Adrift Read online

  Mer gathered them together. She had a job to do, and time was wasting. Each breath they drew depleted their air, and Amber’s anxiety level increased her air consumption. They’d have to return soon.

  Mer used hand signs to tell Ishmael to stay close to Amber, and for both of them to follow her. She placed more glow sticks along the way: a trail of high-tech bread crumbs to mark their way home.

  The Spiegel Grove was five hundred and ten feet long—far too big to explore in a single dive. It once carried a crew of three hundred and fifty, and a full detachment of U.S. marines who would deploy in smaller vessels launched from the stern.

  Two massive cranes spanned the vessel midship. Forward, several levels of decks cantilevered like a pyramid. Hatches had been removed and swim-throughs ran the length of the deck and encouraged divers to explore the hallways. During the day, the openings acted as beacons, guiding divers through the passages, pointing the way out. At night, the ship became a maze, dark and disorienting.

  The Spiegel Grove had never lost a crewman’s soul to combat, but she had claimed the lives of several divers who had penetrated the wreck deep below her decks, trespassing where they didn’t belong.

  A shiver ran down Mer’s spine. She wasn’t afraid of dying. As a scientist, she recognized that death was just another stage of life. But she still remembered the moment—that last second before her body convulsed and she inhaled what should have been air. It was an eternal instant of pure hopelessness. And that had scared her more than anything.

  She looked behind her. Shook off the memories. The green glow of the light sticks still marked their path back to the surface.

  Ishmael floated next to an opening in the side of the ship. Mer had been through that passage numerous times. It cut across the beam of the ship and created a wonderful path for divers to use—during the day.

  Make the proper turns and divers could see the Spiegel Beagle—a fading image of Snoopy painted on the hallway floor. The mascot, clad in a sailor hat, rode an alligator encircled by the words “USS Spiegel Grove.” Silt often obscured it from view, and plenty of divers had passed over it without ever seeing it.

  Ishmael gently tugged on Mer’s fin to get her attention and signaled that he wanted to affix the recording device to the hull. Magnets would hold the encased electronics to the ship and the data would be collected over the next several hours and long after they’d left for the night.

  She kicked away from the ship and hovered above the blackness. Another thirty feet separated her from the sand. Jacques Cousteau had once said that the ocean realm was silent. It wasn’t. The sea was full of clicks and chomps, scrapes and rasps. But even though sound traveled faster through water than through air, it lacked the frenetic pace of urban life. It hummed. And that comforted Mer.

  She drew a breath. The air in her tank was drier than the humid air above the water. When she exhaled, bubbles floated past her mask, beads that merged and separated like quicksilver in their race to the surface. She checked her gauges and then Amber’s. They had about a minute before they would have to turn around and ascend.

  Ishmael directed Amber to take a photo of him placing the listening device against the hull, but then held up his finger to delay her. He examined the bottom of the plate, wiped it with his gloved hand, and tried again. He beckoned Mer. Keeping an eye on Amber, she swam over. He pantomimed for her to hold the equipment against the hull.

  The device weighed more than she’d anticipated. Ishmael fiddled with it, his fins kicking up silt from the passageway that reflected in the beam of her flashlight. The seconds ticked away. At last, it seemed to hold.

  Ishmael signaled Amber to take the photo. Mer bit her regulator. They didn’t have time for this nonsense. Anyone with a modicum of photographic experience knew that all the silt Ishmael had kicked up would ruin the picture. Before Mer could object, Amber raised the camera to her face. The strobe lights on either side of the camera gave her the appearance of horns.

  A bright light rent the darkness. The camera flash continued to strobe, illuminating the swirled silt and blinding Mer. The magnet failed and the listening device slipped past her fingers. She lunged for the box, pinning it against the hull until she could readjust her grip.

  Light. Dark. Light. Dark. Her movements looked robotic. Disjointed. She turned her face and tried to shield her eyes. She couldn’t see past the lights. Couldn’t see anything beyond the spots in her own vision. The box shifted again. Ishmael still didn’t help.

  The scream came from all directions at once. Distorted but recognizable.

  Amber dropped the camera. The strobe continued to fire. Stabbing the darkness. Chiseling her face into unnatural angles.

  Mer blinked several times, flushing the light from her eyes like tears.

  Another scream. Tortured.

  Unearthly.

  Chapter 6

  The listening device slipped from Mer’s grasp. She let it go. It didn’t matter. Amber’s screams, a jumble of bubbles and fear, whimpered into silence. Mer grabbed Amber’s hand before she could claw the mask from her face and bolt for the surface.

  Below them, the light flickered. Feeble now. Dying.

  Amber stopped struggling, stopped doing anything but clenching her eyes shut.

  Mer moved behind her and held her regulator in her mouth. Passive panic could morph into aggression at any moment, and Mer wanted to be in a better position if that happened.

  She had to get Amber to the surface. Safely. That meant slowly. Too fast, and they’d both run the risk of decompression sickness. Getting bent meant no diving for a minimum of six weeks—possibly forever. That’s if they survived it.

  She swept the beam of her light across the coral-encrusted hull and the yawning hatch. Where was Ishmael? She pointed her light toward the area where she’d attached the three glow sticks. A dark shadow swam toward the mooring line. Ishmael. Nice of him to wait.

  Bubbles rose from Amber’s regulator in short, quick bursts. She’d be out of air soon. Mer took her by the hand and squeezed. Amber squeezed back. Good.

  The green glow sticks marked their way. Mer dragged an unresisting Amber back to the mooring line and started to ascend. She calculated time in her head. Sixty feet per minute, a two-minute safety stop at fifty feet. A three-minute safety stop at fifteen feet. As long as Amber didn’t have another panic attack, they’d be back on the boat within nine minutes. Within ten minutes, Mer would be throwing Ishmael overboard for breaking ranks and abandoning them.

  Mer peeked around Amber’s shoulder at the first safety stop. She still hadn’t opened her eyes, as if she could block out the whole dark ocean. Mer’s anger with Ishmael grew. She’d bet her next research job that Amber would never dive again. All because Ishmael wanted a photograph of himself sticking a listening device to a ship to record specters that didn’t exist.

  She and Amber eased up to the second safety stop. They hung on the line, allowing their bodies to shake off some of the negative effects of depth and pressure. Amber’s breaths had slowed. The LunaSea bobbed fifteen feet above them, her lights welcoming them home.

  Mer allowed herself a tiny moment of relief. As angry as she was with Ishmael, she was angrier with herself. She had the final say. She’d been the one to let Amber dive. She’d known from the start that Amber didn’t have the experience for this kind of dive.

  The final seconds counted down, and Mer brought Amber to the surface.

  Leroy stood on the bow. He leaned over the railing. “Everything okay?”

  Mer spit out her regulator. “Panic attack. We did a safe ascent, but I’m going to need some help getting her back on the boat.”

  Mer swam Amber to the platform. Leroy and Echo each hooked her under the arm and on the count of three lifted her onto the boat, tank and all.

  “Whee,” Amber whispered.

  Echo helped her shrug out of her vest and took the tank. Rabbit draped a towel around her, but Echo bumped him aside and helped Amber to the bench.


  Leroy took Mer’s fins from her as she settled on the opposite bench to take off her gear. “Where’s Ishmael?”

  “Very funny.” She leaned forward to look around the portly captain. She stood up with a jerk. “Where’s Ishmael?”

  “He’s not aboard, Mer. What’s going on?”

  Oh, God. She couldn’t breathe. She grabbed Leroy’s forearm. “Don’t mess with me.”

  “Mer.” He looked deep into her eyes. “Ishmael’s not here.”

  Mer swallowed her rising panic. No time for that now. “Echo. Watch Amber. Keep her warm. Rabbit. Suit up.”

  Mer grabbed a recreational dive planner. “Leroy, I have to go back down.”

  His straw spun crooked circles. “Not without a surface interval.”

  “I saw him. He was heading for the line.” She traced her fingers across the tiny numbers to determine her dive profile and calculate how long she had to remain topside before returning to depth.

  “How did you get separated?” Leroy asked.

  “Wait.” Rabbit grabbed Mer’s arm and spun her around. “You left Ishmael down there?”

  Mer shrugged out of his grip. “Not intentionally.”

  “Where’s Ishie?” Amber wailed. “It was the ghost, wasn’t it?”

  Rabbit jumped to the other side of the boat. “You saw a ghost?”

  Amber shrank against the bench. “I don’t know what I saw.”

  “That’s because you got disoriented by your strobe.” Mer turned the dive planner over, not liking the numbers. “Ishmael must’ve gotten turned around. We all did.”

  “Did you see it?” Rabbit asked her.

  She glanced up from her calculations to see if he was kidding, then went back to the chart. “He’s wearing a rebreather. If I wait fifteen minutes…” She threw down the plastic card. “Screw waiting. I’m going back in. We’ll only have about seven minutes of bottom time to find him.”

  She disconnected her gear and dropped it onto a fresh tank.

  Rabbit tore off his beanie and grabbed his camera. “This is awesome.”

  “Put down the camera. We’re looking for Ishmael, not ghosts.”

  —

  Rabbit and Mer descended the mooring line quickly. Mer turned in circles the entire way down, shining her light into the darkness, hoping to glimpse the fluorescence of the glow stick attached to Ishmael’s tank.

  Recrimination filled her mind and adrenaline electrified her body. The crush of water no longer cradled her; instead, it pressed against her, made it difficult to draw a steady breath. She checked her gauges. Tried to calm herself. There was little enough time to search for Ishmael without blowing through her air.

  Mer signaled to Rabbit and they swam along the deck, retracing the path of the first dive. She dipped along the side of the vessel, found the hatch where everything had changed. Her mind jumped to the worst-case scenario: Ishmael trapped somewhere on the wreck, aware that each breath he drew was one breath closer to drowning.

  Think. Ishmael had made it to the mooring line, she thought. But now, in the darkness, her doubts grew.

  The hatch was the last place she’d definitely seen him. She poked her head into the hallway. The silt had settled and the beam of her light illuminated the coral and sponges that encrusted the walls of the wreck. Nothing. No sign of Ishmael.

  Rabbit tapped her shoulder, and she hooded her flashlight with her free hand. He shined his own light at his hand, fluttering two fingers up and down, and then pointed toward the bow, signaling that they should move on.

  A chill crept up Mer’s spine and she spun to face the hatch, certain that something was there. Watching her. Beckoning. Her flashlight exposed the same coral, the same sponges. But something was different. She didn’t know how she knew it, but the feeling pervaded her cells, multiplied. She turned off her light.

  Rabbit swept his light across the hatch opening, but in the passageway Mer saw only a black so deep it seemed to have texture. Her eyes widened, trying to differentiate the shades of darkness. A faint glow caught the edge of her vision. She closed her eyes, then popped them open again, focusing higher than the shimmer. Yes. Definitely something.

  Her pulse accelerated. Penetrating a wreck beyond visible light required extra training, specialized equipment, redundancies, plans. She had a reel, the layout of the passage in her mind, and Rabbit.

  Mer backed out of the passage and signaled Rabbit with her light, then unhooked her reel and tied the line off on a protruding hinge. She locked eyes with Rabbit. He’d trained as a cave diver. He understood her actions and nodded.

  Entering the passage, Mer unspooled the reel as she swam. During the day, she wouldn’t need to set a line. The way out would be illuminated by light. Even though she knew the path, she wouldn’t risk becoming disoriented, wouldn’t risk the safety of another man who swam behind her.

  She kicked steadily, evenly, careful to avoid stirring the silt on the bottom. Periodically she looped her reel around a rail to set a waypoint, and then spooled out more line as they swam deeper into the ship.

  Ahead. Something. Mer held up her hand and they both stopped. The beam of her light bounced around the passage. Nothing. She turned it off and signaled for Rabbit to do the same. Her eyes adjusted to the blackness. There it was. Closer. Rabbit grabbed her shoulder.

  He snapped his light on first and pointed it at the hallway. Mer recognized the passage. The one with Snoopy. The reel portioned out more line as she and Rabbit swam closer. Their bubbles collected on the ceiling of the hallway, mercurial beads that reflected their progress. They didn’t have much time.

  Mer’s light penetrated the passage first, and she sucked in her breath. A glow stick illuminated the painting, casting a ghoulish shade around Snoopy. All the glow sticks had been accounted for—except Ishmael’s. In a few hours, it would fade, then die completely.

  Like Ishmael.

  Mer pushed the thought from her mind. Ishmael had been here. Now she had to figure out where he went.

  At the edge of the light, she saw another object and she finned over to it. For a few seconds she could only stare. Tears blurred her vision, and she blinked several times until she could refocus on the mask. Ishmael’s mask.

  Rabbit darted forward and grabbed it off the deck, his eyes wide. He tried to push past her, go deeper into the hallway. She blocked the path and held up her gauge.

  Time had run out. They were too late.

  Chapter 7

  It was after midnight when the LunaSea left the dive site. Mer sat alone on the bow. The crew of the paranormal dive team kept their distance. She didn’t blame them.

  Leroy had alerted the Coast Guard, the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, and the medics while Mer was still on the second dive. Rescue operations would have to wait for daylight. By that time, it would be a recovery operation. Bile rose in her throat. She stood and leaned against the rail.

  During her time as a divemaster, Mer had rescued seventeen people. Almost all the incidents involved divers who had overestimated their fitness level. They had surfaced and needed assistance swimming back to the boat. Two rescues involved heart attacks. One woman went into anaphylactic shock after being stung by a jellyfish. But, regardless of the cause, every rescue had one thing in common: she had returned the diver to the dock.

  Tonight was different. Every minute took her farther from the person she’d been hired to safeguard. Intellectually, she understood that there was nothing to be done in the darkness. Emotionally, it took every ounce of control she had to refrain from ordering Leroy to turn the boat around. Let her sit vigil until dawn.

  But she and Leroy had a boatload of people who needed support, and, no matter how much she wanted otherwise, she couldn’t offer it to them. Amber had lost her fiancé. The others had lost their boss and friend. They’d all been confronted with their own mortality.

  It was cold solace knowing that she and Leroy had done all they could. In the end, it wasn’t enough.

  More awaited them: incide
nt reports, interviews, alcohol and drug tests. It seemed daunting, but not as daunting as planning a funeral.

  The lights at the entrance to Port Largo looked like accusatory eyes, growing larger as they neared, and marking the LunaSea’s entry into the canal.

  She would have to answer for her actions. Leroy had told her not to worry, but he was also a man who didn’t know the differences between the Arctic and the Antarctic—and they were literally polar opposites.

  When they neared the shop, Leroy spun the boat in the narrow waterway and brought it alongside their dock. Despite the hour, several people waited for the LunaSea’s arrival. Bijoux stood next to two paramedics, her bright tunic contrasting with their dark uniforms. A couple wearing “Spirited Diver” T-shirts clutched each other’s hands. But it was the last man who captured Mer’s attention. Everyone else was in motion, but he remained still, watchful, with his back against the retaining wall that separated the dock from the parking lot. One of Mer’s two brothers was a cop. He had that same vigilance.

  The man stepped forward, into the circle of light brightening the dock. Close-cropped hair crowned latte-colored skin. He wore an untucked button-down shirt that hid the waist of his khakis. He must be law enforcement. No one wore long pants in the Keys unless he was on official business.

  He handed Mer the bowline.

  Her hands shook and she dropped it. He retrieved it and again passed it to her.

  “Thank you.” She wrapped the line around the cleat, then secured the spring and stern lines.

  The medics boarded. Mer pointed to Amber and outlined what had happened and how she’d been cared for since coming up from the dive.

  One medic knelt by Amber. The other asked Mer, “How are you? I understand you went back down.”

  “I stayed within limits.” Almost. “No tingling, no joint pain. I’m fine.”

  But she wasn’t.

  “Anyone else have any issues?” the medic asked.

  Leroy came down the ladder and answered, “Only one other diver splashed. He was with Mer the whole time.”