Corinne facepalmed. “Not you, too.”
“When does the boat leave?” Matti asked.
Rick glanced over at the time blinking on the front of the cable box. “We have to be there in about an hour.”
“Plenty of time for grilled cheese sandwiches,” Matti observed.
“I just need to know how many of us are going.”
Corinne still had reservations about safety, but she supposed Rick was right, that being out on the water wouldn’t be any more dangerous than being on the island. Still, after the hurricane, she just wanted to sit on the beach and read the Karin Slaughter novel she’d brought with her.
“I’m in!” Kelsey announced as she opened a cabinet and stretched to reach for plates.
“Me too,” Matti said with a grin. “I mean, who doesn’t love dolphins?”
“I love dolphins,” Jenn replied. “But I prefer to see them from the beach. Or to fall asleep on the sand.”
Corinne started pulling out the bread, cheese, and butter to make sandwiches. “I think I’ll stay here too.”
“Babe, are you sure?” Rick asked, and there was a twinge of hurt in his voice. Real disappointment.
Touched, Corinne glanced at him. “The next fun thing you want to do, I promise I’m in, as long as it’s not parasailing. I’ll hang back with Jenn and figure out if we have the fixings to make pomegranate margaritas tonight.”
Jenn gave her a thumbs-up. “I approve, but what about dinner?”
“We’ll let the guys worry about dinner.”
Rick turned to Emma and Jesse. “What about you two?”
Emma had been staring down at her phone, texting or on whatever social media platform had been introduced this month. Now she looked around at them and gave a small shrug.
“I think I’m good.”
Corinne saw the hurt look on Rick’s face. Against her better judgment, she took up the cause.
“Are you sure?” she said. “You love dolphins.”
Emma shrugged a second time, this one her apology-shrug. Teenage girls, it turned out, had an entire lexicon of shrugs that parents needed to learn to interpret. “I want to get a tan. And I’m kind of tired.”
Tired from being up all night on your phone, Corinne thought but didn’t say.
“Well, I’m definitely on board,” Jesse said. “After yesterday, I definitely want to get out of the house and just do something.”
Corinne saw the stung expression on Emma’s face and realized she had expected Jesse to stay behind with her. Now she understood, just as she understood the way her daughter closed down in that moment. Emma would have gone along if she had known that Jesse planned to, but now that she’d made her choice so clear, it would be far too conspicuous if she changed her mind suddenly. Instead, she would spend the afternoon sulking and pretending nothing was the matter.
All of a sudden, Corinne wished she could change her mind, but like Emma, she was committed.
“Okay,” she said. “These grilled cheeses aren’t going to make themselves.”
They set about preparing lunch. Jenn and Matti were laughing, teasing Kelsey, who pretended to be insulted though she secretly loved the attention they gave her. Jesse helped fix the sandwiches and then helped clean up. Emma ate half a grilled cheese and stared at her phone the whole time.
“Hey,” Corinne said quietly, drawing Rick to a quiet corner by the stairs. “Please just be safe.”
He smiled like the old Rick, the one she’d been happy to have married, and he kissed her forehead. “I promise I’ll bring everyone back in one piece.”
CHAPTER 9
Deputy Hayes couldn’t remember ever being as exhausted as this. She stood in the sun, appreciative of the breeze off the water, but she desperately wished she could just strip down and dive into the waves. Sweat dripped down her back and beaded up on her forehead. She could have been wearing shorts—there was a version of the Lee County Sheriff’s Department uniform that allowed for it—but sometimes it was difficult enough to assert authority without being undermined by short pants. They provided a visual that made people think of casual moments or childhood, so she nearly always wore long pants.
Today, she regretted it.
The shipwreck fascinated her. The old blockade runner had been on the floor of the Gulf for more than a century and now half of it had been dredged up by the storm. There were three universities that were sending people to take a look. After the police tape had gone up, a news photographer had appeared, followed by Wayne W. Randall, a crime novelist who wrote Florida-set potboilers and lived year-round on Sanibel. According to the Sanibel officer she’d left standing guard, Randall had zipped over on a boat, beached it down the shore from the shipwreck, and then sat taking notes for twenty minutes. When Deputy Hayes had returned to the site after checking on a report of an elderly woman injured in a roof cave-in, Randall had asked if he could get inside the perimeter, even inside the wreck, and Hayes had snapped at him and sent him on his way.
Today was not the day. What the hell must be wrong with people for them not to realize that a tragedy should not be converted into an opportunity, even in the simplest way? But she supposed there were a thousand worse ways in which people were even now exploiting the destruction and human suffering. The prices of gas and groceries would be jacked up, not to mention lumber and other repair supplies.
She needed a meal and a drink and about twelve hours of sleep, preferably in that order.
A wave crashed against the shipwreck, causing a little hollow boom to echo inside. Deputy Hayes knew her presence was wasted here. Even the Sanibel cop who had been on sentry duty before her should not have been using his time this way. But they weren’t the people in charge, so they did not get to make that decision.
The wind gusted and brought a sound to her ears, the noise of someone shouting. Urgent, desperate, maybe even afraid. Deputy Hayes turned and spotted three people rushing along the beach toward her. The two lanky, tanned men wore the bright-orange GulfDaze swim trunks. One was shirtless, while the other wore a faded purple T-shirt bearing the company’s logo. The guys were shouting at her, running on the beach, sand kicking up in their wake.
Deputy Hayes barely looked at them. They wore fearful faces contorted with alarm as they shouted to get her attention, but her attention focused on the young woman racing alongside them, farther away from the water. The woman—the girl—wiped at her tears. And when the three of them came skidding to a halt on the sand just a dozen feet short of Deputy Hayes, the girl shook and wiped furiously at her eyes again. She glanced out at the water, desperately searching the waves.
“Officer, you gotta help this girl,” one of the beach bums said, his concern every ounce genuine.
Deputy Hayes didn’t correct him about her rank. Looking at them, at this honest fear and the girl’s panic, she knew this wasn’t any ordinate dispute. The girl kept shaking, so Deputy Hayes reached for her arm and steadied her.
“Hey,” she said. “I’m Agnes. What’s your name?”
The girl—one of the college kids renting in Sunset Captiva, she remembered—glanced out at the water again and raised a hand to cover her mouth, as if to keep from screaming.
“Oh fuck,” she said, her voice muffled by her hand. “Oh my God. Nadia.”
“Is that you? Are you Nadia?”
The girl’s eyes flared. “No, I’m not Nadia! I’m Simone! Nadia’s dead!”
Deputy Hayes felt a sick twist in her gut. She shot a quick look at the two GulfDaze dudes, who had been hanging back respectfully. Now the bare-chested blond gestured toward Simone.
“She and her friend took out a couple of WaveRunners,” he said, his eyes soft with sympathy. “The other one…”
Simone erupted. “Her name is fucking Nadia!” She pointed out at the waves. “We were out there checking out a pod of dolphins, and a shark came right out of the fucking water, ripped her off the WaveRunner. There was … Jesus, there was blood everywhere. I saw two sharks at least, a
nd they started after me, bumped my WaveRunner, and I got the hell out of there.”
Deputy Hayes felt her eyes go wide. She knew she had to stay professional, but could not contain her horror. “It came out of the water? What do you mean—”
The girl turned on her, slightly bent, as if she had suddenly become stooped with age. But this was grief, an entirely different pain.
“I mean it jumped. Out of the goddamn water. Ripped her off the seat and … and it fucking…”
Simone didn’t finish the sentence. Her lips trembled and fresh tears fell, and it was clear she could not continue. But in her mind, Deputy Hayes felt sure she knew the words that would have come next—ate her.
“I’m so sorry,” she said, releasing Simone’s shoulders. “I can’t imagine how shaken you are right now. I’m going to get you somewhere you can rest, and hopefully get an EMT to look you over—”
“I’m fine,” Simone said, wiping at her tears and looking at Deputy Hayes as if she were crazy. “I don’t have a scratch on me. I’m not the one who…” She cleared her throat, stood a bit straighter. “I’m fine, okay. But you’ve got to keep people out of the water until something’s done. I’ve always heard people say sharks don’t attack humans unless it’s an accident, like they mistake a person in a wetsuit for a seal or something, but this was no accident. You hearing me? Those sharks didn’t think we were fucking seals or dolphins. We were on WaveRunners. They came for us.”
Deputy Hayes tore her gaze away from Simone and turned to scan the waves, unnerved by the girl’s words. She didn’t see any fins cruising the water, no dolphins arcing out of a wave or sharks slicing the Gulf. But she had no doubt, after the haunted look in Simone’s eyes, that they were out there.
She unclipped the radio from her belt. Nodding to the two GulfDaze dudes, indicating that they should keep an eye on Simone for a moment, she turned her back and clicked her radio.
“Sheriff, you there? This is Deputy Agnes Hayes for Sheriff Reyes.”
A crackle on the line, and then his voice. “I know your first name, Agnes. You don’t need to remind me.”
He was trying to lighten the mood, but his own voice sounded tight with anxiety. Neither of them, Deputy Hayes thought, were finding any of this day funny.
“Sheriff, we’ve got a new problem. There’s been a shark attack out here. A girl is dead.”
Static hissed on the radio. Deputy Hayes glanced back at Simone and the GulfDaze dudes.
“Sheriff?”
A click, a hiss, and finally a response. “Agnes, listen. I’m on my way to you. I’m taking a Sanibel Police launch. I’ll explain when I see you, but as of this moment, all the beaches on the Gulf side are closed.”
She walked away from them so they wouldn’t overhear any more of the conversation. “Yes, sir, but are you saying you were already on the way here?”
“Give me fifteen minutes. I’ll be there.”
A click, and she realized the conversation was over.
Deputy Hayes turned and scanned the beach for swimmers, saw a few people in the water, and turned to the GulfDaze guys and Simone.
“If you’re willing, I could use your help getting people out of the water.” She looked at Simone. “I understand if you don’t feel you can do this right now—”
Simone shook her head. “I’m good. I can help. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
Deputy Hayes thanked her, and the four of them spread out across the sand, hurrying toward those few people who were swimming. But something niggled at the back of her mind.
When she had told Sheriff Reyes there’d been a shark attack, and a girl was dead … he hadn’t seemed at all surprised.
* * *
Matti stood on the deck of Captain Len’s small sightseeing boat and marveled at the quiet, aware that perhaps “quiet” wasn’t the word he sought. With the engine rumbling, the world had certainly not gone silent, but the wind had died down and the seas had begun to calm, and the shore of Cayo Costa looked like the apocalypse had come and gone. The trees were skeletal, arcing at strange angles toward the sky like the gnarled, crooked fingers of witches. They weren’t all bare, but the hurricane had stripped many clean, while others had been bleached so white that they seemed to have been the victims of much older storms. Some were newly fallen and lay across the narrow beach, some partially in the water.
“Hey, Len?” Matti called, turning just as the captain cut the engine and dropped the anchor. “You sure it’s safe here?”
The man might look tired, scruffy, even a bit strung out, but he knew his small passenger boat. The current continued to turn the vessel a bit, until it bumped the bottom, rocking on the waves just fifteen feet from the shore.
“Dad, look!” Kelsey cried. “More dolphins!”
Matti saw her pointing north, and sure enough the water churned with so many dolphins that it was hard to fathom that they were simply there, in the wild. That they could swim anywhere they liked, but they had decided to choose this moment to frolic off the coast of Cayo Costa. It emphasized the impression he already had—that there must be many hundreds of them in the area, perhaps even thousands. Captain Len had already given them a tour around North Captiva and into Pine Island Sound, where he had managed to locate a few manatee, despite many of them having retreated to safer water during the hurricane. The dolphins, however, seemed fearless. This was the third pod they had seen in just over an hour, but their omnipresence had not diluted Kelsey’s excitement at all.
“Daaaaad,” she said, dragging Rick over to the railing. Kelsey seemed very nervous about getting near the water, but she was okay as long as her father was with her.
Or Jesse. It made Matti grin to see the way the young girl’s eyes sparkled when she looked at his son. Kelsey had grown up with Jesse almost an older brother to her, and she adored him, always wanting his attention.
The other passengers began to drop into the surf, wading through the crystal clear water. Captain Len had ignored Matti’s question and gone to the rear of the boat, helping those who needed it to climb down the metal ladder. On an ordinary day, Matti figured this trip would have been loaded, with at least forty passengers jammed onto the boat, but today there were only ten, including himself, Rick, Jesse, and Kelsey. Most everyone had worn a bathing suit, except for one heavyset white guy with a shaved head and tattoos and flab that looked to have once been muscle. He wore baggy cargo shorts, but dropped into the water and stumbled to shore nevertheless, more focused on his small cooler of beer than on his wife and son. The other three were a trio of moms about a decade older than Matti and Rick and who appeared to be on a “girls’ vacation.” One of them, a ponytailed Latina with a gym-sculpted body, had glanced at Matti several times, not turning away when he noticed. He had decided to stop noticing.
As Captain Len helped the three moms at the ladder, Jesse and Rick dropped off the back of the boat. Kelsey jumped into Rick’s arms, leaving Matti alone at the stern, looking down at the captain.
“You didn’t answer my question before.”
On his own now, Captain Len could not ignore him. “Sorry, what was the question?”
Matti dropped down into the waist-deep water. A wave swept in, soaking the bottom few inches of his T-shirt, but he hadn’t expected to stay dry. He turned to Captain Len, assessing him anew. According to his business card, his real name was James Lennox, but he went by the amiable, somewhat-too-cheerful “Captain Len” for what Matti presumed were marketing purposes.
The man had to be in his fifties, but it was difficult to tell with any accuracy given how weathered and leathered his skin had become after years in the Florida sun. He was deeply tanned, his skin lined, and he had blond and white stubble on his face that made the tan seem even darker. He was thin, but his arms were ropy with muscle from the work he did. His shorts were spattered with different-color paints, and Matti wondered if the man was an artist or had run out of clean laundry and decided to put on clothes he normally wore to paint his wal
ls.
“Is this place safe?” he asked again. “With the trees down, and nobody around, I wondered.”
Captain Len shrugged and glanced ashore. “It’s as safe as it usually is. Keep an eye on your little girl—”
“She’s not my girl. She’s my friend’s. Jesse is my son.”
The captain blinked, maybe taking that information in. If he had an opinion about Matti’s son being black, he kept it to himself, which Matti felt was wise.
“You’re safe enough, Mr. Hautala,” he said. “The island has residents, just a handful of them, but they all went to the mainland for the hurricane and I’d be surprised if they’d already come back.”
Matti nodded. “Thanks.”
He waded ashore, where Kelsey had already commandeered Jesse’s attention and run ahead of the rest of the group to search for the best seashells. The sun beat down without mercy. What breeze there was hung heavy with humidity, but Kelsey had zero interest in anything that would have stood between her and the huge, magical conch shell she now hunted. They had found at least twenty in the past few days, but most of them were small or broken or both.
Rick had waited for him. He wore a brand new T-shirt emblazoned with a Captain America shield, which Matti found amusing. Neither of them had grown up reading comic books, but Rick loved the movies and had adopted Captain America as his personal avatar somehow. Maybe he thought he was fighting injustice instead of pushing paper. Matti did not want to be unfair to his friend, but he could not help wishing Rick would face his unhappiness instead of sublimating it.
“Hey,” Matti said. “You want to follow the kids?”
“Yeah, but we don’t need to hurry.” Rick smiled. “Jesse’s always been her best baby sitter.”
“Kelsey doesn’t need a sitter any more.”
Rick nodded. “True. But let’s face it, she likes him more than she likes me.”
“He’s much better-looking, and he’s not her dad.”
“There is that.”
They started following their children along the shore at a distance. The three moms had stripped off their cover-ups and gone for a swim. Matti made an effort not to let his eyes linger on the woman who had been checking him out, focusing instead on the tropical foliage and those skeletal trees.
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