‘Then what?’ Tyler asked.
‘Then something found them.’
Tyler couldn’t take his eyes off the gold. He didn’t believe in the shark story. Something so large was impossible. The gold, however, he did believe in, and it was just a few feet away. He blinked as Liam wrapped it up and slipped it back into his bag.
‘So, you interested in helping us?’ Nash asked.
Tyler returned to his seat and drained half his beer. ‘What do you want me to do?’
Nash leaned closer, licking what remained of his lips as he spoke quietly. ‘My body is, for want of a better word, fucked, and I can’t physically dive down there anymore. Even if I could, frankly, I’m afraid that I’ll come face to face with that thing again. You and Liam will dive down to the ship graveyard in Devil’s Triangle, and I’ll provide support from the surface. For your efforts, you’ll get ten percent of the haul, however much that might be.’
‘Ten percent? You tell me there’s a monster shark down there and then expect me to risk my life for ten percent. Sorry, not happening.’
Nash frowned and glanced at Liam. ‘Looks like I said too much too soon. Alright, how does twenty percent sound? We will provide the boat as well as the equipment we need. I’m talking top of the range sonar, and diving gear with face masks that allow us to talk to each other. We will be in constant communication.’
Tyler wasn’t a greedy man, yet he knew this was an opportunity for him to permanently put off returning to his mundane life that he had walked away from so long ago if the story was true. If it wasn’t, it was another new experience for him to say he had tried. It was about security, and if it meant he had to accept Nash’s ghost stories, then he would.
‘Man, you’re breaking me here. Twenty-five percent and I won’t go any higher.’
Nash had mistaken Tyler processing his thoughts as indecision, and the higher offer made the rest easy. ‘Alright, you’re on.’
‘Good to have you on board,’ Nash said, trying again to grin.
‘Just one thing,’ Tyler said, looking at the two of them. ‘No offence, but you don’t look like you can afford all this fancy equipment you talked about.’
‘We can’t, or at least we couldn’t,’ Nash said, glancing to the bag containing the gold bar. ‘I know a guy who will exchange that gold piece there for cash no questions asked. Don’t worry, we can afford this little project.’
With far too much information already taken on board and unsure how he even got pulled into the entire thing in the first place, Tyler nodded. ‘Alright, then I guess I’m in. What happens next?’
‘It’s going to take a few days to get everything we need. In the meantime, I don’t think I need to tell you how important it is to keep this quiet. Nobody around here thinks the Devil’s Triangle is real. We need to keep it that way. We need to go in and out quick and quiet before anything finds us.’
Tyler didn’t have to ask what he meant. The fear in his good eye said enough. ‘No danger of that. I don’t know anyone to tell. Comes with the lifestyle.’
‘Good. That’s exactly what I thought and why I picked you. Liam will give you the address. Be there on Friday morning.’
He waited until Liam had scribbled the details and passed them across to him.
‘Alright, then I guess I’ll see you Friday morning,’ Tyler said, standing and shoving the address into his pocket.
‘In the meantime, do yourself a favour. Learn about the Megalodon. Make sure you read up on it. You need to know what you’re going up against. I’ve got enough blood on my hands and don’t need anymore.’
Tyler was going to crack a joke, something to lighten the mood, then saw that Nash was serious. ‘Alright, I’ll do that. See you Friday morning.’
Tyler finished his drink, slid off his seat and left the bar, realising the slight beer buzz he had before he started talking to Nash had gone. He was now sober and had a head full of questions and speculation. First and foremost, he needed a drink. Just one. Just to calm the nerves.
Chapter Six
Tyler didn’t read about the Megalodon, despite his intentions to do so. Instead, he had gotten drunk and let the demon within him roam free. The Friday morning he was supposed to meet Nash and Liam, he had woken as always on the floor of his motel room, head thundering, body filled with pain and regret at his actions. He had half-convinced himself that the whole story was just the ramblings of a drunk, perhaps a glimpse into his own future if he didn’t get control of his habit. The one thing that kept his interest was the gold. Sure enough, there was no guarantee that the bar he had been shown came from the Devil’s Triangle, but if it was a ruse, Nash was going to extreme lengths to make it seem real. As he dressed and dry swallowed aspirin to relieve the thunderstorm in his head, he supposed today would tell either way. He would go to the dock and see what happened. If there was no Nash or boat, he would move on with his life. He had learned not to try and predict too much of the future and since leaving his old life behind had become blasé about such things. Grabbing his sunglasses to protect him from his hangover, Tyler grabbed his backpack and set out to see what was going to happen next.
The heat of the day was brutal and made Tyler’s hangover feel even worse. His skin was soaked with sweat, and angry patches of perspiration had formed under the armpits and down the back of his navy polo shirt. Even so, he risked lifting the sunglasses and propping them on his forehead to look at the vessel in Dock 9.
The seventy-two-foot yacht bobbed in the azure waters, sunlight shimmering off its white hull. The windows to the wheelhouse were blacked out, the entire vessel screaming luxury. Across the bow, painted in pale blue was the ship’s name. The Sonnet. Tyler stared at it, squinting against the sun and watching Nash and Liam load supplies onto the boat.
Nash saw him and waved a scarred arm. ‘You made it.’
Tyler stood agape and thinking how Amy would have loved to have seen such a rare thing. He was lost for words. Nash saw it and laughed, fedora flapping in the breeze. ‘You thought I was full of shit, didn’t you?’ he said as he leaned on the rail around the stern of the boat.
‘Yeah, actually I did,’ Tyler replied.
‘Well, don’t just stand there, come on board. We’ve got work to do.’
Tyler tossed his bag onto the deck at the stern and climbed on board the boat. Everything felt surreal, from the gentle sway of the vessel in its berth to the slightly hops and booze smell coming off Nash as he sorted gear on the deck.
‘This must have been expensive.’
‘It was,’ Nash replied. ‘Like I said, I know a guy who didn’t ask too many questions. Told him it was for a fishing trip just to be safe.’
Tyler exhaled, doing another slow three-sixty as he took everything in. Nash chuckled as he handed a box of supplies to Liam. ‘You’re still struggling to take it all in, aren’t you?’
Tyler was caught off guard by the directness of the question and was spared having to answer by Nash’s laugh as he clapped him on the back. ‘Don’t worry about it, the story is pretty unbelievable, isn’t it?’
Tyler nodded, the growing feeling of unease in his gut becoming harder to ignore. Nash checked his watch, then squinted up at the sun. ‘Well, maybe we should be on our way. Weather looks clear at least, so that’s in our favour. I want to do this during daylight hours.’
Tyler nodded. Now he was standing on the boat and everything Nash had told him was turning out to be true, he couldn’t help but think about the shark story he had been told. He still didn’t think it was possible, but he knew the more time he spent with Nash and the closer they got to their destination, the idea would grow and fester in his mind.