Her phone rang. Mr. Rossi.
“I have to take this,” she said. “It’ll just take a second.”
Unless it was terrible news and she needed to go. Not that she wanted terrible news, but she wouldn’t mind not getting on that sub. Maybe Mr. Rossi would send a replacement.
“Vivian?” Mr. Rossi asked. “Is this a bad time?”
“I’m about to climb aboard The Green Meanie,” she said.
“Someone posted the video online of you getting Tesla out of the line of fire last night.”
Hopefully, they hadn’t captured her conking that old guy on the head with the tray. “Am I in trouble?”
“Trouble? No.”
Wright looked ostentatiously at his wrist. He wasn’t even wearing a wristwatch.
She held up one finger.
“It’s gone viral. A hundred thousand views already.”
Lucy would be furious her big sister had become an Internet sensation, and in that stupid suit, too. “Oh.”
“I’ve been receiving calls requesting your services all morning. I’m quoting twice your usual rate.”
“Sweet,” she said. “I’ll check in when I get back.”
Mr. Rossi wished her a pleasant voyage and ended the connection. She hurried back to the sub.
“Is your employer, the brave Mr. Tesla, joining us?” Wright asked.
“Just me,” she said. “And my camera.”
“I can understand how the sub ride might be stressful for him.”
Everything was about points with this guy. She wanted to stick up for Tesla, but couldn’t come up with anything that didn’t give Wright more information than he should have, so she settled for, “He’s busy.”
“Did his hot girlfriend make it?”
“Yes.” This had long day written all over it.
Wright changed the subject. “Loved coming up that tunnel. Shameful to think it was once full of sewage being dumped straight into the ocean. Some amazing organisms are growing on the inside. Has your boss ever had a marine biologist down there?”
“I don’t know.”
“Tell him those are the kinds of things he needs to make a priority. It’s too easy to ignore the natural world.”
Wright might care about the natural world, but he was always quite happy to let the human world go, having abandoned his own wife and child. Vivian didn’t say anything. Wright taking her out was a favor to Tesla, and Tesla needed all the favors he could get.
Instead, she climbed in through the open bubble and buckled in. Her body remembered what had happened the last time she got into a submarine. Her legs trembled, and she hoped Wright didn’t notice. Tesla had suggested Parker get on the sub with Wright instead of Vivian, but she’d insisted. She wanted to get right back up on the horse, not give in to her anxiety and let it grow. That had seemed like a good idea when she was on dry land. Now she wasn’t so sure.
Wright closed the bubble and dove. Green water closed over the cockpit. She shut her eyes and took a couple of deep breaths, trying to get her heart rate down. She wiped clammy palms against her pants and tried to think calming thoughts. She had no calming thoughts.
“Are you sure you can do this?” Wright sounded more curious than concerned.
“The last one flooded and almost killed me. Give me a minute.” And also, shut up.
“Better to freak out now, before we’re a hundred feet deep and you can’t get out.”
The perfect way to calm someone down, go straight to the worst-case scenario. Wright’s wife was probably better off without him.
She took a third deep breath, blew it out, and opened her eyes. Outside, all was black, so they must be in the tunnel. Two navigation lights lit the way forward, but not as well as she’d like. This must be how Tesla felt whenever he tried to go outside. Panicked. It sucked. She had to get it under control, because she wasn’t going down Tesla’s path.
“You doin’ OK, sport?” Wright asked.
“Fine, thanks,” she said. “Sport.”
He made a snorting sound she thought might be a laugh.
She ignored him and got to work. Keeping busy with things inside the sub might distract her from the crushing weight of millions of gallons of water outside. She unzipped the camera case. Tesla had given it to her this morning, along with detailed instructions on how to use it.
Waterproof, he’d told her, down to sixty meters. Which made it a lot more durable than she was.
She shook that off. Tesla wanted unbroken footage from the time they left the dock to when they returned. If she turned up any evidence, he wanted to make sure it was well documented, especially if the Harbor Patrol didn’t ever bother to do a more thorough investigation.
She set the camera up and aimed it through the cockpit window, turned it on and checked the picture on the little box. Recording perfectly — clear picture and a time-and-date stamp along the bottom. That was it, her whole job. She could have done it without leaving the dock.
Not really. She had to watch it to make sure nothing glitched and Wright didn’t mess with it. He wasn’t the most trustworthy character.
Also boring. Wright was a lot less fun to travel with than Tesla. After his initial jibes, he fell silent. He didn’t dawdle or swing the lights around to see things either. Wright drove single-mindedly forward, eyes flicking to the GPS to make sure they were taking the most direct route to the scene of the crash.
Today, she liked that. She wanted this to be over with.
She recognized the sunken sailboat she and Tesla had passed before they got hit, the Aronnax. Next up, the transatlantic cable on the muddy ocean floor. No shark this time. Finally, they reached the cracked-up submarine where she’d almost died.
Water filled the cockpit where she’d sat, and a brown fish with big lips swam inside. The back of the sub was flattened. A few feet closer to the cockpit, and they would have had to take her remains out with a teaspoon.
“Damn expensive fishbowl,” muttered Wright.
He held the sub steady while she panned the camera across the wreckage. A black scrape straight down the side showed where the larger sub had hit Tesla’s sub, and a trench marked where the sub had been dragged before coming to rest against a rocky outcropping. Her heart skipped all over the place, but she held it together, trying not to think about the sub’s final journey.
“Looks like you got stomped by Satan’s boot,” Wright said.
“Exactly. Do you see the scoring on the metal? The sub was hit with tremendous force — way more than the prince’s sub could have generated. And those black streaks? They’re wider than the prince’s sub.”
“Let’s go look for the prince’s sub,” Wright said.
“First, can we circle this one?” she asked. “I want to document everything.”
Obligingly, Wright turned the sub in a slow spiral. She aimed the camera downward. She didn’t want even the slightest movement to make anyone question the validity of her footage.
After the circle, Wright headed over to the prince’s sub. Its cockpit had cracked into pieces, like an egg, and the pieces were scattered along the mud in the direction the black sub had traveled — a long arrow pointing toward Tesla’s submarine. She swallowed.
“Looks to me like Prince Timgad’s sub was hit first and dragged, and then whatever it was hit you,” said Wright.
“That’s exactly how it happened.” It surprised her Baxter hadn’t done more investigation, but maybe he had and had been lying to provoke a reaction at the party. Or maybe someone was trying to cover up what had happened.
“Open and shut.” Wright dove toward the wreck.
Her stomach lurched. “Be careful! That’s evidence.”
“You filmed the evidence,” Wright said. “Which is kind of a bonus for you. It’s not why I’m here.”