Eyes of Fire

His eyes met hers. She realized that she still had questions for him. And apparently he still had questions for her.

Odd. She’d known him for only a few months, a very long time ago. She had changed since then, matured. Maybe. But everything about him was disturbingly familiar. Everything she should have forgotten. She knew just how determined he could be. That he had come for something. He wanted something.

And she knew that he would get what he wanted.

“Perhaps Miss Carlyle would be willing to show the dive party the Steps tomorrow,” he said.

“The Steps?” Liam queried sharply.

Adam nodded, looking at Sam. Then he glanced at Darlene, smiling. “There are wonderful, fascinating things beneath the sea as well as the scary ones,” he told her. “Off North Bimini Island, just a little more than thirty feet down, are huge blocks that form some kind of an ancient foundation. No one knows what civilization set them where they are now. A construction company used some of them in Miami in the 1920s, I think.” He glanced over to Smith.

“Yes, it was the twenties.”

“Anyway, scientists think that the blocks are definitely man-made, and that they may be over ten thousand years old.”

“But we can’t go to North Bimini, can we?” Brad asked.

“Not in a four-hour dive trip,” Sam said tensely.

“But,” Adam said, “Sam could take us to the Seafire Steps. Which are…”

He looked at Avery Smith.

Smith laughed. “There are a lot of strange man-made structures beneath the sea, and most of them make for fascinating mysteries,” he said. “Just a bit northwest of Seafire Isle are a set of steps. They begin at a point that’s just thirty feet beneath the sea, then they dive deeper until they suddenly just disappear.”

“So where did they go?” Darlene asked.

“No one knows,” Avery told her. “But, like the Bimini Blocks, they’re supposed to be very ancient, and naturally, they’re very intriguing. Maybe, if Miss Carlyle takes you out there, you can discover where they go and solve one of the great mysteries of the deep.”

“What do you say, Sam?” Adam asked her.

She hesitated. She had been diving the Steps since she’d been a small child. She, Jem and even Yancy had made up stories about them when they were growing up. They led to Atlantis, or to a different, even higher civilization. On really whimsical days, they had imagined that they led to a secret doorway that would take them to a place where there were princes and princesses, maybe a magical bubble island in the sea, where pirates still ruled, or a unique island-within-the-sea where a Middle Eastern society flourished and all the tales told in the Arabian Nights came to life.

Of course, she’d been a child then.

She was older now, and looked at the world through eyes that had been narrowed greatly.

There was nothing all that mysterious about the Steps anymore.

She had avoided the Steps since her father’s disappearance. He had loved them, had been fascinated by them. It hurt to go there. But though she no longer felt their enchantment, it did exist for children. Still…

“There are sometimes underwater currents there,” she said, stalling.

“There are sometimes underwater currents almost everywhere,” Liam said. “Would you actually consider it an unsafe dive?”

“No, no….”

“Sounds fun to me,” Sukee said.

Sam still hesitated, uneasy, though she didn’t know why.

Yes, she did.

She thought that her father might have been diving near them the day he had disappeared. He had been talking about them with so much excitement right before they had parted that day. He had been drawn to the damned Steps, almost as if both he and the Steps had been controlled by some strange magnetic force. Hank, too, had found them fascinating.

“The Steps sound cool,” Brad said.

“I’d really love to see them, Sam,” Darlene told her earnestly.

“I…well, sure. We’ll dive the Steps tomorrow, then,” Sam said.

“Not tomorrow,” Yancy told her. “Not if the weathermen are right. They say it’s going to rain all day.”

“Well, then, we’ll all sleep in tomorrow and dive the Seafire Isle Steps on Thursday.”

“No diving tomorrow?” Brad said, disappointed.

“We’ll just have to sleep late,” Joey Emerson said to his wife. He spoke with such passion in his voice that Sam felt as if she was intruding on their privacy just by having heard him.

“A morning to sleep in,” Sukee murmured.

“Then the Steps. Great!” Jim Santino applauded as he swished his long hair out of his face.

“Skol!” Liam Hinnerman said, lifting the Scotch he had just refreshened in a toast to the rest of them. “Know where that expression came from, young Mr. Walker? It’s believed that the Vikings drank to victory from the skulls of their slain enemies, then raised those skulls in salute to one another.”

“Oh, that is disgusting!” Darlene said.

“Neat, it’s neat!” her brother insisted.

“Really, Mr. Hinnerman,” Judy Walker admonished.

“Nothing he couldn’t learn right in his own school, and not half as bad as the news these days,” Hinnerman said.

Jerry North, at his side, was silent. She was staring at Sam, her lips taut. She appeared anxious. Unhappy, perhaps.

Suddenly Sam wondered why Jerry never went diving with them. Sam had never even asked her if she was certified, or if she wanted to take lessons on the island.

“Jerry, are you certified?” she asked.

“Certified? She’s got certifications up the kazoo!” Liam said.

Sam arched a brow to Jerry, who nodded.

“Not just open water,” Liam said. “She’s an advanced diver. An expert with nitrox.”

Nitrox allowed a diver to stay deeper for longer periods of time.

“Good for you. How come you haven’t come diving with us?” Sam asked.

Jerry shrugged. “I lost my taste for the sea.”

“She nearly drowned a few years ago,” Liam said casually.

“Pretty serious,” Adam said sympathetically.

Jerry offered him a broad smile of thanks.

“She’s all right,” Liam asserted.

“She doesn’t have to dive if she doesn’t want to,” Sam said firmly.

Sam continued to watch Jerry, but she turned away quickly when she felt a little trickle of warmth along her spine. Adam’s eyes, she thought. She looked toward him. She’d been right. He was studying her.

And he was smiling. Just slightly.

Adam had indeed come to Seafire Isle for something. And he was going to get what he wanted. In fact, he was already on the way to doing so, she realized.

Because Adam was just as eager as everyone else to dive the Seafire Isle Steps.

Why?

The question burned inside her.

5

“A h, here comes Jem to lead us in to dinner!” Yancy exclaimed.

For another several seconds, Sam continued to stare at Adam. What was he up to?

And which one of her guests was dangerous? Who had been in her bathroom? Oddly enough, she realized, all