He choked then held the CB to his mouth. “Oh God,” he said, “Someone help. God, please. It took my girl! It took her! So big…Like nothing I’ve seen before…no record of this thing…God…please, help. Help…”
Atticus felt the cabin move around him. It was alive, closing in, consuming him. He formed the words slowly, deliberately, “Jeffery’s Ledge.” A moment later he was unconscious on the cabin floor. He vomited again, but was not aware of it. If he had been, he wouldn’t have cared. Nothing mattered. Not anymore. Life. Death. The world.
Atticus had become a hollow man in the instant that creature had opened its powerful maw and sucked in his daughter. All that remained of the man was a void, as black and as deadly as the deep sea.
A sterilized odor greeted Atticus when he awoke-a hint of apple. Blue light glared from above. Maria was dead.
No.
Giona…
Atticus looked around. He was in a hospital.
After glancing out the window, he realized he was at Portsmouth Regional Hospital. The sliver of blue in the distance reminded him of his daughter’s fate and confirmed his location. He had no memory of how he’d arrived or who had brought him. He couldn’t remember anything after surfacing from the ocean.
He closed his eyes, not wanting to see the ocean, but even through closed eyelids he saw an open jaw, lined with teeth the size of the orange cones he’d set up for Giona’s soccer games when she was little.
“You’re awake.”
Atticus jumped in bed, throwing off his blanket with a shout. He turned, with clenched fists toward the voice. He came face-to-face with a woman, perhaps five-five, with wavy black hair and dark chocolate brown eyes. She stood silent and still, not at all threatened by his sudden movement or clenched fists.
He breathed deep three times, looking at the woman. She wore a stiffly-pressed uniform. Not a nurse. She stood straight as an arrow, perfect posture. Her face, while soft, was firm and serious. The muscles of her arms rippled when she moved her fingers.
Through his anger he sensed familiarity. Her eyes. Looking at them again, his clouded memory opened up and transported him to a time before he became a Navy SEAL. Andrea Vincent. Every summer his family would travel to northern New Hampshire, where they owned a cabin at a privately run campground. Andrea’s family did the same, and for five summers from ages twelve to seventeen, they had been an inseparable duo. They became romantic at sixteen and soon discovered they lived within a half hour drive from each other. When Atticus got his driver’s license he began visiting her weekly. Despite college putting a physical distance between them, their relationship stayed strong and talk of marriage crept into their late night conversations. That is, until Atticus made the decision to join the military. It was a distance and strain that no amount of phone calls could correct. There was no dramatic break up, no “I think we should just be friends” moment. They simply lost touch and faded into each other’s pasts.
But she stood before him now. A little taller. Stronger. Sporting longer hair and a more angular face. More striking than he remembered. Her uniform was what held his attention, though. She’d been opposed to his joining the Navy. Said he’d lose his soul.
“You joined the military?” he finally asked, doing his best to appear put together and in control. Too much so, he realized, in the face of an old friend he should be hugging.
“Coast Guard. Petty Officer First Class.” she said. Her face flickered with disappointment. Had she expected a happier reunion? Or did she know about his daughter? “You must be feeling better?”
Atticus hadn’t taken stock of his condition. He knew he’d been unconscious, but for how long he had no idea. Dizziness set in, and he sat down on the bed. A nurse entered the room, looking concerned. “Mr. Young, you’re awake… Can I-”
“I’m fine,” he said, a little too gruff. When the nurse left with a huff, he felt bad for being rude, but as Andrea was with the Coast Guard, she might have answers.
Andrea sat in a chair, across from the bed, in front of the window. She looked out. “Beautiful view.”
Atticus looked out the window again. The trees were bright green. A few cumulus clouds drifted past. The ocean glimmered in the distance. “Not anymore.”
She turned to him, her face saddened for a moment, but not because of his rudeness. He was all business in spite of their history, and he wanted to cut through the malarkey and talk about why she was really there. “We’re still looking for your daughter.”
His eyes fell to the floor. “You won’t find her.”
“Why is that?”
“She’s dead.”
“It took her?”
Atticus met Andrea’s eyes; his glare was full of suspicion. “That’s what you’re distress call said. It took her.” Andrea paused. “What took her?”
“Please tell me you’re not turning this into some kind of murder investigation,” Atticus said, his voice becoming like stone.
“No…not a chance.” She was adamant. “The police said you rescued your daughter from being raped this morning. Really put the fear of God into the men who attacked her.”
He nodded.
“No one suspects you of anything. Especially not me.”
“Because you know me?”
“It’s been nearly twenty years. I don’t know you that well.” Andrea took a breath, then looked out the window, gazing at the ocean. “What took her, Atticus?”
Atticus’s head slowly moved from side to side as he replayed the blurry images locked forever in his memory. “I don’t know.”
“A great white, an eighteen-footer, was spotted off Beverly Harbor last week. Could it have been-”
“It wasn’t a great white. It wasn’t a shark.”
“A whale then? Orca? Sperm whale? Perhaps a blue hunting krill scooped her up?”
Atticus’s face flushed crimson. “Do you know who I am now? What I do? Did you do any research before coming to see me?”
“Atticus…You are an oceanographer. You do work for independent firms, sometimes for the military. You’re an ex-Navy SEAL, highly decorated. You wrote Ocean’s in Peril, which is a great book, by the way. I knew who you were when I found you choking on your own puke.”
Atticus sat silently. He replayed the attack in his mind, slowed it down, took in the details. “It wasn’t a shark. It wasn’t a whale. I have never seen, nor has anyone else on the planet, seen anything like it.”
Andrea sat down next to him. She put her hand on his shoulder, a gentle gesture from a kind woman to a hurting man. “I have,” she said.
Atticus slowly craned his head around toward her. His eyebrows rose ever so slightly.
“Yesterday…we were pulling a Frenchwoman out of the water…”
Atticus nodded. He’d seen a thirty-second bit on the news about it. Her husband had been found too-drowned when the boat went down.
“But we saw something. It was huge. And I mean huge. Swam directly beneath the chopper. The Frenchwoman managed to snap a few photos.”
Atticus’s eyes went wide. “Where are they?”
“Taken. Some boys from the Navy took the camera and flash memory card.”
Atticus’s shoulders dropped.
“But not before I transferred them to my thumb drive,” Andrea added with a slight smirk. She dug in her pocket and held aloft the small USB device. “Two pictures. Both from above. One shows the shadow, just beneath the surface. The other is of the footprint it caused when it dived.”
“Must be one hell of a footprint,” Atticus said.
“Bigger than I’ve ever seen.”
With a shake of his head, he said, “I had a camera…Giona did too. When it…She still had her camera. Mine was video. Must have dropped it when I surfaced.” Atticus cursed himself. He should have held on. He’d been recording everything. He might have got the creature on film. It could have proved useful.