"Judson!" Mac's voice carried through the air and the ship, bouncing off the bulkheads. "Judson!"
"I heard you the first time," he said coming out onto the deck with the phone in his hand.
"Merrill's alive, kidnaps Gabe, and you don't call?!" She was more than just angry. There was fire burning bright behind her blue eyes. He could see all of the rage and guilt that was hiding just beneath the fire burning wildly out of control.
"Mac, calm down," the last words he wanted to say to her had just left his lips.
"Excuse me?" the harsh tone in her voice only grew.
"I tried to call you last night, but the line was busy." That was it, those were the magic words. He could see the anger that she was throwing at him, begin to fade some.
"Why didn't you leave a message then?"
"I didn't think that you'd want to hear it that way."
"I'd rather've heard it that way than from Merrill!" Guilt was written all over Judson's face. She knew he felt responsible for Gabe's kidnapping. If she could read his mind somehow, she was certain of the thoughts she'd find there. They were the same ones that she was having. Why did they let Gabe go off alone, when he was acting kind of strange? Why didn't they notice before anything bad happened that he was acting strange? Why did they have to assume that Merrill was dead?
"What did he say to you?"
"Just that he had Gabe and he was sending proof to you." Angrily placing her hands her hips, Mac watched as Judson fumbled for the right words to say. Under different circumstances his scramble for words and lack of knowledge would have left her giggling or in the very least teasing him. But Gabe was missing, and it wasn't funny. Merrill could do anything to him, and for no apparent reason. "Did he?" She pulled herself from her momentary reverie.
The steel of her voice would have made him jump from his skin, had he not been expecting to hear it in her voice. Other than the basics of the case, she still refused to say what happened between her and Merrill. She always said that Merrill was in her past and that was where she intended for him to stay. "It came about a half hour ago," he said softly, handing her a small padded envelope.
Her anger seemed to dissolve into the same void that it had come from the moment that the envelope touched the skin of her fingers. As if the contents of the envelope were made of glass that'd been glued together once already, Mac poured them onto the table in the dining room. His watch, the one that he never under any circumstances took off. His wallet, still containing nearly three hundred dollars, and receipts from the day's purchases. His keys to the Vast Explorer and to the engine room and a few other baubles that he'd stuck into his pockets. Fingering the soft leather of the thick watch band, she let what was left of her anger toward Judson for not calling her with the news diffuse and moved the focus of it to the person that it belonged on, Gavin Merrill. There was no way that she was going to let Merrill get away with whatever it was that he was up to this time. "What aren't you telling me?" Her voice was hard, yet soft as she refused to bring her blues up to meet Judson's green one's.
Silently he pushed himself from the door frame that he'd leaned himself against while she examined the things of Gabe's that Merrill had sent over. Words were always easy for him to find, but now he didn't know how to find the right ones. The waves of heat from Mac's anger didn't offer him much help in figuring the right way to say what Merrill wanted. Taking a breath he looked hard at her for a moment. She needed to know; he just hoped that she could handle it. "He wants us to help him . . ."
"You're kidding, right?!" Her livid anger once again burned behind her blues eyes, as she snapped her eyes up to finally lock with those of Judson. For the first since she'd met him he let down a bit of his guard and allowed her to read him. She could see that the entire situation with Gavin Merrill had worn on him and that Gabe was just as important to him as she was. Damn it. She thought as she realized why he didn't wear everything he was thinking out like a flag flapping in a breeze. She'd known that he'd lost people close him, but never had she once thought about the depth to which he'd allowed himself to be hurt by their loss. Loosing Gabe to Merrill could be a last straw for him, or it could close him off forever from her and the rest of the world.
"I only wish that I were," the low, tired tone to his voice made Mac want to strangle Merrill for causing them all this much pain and anger. "He's found a treasure and he wants us to get the permits to dive for it. He also wants us to dive and bring him back the treasure. We get three hundred thousand dollars and Gabe for helping him."
"Guess that we'd better get started then, hadn't we?" She shoved the soft leather banded watch into her pocket as she headed for the door.
"What?!" He stared after her in shock. Not a moment ago she was ready to turn Merrill's head into a bloody stump atop his body, and now she was more than willing to help the monster.
"If it'll keep Merrill from hurting Gabe, I'm all for going along with his little scheme. We know that he'll try to double cross us, but he won't be expecting us to double cross him."