She checked her watch as she swam down the strange channel. Ten minutes. That meant Simon had been down what? Fifteen or twenty minutes? He should be on his way back.
Ahead of her, the cave widened into darkness. She kicked slowly, tentatively, up to the mouth of the opening. When she was practically in the opening she became aware of a distant glow.
Using her headlamp to pick up what it could, she saw an enormous chamber, an underwater grotto. A cathedral, but unlike any she’d seen on her own dives or in pictures. It was as if someone had carved a giant, smooth bubble seventy or eighty feet below the seabed.
She shone her light on the glow—much closer now—and picked up another diver.
Simon floated near the far wall. Not moving. Suspended like a lifeless toy in a child’s fish tank.
Peta stayed at the entrance to the cavern, looking at the body of the man she’d come to save. Damn it, Simon, she thought. Why didn’t you let me talk you out of this?
When she knew she couldn’t put it off any longer, she tilted her body and gave a few small fin kicks to sail nearer to him. His lamp pointed down, dully, at the same meaningless spot, but the reflected glow bounced onto the walls. Peta let herself look up for just a moment to see the strange markings on the smooth surface.
They were…she searched for a word.Incomparable . There was nothing she had ever seen that even came close to them. She thought of the markings she’d seen on Mayan tombs, but they were like cave drawings. These weren’t primitive. They were stylized, with odd shapes that could have been metallic devices and—
She stopped. There was no time for sight-seeing. She reached out and turned Simon around. His eyes were wide open and had bulged, probably as he struggled to breathe, getting the mix wrong. She checked his tanks. They had plenty of air and looked like they were set to a good ratio of oxygen to nitrogen-helium blend. That meant it must have been his heart. It could easily have given out on him. The tension, the pressure.
Looking down, she saw that he had something clutched in his hand. A sharp chill ran through her. The material looked similar to the pendant that Arthur had given her. She reached out and tried to pry Simon’s gloved hand from the object, but his fingers were locked tightly around it. For one grisly moment, she wondered whether she’d have to use her knife to pry off his fingers, but one by one they snapped back like catches on a sunken treasure chest. The object tumbled free, spinning; Peta reached out and caught it.
As her fingers closed around it, she had the same sense of the heat being drawn from her skin as she’d had when she held the piece Arthur had given her. Stranger yet was the fact that the shape looked as if her piece could fit right into it…whateverit was. And she could see places for other pieces to fit, as well.
If McKendry survived and could find Selene and her piece of the artifact, that plus Peta’s and Arthur’s and the one Frikkie still had could be put together to make—what?
There was no time to think about that now.
She looked to see whether Simon had carried a specimen bag and spotted a mesh bag floating empty around his dive belt. Reaching out, she slowly untied it, taking care not to expend too much energy. That could change her breathing rate and—worse—make Simon’s buoyant body spin toward her.
Suddenly, she didn’t want to stay in this bizarre cave for another minute. The place gave her the creeps, especially with Simon’s body hanging there under the strange wall paintings. Briefly, she debated taking Simon’s body with her. According to her dive watch, she had a more than adequate window of time for her return—with or without Simon. Assuming, of course, that she missed the shark on the way.
She stuck the artifact into the bag, thinking, I’m going to leave you here, Simon. I wish I could have made it here in time to stop you, to save you, but you knew the risks. My guess is that this is how you chose to die.
Her contemplation was cut short by the sensation that there was something else in the cavern, and it was coming closer.
Eduardo Blaine watched carefully while Peta’s sleek form disappeared into the clear water. He followed her progress until the only sign of her that remained was the scattered trail of bubbles streaming to the surface.
When he was sure she was far enough down not to notice what happened topside, he moved to the front of the boat, peeled off his clothes, and slipped on a wet suit. He looked over at the man on the other boat watching him.
“You can go.”
“No, man. Mr. Brousseau told me—”
“I’ll bring him back. Don’t worry. Of course, if you’d rather wait for the Obeahman to send you an invitation….”
Blaine looked the man right in the eyes. The Trini blinked. He understood the message: Move or die. He quickly turned away and started his boat’s engine.
Satisfied, Blaine looked back down at the telltale bubbles on the surface. Assuming the currents weren’t pushing them around too much, they told him that Peta was angling away from the support leg and moving toward the center, where the test well would be.
He grabbed a weight belt and slipped on an extra three pounds of metal. He wanted to drop like a stone. If he needed to, he could shed the extra weight on the bottom.
Won’t pretty Miss Peta be surprised, he thought, lifting a chest near the front of the boat to pull out his BCV, fins, and an extra pair of tanks.
In minutes, ready to dive, he sat on the railing, rolled backward, and splashed into the water.
He had no trouble finding the cave opening; it had been clearly marked by Charles and Abdul when they’d discovered it. He assumed that Peta was deep inside by now, perhaps all the way into the cavern. Soon, she and Simon would be coming back.
If Simon was still alive.
He reached over his shoulder and adjusted his air mixture, cutting back the oxygen. When he was satisfied with the new mix, he pulled his knife from its sheath and—holding it in front of him like the bill of a swordfish—started into the cave.
Having done more than enough cave diving to know what to expect, he moved smoothly through the twists and turns. He could almost anticipate the bony stone fingers that lurched out from the top and the sides. He swam sleekly, knife held in front of him, dodging the rocky outcroppings.
How long, he wondered, before he’d be in the cave, face to face with Peta and Simon? The two of them would be totally oblivious to his arrival.
Surprise, surprise.
At a fork in the cave, he chose the wider passage. No diver could make it into the narrower one. The walls of this new tunnel were smooth, looking almost preformed, man-made even. Probably created by the flow of water in and out of the main cave.
He saw the dull glow of a light ahead. Instinctively, he kicked harder.
The rocky tube widened suddenly and he shot into the cave. He could only dimly see what was happening. Simon was suspended near the far wall, which was covered by a mural that looked like something from an alien theme park.
Peta floated partially behind Simon’s body.
Blaine watched as she took a specimen bag from the dead man’s belt and stuffed something into it.
Good, Blaine thought. All the hard work has been done.
He kicked once, twice.
She was turning in his direction. He imagined her shock at seeing someone else in the cave, her relief when she recognized him, and finally her horror when she realized his purpose.
Horror was a bad thing. It was no fun to know that something really bad was about to happen. Better to just go quietly, unaware that—oops, you’re dead. Blaine took no pleasure in the horror. Work like this was meant to be done well, but not necessarily savored.