Not quite a needle in a haystack, Ky mused, but close. Two centuries of storms and currents and sea quakes. Even if they had the exact location where the Liberty had sunk, rather than the last known location, it took calculation and guesswork, then luck to narrow the field down to a radius of twenty miles.

Ky believed in luck much the same way he imagined Hardesty had believed in calculation. Perhaps with a mixture of the two, he and Kate would find what was left of the Liberty.

Glancing over, he watched Kate gliding beside him. She was looking everywhere at once, but Ky didn’t think her mind was on treasure or sunken ships. She was, as she’d been that summer before, completely enchanted with the sea and the life it held. He wondered if she still remembered all the information she’d demanded of him before the first dive. What about the physiological adjustments to the body? How was the CO2 absorbed? What about the change in external pressure?

Ky felt a flash of humor as they started to ascend. He was dead sure Kate remembered every answer he’d given her, right down to the decimal point in pounds of pressure per square inch.

The sun caught her as she rose toward the surface, slowly. It shone around and through her hair, giving her an ethereal appearance as she swam straight up, legs kicking gently, face tilted toward sun and surface. If there were mermaids, Ky knew they’d look as she did—slim, long, with pale loose hair free in the water. A man could only hold onto a mermaid if he accepted the world she lived in as his own. Reaching out, he caught the tip of her hair in his fingers just before they broke the surface together.

Kate came up laughing, letting her mouthpiece fall and pushing her mask up. “Oh, it’s wonderful! Just as I remembered.” Treading water, she laughed again and Ky realized it was a sound he hadn’t heard in four years. But he remembered it exactly.

“You looked like you wanted to play more than you wanted to look for sunken ships.” He grinned at her, enjoying her pleasure and the ease of a smile he’d never expected to see again.

“I did.” Almost reluctant, she reached out for the ladder to climb on board. “I never expected to find anything the first time down, and it was so wonderful just to dive again.” She stripped off her tanks then checked the valves herself before she set them down. “Whenever I go down I begin to believe I don’t need the sun anymore. Then when I come up it’s warmer and brighter than I remember.”

With the adrenaline still flowing, she peeled off her flippers, then her mask, to stand, face lifted toward the sun.

“There’s nothing else exactly like it.”