Yep. She knew she was envied by other girls her age because Brad was hot. She grinned around her regulator mouthpiece. He just wasn’t as good a diver as she was yet.
One day she would change that!
You never, ever dive without a dive buddy. The best divers in the world might perish when a problem could be easily solved or alleviated if a partner was just at hand.
Her father had hammered that lesson into her.
She suspected that during her father’s time in the navy, he had been in the water a few times on dangerous missions when a partner had not been with him.
But she wasn’t alone today; she was following the rules.
She’d thought maybe the young woman they’d just met, Jennie, who was with a guy named Neil, might have wanted to get in the water again. But Jennie seemed to be a bit of a prima donna: she wanted to be on the boat but not in the water. She said she could dive, she was certified, she just didn’t feel like being all salty with wet hair.
That was all right. Katie wasn’t alone. She might have wandered a bit from the anchor line, but her mom’s friend, Anita, was in the water near her somewhere. Mrs. Calabria was always cool: she might have wanted to stay onboard with the other adults, but if so, she hadn’t let Katie see that. She had just enthusiastically excused herself to her new friends, Dr. Neil Browne, doctor of what Katie didn’t know, and his girlfriend Jennie someone, from somewhere up north. Katie didn’t know much about Dr. Browne or Jennie, but they were a younger duo, full of energy, eager for new experiences—except for getting wet, so it seemed. They seemed nice enough, though she had to wonder if her parents and George and Anita might be trying a little too hard to keep up with them. Like her folks, George and Anita were older now.
She’d known Anita and George all her life. They, along with her mom and dad, had been career military, and then her dad had done a stint as a cop while her mom had worked in a library when they’d first been married. Her dad had been over fifty when Katie had been born, and because her mom had been forty-one, Katie was considered something of a miracle child. They’d moved from New Orleans—her dad’s family’s home—to the Florida Keys before Katie was born because of their love for the water, boats and diving. Katie had grown up with that love and shared it with a passion.
She hadn’t wanted to push it. Her parents, she thought, were too tired for a third dive today, no matter that the charts said they could do more time at this easy depth. But Anita—bless her—knew Katie was in seventh heaven because of her birthday and adult certification and so had risen to the occasion and come in with her. And they had been together until...
Katie had noticed a curious barracuda lurking by a reef and had followed his glittering silver body at a distance. Barracuda were okay, as were most creatures, if you left them alone. And while they weren’t diving in John Pennekamp State Park—where the waters were protected, there was no fishing, and fewer underwater plants and animals offered any danger as their natural food supply was healthy—they were close enough to the park so the fish had a ready food supply and most probably would not be after people.
And she had just been watching, keeping her distance. Of course, there were sharks in the water; she knew not to thrash around, and she never wore jewelry while diving or did anything to attract any kind of predator.
Still...
She realized now she didn’t see Anita anywhere. And she’d been so wrapped up in her own thoughts she didn’t even remember when she had seen her last. They’d only planned a thirty-minute dive, but...
She winced. Thirty minutes were up. Anita was going to be very angry with her for swimming off. Just as her parents were going to be angry.
She had to face the music.
She had promised to stay near the boat. Her father had wanted to head back as soon as this last dive was over; it was a bit of a ride to get home, even once they cut through a channel to take the Gulf side of the island chain rather than circle around on the Atlantic. Their scuba gear had to be washed down, the boat secured and so on.
When she’d gone in, he’d reminded her, “Hey, I’m not a spring chicken anymore!”
And she had called back, “Just another old rooster running around Key West.” She adored her dad.
He’d grinned, but he had been serious, too. He was ready to head home.
Where was Anita? Had she gone up without her?
Yes. Katie was going to be in serious trouble. She hadn’t been paying attention to her dive buddy.
Quickly, get up there and face it.
She was generally a good kid. She was an excellent student. Most of her friends were boy crazy. She had nothing against boys, especially cute ones, but her interest in Brad was levelheaded. She never let liking him interfere with her family or school.
Surely her parents would bear all this in mind.
The boat had been anchored by one of the reefs in about thirty feet of water. There was no reason to worry about coming right up: she hadn’t been deep enough to need to decompress. And so she followed the anchor line to the rear of the boat, removing her mask as she arrived and tossing it onto the little dive platform, detaching her regulator and doing the same with it.
She figured her father might be there, or her mother, or even Anita. They would be staring
