Page 78 of Wreck My Mind

Chapter Thirty

Coop

Having survived the first dive with minimal repercussions, my hopes were bolstered that I’d make it through the second one. Realistically, though, I knew my chances had gotten increasingly worse. But sitting alongside me I had every reason I needed to fight to stay alive.

Not liking the guy didn’t make Jim guilty of anything, but I was actually glad it ended up being him taking Zee and I back to the dive site. Breaking his scrawny neck would be quicker and more pleasurable than snapping Kai’s. Not that I was looking forward to the task, but it’d be easier.

I couldn’t help but glare at the back of the Midwesterner’s close-cropped head. Zee elbowed me in the ribs and made wide, beautiful eyes at me as those perfect lips mouthed a growly, Stop!

Oh, I’d stopped. But just looking at her started something altogether different stirring inside me. Clearly seeing the change in my mood and my focus, her eyes twinkled and her lips curled in a shy smile as she mouthed a flirty, Stop!

She grabbed up a coil of webbing and carabiners and shoved them into my flexed abs, but her fingertips lingered, her eyes perused. She wetted her lips. I wetted mine. God, if we’d been alone on this boat right now, the things I would’ve done to that sweet body. Stepping into her touch, I rumbled, “You stop.”

“Stop?” Jim asked, turning his head and sending Zee jumping back about a foot. “But the marker buoy is still up a ways.”

“My bad, dude,” I said with a chuckle as I zipped up my wetsuit. Then to Zee, “You owe me another secret.”

Once we were back to the red bobber, Zee’s game face was back on. She’d quickly secured her injured hand in a full neoprene glove, which would help protect it as well as keep the pressure of my wrap job on it. Jim helped me drop supplies down via the marker line.

After noting the helo was making its landing approach on the stern helipad of the Zamarad, Zee and I rolled into the water and began our own descent.

I concentrated on my breathing, trying to stay calm and alert despite the intense pressure building at my temples. Once at the vault I was able to ignore and override as I concentrated on strapping up the safe. Zee and I fell into a smooth, ops-mode rhythm of working in silence, communicating easily with our eye contact and hand gestures. We’d always had a good flow hashing out logistics and planning together, but having our partnership play out physically came just as natural. I might as well have been working with Nik, or any other of my Team buddies.

Soon we had the vault cradled in a makeshift web sling and were ready to start prepping the lifting balloons. Raising the vault in a balanced, uniform way by each filling our lifts at the same slow rate was critical. At well over a thousand pounds, if the straps didn’t hold, the vault could easily plummet to the ocean floor, destroying it and the Ozma Emerald.

About halfway to the surface, we got the call over our comms from the helo notifying us that everyone had been picked up and that they were safely in the air. Zee came over the comms next. “Coop? I need to…um…make an adjustment. Be ready for it.”

I glanced up and noted the remote detonator in her hand. I shook my head in disbelief. “Unfinished business,” indeed.

I’d noticed significantly fewer explosive charges than had come with the crates. There had been enough missing to take down a full ship. God, I hoped she hadn’t gone overboard on the ordinance. But nothing I could do now. She held her hand up and used her fingers to count down. Three, two, one…

Aziza

I closed my eyes and said goodbye to the past as I pressed the button. I didn’t expect the blast to knock through me so hard or for the vault to start thrashing. I opened my eyes just as the corner of the vault shifted hard and slammed right into Coop’s head.

I watched in helpless fear as his eyelids dropped and the strength seeped from his bones. Limply, his body sank, drifting away from the vault.

Shit shit shit…No!

I scrambled to swim, not caring about the fate of the vault, or the emerald, or even the empire. All I cared about was Coop. I propelled myself against the current, my legs kicking out as hard as I could. The water slowed me, like I was in a dream where I was trying to run but couldn’t.

As I grabbed at his arm he shook me off, spooked. Luckily the water leeched the strength and velocity of his elbows or I’d have found myself knocked out too.

“It’s Zee, Coop,” I pleaded over the comms. “It’s just me.”

Faded and far-off, I heard Nik checking in on us over the comms. But it scarcely registered as something I needed to respond to. My narrow field of attention centered on one thing—keep Coop alive.

It was only once I’d managed to spin him around and he could see me fully that he stopped fighting my help. His eyes widened dramatically then returned to normal. “What the hell happened?”

“The corner of the vault hit you. Knocked you out cold.”

“Everything okay down there?” Nik asked over the comms.

Coop panted through another coughing fit, then hoarsely responded, “Just trying to figure out why Tweety Birds are circling my head underwater. Zee was on it.”

“Copy that,” Nik confirmed.

How could they both be so calm? The air in my closed-circuit system felt more like I was heaving a strip of sandpaper up and down the back of my throat. And my heart pounded way too hard. The blood in my temples surged through my veins with a heavy pulse and my ears were ringing as if I had been the one whose head had been hit.

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