Shark Beach

by Chris Jameson

  “Mom!” she called. “Mom, look!”

  But even as she pointed, she could not spot the fin again. Her mother and Mrs. Hautala scanned the waves to see what had alarmed Kelsey and then both women were working their way closer to her in the water. Kelsey heard splashing behind her and turned to see Emma and Jesse crashing across the waves toward her.

  “What’s the matter, kid?” Emma asked.

  Kelsey would normally bristle. She hated when her sister called her “kid.” In that moment, she barely noticed.

  Her mother said her name, but Kelsey continued to stare out at the Gulf, scanning the surface, a chill spreading through her in spite of the warmth of the water.

  Her mother put a hand on her shoulder, sunk into the water so they were side by side and almost face-to-face. “Hey, honey. What is it?”

  “A shark.” Giving up on finding that fin again, she turned to look at her mother. “There’s a shark out there. I saw it swimming.”

  Her mother make the trademarked Corinne Scully you’re-imagining-things face. “Kelsey, there are all kinds of sea creatures out here. Manatees and stingrays and tons and tons of dolphins. If you saw a fin, I’m sure that’s what it was—a dolphin.”

  “Mom, no—”

  “Honey, trust me. I kind of flipped out a little the other day myself, but it was a dolphin. Of course it was. I know it’s scary to think there might be a shark, but trust me. The dolphins are super-friendly, and even if there was a shark, the dolphins would beat the crap out of it and scare it away. That’s what they do. They’re not afraid.”

  Kelsey glanced back out to where she’d seen the fin. It was nowhere in sight, but she started backing away toward the sand regardless.

  “Maybe they’re not afraid, but I am.”

  She practically backed into Emma, who dropped into the water and started swimming toward her, making the noises from the movie Jaws with her mouth halfway in the water, so bubbles shot up. It might have been funny, but Kelsey didn’t feel like laughing when Emma reached for her under the water, baring her teeth as she tried to bite her sister.

  “Stop!” Kelsey shouted, slapping her arm.

  Her mother snapped at her, then glanced embarrassingly at Mrs. Hautala. “We never should have let her watch that movie. She’s too young.”

  Whatever Mrs. Hautala said in response was drowned out by Emma doing her Jaws music again and diving after Kelsey.

  “When did you get to be so scared of everything?” Emma teased her.

  Kelsey fixed her with a murderous glare. “About the same time you started drooling over Jesse.”

  Emma’s jaw dropped and her eyes went wide. Her face had gone pale beneath her Florida tan, and she stood swaying in the waves as if she had abruptly frozen. Jesse stood just behind her, over Emma’s left shoulder, and he had heard Kelsey’s words with crystal clarity. Kelsey stared back at his sister and at Jesse, knowing that she could never put the words back into her mouth.

  “Kelsey,” their mother said. “I think that’s enough.”

  For her part, Emma continued to gasp like a fish on the shore sucking air. Jesse didn’t look amused the way Kelsey had expected. Instead he seemed awkward and embarrassed and uncomfortable.

  “Fine,” Kelsey said. “Don’t believe me.”

  Maybe it had been a dolphin, like her mother said. That did make more sense, but the way she had been dismissed had stung, and now Emma looked like she wanted to strangle her. Kelsey turned and waded toward the shore, wishing she could do a bit of dramatic stomping and storming away but feeling impeded by the water.

  When she reached the sand, she was surprised to see her father sitting on a beach towel, watching her with a smile on his face. What surprised her even more was the absence of his cell phone. It was just Rick Scully in a vintage Soundgarden concert T-shirt and a bright-orange, tropical-patterned bathing suit, and a pair of a sunglasses to protect his eyes. No hat, no flip-flops, no book or beer or any other distractions.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  “Hey, pumpkin. You and your sister fighting again?”

  He asked without judgment, without admonishment.

  Kelsey smiled. “I saw a shark. Mom says it was a dolphin—which it probably was—but Emma decided to be her usual cranky self.”

  “Well, you can hang here with me,” he said, and then a shadow crossed his features and he hesitated. “If you want to, of course.”

  Kelsey had always resented how much her father worked and how often he was on the phone when he should have been paying more attention to her, or Emma, or their mom, but she had never realized just how much it had bothered her until the rush of pleasure she felt now at its absence.

  “Sure!” she said happily, and plopped herself down beside him, sharing the towel. They sat for a minute or two, just watching the family, and Jesse and his mom.

  “That shipwreck is so cool,” he said. “I’d like to get some photos before they remove it.”

  “How do you think they’ll do that?” She frowned, trying to imagine it.

  “They’ll tow it away somehow, take it somewhere to study. But it’s going to be a while. They have a lot more important things to worry about. Repairs and injuries and getting people off the island who need to go.”

  Kelsey stared at the shipwreck, wondering if she could get inside. She would have loved to take a closer look. Once they towed it to wherever they would tow it, she figured the best she would be able to do would be to look at pictures that would eventually show up online.

  Her dad nudged her. “Hey. I’m really sorry this happened in the middle of our vacation. It’s a scary thing, I know, but we’re all going to be fine.”

  “I know. It’s not your fault. You can’t control Mother Nature. And we have days to go. There are tons of things I still want to do, but…”

  Her words trailed off as she gazed back and forth along the Gulf and saw the cleanup and the small number of people, and remembered how desolate and damaged Andy Rosse Lane had been that morning.

  “What’s tops on your list?” he asked. “The one thing you really don’t want to go home without doing?”

  She thought of that fin. “Dolphin watch! That sightseeing trip where you go to the island and gather shells, and do the dolphin watch along the way.”

  “Dolphin watch,” he repeated. “Okay. As soon as the boats are running again, we’ll take one of those tours.”

  Kelsey smiled. The fin she’d seen still made her a little nervous, no matter what her mother said, but as long as her parents were with her, she knew she would be safe. They’d already made it through a hurricane—and dolphins weren’t scary, they were sweet.

  Just a dolphin, she thought again.

  Just a dolphin.

  * * *

  Nadia throttled the WaveRunner and felt the thrum of it run up her thighs and throughout her body. Her ribs rattled and her teeth chattered as she bounced the machine over a wave, and its bottom smashed back down onto the water. Spray hit her face and she laughed as the engine sang. She nearly let go of the throttle but managed to hold on. Her sunglasses were covered with droplets but she didn’t dare lift a hand to wipe them.

  Heart pounding, Nadia glanced over her shoulder and spotted Simone racing along in her wake. It had felt like a race until that moment, because instead of chasing, Simone had decided to play, zipping back and forth in Nadia’s wake.

  Something struck Nadia’s WaverRunner and she let out a cry. Her grip weakened and the engine screamed as she nearly flew off the back of the machine, barely holding on by her fingertips as it tipped to the left. In an instant, she had her grip again and turned out to sea, heading straight for the next wave even as she realized she had almost capsized because she hadn’t been paying attention. While she had been looking at Simone, she had let herself get parallel to a big wave.

  Stupid, girl, she thought. You told the GulfDaze guys you knew what you were doing.

  Her heart skipped along like the WaveRunner, but she had wrested cont
rol back—both of the machine and of her emotions. It had surprised her that the rental business had been willing to put WaveRunners in the water so soon after the hurricane, but she figured that people marooned on Captiva needed something to do and the owners weren’t averse to making a buck. The ream of indemnity documents she had signed would let them off the hook if she crashed or drowned or if a fucking comet fell from the sky and obliterated her.

  Also, she had begged. Simone had teased her mercilessly about it afterward, but they had gotten their WaveRunners. The absurdly handsome, shaggy, bearded, and tanned beach bum at the counter had even brought them down to the beach himself. The hurricane had been moving fast, he’d said, and the surf had calmed down considerably even since the morning. Now it was mid-afternoon and they were open for business thanks to Nadia’s pleading.

  Something brown flashed below her, visible in the clear water, and Nadia circled back to get a better look. A trio of stingrays—one nearly the size of her WaveRunner—swam beneath the surface, beautiful and alien in their slow progress. A shame, she thought, that the others were missing this. Tyler and Kevin had walked over to the other side to rent kayaks, which while calmer, was at least its own brand of adventure, but Marianna and Rashad had chosen to stay behind entirely. Rashad claimed it was because he wanted a better look at the shipwreck and to talk to anyone who came to investigate it, but Nadia thought he had stayed behind only because Marianna was the world’s most massive wimp, too scared for a kayak, never mind a WaveRunner. And maybe because Rashad wanted to get into her pants, though if so, he hid it well.

  She had slowed down. Now she spun the WaveRunner around and throttled up again, scouting for Simone. She spotted her friend in the distance and aimed the nose of the machine toward her. Zipping over the waves, she scanned the beach, and the view tarnished her happy buzz a little. From this vantage point it was easy to see some of the damage: downed trees, a roof torn right off a house, The Mucky Duck’s still-boarded-up windows. There were so few people out there and no umbrellas, just some hardy, stranded souls and the old shattered boat that had washed up in the storm.

  Nadia shook off the worries—there was nothing she could do about their situation except make the best of the rest of their vacation, and she intended to do that. She spotted Simone again and adjusted her path to head straight for her. As she did, she saw Simone waving a hand, trying to get her attention, as if she wasn’t already headed that direction.

  Nadia let out a long, ululating cry of triumph as she bounced over the water, but her hands had started to ache and her butt hurt from smashing down onto the seat. They had another twenty minutes or so, and she wanted to head farther out to sea, but first she would see if she could recruit Simone.

  She throttled down. The engine’s whine softened and then began to putt and choke as she slid over toward Simone.

  “Having fun?” she called.

  Simone gestured to a churning bit of water about fifty feet away. A wave rose and the WaveRunners crested over it and slid down the other side, and then Nadia saw what had gotten her friend so excited. A pod of dolphins circled and submerged and rose again, as if the entire group were in some kind of aquatic dolphin ballet.

  Delighted, Nadia held onto the handlebars and stood up on the WaveRunner, not wanting to rev the engine again and scare them off. “Oh my God,” she said. “They’re so adorable!”

  Simone didn’t seem to share her delight. Instead of a smile, she knitted her brows and pointed. “No, check it out. There’s something going on. They’re up to something.”

  The waves undulated beneath them, rocking the WaveRunners, and Nadia gave the engine a little gas, nudging closer to the dolphins. One after another, they darted forward, diving deeper, then swimming quickly away. Nadia smiled in wonder, thinking it must be a game. Dolphins were playful and curious and intelligent, and all her life she’d felt a special bond with them. As a little girl, she’d seen them at the aquarium and from that day on she had cherished them, from her first plush stuffed dolphin to the small tattoo on her left thigh.

  “Oh my God,” she said in delight. “I’m in love.”

  “No,” Simone said sharply. “Something’s wrong.”

  Nadia rolled her eyes. She loved Simone—the girl was like a sister to her—but when she was in the wrong mood she could bleed the fun out of anything. Why had Simone even called her over here if she was going to be such a buzzkill?

  “Don’t be like that,” she said. “They’re just—”

  But they weren’t just anything. Nadia saw the other fin, the one that didn’t look anything like a dolphin’s—larger and thicker, the body below displacing more water—and she felt herself go numb. A sound issued from her lips that might have been words or just a whimper. Her grip tightened on the handlebars and her right hand tensed, ready to twist the throttle.

  “Simone,” she said, half-turning away from the dolphins and that other fin. “Do you see—”

  The second shark erupted from the water with such force that it created its own wave, tipping Nadia’s WaveRunner hard to the left. She lost her grip, began to flail, and would have fallen off if the shark hadn’t reached her first. Its jaws struck her with such force that she felt the impact more than the rending of its teeth. The air blew out of her lungs as its massive body traversed the air above her WaveRunner and then plunged her down into the churning water.

  The last sound she heard was Simone screaming.

  Eyes wide, shrieking into the ocean as the shark dragged her deeper, she tried to suck in air and choked as she began to drown. Teeth tore deeper, her own blood fogged the water around her, and the shark whipped her back and forth, its jaws ripping her apart. The panic and sorrow, the single moment of understanding her fate, were worse than the pain.

  Her last thought was that she could taste her own blood.

  Darkness claimed her, but the shark had claimed her first.

  CHAPTER 8

  Simone heard herself screaming and stopped.

  She began to tremble, sitting on the back of her WaveRunner. “Nadia? Oh my God,” she said, entirely to herself, as she leaned forward, breath hitching in her throat as she stared at the blood clouding the water, spreading out in the sunshine, diluted and fading. Deep in that cloud, something floated that could only be a part of her friend, and then Simone could not look any more. She dropped her eyes, staring at the seat of the WaveRunner between her legs.

  The machine surged beneath her. Her breath hitched and she held on tightly as it rolled; she whipped around, telling herself it had been a wave. But there had been a slight bump, hadn’t there? Her heart skipped and raced and her lips pressed into a thin line as tears came to her eyes.

  “Nadia,” she said again, but this time the word sounded like a requiem on her lips. It couldn’t have been real, what she had just seen. Sharks only behaved that way with seals and dolphins, and yet she had witnessed it.

  The rational core of her mind had retreated but it had not been erased.

  The dolphins had begun to swim away, the whole pod racing across the water, leaping from the waves with an urgent speed that had nothing to do with play and everything to do with survival. A second cloud of blood blossomed beneath the water near where Nadia’s WaveRunner rocked back and forth. A dolphin had died there, and the others had taken the moment of distraction to run as far and as fast as they could.

  Simone’s heart went still.

  But I’m still sitting here.

  She saw the fin surface twenty yards away and she knew the second shark must be close.

  Her hand twisted the throttle without any conscious thought. She cranked the handlebars to the right and opened up the engine. The machine nearly leaped out from beneath her, but she held on, turning toward shore.

  In her peripheral vision, she saw the second shark burst from the water only feet from where she’d been idling. Shaking, whispering profanity, she watched it crash back down and knew how close she had come.

  Simone bent her
head and aimed for the beach.

  * * *

  Sheriff Arturo Reyes drove his Jeep down the rutted road to the Institute, surprised at how quickly the downed trees had been cleared. Sanibel was a beehive of activity, emergency crews and locals all working quickly to repair the damage, clear the roads, and limit the long-term economic impact of the storm. Captiva hadn’t been so fortunate. Without the bridge at Blind Pass, it would take much longer for the restoration the island required. But even with Sanibel’s comparative good fortune—if millions of dollars in damage could produce anything positive—the Institute had been especially proactive in keeping their operation going.

  Reyes reached the end of the road and entered the parking lot. All the gates were open, but as soon as he passed through, an engine roared to life and he glanced to the left to see a van pulling in to block the entrance. It bore the Institute’s logo on one side.

  There were only half a dozen other vehicles in the lot, and the trees that had fallen here had not been cleared.

  Once he had parked and climbed out of his Jeep, Reyes saw a man emerge from the Institute’s front doors and hurry toward him, hands stuffed in the pockets of his white lab coat. Despite the fact that he lived year-round in Florida, the guy looked pale as a ghost, but as they approached each other, Reyes didn’t think it had anything to do with lack of a tan.

  “You Dr. Tremblay?”

  The man in the lab coat put out his hand. “Sheriff, thanks for coming. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  Reyes shook his hand, studying his face. Dr. Tremblay seemed to be trying to maintain his calm, but he had a tightness around his eyes and mouth that gave him the look of a man on the verge of cracking.

  “You could’ve called the Sanibel Police,” Reyes said. “This is really their jurisdiction.”

  Dr. Tremblay glanced back toward the building. “It’s not, though. Technically the Institute is county land, which puts it squarely in your lap, I’m afraid. If you want to bring in Chief Smalls after we talk, that’s up to you. But I happen to think Rodney Smalls is a grandstanding buffoon who wouldn’t know how to handle any crisis worse than running out of beer during the Super Bowl—and maybe not even that.”