Devil Sharks

by Chris Jameson

  Nothing could have surprised Alex more than the email he’d received three months ago, the invitation from Harry Curtis to come and celebrate their tenth reunion in Hawaii, a week aboard a luxury sailing yacht, with Harry covering all expenses. They’d all been invited, the remaining group and their spouses or significant others. No kids, though. That was Harry’s one request, to leave the kids at home so they could all relax.

  Alex had a dozen reasons not to go. Marketing companies didn’t like to see their art directors go on ten-day vacations, even when they had that vacation time coming to them. And Tasha … their little girl was only six. Sami’s mother had offered to stay at the house, make sure Tasha was fed, did her homework, went to school, but still it didn’t sit right with him.

  Sami wasn’t having any of that. The lure of the tropics cried out to her—and if Alex allowed himself to get past his old resentment, it tempted him just as much, as did the prospect of reconnecting with the old friends he actually liked, but whom he’d only seen sporadically over the past decade.

  When the plane landed, he grabbed the carry-on and stood in the aisle waiting for people to deplane. The ten-hour flight from Chicago had made him claustrophobic, but once he and Sami were out into the terminal both that and his anxiety vanished completely. At baggage claim, waiting for their luggage to appear on the carousel, they could feel the warmth that waited for them outside. The afternoon sun shone through the windows. He spotted a handful of people who wore Hawaiian shirts without any apparent ignorance or irony, and that pleased him.

  Only when they started away from the baggage claim area, suitcases in tow, did they see the enormous black-suited driver, his face covered in traditional tattoos, and his massive hands clutching a printed sheet that read: ALEX AND SAMANTHA SIMMONS.

  Sami strolled right up to him, a huge grin splitting her face. “I think you’re looking for us.”

  The giant had a smile that matched hers. “Welcome and aloha, Mrs. Simmons.”

  He tucked the sign away and started to gather their bags, talking incessantly about the island, the weather, how pleased he was to make their acquaintance. His name was Kahale, and by the time they’d reached the car Harry had sent, the driver had shared the names of his sisters, his favorite surfing story, and the early history of the Hawaiian islands. Alex wanted to be irritated, to silently grumble about the man’s incessant chatter, but Kahale was so damn charming, and they were in Hawaii.

  The trip of a lifetime, Sami had said, after she’d told him they’d be fools not to go.

  As they drove across the island and he caught sight of the ocean, realized they were on a little dot in the middle of the Pacific, thousands of miles from any continent, Alex Simmons couldn’t get the smile off his face. All that old resentment didn’t seem to matter so much in that moment. Maybe all Harry wanted was a chance to reconnect. A fresh start. And Sami was right—they’d been friends once. Great friends.

  After all the trouble and expense Harry had gone to, the least Alex could do was give him a chance.

  Kahale had started talking about the ancient Samoans who had first settled in Polynesia, and the wayfarers who had first settled in Hawaii, navigating their way across the sea in outrigger canoes by following birds a little farther every year, risking their lives for the thrill of discovery alone. Their week aboard Harry’s sailboat would be nothing like that, and yet still Alex felt a tremor of excitement.

  The trip of a lifetime.

  Maybe Harry really had changed.

  * * *

  As she climbed out of the car in the circular driveway, Sami couldn’t wipe the smile off her face. The afternoon sun felt deliciously warm on her bare arms and her face, a gift from heaven after the seeming eternity of the flight. Back home in Chicago it would be cold and dark, the wind frigid off the lake. Here the wind brought the crisp smell of flowers and the tang of salt from the ocean. With a soft laugh, she threw back her head and drank in the sunshine.

  “You gonna strip down, too? Offer yourself to the sun god?” Alex asked.

  “We’re in Hawaii, baby,” she said. “If I’m offering myself to anyone, it’ll be the volcano god.”

  Kahale laughed heartily, just the way she imagined he would. The big man hoisted their bags out of the trunk as if they weighed nothing, then led the way. Alex tried to protest, offering to take the bags himself. Outside of a restaurant, her husband didn’t like anyone serving him—bellmen, red caps, even taxi drivers. Being waited on made him uncomfortable, made him feel apart from other people. Sami, however, wanted an entire team of Tolkien elves to pamper her and bring her fruity drinks with umbrellas in them, and stat.

  When no elves appeared, she contented herself with following Alex and Kahale up the front walk, which wound through a lovely flower garden. Alex succeeded in wresting one of the carry-ons from their giant new friend. Sami thought about the hospital she’d left behind, knew that other doctors would curse her for her absence, and didn’t care. This doc was on vacation.

  “Holy shit, there he is!” a voice cried happily, and a string of profanity followed.

  As Sami walked toward the front steps of the sprawling estate, the house nestled amidst palms and other trees, splashed with color and Polynesian and Hawaiian design flairs, she began to slow. The guy with his arms spread, walking down the steps from the veranda like King Kamehameha himself, could only be Harry Curtis. Tan and healthy, with a blinding white smile, Harry looked like a young Tom Cruise … but only if Cruise had started to let himself slip into a world of too many margaritas and possibly too much coke. He had the shoulders and arms of a guy who spent plenty of time lifting weights, and the beginning of a paunch that belied the rest, like that nascent belly had snuck up on him one night while he was sleeping and he still hadn’t quite noticed it.

  Don’t judge, she told herself.

  “Alex Simmons, you handsome motherfucker,” Harry said, sweeping Alex into a bear hug. He stepped back to look at Alex the same way Sami’s grandmother had always done to her. “Man, you have no idea how great it is to see you. I love it. This is gonna be the greatest week of our lives.”

  Harry kissed Alex’s cheek, causing Alex to flinch backward and wipe off that kiss. Harry pushed him away and they both started laughing. Sami exhaled, unaware she’d been holding her breath. They’d come halfway across the world for this, or so it seemed. She had inconvenienced a lot of colleagues, doctors who had to cover for her—not to mention her mother and daughter—in order to make it happen. An opportunity like this … if they hadn’t gone, she knew that she and Alex would have regretted it. But more than that, they both needed this, Alex especially. He’d gotten lost in his work the past few years. She and Tasha loved having him home, but he hardly ever did anything but work and hang out with them, and this chance to reunite with his old friends, to reignite some of the passion and positivity of his twenties, was not to be missed.

  Alex complimented Harry on the house, thanked him for his generosity, and turned to introduce her.

  “Damn, Mrs. Simmons…,” Harry said, eyeing her in a way she was sure he thought of as a compliment. Then he held up his hands in apology. “Sorry, Dr. Simmons. You are even more beautiful in the flesh.”

  He took her hands, gazed at her with sudden sincerity, as if the cheerful bluster had been a mask. “Welcome to my home. Sincerely, Samantha, I’m so happy you and Alex are here.” Those eyes told her that Harry Curtis might be smarter than he seemed, more self-aware. They told her, too, that there was pain in him, alongside the bullshit and the Tom Cruise smile.

  “It’s our pleasure,” she said. “Please. Call me Sami.”

  “Sami it is.” Harry squeezed her hands, turned, and escorted her back to Alex, whom he clapped on the back. “Truly. The greatest week ever.”

  They started up the stairs together. Kahale stood on the veranda, in front of the frosted glass of the double front door, still holding their luggage.

  “Mr. Curtis,” the driver said, the smile Sami had loved
on sight now absent. “The next group arrives in twenty minutes. I should get moving.”

  “Yeah, you should,” Harry replied dismissively, brow creasing. “What the fuck are you still doing here?”

  Kahale froze, seemingly at a loss for how to respond. Then he nodded toward the house, his hands too full to gesture. “The bags, sir.”

  Harry opened the door and pushed it open, ushering Kahale into the foyer. “Go on, then. Put that shit down and get gone. You never did get those leis for everyone. If they’re for sale at the airport, make sure the others get them the second they see you.”

  “Absolutely. I’ll make it happen.”

  “Good man. That’s what I love about you,” Harry said, his smile returning. He turned to his guests. “This guy’s the best, right? This island has the greatest people on earth.”

  Kahale set the bags down gently, lined them up, and edged around them to get out the door. On the veranda, he turned to look back inside. “Mahalo.”

  “Mahalo to you, Kahale. Thank you so much,” Sami said.

  Alex added his own thanks, but by then Kahale had closed the door behind him and Harry had already begun to announce the first stop on their tour of his estate. Even from the foyer, as Sami and Alex followed him deeper into the house, she could see the vast, open great room and the open sliders along the back wall, the perfectly landscaped lawn, the broad stretch of sand, and the Pacific Ocean beyond. Sami wondered how much the house had cost, and knew that Harry Curtis was the kind of guy who would have told her if she’d asked, pretending that anyone could afford such a place.

  Mahalo.

  She’d seen the mask drop away from Harry Curtis’s face, seen the sincerity there and the humanity. But as he led them through the house—this place where he lived just three months out of each year, totally alone, with his Tom Cruise smile and his too-tan paunch—she wondered if maybe that glimpse of humanity had been the real mask.

  Alex had been reluctant to come here, even with all of the peace and beauty Hawaii promised. Sami had persuaded him.

  For the first time, she began to wonder if that might have been a bad idea.

  CHAPTER 3

  Isko Flores woke in enough pain to convince him that, somehow, he was still alive. He opened his eyes to slits. The sun burned the horizon and for a moment he wasn’t sure if what he witnessed was dusk or dawn. Surely he couldn’t have been unconscious for a night and a day, so he reasoned it must be sunrise. The light hurt his head and he lifted a hand to shield his eyes.

  He shifted on the beach, the surf rolling up the shore toward him, and as he moved his lower body he felt the throb of heat in his left thigh. Heat and pain, deep and profound enough to make him catch his breath. Isko did not want to look at his leg. The heat subsided and now that leg felt cold and sluggish, as if the leg itself had vanished and all that remained was a ghost of it, pure pain in the shape of the leg he’d once had.

  Isko forced himself to look. His face twisted in grief and tears welled in his eyes, not for the leg—no, the leg was still there. His tears were for his wife Tala and their little daughter Dalisay. His girl had the brightest eyes, shiny like copper, and a smile that always made him feel as if all his sins might someday be forgiven. Three years old, and all the world was a gift to her. How would she and her mother survive without the money Isko earned? What would Tala do to look after the girl?

  The questions flowed like his tears and he wished he could stop them both—had to stop them both. His wife and daughter thought him the strength of the family. Tala always told Dalisay that Papa was the tall tree who put down the roots beneath them and whose branches kept them safe from harm. It had never been true, not really, but his ego made him allow this mythmaking. He wanted his daughter to see him that way. He wanted—

  God, he wanted to see her again. Dalisay. His little Daisy-girl.

  Isko forced himself to look at his left thigh. The thin fabric of his trousers had been torn away there; ripped tatters hung from his leg. The exposed flesh had a half circle of ragged punctures, the bite of a shark. Another second or a more determined shark and the entire leg might have been torn off. Instead, there were those tooth marks, blood crusted on most of them but still pulsing and seeping from the worst and deepest of them. Sharks sometimes mistook people for their most natural prey, bumped and bit before finding the texture unfamiliar. It had to be what had happened to him, and yet …

  He lifted his head, vision swimming, head muzzy from the blood loss. His skull throbbed and blackness crept at the edges of his vision. He closed his mouth and took deep breaths through his nose, steadying himself. Isko glanced out at the water but saw no trace of the boat that had brought them, nor any sign of the others. Machii had thrown them all into the water—Isko had opened his eyes underwater and seen Efrin; he was sure of it. A quick glimpse before the sharks attacked, but despite the blur of his memories, he remembered the terror in Efrin’s eyes.

  Efrin. His friend.

  Isko scanned the water again, then glanced up and down the sand.

  Efrin. His dead friend.

  “Little Daisy,” he whispered, and forced himself to sit up.

  The scream that burst from within surprised even him. Pain cut deep into his thigh with such ferocity that it made what he’d felt upon waking seem like pleasure. He took deep, sucking breaths, but the pain kept flowing and his eyes rolled back in his head and he felt himself toppling sideways.

  When his eyes flickered open again, his first instinct was to glance at the sun. It hadn’t moved much, still just above the horizon, so he hadn’t been out long. On his side, he rolled slowly, tilting farther onto his stomach, wary of that pain. Craning his head back, he could see part of the bite wound at the back of his leg, much worse than the front. The flesh had been torn. The sand and the pressure from how he’d been collapsed on the shore had let the blood crust and temporarily seal the wound, but he’d opened it again and now blood had begun to pool under him. A wave crashed, rolled up beneath him as the tide came in, and washed some of it away, but there would be more blood. He’d keep bleeding until he had none left to give, and then he’d die, and Tala and Dalisay would never know what had become of him.

  Drawing small breaths through gritted teeth, trying to stay conscious, he worked himself into a sitting position again. Though the left leg of his pants hung in strips, the idea of trying to tear them off—jostling that leg—made his stomach turn. Instead, he pulled off his T-shirt, which had mostly dried overnight. He brushed the sand from the shirt and then began to tear it apart. Despite the pain, he managed to rip the fabric into strips and bind his left thigh. Blood spotted the cloth immediately, but he’d tied the leg tightly and hoped it would slow the bleeding. If he could stitch it up somehow, he might survive. If not, he would have to hope that God might take an interest in a fisherman who’d agreed to work for the wrong men.

  With another deep breath, Isko glanced around again. He blinked. The sun had risen a bit higher now and for the first time he noticed a glint of metal among the palms far off to his left. He’d washed up in the most beautiful, desolate place on earth, but maybe not as desolate as he’d thought.

  The glint of metal got him on his feet. It took long minutes and he nearly passed out three times, hissing through his teeth. The blood soaked the strips of T-shirt around his thigh, but he started limping along the sand toward that glint of metal, more certain with every step that it was precisely what he’d thought it was.

  The corner of a roof.

  Hope flickered in his chest, not quite a spark. An image of little Dalisay came to him. He could almost hear her sweet laughter, almost picture her running to him along the sand, ready to jump into his arms.

  The sand shifted as he limped. His right foot slid, threw him off-balance, and he tried to catch himself with his left. The pain buckled his leg and he crashed to the sand, blacking out as his blood seeped through his makeshift tourniquet.

  The sun kept rising and the tide rolled in, but Isko did
not move for a long time.

  CHAPTER 4

  Morning came too soon. There had been drinking the night before, as one after another of the guests arrived, but Harry—who had put away more than any of them—turned out to have been quite serious about their departure time. Shortly after dawn, he had gone through the house banging on bedroom doors, instructing them to rise and shine. Now they were in the back of a limousine and Sami had a glass of fresh pineapple juice in her hand. She’d rolled the windows down and the island breeze whipped her hair around her head while Alex groaned, slumped in the seat beside her, hungover but relaxed.

  They were sharing the limousine with Nils Falk and his husband, Patrick, as well as Luisa Kershaw, who was married but flying solo on this trip. Sami and Alex sat at the back of the car, facing Nils and Patrick, with Luisa perched on the bench along the driver’s side. The others had gone in a second car, though all of them were running behind Harry by an hour. He’d made sure they were all awake and knew where to find the breakfast room—and what time the cars would arrive to transport them to the marina—and then he’d left them there in his home, most of them quiet after the wonderful welcome they’d all had the night before.

  “It’s nice to see him so excited,” Luisa said to nobody in particular.

  Nils glanced up at her, eyes icy blue. “Harry?”

  “Who else? I don’t remember him ever being so enthusiastic about anything.”

  Nils smiled. “Anything?”

  Luisa sprang from her seat and whapped him on the leg. “Don’t be fresh.”

  “Hey,” Patrick said. “That’s my line.”

  Sami watched them bicker. Nils and Patrick seemed nice enough, though she had only spoken to them briefly the night before. Thin and handsome, hair in artful disarray, Nils edited crime novels for one of the handful of major publishing companies in New York, and had apparently written a series of mysteries set in his native Norway that had found great success there but almost no traction in the United States. Nils loved to talk and seemed to seek out common ground, wanting to know if others shared his passions for certain foods or particular actors or musicians. He’d been on an Irish Punk kick lately, according to the previous evening’s excitement, but he’d not said a word about it this morning.