by Brenda Hiatt
I turned to Ronan and spread my arms in an exaggerated shrug, hoping he might know where to look. Apparently, he did. He made a squiggling motion with one arm that I assumed represented the eel, then turned left along the hull.
We both swam low, just a couple of feet above the ocean floor, carefully searching along the base of the ship. That blasted eel had to be along here somewhere. I actually spotted it before Ronan did, its enormous head barely visible under the dark ledge of the hull. I touched Ronan on the arm and pointed, backing away slightly as I remembered just how big that eel was.
Ronan brought up his camera and waited for me to point out the little ledge where I’d found the ring. I examined the hull above the eel but didn’t immediately find the place. It occurred to me that the moray might well have moved since then. We’d seen lots of crannies where it could lurk along the way.
What if it had half a dozen different hidey holes? We could use up all of our bottom time just looking for the place, and never get any pictures at all. I looked around for any other recognizable landmarks, to the right and left of the area just above the eel.
Then, suddenly, I saw it—the little projection, even smaller than I’d remembered, a few feet above and a little to the left of the eel’s artificial cave.
Relieved, I turned back to Ronan to get his attention, only to be distracted by a quickly moving dark shape just behind him. For half an instant, I thought it was a shark and nearly panicked before I realized it was just another diver—Lenny, the young guy from our group.
My relief turned back to alarm when he got close enough for me to see the wicked-looking knife he held, poised for attack. Ronan must have seen my expression through my mask, because he turned to follow my horrified gaze just in time to duck, evading what might have been a serious slice from that knife.
Hampered by his camera, all Ronan could do was kick at his attacker while he tried to reach his own dive knife, attached at his waist, with one hand. However, instead of taking another slash at Ronan, Lenny moved to one side, away from the kick, and came at me, his knife again held high.
I stared uncomprehendingly for a moment, my one inane thought that he was being terribly ungrateful after the help I’d given him earlier. Then, at the last second, I kicked backward so that my fins were in his face and my face was as far from that knife as possible.
He kept coming, and being bigger and stronger, he was also faster than me—especially since I was swimming backward so that I could keep my eyes on him. Ronan had his own knife out now and was catching up, but it was obvious our attacker would reach me before Ronan reached him.
With a spurt of speed, Lenny closed the distance, and I braced for a blow from that knife even as I kicked furiously at him. But instead of stabbing me, he grabbed at my neck with his other hand, his fingers digging into the top of my wetsuit.
I twisted away, managing to land a kick on his chest that slowed him enough for Ronan to reach us. Lenny turned, and then the two of them were fighting, each trying to slice the other with their knives. It was the most terrifying thing I’d ever seen—at least until the giant moray eel came out to investigate.
I’d underestimated its length: it was at least fifteen feet long, tapering along its length from its basketball-sized head. Lenny saw it too, and it must have scared him as much as it scared me, because he gave a scream through his regulator that I could hear from six feet away.
The eel didn’t come any closer, but just circled around on the ocean floor a couple of times before heading back into its lair. Maybe it had decided none of us were small enough to swallow.
Ronan took advantage of Lenny’s distraction to grab his wrist, forcing him to release his knife. Unfortunately he seemed to recover his nerve the moment the eel was gone and started fighting again, now trying to wrest Ronan’s knife away from him.
I floated nearby, feeling useless, rubbing the spot on my neck that he’d hurt with his fingers. My own fingers encountered the chain with the ring on it, and suddenly everything clicked. That’s what he was after—it had to be. Nothing else made any sense.
In quick succession, I remembered the way he’d stared when I’d tucked the ring into my wetsuit, his refusal to meet my eyes when I’d offered him advice, his last-minute joining of the dive group. His ineptitude suddenly made sense, too. He’d probably never dived before.
I swam in closer to the struggling pair and saw that Ronan had managed to flood Lenny’s mask while Ronan’s mask was half off, on top of his head. That wasn’t slowing Ronan down at all, but Lenny kept shaking his head, as if that might somehow make the water in his mask disappear.
On sudden inspiration, I kicked hard with my fins, darted in between them and snatched Lenny’s regulator from his mouth.
To my immense relief, he immediately panicked. He let go of Ronan and kicked away, flailing wildly with his arms but clearly having no clue how to find his trailing regulator. After a few seconds, he did the only thing possible—he swam as hard as he could for the surface.
Chapter Twelve
WHILE I HUNG motionless in the water waiting for my heart to slow and my nerves to stop jangling, Ronan replaced his mask and cleared it, then started after our attacker. I wondered if I should follow, but he’d only ascended ten feet when he stopped and came back to me.
Urgently, he gave me the okay sign, and I returned it to let him know I wasn’t hurt. The same wasn’t true for him—I could see the slice on the shoulder of his wetsuit and the little dark cloud above it that meant he was bleeding. I pointed at it, trying not to teeter over the edge into panic.
Ronan looked down at the cut, then shrugged, which helped me to calm down. His camera had been dangling by its safety cord from his wrist during the fight. Now he grasped it in both hands again and motioned for me to show him the spot we’d been searching for before the attack.
He still wanted to take pictures after all that? But then I realized it would only take a minute now, whereas we’d have to do a whole separate dive to make another try at this later. And we were clearly no longer in any danger from the guy who’d bolted for the surface.
For a moment I worried that he’d escape, but then realized he’d have no choice but to return to the boat—and Van wasn’t likely to abandon the rest of us, especially since Lenny no longer had his knife for leverage.
I managed to find the little ledge again and pointed it out to Ronan, who proceeded to snap several shots from a couple of different angles while I fumed and fidgeted about Ronan’s injury.
Finally he gave in to my silent urgings to ascend. Not only was I concerned that he’d been badly cut, I was starting to get nervous that his bleeding might attract the eel again—or sharks.
On the way up, I wondered what had happened to Lenny. If he’d been stupid enough to hold his breath, he could have suffered a pulmonary embolism, I remembered from dive class—in other words, his lungs could burst as the air in them rapidly expanded. Surely, though, he’d let the air go when it became uncomfortable? If so, the worst he’d risk was a mild case of the bends.
I shook my head, realizing that I was actually worrying about a guy who’d just tried to maim and possibly kill me. That was definitely taking mom-mode too far.
Even though we were in a hurry, Ronan insisted on a safety stop at fifteen feet before we finally surfaced a dozen or so yards from the boat.
“Van! Yo, Van!” he shouted. From here, it didn’t look like anyone was on the boat at all.
A moment later, though, Van emerged from the cockpit and waved to us, then made a circle with his arms over his head to ask if we were okay. Ronan reproduced the gesture, then started swimming toward the boat with me following as quickly as I could. Where the heck was Lenny?
It took us a couple of minutes to reach the boat, but as soon as he got close, Ronan took his regulator out again to yell, “Hey, where’s Lenny? Didn’t he
surface ahead of us?”
Van called something back, but I was still several yards behind and couldn’t hear. He helped Ronan out of the water, and the two of them started talking, Ronan pointing at his shoulder and Van pointing across the water. I looked in that direction and saw another dive boat. Was he saying that our attacker was on that boat instead?
Frustrated, I made it the rest of the way to the ladder, ripped my fins off more quickly than I’d ever managed before, and hollered, “Hey! A little help here!”
“Oh, sorry, Wynne,” Ronan exclaimed, quickly taking my fins, then helping me up the ladder. “It seems our friend swam to another boat—no, not that one, unfortunately. It was one that already had the rest of its divers back on board, so since he was in distress, they radioed Van here, then headed back to shore in case he needed medical help.”
“Then they have no idea—” I started, aghast.
“No. Van’s going to radio them now, though. With any luck, they can call ahead and have the cops waiting for him at the dock.”
“You don’t think he’ll try something desperate once he knows they’re onto him on the other boat? What if he hurts someone? Someone else,” I amended, with a pointed look at Ronan’s shoulder. “That doesn’t look good.”
“You just can’t help worrying about people, can you?” he asked, but he was smiling. “I doubt our buddy is in any shape to do more damage at the moment. That was quick thinking, by the way, grabbing his regulator. I should have thought of that myself instead of focusing on the knife.
“And as for this—” he flexed his cut shoulder—“I don’t think it’s deep. I’m more upset about the slice in my wetsuit. It’s almost new.”
I rolled my eyes at his macho posturing. “Just get out of the wetsuit so I can take a look at that cut, okay? And I don’t mean the one in the wetsuit—I’m no seamstress.” Which was true. Sewing had never been among my domestic skills.
“A nurse?” he asked hopefully, unzipping the suit.
“No, just a mom who’s had plenty of experience with cuts and scrapes.”
“I thought you only had girls.” He stripped his wetsuit the rest of the way off.
“Right. And girls never get in any trouble at all, do they?”
There was no missing the irony in my tone. After a moment he started to chuckle—then I joined in. Maybe it was the release of tension after what we’d been through at sixty feet below the surface, but we both ended up laughing until we were nearly helpless.
Not until Van joined us after his stint on the radio did I remember to examine Ronan’s cut. It was definitely more than a scratch. Van brought out his first aid kit, and I applied a temporary bandage. I didn’t think it would need stitches, but that would have to be up to a doctor.
“Yah, you should have that seen to,” Van agreed when Ronan tried to shrug off my suggestion.
“Okay, okay.” Ronan threw up his hands in surrender. “Now, Van, what’s the deal? Did you let the other boat captain know what Lenny did?”
Van gave a sort of half shrug. “I wasn’t sure exactly what he did, since all you told me was he attacked you down there. I take it he gave you that?” He pointed to Ronan’s shoulder.
“Yeah, but I got the knife away from him, so he shouldn’t be much of a threat now.”
“From what they told me when he first came on board, probably not. Came up gasping and thrashing around, right in the middle of their divers as they were getting back on the boat. They pulled him aboard, then radioed me, like I said. Since I didn’t know nothing yet, I said sure, they could take him back. They were ready to go, and I still had four divers out.”
“And what did they say just now?”
“Well, it took me a bit to raise them on the radio. When the captain finally answered, I said the man might be a criminal, but he said he couldn’t talk right then. Maybe Lenny was listening, or maybe he was dying. No knowing. So I signed off and radioed the dock and told them to call the police.”
“I guess that will have to do.” Ronan glanced at his watch. “The Simonses probably won’t surface for another ten minutes or so.”
“Unless you want me to use the horn to call them in now?” Van asked, with a worried look at Ronan’s shoulder.
I was all in favor of that, but Ronan shook his head. “It won’t make any difference, so let them finish the dive they paid for. Speaking of which, we sure got our money’s worth of excitement, didn’t we, Wynne?”
But reaction to all that had happened over the last half hour was setting in, now that I’d released all that tension by laughing. I couldn’t even manage a smile. In fact, I didn’t know when I’d felt so drained. “Money’s worth. Yeah.”
“Oh, c’mon, Wynne. Don’t let a crazy like that ruin diving for you, your first time out after getting certified.”
Van nodded vigorously. “He’s right, Missie. I been doing this for near twenty years, and nothing like this ever happened before. It was a fluke, that’s what it was.”
“Of course,” I said weakly, knowing it was no such thing. “Look, isn’t that the Simonses?”
“Yah, I’ll get them on board in jig time, and then we’ll be back at the dock before you know it. Don’t neither of you worry.”
As soon as Van was out of earshot at the back of the boat, ready to help the others out of the water, I touched Ronan on his uninjured shoulder. “You know that attack wasn’t a fluke, right?”
He gave me a penetrating look from under his brows. “You mean you think it had something to do with this case? How could it?”
“I’m not sure about the how, but before you came after him with your knife, that guy was definitely trying to grab the ring.” I pointed at the spot on my neck that still felt raw, and Ronan’s eyes widened.
“And I saw him staring at it earlier, before we went into the water,” I added. “There’s no way that attack was a coincidence. In fact . . .” I stopped, stunned by a sudden realization. How could I not have seen it before?
“What, Wynne? What is it?” Ronan prompted.
“Remember I told you there was a guy with Melanie Melampus the other night, only I wasn’t really sure he was with her? I’m almost positive it was Lenny. Except I’ll bet that’s not really his name.”
“Maybe we can check.” He crossed to the other side of the boat and rummaged through the clothes our attacker had discarded when he’d changed into his dive gear, but came up empty-handed. “No wallet.”
“I’m not surprised. But I really think it was the same guy.”
He was looking skeptical again. “Are you sure, Wynne?”
“I’ll have to look at the pictures on my camera again. I didn’t print any of him—they didn’t come out that well, plus I didn’t think . . . That explains why he looked familiar, though. I thought he just reminded me of one of my daughters’ friends. How could I have been so stupid? If I’d been more on my guard, he never could have done that to you.” I frowned at the slice on his shoulder.
“Hey, you said yourself you didn’t get a good look at him that night. And if you’d acted suspicious earlier, he probably would have bailed before getting on the boat, and we wouldn’t have any evidence against him. Now, with any luck, he’ll be in custody, and we can press charges.”
“I hope so.”
And I really, really did. It was finally dawning on me that I’d gotten into something truly dangerous, and I was more than a little bit scared. Yesterday, my main fear had been that Melanie Melampus would get away with insurance fraud and Stefan would go down for a murder he hadn’t committed. Or that the ring would be stolen from me.
I’d been nervous the other night in Oranjestad, yes, but I hadn’t believed I was at risk of actual physical injury. Now Ronan was bleeding, and I was bruised, and it could have been much, much worse. These people were playing for keeps.
True to his word, as soon as the Simonses were on board, Van started up the engine and headed back. I went over everything that had happened during the past hour in my mind, trying to lock in any details that might be important to the police. I didn’t want this guy getting off on some technicality.
Once we were underway, I moved to the front of the boat to watch our progress. The wind and salt spray helped to revive me, and that strange wave of tiredness ebbed until I felt much more like my usual self. Ronan came up to stand beside me, and I resisted the urge to lean against him.
The shoreline grew larger, details coming into focus as we approached. I thought I could pick out the dock now, but I didn’t see the flashing lights I’d expected—hoped—to see. I glanced at Ronan and saw he was frowning, too.
“Do you think the police have already taken him away, or aren’t they there yet?” I asked him.
He shook his head. “From my experience with the Aruban police, they’re probably not there yet. It’s not a very large force, since this is usually such a peaceful island. You know, it’s ‘where happiness lives,’ not the criminal element.”
“Right.” And I knew he was, even though it didn’t feel that way at the moment.
A few minutes later we pulled into the dock, just behind the dive boat that had carried our attacker back, which Van pointed out to us. A knot of people were gathered next to it, but no one appeared to be on board.
Promising Van I’d be back to rinse off my rental equipment, I followed Ronan onto the dock. An animated discussion seemed to be in progress among the group beside the other boat.
“What’s going on? Where’s the guy you brought back?” he called out as we joined them.
They all turned—there were five or six of them, still in swimsuits and cover-ups, wet and windblown from diving and the boat ride back. One man, presumably the captain, stepped forward.