Or curious. Determined to know what he was doing.
She couldn’t follow. He quickly left her with the children, kicking his fins hard against the water to reach the cliff and the last step embedded there.
The step where he had previously found the gold watch.
Hank’s watch.
He kept his eye out for the other divers as he swam, mentally counting off those in his party, trying to make certain they were all involved in their own explorations. Jerry and Liam, Sukee and Jim, the Emersons, the Walkers. They were all present and accounted for, all looking around.
Searching?
He kicked his way deeper, following the cliff face. The drop-off brought the ocean floor from a mere sixty feet to deeper than a hundred. He sank deeper still, studying the ragged edges of coral and rock along the way.
The watery world grew darker as he went ever downward.
He blinked suddenly, certain he had seen a light. It couldn’t be a light, logic told him. A reflection, perhaps.
Reflecting from what?
The world was silent, other than his air bubbles and the constant rhythm of his breathing. The light…
Flickered. Somewhere within the coral shelf. He moved along. Slowly, carefully.
The light, hazy in the shadowy darkness, flickered and blinked. He moved closer. Closer.
Bubbles. There were bubbles other than his own. Ahead of him. His muscles tensed. Someone was diving within the catacomb of coral. He moved closer, closer. He slipped through a break in the reef.
There was a diver ahead of him. A diver with his back to him and a light focused on the coral surrounding them. A lone diver, deep in a world of shadow.
Adam reached to his calf for his diving knife, tensed and ready.
The diver sensed Adam’s presence and turned with a defensive swirl, his own knife raised.
Adam met the diver’s eyes.
He gasped, stunned. Choked.
And the knife slipped from his suddenly frozen fingers and drifted endlessly downward to the shadowy depths below.
12
W here the hell had Adam gone?
Sam remained with the children, having little choice. But she couldn’t see Adam.
Minutes ticked by. Five, ten, fifteen. Twenty. She glanced at her computer, checking the time remaining until they had to surface. How deep had he gone? How much air was he using? Was he going to need a long decompression time?
Was he going to come back up?
Sheer panic seemed to seize her heart. She hadn’t had the sense to be alarmed at first when her father had disappeared. And she hadn’t even panicked when Hank had first come up missing; lightning didn’t strike twice.
But it had. And this might be the third time.
She waited miserably in the water, trying to pretend that everything was all right, forcing herself to remember that she was responsible for two innocent children. Crabs scuttled by; shrimp shot past. A friendly grouper brushed against her, startling her. Darlene tugged her in one direction to see a magnificent ray floating by, majestically cloaked and graceful. Brad found a silver barracuda hulking in the coral. Darlene jerked them away from the barracuda.
More minutes passed.
Sam watched for Adam, trying at the same time to watch for the other divers. Liam and Jerry. Sukee and Jim. The Walkers. The Emersons.
They all seemed to disappear, yet when she looked again, they had reappeared.
This was crazy.
Crazy.
She needed to dive alone with Jem and Adam.
She needed to look for the
Just when she might truly have begun to panic about Adam’s disappearance, he materialized. Brad was pointing to a large blue fish swimming over from behind them. Darlene was suddenly by her side, gripping Sam’s arms so tightly that Sam thought the teenager’s nails might rip through her suit.
The fish was a shark. A blue, Sam thought. Perhaps five or six feet long, magnified by the water. It cruised closer to them.
She slipped an arm around Darlene, holding her steady. She felt the girl shaking.
The shark, she thought, must smell the girl’s fear.
But the animal behaved in a natural fashion, swimming toward them, glassy eyes on them, sleek body cutting the water smoothly.
It took a good look at them.
Veered.
And swam by.
Darlene was still shaking. She burst away from Sam, kicking hard to reach the surface, fifty-five feet over their heads.
Sam shot up, catching Darlene by the legs, pulling her down. She shook her head sternly, indicating that they had to rise slowly. Darlene blinked and seemed to bring herself under control.
That was when Adam appeared, taking Darlene’s hand. A second later Brad was with them, and as a foursome, they slowly made a proper ascent.
They were the first to reboard the dive boat. Freed from her heavy gear, Darlene began to gasp again. “Did you see it? It was huge! Ten feet—”
“Honey, that shark was no more than six feet, tops,” Adam told her. “The water magnifies what we see.”
“A shark. It was a shark. Just like the ones that ate all those men in World War Two.”
“Darlene, it was a blue. It took a look at us, and it said, ‘People, yuck. Way too much body fat in those suckers!’ And it swam by, because the sea is full of delicious fish.”
“But it was there, in the water—”
“Water is where sharks live,” Adam said.
Sam stood in front of Darlene and asked her sternly, “First rule of scuba?”
Darlene swallowed guiltily. “It was a shark.”
“First rule of scuba?”
“Breathe continuously.”
“Right. Second rule?”
“Regain control, respond, react.”
“Right. It was a shark. And we’ve talked a lot about sharks, and about seeing sharks in the water. It looked at you, you looked at it—it swam away. Right?”
Darlene swallowed again. “Yeah. We’re not diving again today, right?”
“Oh, man, she’s really going to be a ’fraidy cat now!” Brad moaned. “Right when things were getting so neat!”
“You leave me alone, Brad Walker!” Darlene threatened.
“What’s going on?” Judy Walker asked, climbing aboard, dripping water as Jem helped her off with her equipment. “Oh, no, Lew. Darlene
Darlene was stubbornly silent for a minute.
“There’s no need to be afraid,” Sam said quietly.
“I…” Darlene paused, puzzled by the answer she seemed to come up with in her own mind. “No, I’m not afraid.” She looked at Sam triumphantly. “We stared it down, right? Isn’t that right, Mr. O’Connor?”
