The Espionage Effect(39)
“You wanted to come. It’s proving useful to me.”
Amused at his pragmatism, I tilted my head and fought a smile. “In what way?”
“You’re the perfect cover.”
How flattering. “Why? Because I’m a mildly attractive tourist, and you’re a local, showing me the sights? Hoping to get into my pants?”
The corner of his lips twitched. “You’re an incredibly attractive tourist. And I’ve already been in your pants.”
My body flushed warm at the reminder. “Now, your sole focus is the mission?”
“Yes.”
I floated onto my back again, baring my bikini-clad body before him. “And how’s that working out for you?” I stretched my arms overhead, mimicking the position he’d bound and ordered me into, on a bed not so far from here.
Silence followed as an angling wave lifted and lowered us in unison. Had he ignored me altogether? I glanced upward to find him staring, eyes shielded by those sunglasses, expression unreadable.
“Harder than you could imagine,” he groused.
“Good.” Pleased with his answer, I blew out a held breath and kicked my feet, propelling me a comfortable distance away from him. “Fun as this snorkeling ruse is, I’m glad I’m not the only one suffering. I keep imagining all the positions you took me in, how many others we missed...”
His deep chuckle echoed along the surface of the water. “Clever.”
“Mmm-hmm…” Wasn’t every day I had a man to tease. And now that I had one as a captive audience, I intended to take full advantage.
He removed his sunglasses and secured them somewhere below the water again. Then he spit onto the lens of his mask, spread the saliva over the inner surface to prevent fogging, and put it on, securing it over his eyes. “And the snorkeling isn’t a ruse. Follow me.”
Once I quickly repeated the same mask prep, I finned after him. It took about ten minutes, but eventually we reached the crescent shape of a secluded little-known section of reef that thrived about a dozen feet below the surface. Brightly colored fishes teemed all around us. Blue tangs darted in and out of skeletal coral. A sage-colored Queen triggerfish with electric blue stripes swam by, delicate side fins fluttering. One anemone had gossamer tentacles tipped with tiny glowing white dots, resembling oceanic baby’s breath.
We swam along the curving arc of the hidden reef, stopping occasionally to watch a fleeting episode of nature unfold before our eyes, like when a white-spotted eagle ray glided by. We even paused to watch a critically endangered hawksbill turtle forage along the reef for sponges.
Alec suddenly grabbed my hand. I blinked and glanced at him, barely perceiving his dark eyes through the shield of his mask. My gaze drifted down to his lips wrapped around the mouthpiece of his snorkel. Instantly, my thoughts flew to images of his lips wrapped around…other things…
But then he pointed, and I shifted my attention, following his arm. A young luminescent blue-green Caribbean reef octopus hovered over the ivory sand, swirling up tiny eddies in its wake as it undulated beneath us before disappearing into a shadowy crevice in the coral.
Without releasing my hand, he led me forward through the water toward land. Only instead of beaching ourselves, we entered a sea channel and swam inland.
The warmth of the sun gave way to the cooler dappled shade of tree canopies. Dense mangroves with broad emerald leaves and gnarled roots lined the inlet. The mixture of fresh and salt water alternated in random currents, slick, then less viscous, cool, then warmer.
When we stopped entirely and broke the surface, I glanced skyward. Mouth slowly dropping open, I slid my mask onto my forehead as I scanned my gaze up…up.
A massive white marble house towered above us, perched on a rocky outcropping, blocking out the sunlight as it overtook the expanse of sky from left to right. “Let me guess,” I whispered. “Escobar.”
“Good guess.”
Before I could voice any of the questions that sprang to mind, including the safety and wisdom of our presence here, so close to a dangerous man whose security would likely shoot the sitting-duck snorkelers who dared stare up at his house a moment too long, he finned ahead again with powerful thrusts of his legs. I rushed forward in pursuit in an effort to stick close by him.
As we progressed into the shaded inlet and toward the northern edge of the channel, a stronger, cooler current tugged at us. Before long, we struggled against a powerful flow right up against the limestone-rock foundation of the house.
He pulled down his mask, securing it over his eyes. I did the same with mine, then followed him as he dove under.
Even in the darkened shadows as I searched along the light-colored foundation of the house, I identified a dark, circular opening, three yards down under the surface. Irregular in shape, slightly wider than tall, it was the source of the newer current that buffeted us.
When we surfaced, we propped our masks onto our foreheads again.
“The underground river,” I whispered with a stunned exhalation. It was one thing to imagine the natural phenomenon sustaining a hydroelectric engine, quite another to feel its impressive nonstop flow pulsing in real time around us.
He gave me a single hard nod, then grabbed my hand again. “Stop kicking.”
In unison, we stopped fighting the current and floated, letting the water carry us back out to sea. I stared behind us, down the inlet, watching as the sun reflected off a meandering waterway that stretched far beyond Escobar’s house while pondering the quiet power of water. The underground river had carved a path through limestone over millions of years to create the tunnel beneath Escobar’s house. The seawater flowed with the tides against landmass to gain an indomitable foothold inland.