“How is that even possible?”
A wry smile crinkled the skin around Talbot’s hazel eyes. “It’s been my experience that ex-wives and fiancées rarely agree on anything.”
Celia dropped the check on her way to another table.
“Then the question remains, who is Ishmael Styx?” Mer reached for the check.
Talbot beat her to it. “The bigger mystery may not be how he disappeared but who he was in the first place.”
Chapter 19
For the second time in one day, Mer hit the dock at a run. The Skype interview had taken longer than she’d anticipated, and at the end of the conversation the dean had offered her the position. She had until next Friday to give the university her answer, a full week to make the easiest decision of her life.
Yet, instead of the director’s words, it was Detective Talbot’s that stayed with her as she drove home. He’d mentioned something at lunch that Mer found odder than the remark about Ishmael’s parents: no one agreed on when Ishmael was born. But she knew how to find out.
In order to dive, a person had to be certified. That meant that somewhere along the way Ishmael had gone through a class and filled out forms that required his birthdate. His certification information was on the boat waiver, and that particular piece of paper was filed in Bijoux’s office.
“Nice of you to join us, Cavallo.” Leroy was pacing the dock.
She slowed to a walk. “Good to be here, Captain.”
“That’ll change.”
“Anything I should know about?” she asked.
“Only that I’m thinking of reinstituting keelhauling as a captain’s prerogative.”
“For the record, I’d prefer to walk the plank.”
“It’s not you who needs it.” He jerked his head toward the picnic area.
Equipment covered every flat surface of the tables and overflowed onto the benches. Hard-sided waterproof containers protected most of the items, but several devices stood vertical and resembled long, narrow missiles. Echo wrote tick marks on a clipboard as if taking inventory. Rabbit carried two more gear bags from the parking lot. Amber sat on the wall behind the tables, sketching.
Mer gawped. “All that needs to go on the LunaSea?”
“That’s in addition to what’s already on board. Lindsey wants to be prepared for any contingency.” The straw in his mouth twirled with such force that Mer expected to feel a breeze.
“I’ve been on monthlong research deployments that didn’t require that much gear, and we were searching for something that actually existed,” Mer said, her eyes still locked on the piles of equipment.
Leroy grunted.
Unlike the daytime dives where the Spirited Divers filmed footage of the wreck, tonight’s dives were meant to gather evidence. Or at least what the crew tried to pass off as evidence. Creaky noises. Flashes of light. Things that could easily be explained as the sounds of a massive metal ship fighting the current, or a reflection off a silver-sided fish.
“Aw, come on, Leroy. It’ll be fun.”
The straw spun faster. “Didn’t expect to hear those words out of your mouth.”
“I’ve decided to be their voice of reason.”
“Oh, goody. Just remember, when bugs throw a party they don’t invite the chickens.”
“They did this time. Lindsey has no one to blame but herself.”
At the table, Rabbit attached a video camera to a tall tripod and planted it in front of a leafy backdrop of bougainvillea along the dock. He straightened his wool cap, cleared his throat, then flipped the switch and darted in front of the viewfinder.
“Above water, paranormal energy is frequently tracked by noting disturbances in the electromagnet spectrum,” he began. “Discovering and recording these fluctuations requires EMF detectors, temperature sensors, motion sensors, listening devices, recording device, laptops, and cameras. Going into water complicates things considerably. To compensate, we use cameras, an underwater microphone, night goggles, and good old-fashioned scuba gear. Oh, wait.” He shut off the camera. “Oy, that was lame.”
He thought a moment, then turned the video back on. “To compensate, we use highly specialized cameras, a hydrophone to record sound, military-grade infrared technology, and cutting-edge technical diving gear. This allows us to take the hunt wherever our targets lead us.” He turned off the camera again and grinned at Mer. “Got to sex it up a bit for cable.”
Mer rolled her eyes. “Who even watches this stuff?”
“You’d be surprised,” he said. “You should let me interview you. Get some exposure.”
“I’m quite certain Lindsey would not appreciate me airing my true feelings about this endeavor.”
“Adds to the drama.”
Hadn’t she just told Leroy that she’d be the voice of reason? They needed an opposing viewpoint. Better yet, maybe this was an opportunity to refute her involvement in this nonsense. Present herself as a bona-fide scientist. “You know what? Sure.” She set her backpack on top of the metal storage box where the dive shop stored extra tanks.
“Really?” He moved out of her way quickly, as if he feared she might change her mind. “Great. I’ll prompt you.” He positioned her in front of the camera. “Tell me, Dr. Cavallo, what do you expect to encounter tonight?”
Mer stared into the camera. “Considering the depth of the Spiegel Grove, I anticipate seeing some of the larger predatory fishes. We have several resident goliath groupers on this wreck. Lots of barracudas. If we get lucky, a shark or two.”
“And what about paranormal activity?”
She shook her head. “Only if you consider angelfish to be spirits.”
“So you’re a skeptic,” Rabbit clarified.
“On the contrary. A skeptic is a person who questions generally accepted opinions. Paranormal activity falls into the realm of pseudoscience, which itself is only one step above nonsense. As a scientist, I’m driven by data. Show me evidence, challenge its validity, revise the hypothesis, and I’m a believer.” Mer pressed her back to the bougainvillea. One of the thorny branches tangled in her hair and she jerked, startled. “Paranormal activity? Just a bunch of ghost stories meant to scare people.”
Lindsey arrived on the dock wearing wedged espadrilles and her trademark oversized sunglasses. Her head swiveled between Rabbit and Mer as if she was trying to decide who deserved her displeasure first. “Why isn’t the equipment loaded yet?”
Maybe there was a place for keelhauling in modern maritime practices after all.
It was an hour later before Mer could sneak off to the office. Bijoux had left for the night, but the folder still occupied a corner of her desk. She flipped it open and scanned the information. Ishmael’s birthday fell on the first of November.
Rather than jot notes, Mer photocopied the form. Her seahorse pendant swung in a lazy arc as she leaned over and returned the original to the file. She folded the duplicate and slid it into her pocket. She’d notify Talbot tomorrow.
—
Bright splashes of reds and golds colored the sky, then faded as night deepened. Mer triple-checked the divers’ gear, ensured that everyone was outfitted with alternate lights, and conducted the safety briefing. Now, for the first time since Ishmael’s disappearance, she faced a night dive.
Her wetsuit choked and her pulse pounded in her neck. She lowered the zipper a fraction. Steamy air filled her lungs, but she drew in huge breaths until her pulse settled, until her thoughts settled. Until she settled. Down.
She toed the edge of the swim step. The inky water reflected her image in wavering swirls, and she touched the bump of her pendant.
Unlike the night Ishmael disappeared, tonight’s crescent moon painted a soothing patina of silver on everything. She could do this. She would do this. She’d do her job, and she’d do it well. And when she surfaced again the moon would welcome her back.
Pointing the tip of her fin upward, she stepped off the swim step and the water closed over her head. Air hummed through
her regulator. She was weightless, cradled in the womb of the sea, and unexpected comfort flooded her body.
Another splash. Rabbit. The green Cyalume stick bobbed behind his tank as Leroy handed down his video camera. Echo entered next. Lindsey handed him his hydroacoustic devices and waited impatiently while he clipped them to his buoyancy compensator. When he finished, he bore a striking resemblance to a decorator crab—a small crustacean that attached bits of detritus to its shell in order to blend in with its surroundings. The final splash announced Lindsey’s entry. She carried a parabolic microphone.
Amber remained on the boat to document surface activity. Mer suspected the task was a lot like snipe hunting, but it kept Lindsey and Amber a safe distance from each other.
The divers gathered at the buoy.
“Ready?” Mer asked.
Nods all around. She preceded them down, periodically marking their path with more glow sticks.
Once they hit the deck, the team passed her. Each member had a job to do and Mer lagged behind them, watching. Echo went to work first, attaching passive hydroacoustic devices to the hull at preset intervals. Lindsey wielded a sonar device that looked like a missile. The zipper on her front-zip shorty was lowered to half-mast and displayed her bikini-clad assets to optimal effect. Rabbit swam beside his coworkers, filming their efforts, his small video camera dwarfed by its huge lighting system.
Mer swam with her flashlight in her left hand. Vibrant color bloomed in the warmth of her light. New divers were often astounded by the bright hues they encountered at night. Simple physics. But in their awe, they forgot that the more water light had to travel through, the more color was absorbed. At night, divers carried their own light source and were rewarded with a panoply of color.
Her heart fluttered a bit as they swam closer to the location where Ishmael disappeared. She shined her flashlight across the open hatch. Patches of coral surrounded the opening, and the open polyps lent a velvety softness to the gray ship as they fed on passing plankton. Mer’s light spluttered, then quit altogether. She twisted the bezel a couple of times, willing it back to life, but it remained dark. She swore through her regulator and let the light hang by its wrist tether while she dug into her BC pocket for her alternate.
Rabbit kept swimming. His lights threw Echo’s silhouette against the ship as he neared the hatch. Lindsey tugged on Echo’s fin. She motioned toward her microphone and pantomimed that she was having a problem with it. Echo hovered in the water and reached for the unit. Lindsey took Rabbit’s camera so that he could help Echo. She had swum around them, filming their underwater diagnostics, and had come in for a close-up of the microphone when one of the lights blew with a slight pop.
The shadows of Rabbit and Echo jumped maniacally and drew Mer’s gaze to the ship.
Ishmael floated, framed in the doorway. No mask, no tank. Just Ishmael. Green and hazy. Staring straight at them. He lifted his arm and pointed at Mer.
She reared backward. Rabbit glanced up from the microphone and froze, then in a frenzy he signaled to Echo and Lindsey. Lindsey swung the video camera toward the hull. The second light blew, plunging the area into darkness. Mer turned on her alternate light and trained it at the opening.
Ishmael was gone.
—
Breathe.
Her breath rasped through her regulator. Burned her lungs. The group retreated. She had to get them to the mooring line. To the boat. To safety.
What the hell had she seen? She spun around. Peered into the darkness. Something was out there.
Her flashlight sliced and slashed the darkness, searching for unknown enemies.
Breathe.
The mooring line stretched into the distance, beyond her light. Her heart pounded. Threatened to tear her chest apart. Her air pressure fell with each breath.
Slow down. Do your job.
Rabbit. Lindsey. Echo. They all clustered together.
Ishmael. No. But he was there. In the ship. They’d all seen him. Seen it. Whatever it was.
She grabbed the mooring line. Her gauges glowed. They had to go up. Slow down. Too fast. Keep everyone safe. Fifty feet. Hold. Two-minute decompression stop. Head count. Everyone present. Good.
Breathe.
She held her hand in front of her face. Five fingers. She pinched the tip of each. Yes, feeling. She twisted. Assessed everyone’s faces through their masks. Rabbit: excited. Echo: scared. Lindsey: shadowed.
What the hell had happened?
Two minutes. Done. Move. Slowly. Hand over hand. No faster than the bubbles.
Breathe.
Every muscle in her body wanted to propel her to the surface. Get the hell out of the water. Onto the boat. Safe.
Echo tried to push past her, and she wove her hand through the shoulder of his vest and held him back. Shook her head. No. Not yet. She moved her hand toward and away from her mouth, hunching and releasing her shoulders. Breathe.
He jerked his head. A nod.
Good.
Fifteen feet. Finally.
Three minutes to decompress. Get a grip.
Amber.
What the hell was she going to say to Amber?
Two minutes. Her flashlight splintered the darkness. Kept the unknown at bay. Lit up the barracudas, the jacks. Normal things.
Things she understood.
Time ticked by as slowly as her breaths had become.
One minute.
Each second an hour.
Finally.
Up the line. Head above water.
“Leroy!”
His bearded face leaned over the gunnel. “You okay?”
“Get everyone on the boat.”
She pushed them ahead of her. Toward the ladder. Onto the LunaSea.
Echo. Lindsey. Rabbit.
Everyone.
No. Not everyone.
Ishmael was still down there.
Somewhere.
She scrambled onto the boat.
Breathe.
Chapter 20
“Get that camera out of my face.” Mer pushed the lens toward the deck, nearly tearing it out of Rabbit’s grip.
Voices shouted above one another, gear hit the deck with thuds. Excitement and disbelief amplified and jumbled everyone’s words.
“Did you see that?” Rabbit’s whole body shivered. “Tell me you saw that!”
The camera lights, lifeless at depth, lit up wide swaths of the LunaSea as he swung around trying to film everything at once.
“That? Unbelievable!” Echo said, shaking his head. “Unbelievable!” He stumbled. Righted himself.
Leroy grabbed Mer’s elbow. “You going to tell me what happened down there?” he said. “I seem to be out of the loop.”
“Would that I could,” Mer answered.
“I’ve never known you to be at a loss for words.”
“I prefer not to speculate.”
“Well, I want to know why all my divers think they saw a ghost, so start talking.”
“My light malfunctioned as we neared the hatch where Ishmael disappeared. Then something went wrong with Lindsey’s equipment. The guys started tinkering with that, then one of the camera lights blew.”
“Sounds like an awful lot of things going wrong all at once.” His ever-present straw twirled.
“That’s when I saw…something. Green. Kind of glowing.”
The straw stopped. “Glowing.”
“The others saw it, too.” She sounded defensive. She should sound defensive. It made no sense. “That’s when the last camera light failed. It took me a couple seconds to get my other flashlight out.”
“And?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Nothing.”
Lindsey lifted her regulator and BC off the spent tank and dropped it over a new one.
“You’re not going down again,” Mer said. “Not yet.”
Lindsey looked at her as if she had just sprouted wings. “Of course we’re going back down. We’re here to film ghosts. I don’t see any up here.”
“Until we have a better idea of what’s down there, we’re grounded.”
Lindsey opened the tank and checked her gauges. “Rabbit, I need you to prep the other video camera. We’ll need the lights. I’m taking the still camera. Echo, can you get anything off Ariel?”
Mer snapped her head around. Ariel? That meant the Sheriff’s Office had released it.
Echo had the acoustic device hooked up to a laptop. “Ariel’s being downloaded now.”
Mer stood in the center of the deck. “Hold up a second. We need to decide on a course of action.”
“You work for me,” Lindsey said. “We’re diving. Simple.”
“No, I don’t. I’m the safety diver. And I’m not giving the okay until I’m convinced that it’s safe.”
Lindsey faced Leroy. “Captain, would you remind your mate why we’ve spent a boatload of money to be here? I’ll give you a hint. It involves paranormal activity and finding evidence.”
Mer waved her hand toward the inky sea. “You don’t know what’s down there.”
“No one will if we don’t get back there. You’re a scientist. Where’s your intellectual curiosity?”
“That’s not a new species of octopus down there.”
“No, Mer. It looked suspiciously like Ishmael. Wouldn’t you agree?”
It did, but she wasn’t ready to admit that yet. “I don’t know what I saw.”
“Oh, please. You saw Ishmael. We all did. And now you’re scared to go back down.”
Succinct and accurate. She had to give Lindsey credit.
Only Amber remained quiet as she sat on the bench hugging her knees.
Mer sat down beside her. “You okay?”
“Did you see Ishmael?” Amber asked.
The noise on the boat had subsided a bit, and Mer’s sigh sounded as if it held the indecision of a lifetime. “I honestly don’t know.”
“If that was Ishie, that means he’s really dead.” Amber fiddled with her engagement ring. “He can’t be.”
Mer tried to gentle her voice, although it still rasped with adrenaline. “It’s been five days.”
“Almost a week.” Amber rested her cheek against her arm. “I need to see for myself.” Tears pooled in her eyes. “Will you dive with me? I’d feel better knowing you were next to me.”
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