Leia shook her head. “I don’t think so. I’ve never heard her say anything about it.”
“I’ll do everything I can to make sure she’s provided for,” Bane said, his voice grim.
Leia didn’t doubt that he would. The caretaker of the world, that was Bane Oana. Sometimes it irritated her beyond measure, but right now she wanted to hug him for it. Candace would need all the help she could get.
Four
The research vessel Pomaik’i floated about a mile off Kalaupapa Peninsula. There was no place Bane would rather be than standing on the bow of a ship with the throb of the engines radiating up his legs. The wind was in his face as he stood on the metal deck with his feet planted apart and surveyed the whitecaps just off the bow. Ajax, his Irish setter, lay at his feet. The dog whimpered at the whine of the crane that labored on deck.
His boss, Ron Pimental, joined him at the railing. About forty, he reminded Bane of one of the many mynah birds on the islands—slicked-down black hair and rapid, jerky movements. He was in constant motion, which accounted for his thin frame. He popped a handful of unsalted peanuts into his mouth. “They’re raising the plane now. Good job finding it so quickly.”
“I want to know what happened to it.” Bane refused Ron’s offer of peanuts and watched the boom crane lift the plane. The waves churned white foam as the plane neared the top of the water. Flotsam from the bottom boiled to the surface around the aircraft, and Bane leaned over the railing to watch. He itched to find the cause.
“We owe it to Tony,” Ron agreed. “I want to find the ship now more than ever. I’ll see Tony’s widow gets her share, of course.”
“Candace will be glad to hear that. She could use the money.” Bane hadn’t slept much last night. He knew Tony would expect him to help his widow. He turned as footsteps clanged on the metal deck, and one of the technicians, Logan Masters, joined them.
“Ron, there’s something on our new sonar you need to see.” Logan’s red hair was a punctuation above a freckled face. He could have passed as a standin for Rugrats character Chuckie Finster minus the glasses.
“In a minute.” Ron turned back to the plane. “Bane, do you think there’s a chance Westerfield Salvage has gotten wind of what our equipment can do? Could they have planted an explosive device to bring you down?”
“I suspected sabotage from the first. I heard a bang that almost sounded like a small bomb before I lost control. Do you think Westerfield is capable of doing something like that? What would be the point?”
“Sam Westerfield is capable of anything.” Ron tossed a peanut shell into the water, then cocked his head like a bird. “He particularly likes to humiliate me. If he finds the wreck before we do, he’d get his papers filed first to arrest the shipwreck, and we’d be out in the cold. If he had an inkling of how advanced this new equipment is, he’d do anything to remove it from our arsenal of search options.”
“What makes you think he knows about the new seafloor scanner we developed?” Bane wanted to know.
“Nothing I do ever goes unnoticed by him for long. I’ve never figured out how he finds out my business, but he always does. I suppose one of my men is on his payroll.” Ron sighed heavily.
The crane lifted the aircraft fully out of the water, and the runoff rained a small waterfall back into the ocean. “Is there a history with the two of you or just professional rivalry?” Bane asked. He didn’t know much about his boss yet. Ron was good at what he did, and his reputation in the business was impeccable. The only rumbling Bane had heard before he took the job was that Ron never forgot a grievance.
“We were partners once,” Ron admitted. “I headed up the business, but Sam was never one to take orders. He started his own company, which was fine. What wasn’t so fine was that he stabbed me in the back and lied to a major client, who took his business to Westerfield. I would never trust him again.” He drummed his fingers on the railing. “What do you think of the equipment? Is it all we hoped it would be?”
“Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to really test it fully, but the preliminary stuff I got back looked like it might be everything we’d dreamed of. We got some awesome imagery before the plane went down—3-D quality stuff, like looking at a top-notch video game.”
Ron frowned. “And now it’s waterlogged. Can we salvage any of it?”
“Maybe. Most of it was in waterproof housing. I’ll have to test it out. We might not need it for this job, though. Tony mentioned an old man who lives out on the peninsula who claims the treasure is buried there. He also says he knows where the boat sank.”
“Sir, about the images on sonar,” the technician put in again.