South Beach/Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts/March 1974

Connie Barnett floated blissfully twenty feet below the surface of the cold water. She found peace here, just the sound of her own breathing, the muffled clack of the regulator and the rapid burble of air as it escaped and rose back to the noisy world above.

The world was noisy. She came from a noisy house, occupied by a noisy family. She had noisy friends and admittedly noisy taste in music. The underwater stillness and silence cleansed her mind and renewed her will. She wanted to grow gills and live in the stillness. A few times, she had even drawn sketches of herself, evolved into a fish-human hybrid, like the Creature from the Black Lagoon, but friendlier, and with her trademark curly brown hair.

The world was a hassle. It made her restless. She was tired of living with her family, but at nineteen, she had no clear options. A single semester of college had been a washout for her. (She squeaked through high school with a merry C-minus average. The rigors of Freshman Comp quickly bested her, and she dropped all her classes except Soccer and Introduction To Calculus in the first four weeks. She got a D in those two classes she kept.)

Her life changed when her family went to the Bahamas during July of 1972, just after her eighteenth birthday. Her stepfather took them to Nassau. Connie had been bored at first, so she signed up for a snorkeling excursion, a two-hour activity that she approached with low expectations. Connie underwent a transformation the instant her face went mask-down into the ocean. Despite living on an island her entire life, she felt in that one moment that she belonged body and soul to the water. In her mind, she thought back to that moment as her true baptism, the point at which she glimpsed a path and purpose for herself. She spent as much of the remainder of that trip as possible submerged, going from snorkeling to a beginner’s scuba workshop to no less than three supervised reef excursions.

In the year and eight months since, she had done everything in her power to obtain her own diving gear. Christmas yielded a mask, snorkel and flippers. A hundred odd jobs and a non-binding loan from her dad the following May got her a wet suit from a discount diving shop in Boston. During her nineteenth summer, she earned her PADI certification. Her father seemed proud of the achievement. Her mother just sighed and repeated her favorite dictum: “If you had put even half of this energy into school, you’d be an honors student by now.”

This late afternoon, she floated, suspended in thirty-four degree water six miles off of South Beach. The chilling temperature didn’t bother her. The insulation from the polyprene fabric met with her own internal will to adapt to the water and rendered the climate entirely comfortable. She was smart enough to know that there was a temporal limit to what her body would permit her in the cold. She was in love with the sea, but she knew it did not love her back. It offered a magnificent embrace and nothing but cosmic indifference to her survival and well-being.

Never go diving alone. This mantra had been drilled into her, by her instructors, her friends, her family. She professed it herself. And yet it was true that she loved best to be under the water by herself. This evening, at least, she was technically not alone. There was Sullivan Krayt. He was thirty feet away, directly above her, aboard his sailboat Destino. Not that he would be any help if she did get into any trouble.

Connie didn’t like Sullivan much, and didn’t trust him. But he had offered her a cool hundred bucks if she could find and retrieve his wedding ring. He had taken it off three nights ago when he brought Kendra Lowden out for an extramarital nighttime swim-and-screw. (“I couldn’t wear my wedding band while I was messing around, right?” he had said to Connie.) He had wrapped the ring in a terrycloth towel and set it on the deck after an illicit nude swim, and somewhere in the middle of his on-deck rocking and rolling with Kendra, he had seen the little packet slide off and into the water.

“Just look around for the towel, and you’ll probably find the ring, okay?” He asked this question a dozen times as he sailed her out to the spot. “I know this is the place, cause we could just see the lighthouse over there.” He pointed to shore. “I have a good sense for where I am.”

“I can’t make any guarantees,” Connie told him. “I want fifty bucks just for looking. The full hundred if I bring it back. But three nights is a long time. It could be buried by now. The tide could have taken it a mile away from here. It’s a big ocean, and a ring is a pretty small target.”

“You gotta! My old lady gets back tomorrow night, and she’s gonna notice. First thing. She’s kind of psychic about this stuff. Just as soon as she sees I’m not wearing it, she’s gonna ask who I was screwing around with. And she’s gonna know it was with her best friend.”

“Ever hear the phrase ‘Not My Problem,’ Sullivan? Because this isn’t.”

“I don’t need you to preach. I just need you to find the goddam ring.”

She didn’t like Sullivan much at all.

There was another hour or so of sunlight, and she would have been happy to spend that much time down here in silent sanctuary. But she only had thirty minutes of air, and less time than that before the chill would take hold and place her in peril.

Not much hope for that ring. She held a hot spot lantern in her hands, scanning it across the sandy bottom, looking for a shred of towel or a telltale glint of metal. Her gut told her the task was a vain one, and that Sullivan probably wouldn’t even cough up the fifty for her troubles. It didn’t bother her too much, though. It was an excuse to get into the water.

These waters were never sparkling and clear as they had been in the Bahamas. Visibility didn’t extend much past 100 yards. But she saw a shadow move in the far reach of the beam of her light. She trained the beam ahead and looked for any movement. She kicked slowly in the direction of the perceived motion.

About thirty yards away, she could see the outline of a cluster of rocks on the ocean floor. A few scraggly weeds grew from it. She hoped this wasn’t all she had seen. She kept kicking in the direction of the minor outcropping, the only landmark of note within her present view.

She glanced back over her shoulder and gave a quick look to confirm the position of Destino lolling on the surface. Then she turned her head forward again. A shape appeared just three feet in front of her.

A glint of metallic blue, rows of long, narrow teeth, a white underbelly. The shape grew as it came closer. A shortfin mako shark. It swam straight at her mask and bumped the top of her head as it sped by. She spun around and watched its tail as it swam away.

She laughed. Bubbles trailed out from around her mouthpiece. Some water snuck past it and into her throat. She deftly cleared it from her mouth, coughed, held her breath as she checked the hose and mouth apparatus, replaced it all and resumed breathing. She had given a nervous jump and her heart was beating faster, but she was smiling. A mako. She loved them! She had never been so close to one before.

She shined her beacon into the murk in the direction the shark had disappeared into. Her mind filled with words to will the creature back. I’m a friend. I want to see you again. You’re beautiful but you swam by so fast! Come back!

She waited and watched for a minute or so, then turned the light back around to the small rocky region. Once again, she thought she saw a shadow in motion. She hoped it would be another shark, or the same one, circled around without her noticing. Heaven knows makos are fast enough to do that, she thought. She was now more than halfway to the rocks, and the shadow was now clear.

It was a person, moving very slowly.

She kicked faster and descended. The person in shadow wasn’t swimming. It looked like someone drifting, someone drowning, or already drowned, sinking to the bottom.

She closed the short distance between them before she knew it.

It was a young man. He wore a tank, a mask and flippers. And not much else. Shorts and a thin tank top. His skin was nearly blue. A thin line of bubbles indicated that he was breathing, barely.

Connie touched his shoulder. He responded, barely, by rolling his eyes her direction. She found the indicator for his tank. The needle was well below the danger point. He had nearly zero air. His face was pinched with pain and fear.

She removed her mouthpiece and offered it to him. He seemed barely aware of her presence. She removed the man’s air hose. That got his attention. She placed her own in his hand and lifted it to his mouth. In a few moments, his eyes came into focus and he took a breath from her tank. His eyes were locked on her face. His raised his left hand, curled into a fist, and haltingly made an ‘OKAY’ sign with it. With his right hand, he took out the mouthpiece and gave it back to Connie. She took a breath and gave it back. She then jerked her head upward, indicating that the next step would have to be a careful trip in tandem back to the surface.

She took the tank off her back and held it between the two of them. The man was aware enough to kick haltingly, but she surmised that he had given himself up for dead some while ago, and had to be in a state of hypothermia to boot.

She was saving a life, and part of her thrilled to this thought. But she also saw clearly that his survival all the way to the top was by no means certain. She looked up and back for the reassuring presence of Sullivan’s boat. It took her a few long glances to find it.

Behind his mask, the man’s eyes kept fluttering open and shut. She placed his arms on top of her shoulders and put her left arm around his back, hugging him into a huddle, her tank at its center. He was slipping in and out of consciousness. She had to shake him the third time that it was his turn to take a breath.

The two of them stayed suspended fifteen feet below the surface. The available light diminished. She couldn’t get much lift anymore. She had to revive him enough that he could kick just a little more. She spent ten minutes helping him breath, shaking him, rubbing his back, closing her eyes and doing something a little bit like praying, to no one in particular, to anyone who might be looking in.

The man’s eyes closed for a full minute, and she felt a dread she had not known before, that someone was about to die in her arms. But then his eyes opened again, and she thought she saw a faint smile on his face.

Then his expression changed. His eyes widened and the respirator flew from his mouth. Abject fear.

And the mako swam by again, grazing her back with its tail. Then it sped away, catching a blue-grey glint on its back.

Connie smiled again. The jolt had brought the man back. He was kicking vigorously now. The quick adrenaline rush had been just the burst he needed.

In another two minutes, they broke the surface. Connie took the whistle from her belt and blew it hard, then followed with a loud shout. “Sullivan! Get over here and make it fast!”

Within five minutes, the man was onboard Destino, wrapped in blankets, and the harbor master and Coast Guard had been alerted by radio. Connie kept close tabs on the man’s breathing. He never spoke. He mostly kept his eyes closed, but now and then, he opened them long enough to look at her and smile feebly.

“What the hell was he doing out there?” Sullivan asked.

“I don’t know. It’s crazy to go out this time of year without a wet suit. He can’t have thought he’d be in the water very long. Maybe he was looking for something.”

“Just like you. Speaking of which …”

“No, Sullivan. I didn’t find your damn ring.”

Not really true. As she had begun her ascent from the rock, she had seen it in her periphery. A tattered length of terrycloth. And a hint of metal. Right by those rocks, and out of reach, because someone’s life depended on her not letting go. Sullivan’s problem had quickly taken zero priority, and she decided now not to mention it. Maybe she would get a chance to go back for a second try, but she decided not to tell him and get his hopes up. It didn’t matter to her.

She could only think of the shark. Her mako. In the two fast glimpses, she had not seen any genital claspers. Her shark was female. The shark had gotten her attention, directed her to a dying man, and then scared that same fellow back into action just in time to get him to the open air.

In almost no time, two helicopters and three speed boats were circling in on them. There was hope for the skinny, shocked man, and unwanted attention surely coming for Connie and Sullivan. Lots of questions about what they were doing out there. Her dad would find out, she knew that. It would lead to an argument, most likely. And Sullivan, not much chance that his out-of-town wife wouldn’t hear about his role in this life-saving drama. She’d have some very tricky questions for her husband, and Connie knew he wasn’t up to providing satisfactory answers. Hell, even if he had the ring back, he was in real good trouble.

The man was loaded onto a stretcher and taken by copter to the mainland. Connie was taken back to the Island on one of the Coast Guard boats. Sullivan wound up on another, his Destino tied and towed behind it in the darkening night.

She gazed at the water all the way home. She thought of her shark, and knew a sense of spiritual bliss that made her laugh and cry at the same time. No god, no idea, no philosophy or concept of land-bound humanity had ever moved her like this.

“Please let me see you again,” she whispered to the waves as the boat entered Edgartown harbor. She saw her father waiting at the dock. She waved at him, ecstatic and more alive than she had ever been in her life.

***

Next Chapter: Prologue 3 - Kaplan