She hiked her mask to her forehead and tried to ride high in the waves. “We’re alright, Wes. They’re gone. You handled them.”
“I was lucky. And you saved my ass down there.”
“Only after you saved us both.” She worked at re-inflating her BC to keep her afloat.
Wes backed away and treaded water. He still didn’t look altogether well. Becca had her BC figured out and now looked around for the Solorio’s boat. Nowhere in sight. “That’s not good,” she said. They were close enough to the island that gathering waves lifted them and pushed them gradually toward shore.
“What do we do now?” Wes asked.
“We don’t see a boat in a few minutes, we’re going to have to brave those rocks and see if we can make it to land.” She eyed the rocks doubtfully. Looked like a good way to get oneself bashed to pieces.
“So it was Ernesto and Tomás down there,” Wes said. “They must have come after us, then sped off in their boat. That first guy was strong. Must have been Tomás. I think I cut him hard.”
Becca wasn’t convinced. “But where was the Solorios’ gear? I didn’t see anything on the boat. And those guys had dive skins. If that was the Solorios, they’d have had to change, check their gear, and come right down.”
“We were down twenty, thirty minutes before we saw them. They had time.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” A wave washed over Becca’s face and she wiped at her eyes.
“Come on, Becca. Someone tries to kill us and then we come up and the Solorios are gone. You sure you’re not giving them the benefit of the doubt because they seem nice? Because they seem trustworthy?”
“Only you didn’t tell Ernesto until we were on the boat about your uncle’s dive. He seemed surprised. And we didn’t say anything about Rosa.”
“Maybe they adlibbed,” Wes said. “They got talking once we went down and decided we’d done something to Rosa and they were going to come do something about it.” There was doubt in his voice. “If not, where the hell are they?”
“Someone could have followed us out and chased them off. They attacked us, swam for the surface and drove off in their own boat.”
“What about that yellow speedboat?” he asked. “The one off starboard when we were coming out? Think it was following us?”
“Yeah, maybe. Looked like it was circling around the other side of the island, but it might have backtracked.”
A wave lifted and separated them. Wes swam back to her side. “One way or another, I’m going to pay a visit to Ernesto Solorio when we get back to Agujitas.”
“Assuming we can get out of here.” Becca spotted something in the direction of the mainland. “That looks like a boat, there.” A largish boat, drifting in the waves a couple of hundred yards away. White against blue. She saw fishing poles.
“Think we can trust them?” Wes frowned suddenly and bent as if fiddling with his flippers. “Something just bumped me. Did you see that shark when we were coming up?”
“No.” And a good thing, too. She’d had enough to worry about without freaking out about sharks.
“Probably nothing, but I want to have a look.”
They pulled on their masks and ducked their heads into the water. All the schools of silvery fish, all the colorful reef dwellers and big, lazy swimmers, now gone. Only sharks. White tips, maybe twenty in all.
Wes and Becca came up at the same time. She didn’t like the worried look on his face. “Not good,” he said. “Not with that blood. Remember what I said about white tips?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, forget about the boat. We’ll have to brave those rocks.”
Chapter Nineteen:
The sharks grew insistent as Wes and Becca swam for shore. Becca fought down her terror. Each time they nudged her legs with their snouts, she kicked wildly. Stupid. At best, wasted energy. At worst, it might encourage the sharks to think she was injured prey.
Wes was a strong swimmer. She’d seen it underwater and again now. He could have easily swam for shore, still some distance away, and left her with the sharks. Instead, he held up for her.
“Just keep moving,” Wes said. Voice calm again. He fumbled with the straps on her BC, and when she gave it over, thinking that he’d drop it, was surprised to see him put it on. He said, “Bernd’s already going to be pissed without losing all your gear, too.”
And it was his measured words, the way he was thinking about mundane details like returning the gear rather than swimming in pure terror that calmed her. He wasn’t worried about the sharks—or at least, he was going to heroic lengths to assure her that he wasn’t—and she shouldn’t either. She forced herself to be calm and ignore the bumps.
And sure enough, the sharks left them alone a few minutes later, as Wes and Becca left the dive spot behind and the blood in the water. Instead, Wes and Becca fought with the surf pounding against the ring of volcanic boulders that protected the approach to the island. The waves lifted them, carried them forward. They struggled toward the south and an empty stretch of beach at the edge of forest.
Becca was exhausted by the time they cleared the rocks. Wes told her to relax on her back. He hooked her under the chin and scissor-kicked his way into the shallows. From there, they let the surf carry them to the beach. It was all Becca could do to drag herself from the water and she collapsed just beyond the line where surf and sand met.
Wes pulled off Becca’s BC and tossed it higher onto shore. They stripped off their flippers. Wes had also lost one. Becca rolled onto her back, enjoying the warm sun and the cool breeze.
And she started to laugh. A moment later and he was laughing with her. It was nervous laughter, mixed with the sudden release of tension.
“Ah, good times,” she said with a touch of irony. “Attacked underwater. A swim in shark infested waters.” She felt jubilant. She’d faced danger and survived. “Notice how they’re always infested? Never shark stuffed waters, or shark plagued waters.”
“Sharks, thick as flies,” Wes offered. “Shark encrusted? Pregnant with sharks?”
“How about, so many sharks they blotted out the sun?”
“They just don’t have the same ring to them,” Wes said.
“No, I guess not.” Becca climbed to her feet a couple of minutes later. “What now?”
“I think there’s a ranger station on the island somewhere. Our best bet is to find a trail, follow it, and see if we can find the place. The island can’t be that big.”
Becca considered. “We’re going to have a hell of a time explaining ourselves. Without calling in the police or something, I mean.”
“I’m not ready for that,” Wes said. He rose to his feet and they walked across the sand, lugging the remaining gear. “You know, you can’t go wrong by playing the stupid tourist card. You might get in trouble, but people will believe you.”
“So what are you thinking?” They walked along the edge of the forest, looking for a trail.
“How about this?” Wes said. “We went diving, then convinced the boat owner to drop us off to spend the night on the island.”
She responded as if she were talking to the ranger. “What do you mean that’s against the rules? We had no idea. Really? How were we supposed to know the island is a protected sanctuary? Anyway, he couldn’t bring the boat in too close, and well, something, something, and the end result is we lost some of our gear.”
“All that sounds better than telling the truth and bringing the police into it before we know anything,” Wes said.
They found a trail. It was steep, and with rocks and jutting roots to make a barefoot hike painful and difficult. It was out of the sun, thankfully, but the air was hot and humid. The sea water didn’t evaporate so much as be replaced by their own sweat.
Becca said, “About not knowing anything. That’s not totally true. We know we can’t trust the Solorios.”
“Assuming they were the other divers,” Wes said.
“And even if they weren’t, they left us behind. And w
e know that your uncle didn’t suffer nitrogen narcosis. He must have died in some other way.”
“Damn suspicious,” Wes said. “Whatever, I’m going to get it out of them one way or another.”
The forest was alive with sound: birds, lizards racing across the dead leaves, animals in the canopy overhead, running water out of sight. They had to push aside vines and branches and take their steps with care. Within minutes, sweat stung Becca’s eyes and pooled along the inside of her dive skin.
“I have got so much sand up and down my dive skin it’s not funny,” Wes said. He set down Becca’s tank to shake at his dive skin.
Becca had the same problem. They’d crawled the last several feet through the sand kicked up by the surf, then lay down on dry land. Over time, the sand had worked up to her crotch.
The sound of running water grew until they came to a stream running next to, and occasionally over, the trail. Then there was a waterfall, about twelve feet high, spilling into a cool, clear pool. They scooped up water to drink. Avoiding stomach bugs took a back seat to extreme thirst.
Wes slipped into the water and did a shimmy to get water down his dive skin to wash out the sand. Becca wore her bikini underneath hers and simply slipped out of the damn thing and climbed into the water. It was blessedly cool.
She swam to the waterfall. “You sure we have to go back?”
“Of course.” He swam to her side and they treaded water together. “The Solorios know what happened to my uncle. They were there, they must have seen.” He did a breast stroke toward the shallows and she came over to stand next to him. The water came just above his waist, a little higher on her.
“I’m not talking about the mainland. I’m talking about going back to the U.S.” As soon as she said it, she felt the weight of her job and the pressures of Riverwood on her shoulders. What about that failed inspection, anyway? The state would write up a list of remedies, and—and she wasn’t going there right now. “I’m only half joking. We can get a beach house of our own, maybe open a little dive shop…”
Wes lifted his left eyebrow. “We?”
Becca stopped. It was a careless remark and worse, she remembered her clumsy handling of the other night when Wes had been about to kiss her and the even clumsier moment after she’d climbed into his bed. She’d told herself that going to his room was about being scared, or talking, but had reexamined her motives in the morning and realized that she’d been giving him a second chance to try something.
She blew it off. “Yeah, that’s pretty cliché. Expats move to paradise and open a business. Cater to foreigners like themselves, while hiring the locals for a dollar an hour.”
“And price the locals out of the real estate market at the same time,” he added. Then, in a quieter voice, “What are you doing, Becca?”
“Doing? That we stuff? That’s called banter, Wes. Maybe even flirting. It doesn’t mean anything.”
“It doesn’t mean anything to you. Is that what you mean?”
“Listen, Wes. We just about got killed back there. And yeah, that was kick-ass how you took care of those guys. If I were someone else, I’d say it was pretty hot. Not to mention that stuff with the sharks, and the way you carried my vest and tank.”
He looked genuinely confused and sank halfway into the water. “What does that have to do with anything?”
She laughed, and regretted it at once for sounding more dismissive than she meant. “You know what I’m talking about. We’ve got a little danger going. We’re sitting in a pool underneath a waterfall. Oh, and I’m already half-naked and you’re wearing a dive skin you could slip out of in about two seconds—probably should slip out of to wash the sand out of your ass. Of course you want to kiss me.”
But Wes wasn’t pulling away, he was drawing closer. She had to look up to meet his gaze and found herself caught in its intensity.
He said, “All that’s true. But two weeks from now we might be sitting on the couch at Riverwood, surrounded by residents in wheelchairs and wearing those silly half-scrubs with name tags and guess what? I’ll be fantasizing about being right here, only you wouldn’t be arguing with me, you’d be kissing me and my hands would be in your hair, your hands on my back, and your legs would be wrapped around my waist so our bodies could be closer.”
“Ooh, you’re good.”
And then he was kissing her. Somehow, while she sat there, stunned, because Andrew had never talked to her like that, he had leaned down and kissed her. And he’d hooked his hand around her head so she couldn’t pull away. She didn’t want to pull away.
Andrew, that spineless fool. Moved across the country to break up with her. And still, he hadn’t been able to do the deed, not by phone or by email. Only when she had her plane tickets in hand, the arrangements all made for a ski vacation at Tahoe. Only then had he blown her off.
Wes was nothing like that. He knew exactly what he wanted. He wanted to take care of his brother, to find out what happened to his uncle. People had threatened him, then tried to kill him and he had taken care of them. Kicked their asses, in fact.
Becca pulled away at last. She was breathing hard. She’d already hooked one leg around his waist, just as he’d imagined, and now she extracted it. “God, this is so wrong.”
“You keep saying that. Is it the age difference? It’s just four years and if I don’t care, why should you?”
“No.”
“Your boyfriend?”
“Ex-boyfriend,” she corrected.
“I mean, is it too soon?”
“No. I mean, yes, it’s too soon. But it’s not just that.”
“Then what, Becca? You just don’t like me that much?”
She laughed at the intense look on his face. He returned a tentative smile. “Wes, you’re just not serious about this. I can tell. It’s a vacation fling. Another time, another place, I might go along. Could be fun. But yeah, I’m still hurting. And that cuts down on the horniness, you know.”
Wes nodded and then waded toward the edge of the pool. “I’m sorry, Becca. For pushing. I misread you. But I’m not apologizing about the vacation fling thing.” He shook his head. “That’s not me. I thought you’d know that by now.” He climbed out of the water and picked up the gear. “Because I’m a direct kind of guy, I’m just going to say that yeah, I’m interested. Costa Rica, Vermont, wherever. I’m putting that out there if you ever want to do anything with it.”
Becca picked up the flippers, and followed, at a loss for a snappy comeback. There was absolutely nothing wrong with Wesley Pilson. He was everything that she’d wanted from Andrew.
And it occurred to her that maybe the problem wasn’t Wes, or even Andrew, the problem was herself. It was a sobering and depressing thought.
#
The ranger, a man named Nelson Palomar, looked irritated as Wes told their story in a mix of English and broken Spanish. A few sentences of fluent, Costa Rican-accented Spanish and the man might grow suspicious. As it was, he seemed to believe every word Wes told him. Probably seen it before.
Thing was, tourists everywhere proved adept at getting themselves in trouble. The wounds, as often as not, were self-inflicted. As such, why wouldn’t the ranger think they’d washed ashore without boat, bedding, or brains?
Palomar gave them a lecture, which amounted to, “wise up, losers,” said he would take them to the mainland when he took the boat to Agujitas that evening, and waved the park entrance fee since they obviously wouldn’t be doing any more barefoot hiking. He didn’t even press too hard for the name of the local imbéciles who had agreed to drop two tourists on the island.
It was dusk when Palomar’s boat pulled into the dock at Agujitas. Wes could see the Land Rover, still parked where he’d left it. They thanked Palomar, who couldn’t resist giving them one final lecture about how easy it was for the stupid or unwary to kill themselves in Costa Rica. They did their best to look sheepish.
Once the ranger disappeared in the direction of the pulpería, Wes pulled Becca aside.
He found a place in the shadows, partially hidden by a palm tree and watched the town and docks for anything suspicious. A couple of boys played soccer by the fading light. A man rode by on a horse, holding the reins of a second, riderless horse. Two men tended to their fishing nets while another fished off the docks with a young girl.
“Can’t be hard to find the Solorios,” he said. “Just wanted to make sure nobody was waiting for us.”
“What do we do when we find them? Tell them what we know? Accuse them of attacking us?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “We’re stuck here anyway, since I left the car keys in my shorts on the boat. And I’m not leaving here until I find out what the hell happened out there.”
He palmed Becca’s dive knife, then stowed the dive gear beneath the Land Rover. Wes tried the boys playing soccer first. Of course they knew the Solorios, the oldest boy said. In fact, they lived in the house with the painted red door, just down that street. He pointed.
Barefoot and still wearing dive skins, they followed the boy’s directions. “Come with me to the door,” Wes told Becca. “But keep an eye on the street. Warn me if you see anything funny.”
The house was blue, apart from the red door, and tucked between two fruit trees. Laundry stretched on a line across the yard and a table and chairs sat on a small, but neatly swept stone patio. Light spilled from inside. A radio blared music.
A man leaned against the outer wall of the house, smoking a cigarette. It was Ernesto’s son, Tomás. Wes stepped into the yard and approached quickly. Tomás looked up, started, and dropped his cigarette. But before he could move toward the house, Wes was in his face. He grabbed the man’s shirt in one hand and threatened with the dive knife in the other. Tomás babbled in Spanish.
Wes grew enraged as the memories of the underwater attack and the swim from the sharks came flooding back. He gave Tomás a shake. “Cállate, pendejo.” He continued in Spanish. “Call your father. Do it, right now.”
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