the path through. Behind was a salt marsh, a saline, gelatinous muck soft enough to swallow even the occasional iguana unfortunate enough to wander there. To Jason's left, the beach ended in impenetrable mangrove at the point of a tidal stream's juncture with the ocean. To his right, sand the texture of powdered sugar stretched in a three-mile crescent without intersecting so much as a path connecting it to any of the three small native settlements.
The latter approach was the only practical one, the house's single vulnerability should someone choose to trek miles across scrub bush and sharp rocks to reach the shoreline. Discouraging as such a journey might be, Jason had done his best to foresee the possibility.
Jason had not been surprised that Jeremiah had chosen to deliver the packet by boat rather than the long
