Decompression sickness was a danger to inexperienced divers or those who panicked during a dive, but to Atticus, avoiding the bends was second nature. And at that moment, his instincts told him to stay put. First, they might not make it in time. Second, they could pass out from the bends before reaching the surface. No, they had to face whatever was coming.
Then he saw them, ten whales, surging through the water at speeds Atticus was unaware the creatures could reach. And they were headed straight for him and Giona.
“Daddy…”
Giona’s voice quivered.
“Get ready to hold open your backup regulator. Blow your air tank.”
“Now?”
“No. If we blow it too soon, they’ll figure out its just air and keep coming. We need to surprise them.”
The whales were fifty yards off and closing fast. A huge one, a bull, led the charge.
Thirty…
Twenty…
“Now!”
Twin bursts of bubbles erupted around the pair, concealing their view of the whales. Atticus’s only assurance that his plan had worked was that they were still alive. The front whale must have veered off, the others following his lead. Atticus spun around, his suspicion confirmed by the flashes of white fading into the distance—the whales’ flukes pounding up and down.
“Daddy!” Giona was yanking his arm, her pulling so hard it actually hurt his shoulder. He spun just in time to see a cloud of silver sparkles flooding toward them. It only took a second for Atticus to identify the small creatures as herring, but the mindless fish wouldn’t be repulsed by another blast of air. They were too panicked.
The fish were on them, rushing by, slamming into their bodies like fists. Atticus hadn’t felt so abused since hell weak in SEAL training. He struck out at any fish he saw coming, angry and horrified that Giona was enduring the same beating. He could hear her, shouting in pain, shouting for him. But all he could see was an undulating wall of mirrored fish.
“Giona!” He grunted as a herring struck his open gut. “Curl up into a ball! Stay tight!” Then he followed his own advice. He pulled his knees up and wrapped his arms around them, still holding the video camera. His soft spots were protected, and his body was all rounded edges. The fish were glancing off it.
He counted a full fifteen seconds more between that moment and when the last fish struck. He waited a few seconds, just in case, then unfurled like a potato bug. His body ached, but beyond a severe bruising, he would live.
He saw Giona, a hundred feet away, still curled up tight. Good girl.
“Honey…it’s all right now. They’re gone.”
He sighed with relief as she loosened her grip on her knees and uncoiled her body. She was surprisingly unfazed by the ordeal. “Have you ever seen anything like that, Daddy?”
“Herring run all the time, we just got in their way.”
“Yeah, but do herring normally chase whales?”
In that instant Atticus knew they weren’t out of the woods yet. Something had spooked the whales and the herring. He hoped it was a submarine, or some other man-made disturbance, but his gut told him otherwise. Get out! His mind shouted. Get out now!
“Giona, baby, start your ascent now. Go fast, but not too fast.”
“You’re coming too?”
He could hear the concern in her voice. She must have realized what he had. Something else was coming. “Right behind you.”
He watched as Giona headed for the surface, moving in tight circles, perhaps a little too fast, but not so fast that it would make her sick. They were still fifty feet apart when he felt a queasiness in his stomach. He could feel his hair trying to stand on end beneath the wet suit. He’d experienced a similar feeling once before, when a sniper had a bead on his head. It had saved his life then. He trusted it again.
He swung around and saw only open sea.
He turned back toward Giona and saw a nightmare unleashed upon reality. The shape slid through the water as easily as a comet through space. It looked like some kind of massive, organic roller-coaster ride, undulating up and down through the water. And Giona floated in its path.
The next five seconds were a blur, but seemed to move in agonizing slowness. He managed to shout half her name,” Gio—”
A mouth opened. Teeth flashed. Then she was gone, swallowed whole by the huge…fluid…thing. It took everything in one gulp, her body, her air tank, her camera. No trace of his daughter remained.
The apparition that took her swirled deep into the darkness below.
The ocean fell silent.
Giona…his baby…his girl…had been taken from him in a surge of violence.
Alone in the depths, Atticus wailed.
Then, like a man possessed, he surged toward the surface, straight as an arrow, as fast as he could.
9
Jeffrey’s Ledge—Atlantic Ocean
Atticus exploded from the ocean and onto the stern deck of the Bugaboo. He was moving so fast that it appeared that the ocean, his longtime love suddenly turned enemy, had forcefully expelled him. His mask, air tanks, and weight belt fell to the deck in a clump.
His body shook with convulsions, heaving. The world spun around him. His head stabbed with intense, fiery pain. He struggled to his feet, slipping a few times, and headed for the bridge.
Before reaching the door, he vomited, covering the front of his wet suit. He entered the pristine, freezing-cold cabin, without giving any thought to the bile dripping over the shiny floor and smooth leather seats. He switched on the CB as the cabin spun around him. He’d never experienced such vertigo, such confusion.
He choked then held the CB to his mouth. “Oh God,” he said, “Someone help. God, please. It took my girl! It took her! So big…Like nothing I’ve seen before…no record of this thing…God…please, help. Help…”
Atticus felt the cabin move around him. It was alive, closing in, consuming him. He formed the words slowly, deliberately, “Jeffery’s Ledge.” A moment later he was unconscious on the cabin floor. He vomited again, but was not aware of it. If he had been, he wouldn’t have cared. Nothing mattered. Not anymore. Life. Death. The world.
Atticus had become a hollow man in the instant that creature had opened its powerful maw and sucked in his daughter. All that remained of the man was a void, as black and as deadly as the deep sea.
***
A sterilized odor greeted Atticus when he awoke—a hint of apple. Blue light glared from above. Maria was dead.
No.
Giona…
Atticus looked around. He was in a hospital.
After glancing out the window, he realized he was at Portsmouth Regional Hospital. The sliver of blue in the distance reminded him of his daughter’s fate and confirmed his location. He had no memory of how he’d arrived or who had brought him. He couldn’t remember anything after surfacing from the ocean.
He closed his eyes, not wanting to see the ocean, but even through closed eyelids he saw an open jaw, lined with teeth the size of the orange cones he’d set up for Giona’s soccer games when she was little.
“You’re awake.”
Atticus jumped in bed, throwing off his blanket with a shout. He turned, with clenched fists toward the voice. He came face-to-face with a woman, perhaps five-five, with wavy black hair and dark chocolate brown eyes. She stood silent and still, not at all threatened by his sudden movement or clenched fists.
He breathed deep three times, looking at the woman. She wore a stiffly-pressed uniform. Not a nurse. She stood straight as an arrow, perfect posture. Her face, while soft, was firm and serious. The muscles of her arms rippled when she moved her fingers.
Through his anger he sensed familiarity. Her eyes. Looking at them again, his clouded memory opened up and transported him to a time before he became a Navy SEAL. Andrea Vincent. Every summer his family would travel to northern New Hampshire, where they owned a cabin at a privately run campground. Andrea’s family did the same, and for five summers from ages twelve to sev
enteen, they had been an inseparable duo. They became romantic at sixteen and soon discovered they lived within a half hour drive from each other. When Atticus got his driver’s license he began visiting her weekly. Despite college putting a physical distance between them, their relationship stayed strong and talk of marriage crept into their late night conversations. That is, until Atticus made the decision to join the military. It was a distance and strain that no amount of phone calls could correct. There was no dramatic break up, no “I think we should just be friends” moment. They simply lost touch and faded into each other’s pasts.
But she stood before him now. A little taller. Stronger. Sporting longer hair and a more angular face. More striking than he remembered. Her uniform was what held his attention, though. She’d been opposed to his joining the Navy. Said he’d lose his soul.
“You joined the military?” he finally asked, doing his best to appear put together and in control. Too much so, he realized, in the face of an old friend he should be hugging.
“Coast Guard. Petty Officer First Class.” she said. Her face flickered with disappointment. Had she expected a happier reunion? Or did she know about his daughter? “You must be feeling better?”
Atticus hadn’t taken stock of his condition. He knew he’d been unconscious, but for how long he had no idea. Dizziness set in, and he sat down on the bed. A nurse entered the room, looking concerned. “Mr. Young, you’re awake… Can I—”
“I’m fine,” he said, a little too gruff. When the nurse left with a huff, he felt bad for being rude, but as Andrea was with the Coast Guard, she might have answers.
Andrea sat in a chair, across from the bed, in front of the window. She looked out. “Beautiful view.”
Atticus looked out the window again. The trees were bright green. A few cumulus clouds drifted past. The ocean glimmered in the distance. “Not anymore.”
She turned to him, her face saddened for a moment, but not because of his rudeness. He was all business in spite of their history, and he wanted to cut through the malarkey and talk about why she was really there. “We’re still looking for your daughter.”
His eyes fell to the floor. “You won’t find her.”
“Why is that?”
“She’s dead.”
“It took her?”
Atticus met Andrea’s eyes; his glare was full of suspicion. “That’s what you’re distress call said. It took her.” Andrea paused. “What took her?”
“Please tell me you’re not turning this into some kind of murder investigation,” Atticus said, his voice becoming like stone.
“No…not a chance.” She was adamant. “The police said you rescued your daughter from being raped this morning. Really put the fear of God into the men who attacked her.”
He nodded.
“No one suspects you of anything. Especially not me.”
“Because you know me?”
“It’s been nearly twenty years. I don’t know you that well.” Andrea took a breath, then looked out the window, gazing at the ocean. “What took her, Atticus?”
Atticus’s head slowly moved from side to side as he replayed the blurry images locked forever in his memory. “I don’t know.”
“A great white, an eighteen-footer, was spotted off Beverly Harbor last week. Could it have been—”
“It wasn’t a great white. It wasn’t a shark.”
“A whale then? Orca? Sperm whale? Perhaps a blue hunting krill scooped her up?”
Atticus’s face flushed crimson. “Do you know who I am now? What I do? Did you do any research before coming to see me?”
“Atticus…You are an oceanographer. You do work for independent firms, sometimes for the military. You’re an ex–Navy SEAL, highly decorated. You wrote Ocean’s in Peril, which is a great book, by the way. I knew who you were when I found you choking on your own puke.”
Atticus sat silently. He replayed the attack in his mind, slowed it down, took in the details. “It wasn’t a shark. It wasn’t a whale. I have never seen, nor has anyone else on the planet, seen anything like it.”
Andrea sat down next to him. She put her hand on his shoulder, a gentle gesture from a kind woman to a hurting man. “I have,” she said.
Atticus slowly craned his head around toward her. His eyebrows rose ever so slightly.
“Yesterday…we were pulling a Frenchwoman out of the water…”
Atticus nodded. He’d seen a thirty-second bit on the news about it. Her husband had been found too—drowned when the boat went down.
“But we saw something. It was huge. And I mean huge. Swam directly beneath the chopper. The Frenchwoman managed to snap a few photos.”
Atticus’s eyes went wide. “Where are they?”
“Taken. Some boys from the Navy took the camera and flash memory card.”
Atticus’s shoulders dropped.
“But not before I transferred them to my thumb drive,” Andrea added with a slight smirk. She dug in her pocket and held aloft the small USB device. “Two pictures. Both from above. One shows the shadow, just beneath the surface. The other is of the footprint it caused when it dived.”
“Must be one hell of a footprint,” Atticus said.
“Bigger than I’ve ever seen.”
With a shake of his head, he said, “I had a camera…Giona did too. When it…She still had her camera. Mine was video. Must have dropped it when I surfaced.” Atticus cursed himself. He should have held on. He’d been recording everything. He might have got the creature on film. It could have proved useful.
“Speaking of surfacing,” Andrea said. “You’ve got a mild case of the bends. I don’t think it’s what knocked you out. The doctors say that and the vomiting was shock. You might feel some nausea or headaches—”
“I know the symptoms,” Atticus said. “I was trained to deal with them.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“A SEAL never forgets.”
Andrea eyed him with suspicion for the first time. Could she tell he was already plotting?
“Just do me a favor and stay here overnight. The police have a guard outside the door.”
“I thought I wasn’t a suspect.”
“He’s not there to keep you in,” Andrea said. She jerked a thumb toward the window. “It’s to keep them out.”
Atticus stood up and looked out the window. A crowd of reporters and news vans, even a few helicopters, all bearing news-station logos, swarmed outside the hospital.
“Your distress call was heard by everyone. You were already front-page news because of the incident this morning. Nice work, by the way. When word about who had placed the distress call spread, a fire was lit under the butts of the media machine. Some reporters actually beat us here. Got some footage of you being taken out of the Jayhawk.”
Atticus sighed. He was trapped. The media had to be avoided. He didn’t want anyone keeping tabs on him. No one could know what he planned to do…especially Andrea. Being with the Coast Guard, she could ruin everything.
“So you’ll stay here then?”
“Looks like I don’t have a choice,” Atticus replied.
Her hand was on his shoulder again. Her honest eyes almost looked wet. “Atticus, I really am sorry about what happened. If you need my help, ever, for anything, please call me.” She handed him a piece of paper. On it was written her address, cell-phone number, and home number. He was taken aback by the earnest tone of her voice and the friendly grip on his shoulder. Could old friends pick up where they’d left off?
“Why?” he asked.
“We share a common bond, Atticus.”
“Our past.”
“No. My daughter, Abigail…she was killed last year. Hit-and-run. Drunk driver. She was nine.”
“I’m…sorry. And your husband?”
“Boyfriend. Left when I got pregnant.” Andrea looked into his eyes, burrowing into his consciousness, or was it his conscience? “I understand how you’re feeling. I know what you want to do. Please, just wait.
”
She could see right through him. Perhaps it was because she’d lived through a daughter’s death herself? It didn’t matter. His mind couldn’t be changed. He was a missile preparing for launch. Preparing to kill.
Andrea gave his shoulder a squeeze and headed for the door. She paused, her hand on the handle. “Hang in there, Atti.” With that, she left.
He stood silent and still for a moment. The only person to ever call him Atti had been Maria. He stifled his rising emotions. They would serve no purpose.
Atticus clenched his fists so tight that his palms burned with pain. The guys who’d attacked Giona that morning had got off easy. Only his responsibility to his daughter had allowed him to refrain from killing them on the spot. Maria and Giona had tempered his violent side, his training. He’d even become a pacifist. Revenge was something he’d been adept at in the past. He had gutted the sniper whose bullet had missed his skull. The drill sergeant who’d pummeled him during basic training had been found five years later, outside a bar, badly beaten, suffering from a broken nose, dislocated shoulder, and several impacted teeth. A man who’d grabbed Maria’s butt and moved in for a kiss, found the four fingers on Maria’s backside suddenly broken. But the woman he loved and the daughter born to him, who had turned him from a killer to a gentle man who couldn’t crush an invasive species, were both gone.
The coldness and hard-heartedness of his past began creeping up on him. He felt a chill run up his back. There was a lot to do. Killing something the size of a jumbo jet was going to be a challenge. But he knew in his heart, the creature didn’t stand a chance. Not against him.
10
Somewhere on the Atlantic Ocean
The knife pierced oozing red flesh, then struck bone and fell from the wielder’s hand.
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