Read Chapter 29: Pete's Sister

The ghost-light shimmered faint against the water, pale as a drowned moon through the murk. Mack pulled his mask down, checked his regulator, and looked at Pete beside him. Pete’s face was a mask of cold resolve, but his hands trembled on his dive knife.

The light trailed downward, past a shelf of coral and into a shadowed crevice that opened into a narrow gully. Mack signaled. Pete nodded once.

They descended together, fins sweeping slow and deliberate through the green gloom. The current was weak here, sheltered from the storm’s aftermath. It was quiet, the pressure building against Mack’s ears and chest, a familiar weight that used to feel like escape. Now it just felt like gravity.

A shape emerged from the dark ahead: a rusted trawler hull, crumpled nose-first into the sand, wound in kelp and silt. Her nameplate was mostly gone, eaten by salt and time, but the bronze letters of "MARIA'S HOPE" held enough of a memory, scraped clean where something had brushed against them recently.

Pete swam forward, his breathing fast and ragged in Mack’s ears. He reached the hull first, grabbed a torn gash in the metal, and pulled himself inside. Mack followed.

The wreck’s interior was a cathedral of decayed ropes, portholes glazed with algae, and the scattered bones of gear. The ghost-light hovered near a collapsed berth in the forward cabin. It pulsed once, then dissolved like froth.

Pete’s hand landed on a edge of canvas, folded beneath a fallen beam. He pulled. The fabric tore away and revealed a dive suit, old style, canvas and brass, with a pair of rusted tanks still strapped to the back. And within the folds, a skeleton. Small-boned, the ribs broken, a boot still laced to one foot.

Mack hovered, watching Pete’s shoulders shake. He could hear the muffled sob through the regulator. He reached out, touched Pete’s arm. Pete turned, eyes wet even through the dive mask, and gave a slight nod.

They worked together, Mack holding the flashlight steady as Pete gently freed the remains from beneath the beam. The bones came apart in places, delicate and quiet. They wrapped what was left in the waterlogged canvas and secured it with a length of rope from the wreck. Pete took his sister’s skull in his gloved hands, cradling it for a long moment before setting it into the canvas bundle. He pressed a hand to the folds, then turned and led the way out.

They surfaced a hundred yards off the Sea Serpent. The sun hung low, burning orange through the trailing remnants of fog. Jake and Rosa were on the deck, waiting, hands on the rail. Abigail stood at the stern, camera dangling loose at her side.

Mack spat his regulator and treaded water. “We got her.”

Pete said nothing. He swam to the ladder, climbed aboard with the bundle secured to his back, and stepped onto the deck without a word. He walked past Rosa, past Jake, to the port rail. He stood there, holding the bundle, facing the open sea.

Mack pulled himself up, water streaming off his shoulders. He was exhausted and cold, but something in his chest had shifted. He watched Pete’s back and felt the weight of every lie he had told settle heavier than the gold he had carried.

“Do you want to do this now?” Mack asked.

Pete’s jaw worked. “I just want her home. But home is gone.” He turned, eyes red. “Out here’s all she’s got.”

Mack nodded. “Then we give her the sea.”

They spoke no formal words. Pete knelt, opened the canvas, and kissed the inside of her wrist—just bone and salt and old cloth. He tied a small canvas pouch—her dive watch, still ticking faintly—around her bones. Then he let the bundle slip over the rail.

It hit the water with a soft splash and sank, pale among the ribboned green, until the shadow of the Serpent swallowed it.

Pete stood there a long time, gripping the rail so hard his knuckles went white. Then he turned to Mack, and his voice was raw. “I’ve cursed your name for two years. Told myself you were a con and a liar, that you cheated her out of her cut. But you dove down for her when no one else would. You brought her back.”

Mack shook his head. “I only followed the light.”

“Doesn’t matter.” Pete stepped closer. He pulled a battered flask from his coat, uncapped it, and took a long drink. He offered it to Mack.

Mack took it. Rum. Warm, cheap. He drank. It burned on the way down and felt like absolution.

“We’re even,” Pete said. “The debt you owed me—paid. Whatever you did before this, that’s between you and the Navy. But you don’t owe me anything no more.”

Mack handed the flask back. “I owe you more than you know.”

Pete frowned.

Mack looked at the horizon. The sun was gone now, night climbing fast. The water had gone black glass, swallowing the stars as they tried to rise.

“I let you believe I was just a poor salvager who ran out of luck. The truth is, I did something worse than lose money. I got a man killed.”

Pete’s face went still.

“His name was Sam. We were on a Navy op, off the coast of Honduras. I made the call to push deeper into a mine-choked channel. Sam’s boat hit a charge. He didn’t make it out. I tried to cover it up. Made it look like intelligence failure, not my order. My dishonorable discharge is mercy compared to what I deserve.”

Pete studied him, eyes cooling. “So you been running from that?”

“Whole life,” Mack said. “Running from the lies and the bills and the ghosts. Thought if I got enough gold, I could outrun my own name.” He let out a heavy breath. “But the gold just brought more ghosts. And every one of them was somebody’s sister, somebody’s friend, somebody’s blood.”

Pete turned back to the water. “You still going to turn yourself in?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Pete put a hand on Mack’s shoulder. “Then I’ll be there, telling the Navy what you did. That you dove into a cursed wreck and brought my sister back. That you didn’t have to, and you did anyway.” He squeezed once, then let go. “That’s worth more than gold.”

Mack looked down at the deck boards, at the salt in the grain. He wanted to believe it.

Jake approached, moving quietly, his own frame still bearing the marks of months trapped in the dark side of the wreck. He carried the helmet, cradled like a relic. “We need to talk.”

Mack nodded.

“The wreck’s unstable,” Jake said. “Every day it’s shifting. The cave’s still open, but not for long.” He looked from Mack to the horizon. “If we don’t go back within the week, the opening collapses, and Blackwood stays loose, half-bound forever. The curse keeps breathing. And the coins you still have—they’ll follow you to port, into the Navy’s hands, through every cell and courtroom. It’ll spread where you go, stick to anyone who touches you.”

Mack looked at his own hands. He could still feel the warmth of the coins, faint and knowing, like a pulse under his skin.

“So what’s the choice?” Mack asked.

Jake set the helmet down on the deck, its brass dull against the wood. “The choice is whether the last act of your old life is surrender—or redemption.”

Mack looked at the helmet. At the black water. At Rosa standing near the helm, watching him with unreadable eyes.

But before he could answer, Abigail called out from the cabin, her voice sharp and thin.

“Mack! You need to see this.”

She came out holding the journal, open to a page near the back. Her face was pale.

“Blackwood made a map to a third location,” she said. “Not the second cache. An underwater cave system north of the wreck.” She looked up. “It’s labeled ‘the true treasure.’ And there’s a date scratched beside it.”

Mack took the journal. The date was three days from now.

The same day he planned to surrender.