Page 12 of Vanished in the Mist
And if he didn’t surface soon, he’d become one of those statistics.
His hand touched another piece of wood. It was hard, unyielding and mired in sticks and muck, just like everything else in this area. He tugged it loose and decided to bring it up to gain a better understanding of the kinds of debris he’d need to be aware of while diving in this lake.
Seconds later, blessed cool spring air rushed into his aching lungs. He bobbed on the surface, treading water, his arms and legs feeling heavy and weighted down. It was the oddest feeling, as if something was trying to suck him back under.
“Kaden! Over here.”
He turned, surprised to see Shanna waving at him from the boat a considerable distance away, at least three times thedistance from where he’d gone into the water. And there wasn’t even much of a current to have pushed him that far.
“Kaden, grab your life jacket. There!” She pointed.
He turned again, to see it floating a few yards away, the sonar device still attached. He lunged for it, grabbing it and holding on. The strange weakness in his limbs was disconcerting and made no sense. It took all his strength to hold on to the jacket and kick toward the boat.
As soon as he reached it, he let out a shaky breath and tossed the life jacket and muck from the lake bed onto the deck.
Shanna’s face was pale. He must have scared her by being gone longer than he’d intended. He really should have suited up and gone in with a flashlight and tank. With her fear of the water, it hadn’t been fair to leave her alone. From the way she was shaking, he must have terrified her.
“I’m so sorry I worried you.” He pulled himself onto the deck. The moment his legs cleared the water, the strange lethargy evaporated. “How long was I under?” He stood and closed the opening before turning around.
Shanna wasn’t looking at him. Her body was shaking as she stared down at the bundle of debris and muck he’d tossed onto the boat. Except that it wasn’t just debris.
It was a human hand.
Chapter Six
Shanna wrapped her arms around her waist as she sat at a picnic table a good thirty feet from the shoreline, watching the activity on the lake. The police had told Kaden yesterday that it was too late in the afternoon to begin their search of the lake where he’d made that horrific discovery. So they’d all agreed to meet out here this morning.
Neither Kaden nor she had been interested in dinner yesterday, so he’d stayed on his boat to do whatever maintenance boaters did after going boating. He’d spent the night there while Shanna had slept at her sister’s cabin. This morning, the two of them had shared a quick, lean breakfast of toast and juice in spite of the kitchen being well-stocked as Cassidy had promised. Neither of them had gotten their appetite back yet. Then he’d left in his boat and she’d left in her car, both of them ending up at the same spot. This place, where he’d discovered that awful, severed hand yesterday afternoon.
There weren’t any local police divers, so rather than wait for the state police to arrive with their dive team, Kaden had volunteered to begin the process of recovering the remains. As he dived yet again, this time in scuba gear, three Mystic Lake police officers, including the chief, assisted from their much smaller boat, holding a rope tied to Kaden and tugging it now and then. In answer, Kaden was supposed to tug back so they knew he wasn’t in trouble.
She shivered as he disappeared beneath the water for the dozenth time. At least he had people with him to help if he ran into trouble. The only thing that Shanna could have done the previous afternoon was to call 911 if she felt he needed help. If he really had been in trouble, he’d have likely ended up drowning since there was nothing she could have done to save him. She felt so danged useless, frozen on that boat staring at the water and counting down the seconds since he’d disappeared beneath the surface. She’d wanted to dive in, to look for him. But she couldn’t seem to move, no matter how hard she’d tried. Fear had held her in place.
Four minutes.
She would have sworn an oath that Kaden had been underwater for four minutes when he’d made that dive without any diving equipment. She’d been on the verge of making that 911 call when he’d finally surfaced. Later, he’d assured her that he couldn’t have been down that long. He’d have run out of air. But she’d checked the time on her phone throughout his dive. It had definitely been four minutes. Or, at least, her phone told her it had. Maybe yet another of the anomalies around this allegedly cursed lake was that it somehow messed with electronics. It was either that, or divine intervention had protected him.
She shook her head at her fanciful thoughts, torn between her being determined to wait until all of the bones were recovered, so they could officially confirm that it was Tanya, and wanting to head back home. One thing was for certain. She wasn’t ever going out on that lake again. The largest, deepest body of water she ever planned to get close to in the future was a bathtub.
“Hey, there,” a friendly voice said as one of the female police officers sat beside her at the picnic table. “How are you holding up?”
Shanna gave her a weak smile. “Okay, I guess. I’m sorry, I forgot—”
“My name? I wouldn’t expect you to remember. We only spoke briefly when all of us met up here a couple of hours ago to start the search. I’m Officer Grace O’Brien. That’s Chief Dawson and Officers Ortiz and Collier on the boat out there. And you’re the private detective that Cassidy has been hounding to come here for quite some time.”
Shanna winced. “Guilty as charged.”
The policewoman surprised her by pressing Shanna’s hand in camaraderie. “Try not to feel guilty. There’s no evidence that Tanya Jericho’s disappearance was anything sinister that needed your expertise as an investigator. You should feel proud today, proud that you and Mr. Rafferty are likely bringing closure to the Jericho family by bringing Tanya home. Or, at least, helping them accept that she’s truly gone so they can lay her to rest.”
Shanna nodded her thanks, but guilt was riding her hard. She doubted it would go away until or unless she could confirm that her refusal to help before now hadn’t contributed to whatever had happened to Tanya, and whatever the young woman may have suffered.
She watched as Kaden handed a dark plastic bag to one of the officers on the police boat. Then he dived beneath the water yet again. “You really think it’s her? Tanya?”
“You don’t?”
“I hope it is. Not that I want her to really be…gone. But if it’s not her, that means we still don’t know what happened, where she is. Her family won’t get that closure you mentioned. And someone else’s family is going to get some really bad news.”
“We don’t have anyone else missing, at least not recently. And no one’s ever been reported missing in this section of the lake. An unfortunate number of swimmers and boaters do go unaccounted for around here, more than in most lakes—”
