Karen Harper - Below The Surface

He went out and slammed the door.

On the way out to the dive site in the boat, Mermaids I, with Manny at the wheel, Cole’s thoughts were flying as fast as the white wake they left behind. He’d been trying to come up with additional arguments for why this dive was a bad idea, but he knew he’d do the same thing in Bree’s place. Unless he tied her up, he figured he couldn’t stop her, so he had to go along to be certain nothing happened to her. He knew she was going, with or without him.

Then, too, she’d convinced him that she could sense that Daria was alive. He knew nothing firsthand about that intense kind of simpatico relationship with another person, but he’d read identical twins could be that way, and he’d never seen twins who were more mirror images of each other. He’d studied a framed photo of them in their apartment, a formal, posed picture where they were evidently bridesmaids at someone’s wedding. They were beautiful women. If he ever saw Briana smile, he could probably tell one from the other, because one of them had a slightly lopsided grin, with a sort of bet-you-can’t-guess-what-I’m-thinking look.

He was coming to know Briana, and he figured he knew Daria a bit, too, so this felt doubly personal to him. Another reason that he was literally along for the ride, even though he should have been installing Brazilian cherry in the salon on a big yacht in Naples today, was that he’d quickly come to admire Bree so much. She had not gotten hysterical and had seemed in control, when most women he knew would be frantic wrecks by now. Jillian’s first response to any trauma had been tears and tantrums, so he was totally impressed with this woman. Impressed and just plain turned-on, even in these terrible circumstances.

Cole tried to listen carefully as Bree told him things he should know about the dive. Though she was speaking over the roar of the motor, she wasn’t talking loudly enough, and sometimes he had to almost read her lips. Like Cole, Manny seemed to be straining forward to hear her. Instead of facing her, Cole moved to sit beside her, edging her over a bit.

“Motor’s too loud to hear you!” he told her, only to see her cringe. “What is it? What’s the matter?”

“I agree about the motor. Your voice—I’m hearing sounds sharper than I did before, that’s all. It’s nothing. Okay, I’ll start over. First off, if you’re used to diving in the Caribbean or even in the Keys, the water’s going to look really different here, not so clear. We’ll both take dive lights. Manny brought two dive lights along, didn’t you, Manny?” she asked, craning around toward the back of the boat so he could hear her.

She almost bumped noses with Manny since he was leaning so close to her. “Always got two of everything on board,” Manny told her, sitting up straighter. “Usually for you and Daria.”

Bree just nodded. When she turned back toward him, Cole saw she had tears in her eyes.

“Go on,” he prompted. He was grateful she seemed to be thinking clearly, despite the fact her emotions were right on the edge.

“We’re only going down to thirty feet,” she explained, “so we won’t have to decompress, but we’ll take a three-minute safety stop at fifteen feet, both entering and ascending. The wreck lies in a small, natural trough.”

“What’s the visibility at that depth?”

“Vis varies a lot out here, from six inches to sixty feet, but since we evidently aren’t getting a storm today, it could have settled down to ten or twelve, especially since the incoming tide will bring in clearer water. I’ve got to find that camera.”

“Let’s just say we’ll check for the anchor today. Set reasonable goals. We can’t search a vast area on this dive.”

As if she didn’t hear that, when he knew she did, she continued. “The camera’s in a plastic housing, which mutes the red color I’ve painted it, especially since all reds disappear about fifteen feet down. At the depth we’re diving, everything will look green, yellow or blue.”

“I remember. Bree, we should keep this dive short.”

“We need to cover a certain area,” she countered.

Cole was not used to being told what to do. Damn, this woman was stubborn, but maybe that came with being strong.

“I never would have done a dive alone that day,” she admitted, suddenly changing the topic. She kept fussing with her mask she held in her lap. “But Manny needed time to patch up the generation gap with his daughter and couldn’t go. It was the fifty-seventh dive we’d made at the Trade Wreck without incident, photographing and recording the growth of the turtle grass there. Daria had a really bad toothache that came on fast, so I said I’d go down alone. It only takes about twenty-five minutes. The storm was a distant line on the horizon, and the marine weather forecast hadn’t mentioned it could come in so fast or hard.”

“I know. So you anchored nearby but not where the anchor could disturb the site,” Cole said, when she frowned out over the water.

“Right. The submerged aquatic vegetation—SAV—is very delicate and not doing well. We always joked that our motto for this Clear the Gulf Commission project would be Save Our SAV.”

Her voice trailed off and her eyes took on a faraway look. Was she seeing a scene with her sister? He bumped her shoulder gently, and she seemed to come back from wherever she’d been. He was going to have to stick close to her down there, though she was obviously the more skilled diver.

She went on. “The report we were preparing to give the commission—and the media—next week would not be good news. The poor and declining quantity and quality of the sea grass indicates that the whole marine ecosystem here is still struggling from the increasing industrial and toxic runoff. Too many people means too much pollution, and that extends to the Trade Wreck sea grass meadow, which we’re using as a sort of touchstone and symbol for the health of this entire area of the gulf. And it’s sick.”

“A dire report could mean cutbacks, penalties and political fallout for lots of important people. When the foundation of the marine food chain is screwed up, it’s trouble for every living organism all the way up to humans, and that equates to millions of dollars in fishing, real estate and the tourist trade. Had you told anybody about your findings already?” he asked.

“We weren’t keeping it a secret,” she admitted. “You’re thinking someone might want to warn us or stop us from releasing that? But everyone with interests in those things you just mentioned would want the environment to stay safe. They’d want to know what our report says so the situation can be fixed by concerned citizens, environmentalists, scientists, politicians—everyone.”

“Back to our dive. We can’t search the entire area for a camera.”

“I’m hoping it snagged on either the Trade Wreck or another artificial reef nearby.”

He nodded. “I heard there’s one about three miles off Keewadin, where you came in.”

“Right, the Stone Reef. That one’s not a wreck but limestone boulders. I don’t know if the camera would just go to the smooth, sandy bottom and stay put, or if the tides and currents would move it south until it snagged in one reef or the other.”

“So what’s the Trade Wreck like?”

“It’s a supply ship sunk in the late 1930s, made of wood and metal. It broke apart but what’s there is pretty well preserved.”

“Do you use GPS coordinates to locate the site? I don’t see that equipment on board.”

“Our only GPS is on the bigger boat, but we’ve been out here so much, it’s half instinct and half compass coordinates. You’ll be glad to know it’s ordinarily a safe dive, with no sharks out here. I think the rough water or sudden change in barometric pressure from the storm yesterday stirred them up.”