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build and coloring from his Hispanic-American colleague. Both young men had jumped at the chance to take part in the expedition as volunteer workers for credit toward their degree in nautical archaeology.
    â€œYou two just want a chance to play,” Mara Adams piped up from the far rear of the vehicle, where the slim blonde grad student from A&M’s Archaeological Preservation and Research Laboratory was packed like a sardine along with luggage and equipment.
    Nick turned around, leaning on the cooler wedged between him and Stuart, and wagged a playful finger in her face. “Just remember, Adams, without Stu and me bringing up the artifacts, you geeks at the APRL wouldn’t have anything to preserve.”
    â€œYeah.” Stuart produced a toothy grin. “We’re the expedition heroes.”
    Shoving her black-framed glasses up on her nose, Mara looked up from the book on Spanish artifacts that she’d been reading on the morning-long drive from Cancún and tucked a strand of straight white-blonde hair behind her ear. “Dream on, Stuart.”
    â€œNow, whom does that remind me of?” Remy said under his breath as he slowed to ease around two men, a young one clad in Western shirt and jeans and a much older one in the traditional white jacket and pants, a flat serape folded over his shoulder.
    â€œMe?”
    At his nod, Jeanne smiled. She didn’t recall being so single-minded in her ambition to get her doctorate, but her brothers probably would’ve concurred with Remy that she had been. Her zeal had made her the professors’ pet—all of them, not just Remy. But Remy was special, despite his pessimistic view of life. He’d gone above and beyond to see her arrive at the right place at the right time.
    â€œHoly moly!” Stuart exclaimed, his glasses pressed to the Suburban’s electric window.
    â€œMy feelings precisely,” Remy echoed as the road became part of the town’s zócalo . A scrawny, filthy pig took its time crossing the street that led from the shaded square toward a side street next to the town hall, forcing him to brake. Through the park, where men and women congregated in gender-specific groups, Jeanne saw the time-darkened stone of a large and ancient Catholic cathedral.
    On the other side of the Suburban, Remy took a deep breath from one of his assorted inhalers and sprays. As he recapped it and dropped it in the pocket of his tropical-print shirt, he leveled an I warned you look across the hood. “Paradise, eh?”
    â€œNow, this is paradise.” Gabe Avery placed a folding deck chair next to the deployment arm that he’d had remounted on his boat at a Cancún dockyard the week after Dr. Jeanne Madison’s visit. Bolted to the deck next to the bridge bulkhead was an air compressor. Both had been removed and stored after his last shipwreck venture forced him to give up the quest for gold and take up one that paid off in pounds and dollars—charter fishing.
    Taking a seat, Gabe propped his feet up on the stern rail of the Fallen Angel and raised a bottle of beer to his lips to offset the heat. Beyond the rise and fall of his chest, glistening with sweat and a combination insect repellant and sun lotion—a basic need for any gringo in the tropics—he sat motionless as he watched a heron dip into the turquoise water and emerge with its lunch. Putting the Corona down on the deck, he felt a long wet tongue lap at his hand and the bottle, knocking it over.
    â€œNemo!” Gabe bolted upright and stamped the spilt liquid into a piece of faded indoor-outdoor carpet, while a large mix of black Lab and who-knew-what-else suckled what still poured from the bottle. “You’re too young to drink.”
    Gabe knew it was a mistake to take the dog with them, but he’d grown attached to it since the puppy showed up at Marina Garza, half-starved and smelling like a rotten fish from rummaging in garbage. A year