“Okay.” She slipped the fifty into her purse as she stood up. “You know, you don’t look as much like Jerry as I thought.” With the click of high heels, she crossed the pavement and went back into the club.

“It’s a beginning,” Jonas murmured as he pushed his coffee aside. When he looked over, he saw Liz studying him. “Problem?”

“I don’t like the way you work.”

He dropped another bill on the table before he rose. “I don’t have time to waste on amenities.”

“What would you have done if I hadn’t calmed her down? Dragged her off to the nearest alley and beaten it out of her?”

He drew out a cigarette, struggling with temper. “Let’s go home, Liz.”

“I wonder if you’re any different from the men you’re looking for.” She pushed back from the table. “Just as a matter of interest, the man who broke into my house and attacked me wore a thin band at his wrist. I felt it when he held the knife to my throat.”

She watched as his gaze lifted from the flame at the end of the cigarette and came to hers. “I think you two might recognize each other when the time comes.”

CHAPTER 5

“Always check your gauges,” Liz instructed, carefully indicating each one on her own equipment as she spoke. “Each one of these gauges is vital to your safety when you dive. That’s true if it’s your first dive or your fiftieth. It’s very easy to become so fascinated not only by the fish and coral, but the sensation of diving itself, that you can forget you’re dependent on your air tank. Always be certain you start your ascent while you have five or ten minutes of air left.”

She’d covered everything, she decided, in the hour lesson. If she lectured any more, her students would be too impatient to listen. It was time to give them a taste of what they were paying for.

“We’ll dive as a group. Some of you may want to explore on your own, but remember, always swim in pairs. As a final precaution, check the gear of the diver next to you.”

Liz strapped on her own weight belt as her group of novices followed instructions. So many of them, she knew, looked on scuba diving as an adventure. That was fine, as long as they remembered safety. Whenever she instructed, she stressed the what ifs just as thoroughly as the how tos. Anyone who went down under her supervision would know what steps to take under any circumstances. Diving accidents were most often the result of carelessness. Liz was never careless with herself or with her students. Most of them were talking excitedly as they strapped on tanks.

“This group.” Luis hefted his tank. “Very green.”