Into the Deep

by Virginia Smith

  “I don’t care how you feel about it,” she shouted into his face. “I want to pray.”

  He matched her volume. “Fine, go ahead. I’m not stopping you.”

  Thick, wet locks of hair slapped her face as she shook her head. “The Bible says if two people agree in prayer, God will do it. You have to pray with me.”

  His eyes swept upward, toward the swiftly darkening sky. “Oh, come on. You haven’t really bought into that garbage, have you?”

  “Pray with me, Ben. Please!” Tears blurred her vision. She clenched her eyes shut and struggled against deep sobs that came out as choking gasps of air. When she opened her eyes, Ben was watching her with increasing alarm.

  “Okay, Nikki.” He released a deep breath. “If you want me to pray, I will. Just don’t get hysterical, okay? We’ve got to keep a level head.”

  Her chest shuddered as she nodded. He only agreed to humor her, but she didn’t care. “Thank you.”

  “So, uh, how do we, you know, do it?” He glanced around, as though looking for an instruction manual to float by. “What do we say?”

  “I’ll talk.” Nikki drew in a deep breath, past the knot in her throat, into lungs that couldn’t be tighter if her chest was being squeezed in the jaws of a whale. “Just close your eyes and listen, and say Amen when I finish.”

  She watched to make sure Ben obeyed. Hysterical laughter simmered in the bottom of her throat when he closed his eyes. Nikki felt it and knew she couldn’t let it out or she’d never be able to stop. Instead, she closed her own eyes and poured her thoughts heavenward.

  “Dear Lord, we’re in a mess, and we need Your help. Please don’t let us die. Keep the sharks away from us, and send somebody to help. The coast guard, maybe, or some night divers or somebody. Anybody. Just, please, get us out of here. In Jesus’s name, Amen.”

  “Amen.” Ben’s response rang with obedience more than reverence. “Do you feel better?”

  Oddly, she did. A comforting sense of peace dulled the sharp edges of the panic that gripped her. She managed a trembling smile and nodded.

  “Well, good. At least one of us does.” His voice, laced with sarcasm, sliced into the air between them. “Now that we got that out of the way, maybe we can put our heads together and come up with a real plan to—”

  His words cut off abruptly. Jaw dangling open, Ben’s gaze focused on something behind her. A jolt of fear electrified her nerves. Had the sharks followed them? She turned, expecting to see a sinister fin heading in their direction. Instead, she saw—

  A boat.

  Running lights illuminated a swath in front of the boat, and the stern light glowed like a beacon above the dark waters through which the boat sped. The hum of the motor reached her an instant later.

  “Help!” Nikki raised her arms and waved, screaming at full volume. “We need help.”

  Ben’s voice joined hers. “Hey, we’re over here!”

  She kicked her fins with frantic movement, and propelled herself upward in the water several feet, shouting the entire time. Beside her, Ben unclipped his flashlight from his BCD and turned it on. He aimed the beam at the boat and waved it back and forth.

  The signal worked. The volume of the motor decreased and the boat slowed. Nikki increased her frenetic waving and pushed her voice to decibels she’d never attained before.

  A voice came to them across the water from the boat’s speaker. “Nadadores, te vemos. Estomos vinlendo ayudar.”

  Nikki had no idea what the Spanish words meant, but Ben’s laughter echoed across the water’s surface. “They see us. They’re coming to help.”

  He continued to wave the light as the boat executed a turn in their direction.

  Nikki’s sobs formed words. “Thank You, God. Thank You.”

  TWELVE

  Ben shivered inside his wrapping of towels and looked at the faces around him. Their rescue boat was a privately chartered deep sea fishing vessel, heading in to shore an hour behind schedule. When he caught sight of the boat, coming so quickly after their prayer, a shiver had swept through his body. A shiver that had nothing at all to do with the temperature of the water. He hadn’t prayed since he was nineteen, when he had begged God to save his mother from cancer. He had not set foot in a church since that day when he was ten and he learned his father’s views on religion, but as he sat beside the hospital bed, he’d made a promise that if God would save Mom, he would start going. That was a promise he didn’t have to keep.

  And yet, Nikki prayed, and a boat showed up to rescue them within seconds. He’d half expected to find it filled with priests or missionaries or something.

  “I’m telling you, folks, you shoulda seen that fish.” The big man wearing a Kentucky Wildcats cap, who definitely wasn’t a priest, spread his hands as far apart as they would go. “I never saw nothing like that in the crick back home. Fought like the wildcat on this here cap, too. Snapped the line just when I was about to get him close enough to net. Hey, Ed, you got pictures on that camera of yours, didn’t you? Show the folks.”

  “Ralph, they don’t want to hear about your fish.” Thankfully, Ed, red faced from too much sun and not enough sunscreen, didn’t produce his camera. “They been through a terrible ordeal.”

  Manuel, the men’s fishing guide, held a white plastic cup beneath the spigot on the water cooler and refilled it. He handed the cup to Nikki, who downed it for the third time. Wrapped in a couple of towels of her own, her violent shaking had finally calmed to an occasional tremble.

  Ben drained his own cup. They were both probably dehydrated from their extended time breathing the extra-dry compressed air under water. When Manuel handed him another cupful, he mumbled, “Gracias,” without looking the man in the face. That Manuel disapproved of his request to not contact the Mexican water patrol was obvious. Censure oozed from the man’s pores and the tightly clamped line of his mouth.

  Thankfully, the boat’s captain had listened to reason. In a whispered conversation in Spanish, while the Kentucky fishermen attended to Nikki, Ben claimed that he and a group of fellow tourists had rented a boat to do some scuba diving on their own. Between too much beer, the hot sun and too little food, things had gotten a bit wild. They’d been left behind, apparently forgotten. But he didn’t want to get his friends in trouble by contacting the police. The captain’s shrewd eyes had pierced into him as he talked, and Ben knew he suspected there was far more to the story than he was being told.

  Most business owners, especially those who made their living from the tourist trade, would have followed the rules and notified the authorities, regardless of the request not to. Whether this captain disliked the police, or he took pity on what he assumed were a couple of traumatized tourists, Ben didn’t know, but he had agreed to return them to the marina without getting the authorities involved.

  Yet another reason for Ben to wonder if this particular boat coming across them at exactly the right moment was, indeed, a coincidence. The policía would ask far too many questions that Ben wasn’t in a position to answer right now, not to mention the fact that he had no identification and no money. Plus, he’d just as soon not advertise the fact that they’d survived. As long as the Reynosa cartel thought them dead, they were safe.

  Nikki leaned sideways against him. Her lips were still blue with cold, but a touch of color had begun to return to her cheeks. “We made it.” She closed her eyes and rested her head on his shoulder.

  We’re out of the ocean, but we’re not out of deep water yet.

  He clamped his mouth shut on the words. When the direness of their situation hit her, she would probably insist they pray again.

  The private fishing charter operated out of Puerto de Abrigo, the same marina where Cesar had left the Alexandra for them. By the time they docked, full darkness had fallen. Lights illuminated the marina and the string of boats that lined the mooring docks. Ben shed his damp towels to help a surly Manuel secure the boat, then as the Kentuckians gathered their belongings, hefted their gear up on th
e dock. Nikki collected the fins and masks and accepted the captain’s assistance in climbing onto the dock.

  “You are sure I cannot take you to your hotel? I have a car.” The gaze he turned toward Ben held suspicions, but they remained unspoken.

  Only if you want to foot the tab, too, since all our money is gone.

  “No, we’ll be fine.” Ben put on a guileless smile. “We don’t want to inconvenience you any more than we already have.”

  “We can’t thank you enough.” Nikki placed a free hand on the man’s brown arm. “You were an answer to prayer.”

  Normally, that comment would have evicted a disagreement from Ben, or at the very least, an eye roll. At the moment, though, he couldn’t bring himself to do either. Instead, he bid farewell to Ed and Ralph, hefted the BCDs with their attached cylinders, one in each hand, and headed down the dock.

  Nikki fell in beside him. “Where are we going?”

  He glanced behind them to be sure their rescuers were out of earshot. “First, I’m going to ditch this stuff somewhere. It’s too heavy to lug around.”

  “I hate to throw away Cesar’s equipment. He’ll have to replace it, won’t he?”

  A blast of laughter escaped before he could stop it. He turned an incredulous stare on her. “You’re kidding, right? He has to replace a boat, Nikki. A couple of BCDs are nothing compared to that.”

  She nodded but didn’t reply. A wooden plank creaked beneath their bare feet, which otherwise made no sound at all. Nikki’s feet were dainty, half the size of his, with ten bright pink toenails. As they passed the slip where the Alexandra had been docked, Ben cast a regretful glance into the empty space. The marina was even more deserted than when they’d left, with only a few people cleaning up after a day at sea and readying their boats for the night. They drew a couple of curious stares. At least they’d both chosen to wear T-shirts beneath their BCDs, though they looked pretty awful at the moment, wrinkled and stiff with dried salt. Still, they would have drawn even more attention strolling through the marina wearing nothing but bathing suits.

  As they walked, Ben scouted around for a place to stash the equipment. A healthy-looking bush just inside the entrance looked like a good prospect. He stopped, set the cylinders down and unclipped his underwater camera from the BCD. Good thing he’d thought to bring it, because it was the only thing they owned at the moment. Maybe he could hock it for enough money to…what? He hadn’t thought that far ahead.

  The waterproof case was too bulky, though. He unfastened it, buttoned the digital camera inside the pocket of his now-dry swim trunks, then stooped to shove everything beneath the bush.

  He gestured for Nikki to hand him the fins and masks, and stored them with the rest. “We’ll call Cesar and tell him where to find them. And explain what happened to his boat.”

  Nikki winced. “I hope his insurance covers theft.”

  “I’m sure it does.” Ben gave the gear a final shove to push it farther beneath the foliage, then straightened.

  “Now what?” she asked.

  He searched her face for signs of the panic she had exhibited earlier. Her skin was still pale. Creases at the corner of her eyes whitened with strain, but she appeared to be calm. Trusting, even. The look she turned on him stirred unusual feelings deep inside, feelings of responsibility and protectiveness.

  They pressed on him like a weight. Could he come through for her? He was fresh out of ideas.

  Think. We’ve lost our passports, our money, everything. Who helps tourists when their stuff gets stolen?

  When the answer came to him, he slapped his forehead. “Duh! The American Consulate. There’s an extension office in Cozumel.”

  Relief smoothed the creases around her eyes. “Won’t it be closed?”

  “Yeah, but maybe they’ll have an emergency number or something. We’ve got to find a telephone.”

  He put an arm around her waist to guide her back in the direction they came, toward the marina office. When they fell in step beside each other, he didn’t remove his arm. Nor did she pull away from him.

  The feel of her next to him, touching him, brought back so many memories. They used to walk along the beach at night just like this, listening to the surf wash up on the sand, watching the moonlight reflect on the water. They’d talked for hours about everything and nothing. Their most vivid childhood memories. Their favorite movies. Books. Even sports, though Ben always suspected she was humoring him, letting him ramble on about the New England Patriots. The six months they’d spent together had been the most satisfying of Ben’s life. The happiest since his mother had died.

  “Hey, I forgot. You’re on vacation for your birthday. When is it?”

  She wrinkled her nose. “It was yesterday.”

  He came to a halt and faced her. “Why didn’t you tell me? I could have—” He stopped. They’d spent the day anticipating the meeting at Mallory Square. Not exactly a relaxing time.

  A grin stole across her face. “What? Thrown me a surprise party? I had enough surprises yesterday, thank you.”

  “Well, I could have at least told you happy birthday.”

  “Thank you.” They continued walking, still close to each other, their steps matched. She watched her feet as they walked. “Ben, I want to talk to you about something.” He sensed the tension in her body, in the set of her shoulders. “Something important.”

  Oh, no. She wants me to pray with her again.

  Although, if the answers to Nikki’s prayers always came as quickly as the last one, maybe he shouldn’t be so quick to discount the practice.

  Don’t be ridiculous. It was a coincidence, nothing more, that the boat came at exactly that time.

  “O-kay.” He drew the word out. “I think I know what you want to say. But let me just—”

  A sudden movement from the shadows behind a wooden structure startled him into silence. In the next instant, something hard pressed into the center of his back. “Hola, amigo. We meet again.”

  High tenor. Heavily accented. It took a minute, but then he placed the voice. Key West. Mouth, from the pier at Mallory Square.

  A second man emerged from the shadow and stepped in front of them. Inside the circle of Ben’s arm, Nikki’s body went rigid. The guy Ben had knocked into the water. He wore a dangerous scowl as he glared at Ben. Obviously, he was holding a major grudge.

  “I see you enjoyed an afternoon dive. Hand over the thumb drive now and all is forgiven.” Señor Mouth’s voice in his ear rang with false geniality, even as the gun pressed into his back. “Of course, if you do not intend to keep your part of our bargain, I have permission to deal with you and the señorita however I want.”

  Beside Ben, Nikki sucked in a loud, shuddering breath.

  THIRTEEN

  They were pushed into the shadows behind the storage building where the men had been hiding. Nikki sought strength from Ben’s arm around her waist and stayed close to him. When they were allowed to stop, the second man, the one who had grabbed her in Key West, stood directly in front of her and watched her with an unwavering stare as black as the shark’s a few hours before. She shrank even closer to Ben’s side.

  Ben gave a weak laugh. “You guys obviously need to work on your communication skills.”

  How could he speak so calmly with a gun barrel pressed against his back? The only thing keeping her teeth from chattering in terror was the fact that she had them clenched together. Her knees were locked, frozen. Had they not been, no doubt they wouldn’t have held her upright. How much stress could a person take before she collapsed under the strain?

  “My English is good. You understand me,” replied the man with the gun.

  “No, I mean communication within your own organization. Or maybe you’re just too far down the totem pole to get up-to-the-minute scoop.”

  Ben laughed again, this time with a touch of derision. Nikki shot him a warning glance. Don’t taunt him, Ben. He has a gun.

  “I gave the records to your buddies.” Sarcasm weig
hed down his words. “You know, the nice ones who stole our boat and tried to turn us into supper for the sharks.”

  “Ah, you make a joke. I do not like jokes, señor. Just give us the item.”

  The danger in the man’s voice sent a shiver rippling through Nikki’s body. She spoke up before Ben could provoke him further.

  “He’s not joking. Some of your people were waiting when we surfaced with the flash drive. They took it and then baited the water for sharks before they left.”

  A pause. “Our people?”

  “Four men.” She shot a quick backward glance at the handgun pressed between Ben’s shoulder blades. “They had bigger guns, though.”

  A heavy silence fell over their captors. The eyes of the man standing in front of them did not waver from his partner’s face. As Nikki watched, an unspoken message passed between them. The man’s forehead cleared. In the next instant, he lurched forward, grabbed Nikki’s arm in an iron grip and jerked her away from Ben.

  Fear paralyzed her lungs.

  “Hey!” Ben’s hand formed a fist and he started to lunge for the guy, but froze when the gun moved up his spine to the base of his skull.

  “We go for a ride, yes?” The gun nudged Ben’s head forward. Nikki choked on a sob. “Someplace where we can talk.”

  “There’s nothing to say,” Ben almost shouted. “Make a call. You’ll find out we’re telling the truth. We’ve already turned over the list.”

  The man holding Nikki pulled her to the corner of the building and shoved her against the rough wood while he peeked around. She gasped, more from fear than pain. A sobering fact became clear in that instant. The Reynosa cartel never intended to let them live. They wanted to get rid of anyone who knew about the information. When these two called whoever was in charge of getting the flash drive back, they would be instructed to kill them.

  God, please don’t let us die. But if we do, please watch over Joshua. The thought of her innocent baby in the hands of these murderers squeezed her heart in a painful vise. Keep him safe from these horrible people.