Shark Island Page 18

  With new strength, she climbed another half-dozen feet, shoulder and back muscles aching badly. On the third crossbeam, thirty feet above the water—maybe twenty-nine now—she dragged herself up and tucked into a triangular space. Wary of the beam giving way, she sat rigidly for several long seconds, waiting for the worst to come. When it didn’t, she still held on to the bar that angled down in front of her, forming the top of the triangle.

  The tower swayed. The creaking of its joints sounded like a hundred tiny voices.

  Down below, the seals were abandoning Bald Cap. It offered no haven to them now. They slid through shallow water and vanished into the deep, resurfacing with their sleek backs gliding swiftly away. Some would head for Deeley Island, but the signal from the sunken boat would keep them coming back despite the danger here. Their instincts should have kept them away, scattered them to many of the islands nearer to the mainland, but those instincts had been rewired. They wouldn’t go far, even if it meant their deaths.

  Naomi watched the fins, saw one of them cut toward a seal. For a few seconds the fin submerged, lost in the depths. The shark came up jaws first, and it bit the thrashing seal in two before it plunged into the water again.

  The tide kept rolling in.

  Naomi glanced down and saw Wolchko struggling to make the climb, looked over, and saw Captain N’Dour watching her in silence. Overhead, Kat and Tye and Rosalie were resting, and the rain pattered the metal platform almost gently. The smell of rust and salt filled the air. Naomi told herself again that they would be all right.

  But whoever might be coming to check on them, she wished they’d hurry.

  CHAPTER 32

  Jim’s kayak cut diagonally over a wave. His shoulders ached a bit, but he knew it was only the beginning. By the time he reached the end of the day, his back and neck would be burning.

  He had paddled rougher waters than this. Near the island, the swells turned into waves and crashed onto the shore, but out here to the south of Deeley there wasn’t as much whitewater. Some of the surges and swells frothed at the top or started to break, but he knew his way around them, knew how to stop them and avoid them. Dorian might not have quite as much experience, but he had enough. He’d been ocean kayaking since the age of seven. They’d be fine. But the people on the watchtower over on Bald Cap were going to owe them many, many beers.

  Jim lifted the paddle, swiped it into the water, and started to turn north. They’d kayaked south and then out to sea. The extent of the seal herd had astonished him and filled him with wonder. Their numbers made the moment surreal, as if he and Dorian had found themselves in an impossible dream. The storm and the ocean and the dark skies fed into that sense of detachment. But now they had gotten clear of the densest gathering of seals and it was time to approach Bald Cap from the east.

  Jim scanned the water for sharks, counting fins, gauging their patterns. They seemed to be staying mostly in the channel between Deeley and Bald Cap, circling out and then returning to one spot in particular, where they would dive and vanish for a while before emerging. That worked fine for him. He had spotted some outliers and now that the water had swept across Bald Cap many had drifted beyond the tower, but he could work with that. The sharks would focus on the seals, and if there were a few nearby when he and Dorian approached the tower he wasn’t concerned. They weren’t seals, after all. The kayaks were bright yellow, even in this grim weather. Though it occurred to him that he had no idea if sharks saw color.

  He craned his neck around to check on his son. Dorian paddled smoothly, keeping up with his dad seemingly without effort. Jim grimaced. He had a lot of pride in his sons, but he wouldn’t have minded if it had been a little difficult for Dorian to keep up with him.

  Jim kept his palms open as he swept the paddle forward and the kayak glided over the water. Even in the midst of the storm, he couldn’t help enjoying himself just a little. If not for the specter of what he’d seen, that one man being killed by the sharks, this would have been one of his great adventures.

  He dipped the paddle into the water to port and the kayak rode a large swell.

  Something struck the paddle, thumped against the kayak hard enough to jostle him. The tug on the paddle nearly dragged it from his grasp. The kayak slewed sideways and tilted, out of his control for a moment. Jim swore as an enormous gulp of ocean water spilled into the kayak. He’d have been safer in a single, but then there’d have been no way to evacuate anyone off the watchtower.

  Dorian shouted his name. Jim ignored him, paddling hard to get himself at the correct angle to the next swell. A frisson of fear prickled his skin and he remembered the man in the channel and the way the sharks had torn at him, but then he saw an enormous seal, and a second, and then a third and fourth, not quite so large, and he realized it had been them he’d struck.

  He whispered a prayer of thanks, grinned into the salt spray and the rain, and paddled toward the watchtower, which was the only sign now that Bald Cap had ever been there.

  Jim turned to look back at Dorian. “I’m all right!” he called.

  His son was gone. The kayak drifted, upside-down in the undulating sea. Jim shouted Dorian’s name, paddled hard, turning himself around and scanning the water. When Dorian’s head burst from the sea, the kid whipping his head back and forth to get his hair out of his face, the relief Jim felt nearly brought him to tears.

  “It’s there!” he said, pointing to the overturned kayak. “Swim, and I’ll find the—”

  He’d been about to say paddle. Dorian needed his paddle. But Jim saw two things at once that silenced him. One was the fear in his son’s eyes and the other was the dark, narrow shape just beyond the overturned kayak, the tall fin that zipped toward them both.

  “Swim, Dorian!” Jim screamed. “Jesus, please swim!”

  He paddled straight for his son. For his boy. Twenty-one now, pierced and tattooed, but still the toddler who hadn’t liked to walk up their street without holding his daddy’s hand. Still the sweet boy who’d loved Winnie the Pooh well into elementary school and who’d written his mother the most profoundly sincere get-well notes ever scrawled in crayon. Jim had no memory of tears now, only a dark, primal strength that welled up from some ancient place inside him.

  Dorian fought the pull of the sea and the weight of his clothes, swimming to meet his father. The shark glided just below the surface, breaking the water around it. The kayak flipped backward and to one side as the shark passed by. Jim swept the paddle down, firing his own kayak into the space between Dorian and the shark. He shouted to his son, not even hearing his own words as he planted his paddle into the water, dragging to a stop, prow pivoting. He lifted the paddle and swung it around with all of his strength as the fin came toward him—toward his boy.

  The paddle struck even as Jim’s kayak rose on the water displaced by the shark’s arrival. The impact jarred him, lifted the kayak off the water. The prow went up and up and Jim paddled at the air for a heartbeat before he understood that he was flipping over backward. He heard Dorian scream for him as he plunged into the cold Atlantic, the deep current seizing him.

  He kicked toward the surface, lungs already clamoring for air. He hadn’t had a moment to hold his breath and now he exploded from the water, gasping, terrified, and freezing. The water surged around him and he caught a mouthful of it as he floated, scanning for his kayak … for Dorian … for the shark. He spotted Dorian, but then he saw bright yellow fifteen feet farther out. He called for his son to follow and he started to swim.

  For a second he thought he saw a flicker of light, just south of Deeley Island. His wrist batted something hard and he saw it was his paddle. Triumphant, he grabbed it and kept swimming, one-handed, for the kayak. Shouting again, he glanced back to make sure Dorian was following, and when he turned again toward the kayak he saw nothing but teeth. Teeth and the yawning darkness of the shark’s gullet. It hit him so fast that he didn’t have time to scream, taking his left arm, head, and shoulders all in one snap of its jaws.r />
  CHAPTER 33

  Dorian saw his father die, saw the shark thrashing back and forth so hard it sawed him apart. The horror of it froze Dorian, grief pouring into him even as he saw a second fin circling out by his father’s kayak. Dorian had been bitten already, the snap of something smaller than these sharks, and he could feel the warm cloud of his own blood around him in the water. The sea swelled ahead of him and he saw something dark and ragged and awful bob up to the surface. He understood that he was seeing what remained of his father, but he couldn’t accept it, couldn’t allow himself to really see. Not with the fins nearby.

  Swim! his father had screamed. And now Dorian did. His own kayak was behind him. He turned in the water, forcing himself not to think about how close the sharks were, how quickly they could reach him. Forcing himself not to admit that his only chance was if they paused to eat the rest of his father. Hating himself for wishing they would. Screams bubbled up inside him, but he forced them away and just swam, arm over arm, roiling water swamping him, dragging at him, making him hold his breath.

  He glanced up, searching for the yellow of his kayak even as he realized it would not save him. Of course it wouldn’t save him. So stupid, he thought even as he spotted that yellow plastic bobbing on the water and struck out toward it. If he managed to flip it, to climb aboard, he’d only be buying himself a little time.

  Dorian slowed. He felt tired. The cold water and the blood seeping from his leg and the leaden weight of grief tugged at him. He almost gave up, then, but his father’s voice still echoed around in his skull. Swim, Dorian!

  Determined, he kicked hard and pressed on toward the glimpse of yellow again. The rain fell, made him blink his eyes. A wave rose beneath him and his heart stopped a moment, as he thought a shark had caught up to him.

  A noise blared into the storm and he jerked up short in the water. For half a second he thought it might be the bark of a seal, but it was so loud, so long and baleful, and then he recognized it as something that simply couldn’t be. Dorian spun in the water and saw the fishing boat churning through the water, on a course to pass right by him. A big, bearded man stood at the rail, trying to call to him over the blare of the horn.

  Dorian saw the sharks, still back where his father had died, where even now his blood was spreading, vanishing into the endless ocean. One of the fins struck out toward Dorian.

  The horn went silent. The wind and rain replaced it, along with a voice, the fisherman shouting at him. Dorian shook himself from the daze of grief and shock and looked up to see the man tossing a life preserver toward him, the rope on it unraveling as it plunked into the water. Again he heard his father’s echo in his head, shouting at him to swim, only this time it merged with the voice of the fisherman.

  Bleeding, numb, mourning, fatherless, Dorian swam.

  His hands closed on the life preserver, held on while the fisherman dragged him toward the boat. Moments after the big, bearded guy hauled him into the back of the boat a shark bumped against it hard enough to rock the whole vessel.

  “Hey, man,” the fisherman said, “you’re okay. We got you, all right? You’re okay.”

  Dorian’s vision dulled and he blinked as black dots blotted out the corners of his eyes. Lying on his back, he looked up at the fisherman and at the storm high above them.

  “Bit me,” Dorian said. “I’m … I’m bleeding.”

  The fisherman glanced down at Dorian’s leg—Dorian himself didn’t bother looking, didn’t have the energy. But he saw the bearded guy’s brow wrinkle and the cloud that passed across his rescuer’s eyes.

  “Ah, shit,” the fisherman growled. “This ain’t good.”

  CHAPTER 34

  Jamie got the young guy’s name out of him—Dorian—but nothing else. He ripped apart the guy’s pant leg to check out the wound and let out a huff of air. The shark hadn’t torn a chunk out of him, but the punctures from the bastard’s teeth were deep and ragged and bleeding badly.

  “Oh, Jesus,” Dorian said blearily, on the verge of passing out. Which would be a better option for him than staring at that wound.

  “I got this, buddy,” Jamie said. “Don’t sweat it. You’re gonna be all right.”

  Dorian gave him a doubtful look, full of despair, too smart for his own good. Jamie turned and called for Walter, shouting to be heard over the engine. They’d been powering farther out, away from the sharks and seals they’d seen. One of the sharks—maybe the same one that had bitten Dorian but maybe not—bumped them a couple more times on the way, but a few minutes had passed since then. Now Walter throttled down and when Jamie looked up to shout for him again he was already there with the first-aid kit in his hands.

  “That ain’t good,” Walter said, staring at the guy’s torn-up leg as he handed over the kit.

  “Exactly what I said.” Jamie pulled a plastic bag from the kit, tore it open, and tugged out a thick roll of gauze, started wrapping it tightly around the leg. Blood began to seep through a moment or two later. “I’m gonna need something more than this. A sweatshirt or something.”

  Walter dug around in a cabinet and pulled out a stained Red Sox hoodie, unsheathed his fishing knife, and started cutting the sweatshirt into strips.

  “I saw two kayaks out there,” Walter said.

  “Two kayaks, maybe,” Jamie replied, “but this guy was alone. Anyone else with him is already gone.”

  Dorian had turned deathly pale. Now he slumped to the deck, the last of the fight going out of him. Unconscious, for now, and mercifully so.

  “You think he’ll make it?” Walter asked.

  Jamie turned to him, grim determination forming inside him. “Fuck if I know, brother. But we’re not done yet. Maybe it’s just so many seals being around, but those sharks were in a feedin’ frenzy or something. Let’s check out Bald Cap, make sure nobody else is in danger. It’ll add five minutes, and then we get this guy to a hospital.”

  “Harbor master said there are people on Deeley Island, too. This kid’s family, right?”

  Jamie thought of the two kayaks. “Or what’s left of his family. But if they’re on Deeley, they’re safe enough.” He looked down at the blood soaking through the bandages on the young man’s leg. “This guy ain’t.”

  “All right,” Walter said. “Bald Cap, then home.”

  But the way Dorian was bleeding, Jamie wasn’t sure the guy was ever getting home.

  CHAPTER 35

  Tye’s head throbbed. He lay on one side of the platform with Rosalie and Kat sitting face-to-face, occupying the other. The rain had soaked him through and the wind made the last, partial wall on top of the platform creak and squeal as it held in place, uselessly. The bleeding had stopped on his leg, at least according to Kat, which explained why he hadn’t just fallen unconscious or bled to death at this point, but a part of him wished he’d bled just a little bit more—enough to put him out. Instead, he gritted his teeth and lay on his side as the pain thumped against the inside of his skull and throbbed in his temples. His leg had gone mostly numb, and what pain remained felt minuscule in comparison to the thudding in his head.

  A hand shook him gently.

  His eyes popped open and he realized with some surprise that he’d drifted off, in spite of it all. A groan escaped him. His neck and shoulder muscles burned and his spine felt like he’d been kicked by an elephant. With only one useful leg, the climb had messed up his back.

  “Hey,” Kat said, forcing him to focus on her.

  He blinked against the rain. “Tell me we’re rescued.”

  She shook her head, too miserable for the joke to make a dent. “Rosalie and I are swapping places with Wolchko and Naomi for a little while. Give them a rest. I just wanted you to know.”

  Tye watched Rosalie wave to him before she climbed over the side of the tower. Wincing at the renewed throb in his skull, he gave the tiniest of nods.

  “Listen … about that secret—”

  “Tye.”

  Kat’s tone said it all. He frowned,
blinked away the raindrops, and tried to focus on her face.

  “I’ve been thinking about it,” she said. “I guess I was so convinced this was about you being in love with me, and feeling weird about starting something with Rosalie—”

  “It’s not.”

  Kat nodded. “I know. It’s about The Persimmon Foundation. Why they pulled their funding from my lab. They’re funding you instead.”

  Tye shivered in the cold rain. His whole body throbbed with the pain in his leg and he wondered how much blood he’d lost, how long before infection set in. Gangrene. But he forced himself to focus.

  “You knew?”

  “For months,” she assured him. “Dashawn at Persimmon told me you’d done an end run, pitched them your own projects. I’m not going to say I wasn’t pissed, but you were always going to end up with your own lab.”

  Tye stared at her. “I stabbed you in the back and you knew, but you kept me on your team.”

  Kat shrugged. “For me to be really angry, I’d have to see you as competition. You’re smart, Dr. Ashmore. But you’re not smart enough to really be a threat to my funding.” She glanced around. “Of course, after all of this, I’d say we’re both going to have some lean times, funding-wise. I guess my only question is, what’s the deal with Rosalie? I thought you two had a thing.”

  Tired, Tye closed his eyes. His lips felt chapped and dry, despite the rain. “She’s … Rosalie’s coming to work for me.”

  “Ah. Now it makes sense.” Kat bent to whisper in his ear. “Watch yourself. That one’s even more needy and conniving than you are.”

  She moved to the edge of the platform and started to carefully slip over the edge. Tye dragged himself a few inches so that he could see over the side. He flinched back as Wolchko’s face came into view.

  “Jesus,” Tye muttered.

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to spook you,” Wolchko said.