Page 97 of Hold Your Breath
Stupidly enough, her mask was the hardest thing to manage. Her gloved fingers were useless at tucking the edges under her hood, and she finally gave up in frustration, leaving the mask as it was while hoping it would still form an airtight seal. After fastening a harness around her, she dug her portable out of her coat pocket. Carrying it and her fins, she headed back out into the howling wind.
She tied the end of the safety line to a metal bracket on the dive van and stepped onto the ice. It was solid beneath her feet. Cal’s ice-rescue training lecture skipped through her mind then, about how no ice was safe—ever.
Although she tried to keep a straight line, she was walking blind. The dive light hooked to her BCD reflected off the sheets of sideways-driven snow. Her stomach twisted with the fear that she’d walked right past the hole when the wind settled for just a few seconds—just long enough for her to glimpse the dark smudge of water against the whitish-gray surface of the surrounding ice.
Her steps grew cautious as she approached the hole. She dropped to her hands and knees and then her belly, despite the growing urgency demanding that she hurry. The ice was firm beneath her, with no cracking or signs of weakness, and she frowned as she slid to the edge, suddenly remembering Callum’s throwaway comment during the tense drive over.
There are always weak spots on Verde once the temps start warming up. But Mission? What’d this guy do? Chop a hole before jumping in?
The edges were uneven, but smooth…and haddefinitelybeen cut by some kind of tool. What the hell was going on?
Staring at the dark water as if it would tell her the answers, she reached for the radio and pulled it close to her face.
“1244, Dispatch.”
“1244, go ahead.”
“Diver One’s safety rope was cut,” she said. “Diver Two entering the water.”
There was a startled pause, and then the dispatcher responded, “What is the status of Diver One? 1244, do you copy? Do you have another dive tender on scene? Is there someone else on shore?” Her questions increased in urgency as Lou fumbled to pull on her fins. Lou picked up the radio again.
“Status of Diver One is unknown. No one else is on shore. It’s just me.” Her voice wobbled on the last words, and she placed the radio back on the ice.
Closing her lips around the regulator mouthpiece, she slid feetfirst into the black water.
Chapter 19
Although the majority of her was covered with the dry suit, the frigid water on the exposed skin of her face made her gasp. She sank quickly—too quickly—and fumbled to inflate her BCD. Although her thick gloves made her clumsy, she finally managed to add air, and her descent slowed. The light attached to her BCD cast an eerie glow, illuminating a short distance directly in front of her. When she turned her head without also rotating her body, the darkness was absolute.
Her breathing was too quick, too shallow. If she kept panting like that, she knew she would use up her air much too quickly. She counted to four on her inhale and then exhaled for four counts, tipping her light up so she could watch her bubbles ascend. The sight calmed her a little, that evidence of her ability to still breathe, despite her nightmarish surroundings.
Her ears ached, and she pinched the rubber over her nose and blew, equalizing the pressure. That familiar action settled her nerves even more, reminding her of all those sunlit sea dives she’d gone on before Brent became a fourth on their family vacations to the Caribbean.
Lou checked her depth gauge, which showed her at eighteen feet. She turned in a circle, careful not to get tangled in her safety line. Her light penetrated less than eight feet through the murky water and revealed absolutely nothing. Forcing her breathing to slow once again, she tugged her dive knife from the sheath attached to her dry suit.
Reaching back, she tapped it against her tank, creating a pinging noise. Sound traveled through water four times faster than through air, and the sharp ding of metal against metal cut through the reservoir better than her light. Lou paused, waiting for a response. Once again, she had to force herself not to hold her breath. There was nothing, though, and she quickly cut off panicked thoughts about what was keeping Callum from answering her signal.
Lou attempted to ease the knife back in the sheath, but the tool refused to cooperate. After several unsuccessful tries, she gave a frustrated grunt and kept the knife in her hand, telling herself sternly not to cut anything vital, like a safety line, regulator hose, or an artery.
As she’d messed with her knife, she’d descended another ten feet until her light glanced off the weedy bottom just beneath her. The reservoir averaged eighty feet in depth, so she was relieved this was a relatively shallow area. After equalizing the pressure in her ears again, she turned onto her front and began searching in larger and larger circles.
The bottom was littered with junk—from beer cans to umbrellas to fishing reels—everything that fell or was thrown into the reservoir during the summer months when the water warmed to a balmy forty-two degrees Fahrenheit. Her light created odd shadows around the waterlogged objects, turning everyday items into ominous shapes.
The image of HDG’s body kept flashing in her mind, no matter how many times she forced the visual from her brain. The possibility that she’d stumble upon another body in this eerie darkness made her breathing quicken, forcing her to consciously slow it down, again counting her inhales and exhales. There were two victims in the water, she reminded herself, plus Callum—although she refused to think of him as a victim. It would be agoodthing to find them. Despite that, she shivered beneath the thermal layer under her dry suit.
Systematically scanning for a glimpse of Callum or the victims, she turned her light and gaze from left to right and then forward again. Every so often, she would rotate to look upward, shining the light into the murky, endless water, which brought a stifling rush of claustrophobia each time. It was hard to believe the surface existed less than thirty feet above her.
She checked the pressure gauge and saw that her tank was half-full. Giving a near-hysterical huff of laughter into her regulator, she commended herself on her optimism. It wouldn’t be good to start thinking about her tank being half-empty.
Lou refocused on her search, sweeping her light to the left. She moved it past the figure before it registered. With a jerk of delayed reaction, she aimed the light back at the dim form as she turned, kicking her fins as hard as she could to propel her toward the human-shaped shadow.
As she grew closer, the shape became more defined, and her muscles tightened with excitement as she recognized the back of a figure in a dry suit—Callum! Her light reflected off his oxygen tank, and she renewed her forward plunge. Kicking closer, however, Lou had a moment of confusion when she saw a second dry-suited figure in front of Cal.
It appeared that they were grappling, which didn’t make any sense. Lou stared, confused, as the second diver shoved Cal, making him stumble back. His fins kicked up clouds of sediment that fogged the water, adding to the surreal image.
It had been just a couple of seconds, but time felt stretched to Lou, like she’d been watching the horrifying tableau for hours. The second diver’s dry suit was green and black—definitely not one of the dive team’s.
And he was attacking Callum.
