Below The Surface. Karen Harper

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      A three-foot sea turtle swimming above the debris eyed them, then glided away. When they swam over and hovered above the sparse sea grass meadow, tiny, spidery arrow crabs with fuzzy topknots seemed to stare at them, but they saw no Gertie the grouper and no camera snagged anywhere here or on the sand flats.

      Bree noted that the storm had pulled a few strands of grass loose. Of the fifty-two species of marine sea grass worldwide, only about four of those were widespread in Florida. Her precious turtle grass—fancy biological name Thalassia testudinum—was the most hardy, with its deep root system and sturdy runners from which grew blades of graceful, bright green grass. Most of the sea grass meadow stood about fourteen inches tall and shifted its gentle, ribbonlike blades in harmony with the currents. It should love the relatively shallow waters here but, as she’d told Cole, it was struggling to survive here—just as she was, she thought.

      But she had no time for her beloved project right now. They swam back toward the wreck, playing their yellow beams ahead of them. Sometimes Cole’s shaft of light seemed to dance with hers. If only her camera had caught here on the exterior of the ship, and if only it had captured some clue to what happened on the surface.

      Bree motioned to Cole, and they swam the area around the wreck in broadening circles, searching for the camera and the anchor. Cole was not letting her out of his sight. When she motioned he could go one way and she the other, he shook his head and swam right on her tail.

      And then they saw something. Both their beams shone dully off the links of a chain, which they followed to the half-buried anchor itself. Yes, their new anchor and chain! It was at least thirty feet from the position of the anchor and rope from their smaller skiff today. When Cole held his hands up in a questioning gesture as if to ask her if that was her anchor, she nodded, but her heart sank.

      Daria never would have thrown the entire chain overboard, not unless something terrible—more than an approaching storm—had made her flee fast. Or had someone else thrown it over? And if that someone had wanted the Mermaids II, would they have also thrown Daria overboard?

      The find filled her with frustration and fury. She had to locate that camera now at all costs, even if it meant going a ways into that broken, rusting old wreck.

      She led Cole back in that direction, and they swam the entire length of where the camera might have drifted down or been snagged against the ship by the incoming tide. It was just over twenty-four hours ago now. How could so much have happened so fast? Twenty-four hours—like Sam had said, a new wreck only released a trail of bubbles for that long. Daria, even if the boat went down, tell me you didn’t go with it! I made it in. You must have, too!

      They saw no sign of the camera, so they started back, this time peering into nooks and crannies where it might have caught. Bree berated herself that she hadn’t somehow kept the camera with her in the storm, however heavy and bulky. Using both their lights, they illumined each dark entry spot until—

      Bree jerked back. Oh, it was just one of those cow skulls, bobbing on the other side of a thick glass porthole. When they’d first dived this wreck with their father years ago, the portholes had been covered with algae, but that, too, had been done in by the lack of oxygen in what some called dead water.

      She tried to fight off the images that being this close to the wreck often triggered in her. Whenever she could, she ignored the ship’s ruins and just concentrated on the sea grass meadow. She and Ted had dived this wreck just before they’d broken up, the summer before their junior year of college. The two of them had always called this wreck the Titanic, not because of its size, but because they’d seen the movie just before they’d first dived it together.

      As bold as Bree was underwater, that movie had shaken her to her core. The scene where Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio had stood together at the top of the ship as it was sinking into the cold Atlantic had not just scared her but haunted her ever since. The first time Sam berated her for being the reason Ted enlisted and died, he’d said she’d scuttled and wrecked his son’s life. And in her nightmares about Ted’s death, he wasn’t killed by an improvised incendiary device in Iraq but was sent down to his death on a sinking ship, while—like the woman in the movie—Bree survived and lived her life. Then guilt hung heavy in her heart, until she could convince herself once again that Ted had made his own choices and that his loss—like her mother’s death—was not her fault.

      Now…now, when that nightmare stalked her, in sleep or awake, would she see Daria going down with the ship? While Bree still lived and breathed and walked and swam, would it be Daria she saw, doomed and clinging to Mermaids II while it slipped into the dreadful depths.

      Cole tapped on his tank and gestured about the skull. She tried to motion back to him that cows had been the cargo. He nodded, and they went on, swimming about five feet apart, peering as far as they could see into entries of the wreck. It didn’t take long to determine that the camera was not snagged against the upright stern, but she knew it could have settled into numerous nooks in the tipped fore parts of the ship.

      And then Bree saw it! A glint of new metal! It was lodged in a small cranny that had once been clearly marked but was now faded: Fire Ax and Hose—Break Glass. No glass now, and someone might have taken the ax head for a souvenir, but the ragged remains of an old fire hose hung there below the rotting ax handle. It looked like the plastic housing had come off the corner of the camera, but she reached for the piece of metal she could see.

      And yanked her arm back. From behind the remnants of the hose, a moray eel lunged at her, barely missing her hand. Bree backed away fast; the eel retreated partly into its lair. Her heart was thudding so hard it sounded like a bass drum was in her mask.

      Morays loved to hide in rocks, tall grass or small crevasses to wait for their prey. Frightening in appearance, they had small eyes and a protruding snout, but worse was their always-open mouth, with their powerful jaws and long, sharp teeth. Their skin was scaleless and they had thick, mucous-covered, patterned bodies so they could hide from their prey. This one looked about four feet long, dangerous and hidden…like someone who may have hurt Daria.

      Cole took her elbow and pulled her farther away. She pointed at the edge of the camera and he nodded. He swam over the moray’s lair and carefully retrieved the half-rotted wooden ax handle. With it, he hooked the edge of the camera and pulled it out. The eel lunged at the metal, then retreated once again to protect his piece of property.

      Bree was relieved until she saw that what had lodged there was the strobe lights she had released and not the camera.

      She held the strobe up and shook her head. Cole squeezed her shoulder. Is that yours? he gestured, and she nodded. Their eyes met through their masks. Bree fought back tears. She did not dare cry or the mask would be a mess. She motioned to him that if the strobe was snagged on the wreck, the camera could well be, too. He shook his head and pointed to his watch, though she saw they’d only been down twenty minutes and they had much more air. When he pointed toward the surface, she shook her head and gestured with both hands and her fingers spread: just ten more minutes to peek inside the open entryways.

      Another of the common safety sayings about diving, one her dad had stressed, popped into her head. Only fools break the rules. She was not a wreck diver and she hadn’t brought either a wreck reel or a penetration line to help find her way out once she was inside the decaying wreck, where pieces could be loose or block an exit. These lights were good for a thirty-foot dive but not for diving blind inside a wreck—another rule about taboos. Still, when she hit the button on the strobe, it flashed its nearly blinding light. That would have to do to guide her just a little way, to find the camera, which she’d let go of in the same spot she’d dropped the strobe. The risk of moray eels be damned.

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