At first he saw nothing. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a shape moving toward him. For an instant he felt the strictures of panic close once more around him. But then he realized what the shape was.
A turtle! Nothing but the sea turtle coming back for another look at the odd-looking creatures that had invaded its environment. Probably the same one he and Michael had seen a little while ago.
Michael!
Where was he? Josh looked quickly around but saw no sign of his friend. He’d just been there, right behind him, just a couple of feet to the right!
Hadn’t he?
Suddenly he remembered the octopus. How long had he been watching it? You tended to lose track of time underwater; everyone did. And the darkness only made it worse. Damn! How long had it been since he’d actually seen Michael?
Josh twisted frantically in the water now, searching for a glimpse of Michael. What the hell had he been thinking of, bringing Michael out here in the middle of the night? Just because Michael had managed to pull him out of the reef didn’t make him an expert diver! He should have known better. And he sure shouldn’t have let Michael out of his sight, even for a second.
He switched on his flashlight and shined it around.
Nothing.
Now he aimed the beam downward, raking it back and forth across the bottom, silently praying that when the light picked Michael out of the darkness, he would be moving, not just—
Before the words could form in Josh’s mind, he saw him.
Michael was twenty to twenty-five feet off to the left, and ten or twelve feet below. And he was moving.
Josh’s panic subsiding now that he’d located Michael, he automatically sucked in a breath of air in preparation for the dive down to make sure his friend was all right.
But the familiar pressure from the regulator had disappeared, as if the tank had run out of air. That didn’t make any sense — they’d only been in the water for maybe forty minutes, and the tank should have held enough air for an hour.
Unless it hadn’t been full when they’d started.
But he’d checked it! He could distinctly remember checking the tank he was wearing, as well as Michael’s and Jeff Kina’s.
He looked down again. Was Michael really moving?
Suddenly he couldn’t tell.
What if Michael had run out of air, too?
What if he’d forgotten what to do, and panicked?
His fear for Michael flooding back, Josh reached back and jerked the lever over to the reserve position, then frantically dived down toward Michael. He was just coming into the murky part of the water when he saw Michael drop his weights and pull the cord that activated the CO2 cartridge on his life vest. The vest instantly inflated, and Michael popped to the surface, shooting past Josh. Not bothering with his own emergency cord, Josh swam quickly to the surface, pulling the regulator out of his mouth the second his head popped out of the water.
“You okay?” he asked. But even in the dim light he could see that something had happened to Michael.
“I–I think so,” Michael stammered. “I just — I don’t know — all of a sudden I couldn’t breathe!”
“Damn it!” Josh Malani exclaimed. “Let me see your gauge.” He maneuvered himself around behind Michael, switched on the flashlight, and shined it on the gauge. “It’s the damned tanks,” he told Michael. “Mine’s running out, too! I was going down to get you when you pulled the cord. Let’s get back to the beach and make sure the other guys are okay.”
Inflating his own vest to make swimming on the surface easier, Josh started toward the beach, keeping pace with Michael. It wasn’t until they were scrambling out of the water onto the beach that they saw Jeff Kina trying to get a small pile of kiawe burning in a makeshift fire pit.
“What happened?” Josh asked. “How come you’re out already? You’re always down till you start breathing water.”
“And that wasn’t very long ago,” Jeff replied. “The gauge said the tank was full when I went in, but I ran out of air ten minutes ago.” He scowled in the moonlight, then glared at the offending tank. “And we can’t even complain to Ken about it, since he didn’t exactly rent this stuff to us!” He struck another match. The small pile of kindling under the kiawe branches sputtered, then burst into flame.
A few minutes later, as the fire crept up through the kiawe, which burned brighter every minute, Rick and Kioki emerged from the water, too. “What happened to you guys?” they asked.
Josh shrugged. “Tanks weren’t full.”
Kioki frowned. “Yours, too? I figured it was only mine.”
Rick Pieper glanced at his buddy. “What are you talking about? You had trouble, too?”
Kioki nodded. “I think the gauge on mine was screwed up. I had to switch over to the emergency real early on.”
“Why didn’t you give me a signal?” Rick demanded. “My air supply was okay. Jeez, Kioki, if we’d been down deep, you coulda been in real trouble.”
An expression of sudden fear came over Michael’s face, and Josh spoke quickly. “But we weren’t deep. We’re all fine, and all we have to do is put this crap back in the dive shop and make sure that next time everything works right. Okay?” He looked from one face to another, as if daring anyone to challenge him.
“Don’t you think we ought to tell Ken?” Rick finally ventured.
“Tell him what?” Josh demanded. “That we snuck in and borrowed his stuff?” His voice took on that edge of sarcasm already familiar to Michael. “That’d be a real good idea, wouldn’t it?”
“So what do we do?” Jeff Kina asked.
Josh shrugged. “What we were always planning to do. Nothing happened, so we take the stuff back, clean it up, and go home. Or do you all want Ken calling the cops on us?”
As they moved closer to the fire, letting its warmth drive the chill of the water out of their bodies, no one said anything.
No one had to.
Michael gazed past the campfire’s flames at the dark pool of water, and shivered as he realized how close to danger they had come.
But nothing had happened. He hadn’t panicked, and he’d gotten the weights off, and …
And he wished he’d never come on this dive.
CHAPTER 8
Rick Pieper glanced at his watch — it was 11:35. If his folks were still up, there’d be hell to pay, since he’d sworn he’d be back no later than eleven. But it had taken longer than they thought to get all the equipment back into the dive shop, and even when they were done he was pretty sure Ken would notice in the morning, no matter what Josh Malani had said. Well, if Ken figured it out, Malani would just have to find some way to get them all out of it. One thing about Josh — he could always figure out something. Now, as Rick slowed his car to make the left turn off the highway to the village in the cane fields where Kioki Santoya lived, he tooted his horn at Josh’s beat-up truck, which sped on up the mountainside.
“Want me to drive you all the way home?” Rick asked a few minutes later as they approached the intersection where he’d have to turn to drop Kioki at his house.
The other boy shook his head. “My mom’ll wake up. Seems like she can hear a car a mile away. Just let me out up here, and I’ll walk the rest of the way.”
Rick Pieper pulled the car over close to the ditch. As Kioki opened the door, he felt something funny, like a wave of dizziness. Hesitating, he wondered if maybe he shouldn’t have Rick drive him the rest of the way home after all. But the feeling passed as suddenly as it came on. Kioki slammed the door shut behind him. “See you in the morning,” he called. Rick popped the clutch on his car, taking off with a screech of wheels and a cloud of dirt that kicked up into Kioki’s face. Flipping his friend the finger, Kioki started along the narrow road.