Baited

by Crystal Green

  In fact, she added to herself, like the rules of the sea, you should never venture into life itself without realizing that you’re in over your head and you might have to fight your way out.

  Last night had only emphasized that.

  Oddly, the Delacroixs had kept to themselves after the outburst. Even so, Kat had lingered in Duke’s stateroom until dawn, just in case one of his relatives got the itch to harass him.

  Clearly, Duke was in no shape for this drama. The inheritance confrontation had wiped him out, and after a bout of vomiting which worried Kat more than anything else, he’d been visited by the medic, then hit his berth, falling into a deep slumber. Kat didn’t dare wake him, even though there was so much to straighten out. Instead, she’d spent the night in a chair by Duke’s side, jangled by all the emotions mingling and confusing her conscience.

  What was five percent of billions of dollars?

  Even now, standing here on deck, she told herself not to dwell on it. She didn’t want to face that tiny seed of greed taking root, the ecstatic buzz of power and control that money would bring to her life. No more debts. A better place for her and über-roomie Tracy to live.

  Respect from everyone who’d ever looked down on her.

  Just as she was flying high on this fantasy, she crashed to earth again. The price for this false sense of self-esteem was Duke. His death.

  Heaviness settled on her shoulders. She’d give millions just to keep her surf-days friend around.

  “Kat?”

  It was the first word Chris had said so far this morning. He seemed just as troubled and red-eyed as she was after last night. Had he lost sleep after the confrontation, too?

  “You ready to go first?” she asked.

  “Sure.” He was distracted, moody, showing an uncharacteristic lack of excitement. Even at this young age, Chris was an experienced diver; it was one of his passions, one of the things the lonely teenager was really good at.

  Kat was still determined to make the most of this amazing experience for him. “Think about it—three whole days out here. We’re gonna have some fun.”

  “Right. Fun.” Chris fidgeted with his suit.

  Kat glanced back to the stern, where the cage was being checked over. Sunlight chased away any reminder of last night’s restless weather, and the ocean itself was calm and ready to embrace them. Near the cage, the Delacroix family was keeping to themselves. Alexandra was reading the latest Harry Potter book while Eloise, swathed in layers of white, stared at the ocean from her lounge chair. Louis, Duffy and Nestor fished quietly.

  In the background, Isla de Guadalupe waited, its mammoth, hunched rocks stretching under the specter of a lone gray thunderhead. Kat suppressed a shiver.

  It was as if something had shifted between everyone, like plates of the earth had rubbed together and were causing a silent quake. Kat dreaded the damage that would come during the next few days.

  She was so intent on considering the possibilities that she barely heard Duke greeting them in a reedy, yet cheerful, voice. When she turned around, she saw him hugging a newly joyful Chris, who was obviously excited that Duke was up and around. Kat blinked, unable to believe what she saw. Duke barely looked fit enough to be out of bed, much less on deck.

  And he was dressed to dive.

  “Uh…?” She indicated his gear.

  “I thought I’d give it a go. What do you say, Chris? You want to let the old man go first?”

  There’s no way his health would allow him this kind of crap…excuse her, nonsense.

  “Can I talk to you?” she asked, trying to draw him aside.

  “Go ahead.” Duke placed a hand on Chris’s head. That was body language for: “What I hear, he hears.”

  Okay, if that’s how he wanted it. “Your doctor didn’t even approve this trip, did he? I’ll bet he doesn’t know you’re here.”

  His guilty look told the answer.

  “Chris, why don’t you wait by the cage?” he said.

  The teen raised his eyebrows, cheeks turning pink. “But—”

  “Small favor,” Duke said. “For me.”

  Chris shot a miffed glance at Kat. “’Kay.” He left, looking curiously over his shoulder at both of them.

  Duke sighed, leaning his frail body against the wall. “As great as that kid is, he hates being told he can’t do something.” For the slightest moment, his eyes went empty.

  What was with him this morning? “I think he wants to see that you’re okay after last night, you know?”

  A smile fought its way onto Duke’s mouth, but something still hung behind. Something like yesterday’s mournful wind.

  The looming threat of his death iced between them. So did the ugliness of his family life.

  “So what’s up with you?” she asked.

  Duke’s expression changed to one of pure innocence. “I feel fine today, so I’m going to face off with a shark. It’s something I want to do before plunging into the great hereafter.”

  She ignored the implausible scenario, then took a breath, going for it. “About what you said last night…about Will…”

  “Remember what I said about you deserving a chance to close your file on him and move on?”

  “So you put him in a position where he’d be tempted by wealth? Did you want me to see what he’d do and finally swear off him when he failed?”

  A soft smile. “It’ll be interesting to see what happens after he hears about the changes I want to make.”

  Her five percent. “I need to talk to you about that—”

  “Don’t refuse the possibility, Kat.”

  She clamped shut her mouth in shame. She hadn’t necessarily wanted to refuse—she’d been aiming for more of an explanation, actually.

  Dammit, what was happening to her? Was Duke playing mind games with her, too? After all, he’d said he was only thinking about changing his will, right?

  “Duke, we need to sit down and hash out a lot of things. Okay?”

  He smiled, and Kat sighed, giving in to him. Charmer. Then he nodded at someone behind her.

  “Morning,” he said, chipper as could be.

  Kat turned around to find Alexandra and Eloise staring at Duke in his wet suit.

  Eloise spoke. “Chris told us you’re diving.”

  The teen appeared next to Alexandra. “Sorry, Gramps. They don’t want you to do it.”

  Duke chuckled. “It’s not like it’s going to kill me.”

  A loud argument followed. It was passionate enough to create a scene, drawing Dr. Hopkins and most of the curious crew. Kat pictured the shark cage all by its lonesome, twiddling its aluminum bars and wondering what the holdup was.

  When Will made his way to the front of the crowd, Kat’s blood gave an excited, wary leap in her veins.

  “I won’t be responsible for sending you into that cage, Mr. Harrington,” Will said.

  “It would be worth your while.” Duke made the international sign for cash with his fingers by rubbing them together.

  Grunting, Will just shook his head and planted his hands on his hips. Even though he had his eye on the big pie in the sky, he apparently had pride in his reputation, also.

  Still, too much of it, Kat thought. Pride was responsible for his quest for redemption. Pride was why they couldn’t be together.

  By now, Duffy, Nestor and Louis had filtered to the back of the crowd, tellingly silent. Kat wondered if they agreed with Eloise and Alexandra about keeping Duke out of the cage or if they wouldn’t mind seeing a speedier demise out of the older man.

  “Bottom line,” Will said, “is that I’ll dismantle that cage before I let you get into it.”

  With that, he headed toward the bridge.

  “You’re missing a good opportunity,” Duke said.

  With surging admiration, Kat watched Will disappear, a warm smile on her face. When Duke caught her eye, she lifted her brows, just like she was saying, “So much for him giving in to money.”

  But when his visage clouded�
��frustration at being proved wrong?—she stopped smiling, feeling a little owned.

  Manipulated.

  It riled her temper, her need to find a way out of the net she’d found herself tangled up in.

  Cool yourself, Kat, she thought. Losing it isn’t going to help at all.

  “Let’s just go watch Chris from the flying bridge,” Kat said to Duke, offering him a graceful way out.

  “Hold it.” Nestor cleared his throat, reminding everyone of his presence at the back of the crowd. “I say we postpone the dives for a spell, just until we straighten a few matters up.”

  But Chris was already on his way toward the cage, pulling Dr. Hopkins along with him. Thank God seeing Duke had brought his verve back.

  “Let’s go!” the boy yelled.

  “Not yet,” Louis headed off after them.

  Nestor took off, too, unsuccessfully urging Chris to come back.

  Arms folded over his chest, Duffy watched the chase, then followed his father. The various gathered crew members traded jaded looks, probably used to the drama of the wealthy, then went back to their jobs.

  That left Duke, surrounded by disapproving women.

  After a tense hesitation, he nodded, his grin sheepish. “Hell, I tried.” Then, growing serious, he turned to Eloise and Alexandra. “Thank you for the concern.”

  As Kat led him away, she noted Alexandra’s pleased expression: The almost-hidden relief of someone who’d positioned her chessboard queen in a very strategic square.

  Before they’d momentarily left their posts to witness all the hubbub, Larry the dreadlocked and Tinkerbell had eased the cage into the water. So, it was just a matter of getting Chris into the last of his gear, linking him to the “hooka regs”—long-hosed regulators that were connected to oxygen tanks on deck—and helping him inside. Since everyone had been prepped on safety, everything was a go.

  As the cage was lowered a couple of feet below the surface, Kat leaned over the flying bridge’s railing with Duke and Dr. Hopkins, who had joined them. The clear water gave them an eagle’s-eye view of the ocean and cage; they could see Chris holding an underwater video camera, see the bubbles gushing upward with his breaths, see the chum—fish scraps, oil, guts, blood—spread into the ocean to attract sharks.

  When the first creature, then the second, appeared, Kat grabbed Duke’s arm, on edge. All that was protecting Chris from a set of dagger-sharp teeth were the cage’s bars and the knife that cage-divers wore strapped to their thighs.

  The sharks began to take passes at some tuna bait.

  “Would you look at that,” Duke said.

  Dr. Hopkins laughed. “Every time I see them, I can’t help feeling like it’s my first time.”

  A ten-footer glided past Chris and the cage. Previously, the doctor had explained that the sharks were conditioned to accept the tourists, but that didn’t guarantee safety—not by a long shot.

  You never know what a shark is going to do, she’d told Kat on their first day together. We’ll be in their territory, their world, and they own it.

  Never forget that.

  “It’s always good to give them some healthy respect,” Dr. Hopkins added, “but as I’ve told you before, even though sharks have been around for thirty million years—and they haven’t changed much in that time, either—we still don’t know a whole lot about them. They still pull the unexpected. For instance, we can be outside of the cage in the water, and never be attacked.”

  Kat’s stomach flipped. “Seriously?”

  “Seriously. In fact, shark attacks in the United States are less frequent than homicides or auto deaths. You’d never know it by the kind of attention the media gives them though, would you?”

  Duke straightened up, creaking with the effort. “Judging by the news, the sea is full of jaws.”

  Without much energy, he squeezed Kat’s arm as he left the flying bridge, saying something about a nap, while the women chattered and watched Chris. From all the doctor’s information these past couple of days, Kat felt confident about her own dive. She wasn’t as afraid of these predators half as much as she’d been back in San Diego, where surfing myths about man-eating sharks ruled the day.

  By this time, the ten-footer had started to “test” the cage bars, as Dr. Hopkins explained. Its teeth had been scraping the aluminum with every pass and, now, it had graduated to biting the cage.

  “When this happens to you,” she said, “just remember that it’s trying to determine what the cage is.”

  “Or if it would make good grub.” Kat wondered if Chris had peed in his suit yet. But she had to hand it to him; he looked real collected down there all by himself.

  Seconds later, one shark had left, but the ten-footer was still hanging out, going back to eat more chum.

  When it finished, it tested the rope that connected the cage to the boat—the lifeline. Kat gasped.

  “Is that okay?”

  “It’ll realize the rope tastes awful.”

  But then it happened.

  The ten-footer gave a powerful yank on the lifeline.

  “Tell me that’s okay, Doctor.”

  Dr. Hopkins backed away from the railing, gazing at the water. She started to walk toward the stairs with Kat.

  Tinkerbell started yelling at Larry.

  The shark wrenched on the rope again.

  Chris’s cage began to float…underneath the boat. A trail of bubbles spurted out of the top. His breathing had gone erratic.

  Kat took off down the stairs, Dr. Hopkins on her tail.

  Grasping for breath, she came to stand by Larry. He’d retrieved another lifeline and was ready to throw it toward the cage for Chris to grab.

  “Is that going to work?” Kat asked.

  A jagged voice cut the air. “What’s happening?”

  Will. Calm, in control, green-blue eyes blazing.

  “Old Ten Speed got a hold of the lifeline,” Larry said, gesturing toward the shark, who’d deserted the rope and resubmerged. A faint thud from the bottom of the boat spoke for the peril of Chris in his cage.

  Will leaned over the vessel’s side. “Did he tear it? How—?”

  Kat joined him, heart thudding until it beat in her ears. “What can we do?”

  He leaned over further, inspecting the rope. The length was taut, moaning with tension.

  “Shit,” Will said, a hint of fear in his tone.

  Kat saw the problem. The strands were splitting and every push of the current weakened them as the rope was stretched.

  Will looked ready to kill. “I inspected everything myself before we started. That rope should withstand more than a test bite.”

  She knew the cage couldn’t be hauled in the old-fashioned way. “Can’t we all grab the rope below where it’s damaged and bring it in?”

  Even as she said it, she knew it was an idiotic question. There wasn’t enough length between the cage and the yielding strands for them to get leverage.

  Will pushed away from the boat’s edge. “Larry, get your lifeline in the water.”

  “And what happens if Chris can’t grab it?” she asked.

  She didn’t really expect an answer, especially since Will was already holding the rope below the frayed strands, his arms in the water, muscles straining as he battled to keep the cage from floating to the bottom of the ocean.

  “Are you loco?” she yelled, her pent-up emotion for him coming out as anger.

  “I think Ten Speed is gone!” a voice said from the flying bridge. It was Shaw, on watch. “I don’t get any readings on the equipment!”

  And then the crap really hit the fan.

  At first, Kat only heard the bubbles. But then she saw it.

  Chris’s regulator mouthpiece, still hooked to the hose. It was dancing in the water like an agitated snake.

  Which meant Chris wasn’t getting any air.

  She didn’t stop to think. Pulling the diving hood over her head, Kat dashed over to her fins and mask, boarded the swim step at the back of the boat,
spat in her mask, rinsed it then jammed that and her fins on. She heard someone yelling at her, but she was already treading in the warm water before the words made any sense.

  “Kat, we’re not positive that shark is gone for good!”

  It’d been Will’s voice, serrated with frantic concern.

  But she’d think about Will…and everything else…later.

  All that mattered now was Chris.

  This is just another day at the pearl show, that’s all, she thought to herself, sucking air into her lungs and bobbing up in order to dive under. If she needed more, she could go to Chris’s abandoned regulator, but there was no time now.

  Slipping under the waterline, she was enveloped and felt welcomed, as usual. Steeped in the blue of a beautifully forbidden place.

  A place that could be hiding death.

  Balancing between her normal fear and exhilaration, she swam under the boat, the echo of her heartbeat filling the universe. The fear kept her from looking behind her. She was afraid of what she might find.

  Instead, she immediately locked on to the cage. Chris was holding his breath, pushing at the top of the structure in order to get out.

  Was it stuck?

  When he saw her, a bubble of surprised gratitude escaped him, and she signaled for him to calm down. Then, working smoothly, telling herself that undoing a cage was no trickier than collecting an oyster, she pulled at the top hatch, which really was jammed.

  Adrenaline spiking her to action, Kat braced her feet against the boat, pushing the cage away from it. Bubbles of air flew out of her mouth, every one a countdown to possible failure.

  She was getting dizzy, but it didn’t matter. All she knew was that the hatch was opening and Chris was squirming out, that she had to get him back to the boat before…

  Chris’s eyes widened behind his mask, and Kat didn’t look.

  Couldn’t look.

  Her chest drew into itself, her pulse beating through her suit.

  Up…boat…get Chris out of here…

  Dr. Hopkins’s lectures slashed through her mind: It’s their territory, so it’s better to leave them to it than challenge them for it.

  Remember, you can meet a shark without being attacked, but don’t count on it.

  Never make sudden moves; they’ll think you’re wounded prey.