The wall was honeycombed with shadowy openings, and it took her some moments to locate the crevice the lobster had chosen. As a squadron of angelfish floated past, she gave a couple of strong kicks and plunged her right hand into the lobster's hole, a narrow, ragged slot in the rock, going inside it up to her elbow.
And she had it. Gripping it hard this time, she held on against its thrashing and began to draw it out. But the hole was too narrow. It wouldn't pass through. The lobster knew the way in, but there was some subtle tilt and slant required to pass through the narrow notch. The critter flipped in her hand as she twisted it this way and that. The flesh at her wrist burned each time she scraped her arm against the rim of the hole.
Like trying to work a house key free of a difficult lock. Some mesh existed, she was sure of it, but she was never good at that problem, had to step aside a few times over the years and let the man do it. Resenting it, but it was simply not a skill she had.
Darcy felt the pressure growing in her chest. She tried to extract the thing twice more, but it wasn't going to happen. And now a large moray had come out of its hole, showing three feet of itself, mouth open. Probably just display. Puffing itself up to frighten this invader from the other world, this creature that was stirring up the bottom.
Darcy let the lobster go. And began to slide her arm out of the slot, but her hand caught. She paused, fought back a stab of panic. Willed herself to relax, to soften the tissue and muscle, to ease her hand out of that slot of stone. For after all, it had gone in. But it didn't work. Her hand seemed to have swollen to twice its size. She couldn't find the fit.
This had happened to Gaeton once when he was just a kid. His hand caught in a cleft of rock; he was badly skinned, but had worked himself free. Afterward he'd said the trick was to be as limp as possible.
So she willed herself to go slack. The ache in her chest was growing. She tried every angle, every push and pressure, but her hand was trapped, numbing now, and a mist of darkness was rising from the lobster's hole. Her own blood leaking into the water.
She'd been down more than a minute, approaching two perhaps. She fought the terror rising inside her, twisted around, brought her feet against the rock, planted them, tried to straighten her legs, wrench her hand free, but the edges of her vision began to wrinkle and darken from the pain.
She blew out the last bubble of air in her lungs, and stared helplessly at the bright surface above her. A small hammerhead cruised overhead, its eyes moving on the stalks. It dallied for a second, sampling her blood, then in a rush it disappeared.
Darcy bent forward, reached her left hand to her right leg and drew her knife from the scabbard. Again she tried to calm herself, bringing a shoulder down, trying to glimpse the opening in the rock where her hand was caught. Her blood beginning to rise from the hole in darker shades. And her hand was completely numb. There was no more time.
She hacked with the knife at the rock around her wrist, broke small pebbles of it loose. She pulled hard, but still she was caught. She stopped. Stilled herself. Brought her face close to the rock where her arm was stuck. Peered into the opening, and nearly fainted at what she saw.
A white-gloved hand gripped her fingers, holding them in some strange handlock. Then above her she saw the thin trail of bubbles from an air tank rising from the other side of the lobster's hole.
Fluttering her fins madly now, she tried again to wrench herself from this grip. But it didn't budge. And in a flood of panic, she brought her feet back, once again planted them against the rock, and with all her strength she thrust upward, tried to straighten. But the person behind the wall simply found a tighter clasp.
Again, she brought her face to the hole. Sighting on the white-gloved hand, she lifted the knife blade and stabbed. Slashed across the knuckles of the glove, drew a cloud of blood. But she wasn't sure, it might've been her own.
A large burst of air bubbles rose from the other side of the rock, and the diver pulled Darcy's arm even deeper inside the hole.
The light had begun to dim. And Darcy felt a sudden rush of calm. Her muscles relaxed. Overhead, she watched a hogfish swim through her blood, its lips working. She stared up through that twenty feet of water toward the luminous surface, and she saw a large tarpon on Thorn's line, running from the boat, launching itself into the air, and then a splash almost directly above her.
She swallowed back the pain in her chest, focused her eyes on the brightness above. She composed a short, wordless prayer, and looked around her one more time at the bright colors, the delicate, twisted corals.
With all her strength she jerked against the grip, straining so hard she took an involuntary breath. And choked. And it was as if the sun had passed behind a thick mass of cumuli. The water darkening, and suddenly cooler. Everything slowing, as her body stopped writhing, gradually went slack. And long empty moments passed until finally she realized she was free.
Free from the tight fit, free from everything. Her lungs full of rich, cool seawater. And as she rose, yellowtail snapper, grouper, soldierfish, angels and spadefish, and glasseyes schooled around her. And then a cluster of strange red fish she'd never seen before swarmed past. The water filled with fish. Every color, shape, and size stitching back and forth, amazing numbers of them. Their eyes watching her as she rose and rose through the bubbles of air, as she rose through a bright mist of glassy minnows, millions of them, millions, the sea crowded with fish, and everywhere there were eyes, transparent, like bubbles in blue water, eyes watching her as she rose, as Darcy Richards drifted up toward the impossible sky above.
CHAPTER 3
To the west the Grady White made a slow, wide circle, then surged up onto plane and headed back toward shore. Thorn watched it go, watched its wake spread out, come in slow, shallow ripples in their direction. The skiff rocked lightly. The ice shifted in the cooler.
Then something told him to look over his shoulder. Some nagging peripheral awareness that things weren't right. The tarpon at that moment making still another run in front of him, taking almost all the line, heating up the bearings in his reel, then exploding out of the calm water, a spiral of silver, a gush of brilliant water, the fish standing on its tail for an extraordinary instant, and at that second Thorn pulled his eyes from the marvel of the fish suspended in air, and behind him he saw Darcy on her back in the water, mask askew. It was clear she was not basking in the sun after a long dive.
As the tarpon splashed back down, he dropped his rod. The fish sped away, pulling the line taut, and the rod clattered across the deck, smacked the rail, and flew overboard, the big fish taking it under. Thorn stared at Darcy, waiting for her to lift her head, start to tread water, smile over at him, hoping this was not what it looked like. But none of that happened, none of it, and Thorn sucked down a breath, took a quick step, and dove over the gunwale toward her body, toward the spreading shadow of red hovering around her.
***
He lay her body on the bow deck, tipped her head back, pulling her jawbone down, peering inside her mouth for obstructions. Then he pinched her nose, his lips to her lips, blowing into her as hard as he could. Blowing as he tried to calm himself, make sure this was right, the way he'd seen it done. Then leaning his weight heavily on her chest to make the heart squeeze blood, and repeating it, repeating it, gradually finding a rhythm, adjusting to a more and more natural cycle. He kneeled beside her, the blood from the gashes on her wrists spreading across the deck.
For some absurd reason while he worked on her, while he fought off the panic, he pictured the tarpon swimming away, hauling his rod and reel, towing it out miles and miles through the peaceful ocean, the water rushing over the big fish's gills, bubbles of oxygen churning in its wake, as the fish turned downward, sounding into the dark depths, towing Thorn's graphite rod behind him, this man-made thing, this unnatural, preposterous thing chasing the fish deeper into the cold water, into the rapturous channels of the sea. Thorn following the tarpon in his head while he breathed into Darcy Richards, while
the fish dove into bleaker and bleaker water, trying to break free of the terrible weight it dragged behind it. All the while the fish breathed the water. Breathed the water.
And something happened in Darcy's throat, a hitch, then a sloppy cough. Thorn pulled away in time, and she gagged up a quart of seawater. And when she was through, he brought his face back down, sealed her mouth with his, breathed in, and with both hands pressing against her sternum, he forced her chest down hard. Got another trickle of water from her lips, and she began to breathe on her own. A troubled rhythm, feeble. But she was managing it herself.
He waited a few seconds, watching her continue her meager breathing. When he was fairly sure she didn't need him anymore, he hustled to the console, switched on the VHF to channel sixteen, and called Mayday. After half a minute he raised a charter captain and gave him a quick picture of the situation, and lined up an ambulance for the docks at Snake Creek Marina, the closest landfall, and he dropped the microphone and hurried back to her body.
Her chest had gone still again. And Thorn dropped to his knees and again he breathed into her. Mouth to her mouth, very careful, as if he were making love to the dwindling life inside her, as if each wary breath were exhaled against some fluttering flame. Too much wind would blow it out, too little would starve it. Trying to coax that glowing wick, bring it back.
Five minutes, ten. Dizzy, sweating heavily, he pulled away, checked the pulse at her throat. Watched her chest for any movement. But there was none. Her lungs wouldn't restart, her heart was quiet.
He pressed hard against her chest and spoke her name, stroked her cheek, but she gave no sign she heard. Her eyes were closed, the muscles in her face lax, as if she were listening intently to some blissful inner choir. Music more alluring than anything this world had to offer. Almost a smile on her lips.
In Thorn's throat a hot swell had begun to ripen as if an enormous blister were growing on his larynx. His head was heavy and he felt like he'd gone for days without sleep. He spoke her name again, trying for the tone he'd used once or twice to awaken her from nightmares. Darcy. Darcy.
But it had no effect. No effect at all.
***
At Snake Creek Marina, Sylvie and her father, Harden, relaxed at a stone picnic table at the outdoor grill. Fish sandwiches, cole slaw, fries, draft beer in plastic glasses, that kind of place. Both of them wearing bathing suits, Sylvie's a black one-piece, Harden in dark green baggies. A pair of binoculars lay on the table. Sylvie was sitting backward on the bench, leaning against the table as she watched the excitement.
The EMS truck with red light whirling, the stretcher, the two young paramedics, and the tall, rangy blond man hurrying after the rescue guys as they wheeled the stretcher from the blond man's boat to the ambulance. Sylvie took a sip of her beer and watched the guys load the stretcher in the EMS truck.
The blond man was good-looking in a rough-and-tumble way. Scraggly Prince Valiant hair, dark tan. He had a fluid, athletic way of walking, agile and limber. And with that kind of coloring he probably had blue eyes, though Sylvie couldn't tell for sure at such a distance.
"Tragedies," she said. "There's no escaping. They're everywhere. You can't sit down, have a beer without death rolling past."
Sylvie watched the blond man climb into the ambulance and kneel beside the stretcher.
Her father glanced at her, had another sip of his beer and set it down. He picked up the binoculars and brought them to his eyes, focusing on the one-story concrete building across the channel.
After the EMS truck was gone, Sylvie turned around on the bench and followed Harden's gaze across Snake Creek. At this distance all she could make out was the comings and goings of the commercial fishing boats, big lumbering dirty things, and men rolling loaded dollies up and down the concrete ramp, a small winch regularly lifting crates of lobsters and fish out of the boats and swinging them up to the dock. There was a sign hanging above the double back doors. In bold black letters it read, ALBRIGHT'S FISH HOUSE, SUCCULENCE FROM THE SEA.
"And you," Sylvie said. "You're another tragedy. A grown man, obsessing like this. It's embarrassing. It's goddamn sad."
He lowered the binoculars for a second and gave her a long, empty look.
"Someday may you be so lucky to love someone as deeply as I love her."
"Is that what you call it? Love? Hell, it looks more like the heroin jitters to me."
Sylvie was twenty-five years old, though people regularly mistook her for seven, eight years younger. She had black hair, which she hacked off every week or two with pinking shears. Short like a boy's, or Mia Farrow's back in the old days. Looked like she ducked her head into a food processor, turned it on puree.
Nothing a normal woman would do to her hair. But then, Sylvie wasn't a woman, normal or otherwise. She didn't fuss with her nails. Had no interest in dresses or skirts, clothes of any kind. Mainly wore Harden's old castoffs. Though some nights she'd slip into something one of her boyfriends gave her and head out to the bars. Trolling clothes. She wasn't any kind of cook or house cleaner either. Didn't crave a baby, sure as hell didn't have any appetite for a husband, a man snoring away next to her every night the rest of her days. Lipstick, eye shadow, mascara, hell, she hardly knew one from the other. Never played with dolls, never wanted to ride a horse.
But on the other hand, she wasn't any tomboy either. Hell, she had no desire to be a man, some snot-slinging, boozing, vine-swinging ape. Sylvie Winchester thought of herself as a brand-new evolutionary development. Sylvie, the missing link, an early stage of what was coming. Neither sex. Sexless.
She'd never even had a menstrual period. The years when all that should have started were just too stressful. Her body seemed to know she couldn't handle one more problem. So no fat accumulated, her breasts never budded, her hips stayed narrow. Sylvie, the girl with no sex. Yet somehow certain men found her irresistible. Sylvie could make them steam. Could make ribbons of drool hang from their mouths. God only knew why.
Harden had enough sexual energy for both of them. Still burning for that one woman from years ago. Something between them once, something hot and dangerous, but finally she'd run off. But that didn't seem to matter to Harden. Here he was, fifteen years later, still devoting himself to her from afar. Making the hundred-mile trip from the Gulf coast to Key Largo twice a month to sit at this same marina, or down the street from her house, waiting to get a glimpse of her. Pathetic.
Harden was handsome enough, he could've had almost any woman in the world. He kept himself in damn good shape for sixty-one, his balding head tanned as dark and gleaming as a coffee bean, with a fringe of gray hair he kept bristle-short. An inch or two over six feet, lean, wide shoulders. When he worked, the muscle strands rose and twisted in his arms and stomach, like snakes crawling for cover, hard and sinewy.
Back home on the farm, he went without his shirt all day every day, working outside, and his shoulders and back were a coppery gold. He let his beard grow just long enough so it wasn't stubble, the same silvery gray as the hair on his chest and arms. There was a glitter in his gray Scottish eyes, and he had a roguish smile that Sylvie had watched him use to bring ladies to their feet across a crowded barroom. He was the kind of man who knew how to touch a woman, how long, and where. Sylvie knew that because she'd seen all those women come out of Harden's bedroom in the morning, float into the kitchen, the mellow looks on their faces, hear the slow, honeyed voices they spoke in, not at all how they'd acted the night before.
Her father claimed he had no real interest in those women. "Keeping in practice" was what he said he was doing. Keeping his blade sharp, his technique up-to-date, to stay ready for Doris Albright.
Married, single, rich, poor, he could talk any one of them out of her cocktail dress or blue jeans in a Miami minute. He could be trashy or a gentleman, whatever was called for. And there were probably a thousand women who would've gladly taken Doris Albright's place. But no, Harden couldn't manage that.
"She's wearing pink today.
She always looked good in pink."
Sylvie groaned.
Harden said, "Has her hair pinned up. Same way she used to wear it when I'd come home on leave."
"You see her husband over there anywhere?"
Harden lowered the binoculars and glared at her.
Sylvie stood up, ran a hand through her butchered hair.
"I'm ready to go back to the motel. I'm tired."
Harden lifted the binoculars again, steadied his elbows against the stone table, and trained the lenses on the fish house.
"Pink shorts and a pink jersey on top," he said. "Pink's definitely her color. Soft, feminine."
"Pink," Sylvie said. "The color of open wounds."
"Don't talk like that."
"What you're seeing, it's a ghost, Daddy. A pink ghost."
Harden ignored her, kept the binoculars trained on the fish house, his breathing changed now, slower, deeper, a quiet vibration filling the air around him.
"You want to look, Sylvie? See your mother?"
"Maybe some other time. About ninety years from now."
Sylvie downed the rest of her beer. Looked around the dock for something to capture her attention. Just tourists coming and going, people renting boats, starting them up, heading off to the reef. A couple of the ponytailed riffraff sitting on the seawall, drinking beer from cans, ogling the pretty tourist girls. One of them kept glancing her way. God help the poor bastard.
She looked back at her father, still spying on the woman in pink. His body throbbing like a plucked string. All around him, the air filled with something like the hum of a frayed power line.
If that was the look of love, Sylvie wanted no part of it. She'd settle for something less hazardous, something that didn't turn the blood to vapor. Love was just going to have to be another thing she'd miss out on, one more major life experience she'd have to get along without. Like some paradise everyone raved and raved about, but that would always remain a blank continent on the map inside her.
Mean High Tide (Thorn Series Book 3) Page 3
