Cassidy Jones and the Luminous (Cassidy Jones Adventures Book 4) (20 page)

~~~

While Jared lowered the anchor, Emery and I went down to the cabin to change into our wetsuits.

“So his dad spent a ton of money making all of this look state-of-the-art, but doesn’t bother with the equipment?” I remarked, glancing around at the fancy-schmancy cabin with disgust.

“Remember his dad’s taste in women.” Emery pulled his hoodie off.

“Superficial, like him.”

“Your gear is next to the bed.” Emery ignored my snide remark. Instead, he turned his back to me and faced his gear, neatly organized across the table. Apparently, he was done discussing the subject. I wasn’t, however.

“Doesn’t it make you happy to have your parents?” I tossed my jacket on the bed and peeked over my shoulder at him. Glimpsing the knotwork circle tattoo on his broad shoulder, I jerked my head forward. I had expected him to have on a Neoprene shirt, like the one he had bought me when we’d picked up our rentals from the dive shop.

“I’ve always been grateful for my parents,” he answered, seemingly oblivious of my discomfort. I could tell by his voice that he was taking off the sweats that had covered his board shorts.

Blushing, I fought the urge to peek again.

“Me too,” I blurted out, then concentrated on getting into my wetsuit as quickly as possible.

So I find my best friend attractive
—
what’s wrong with that?
I reasoned, wiggling my leg into the snug material. Emery worked quietly, too, which made me wonder if he was aware of my thoughts. The very idea caused a blush to burn up my forehead and into the roots of my hair.

“
Burrrrr
. . . this is chilly,” I remarked of the wetsuit, which was still damp from my earlier lessons. I hoped filling the silence would bust up the tension building in the air. It was so thick that I could almost taste it. “You know I’m talking about the wetsuit, right?”

“Uh-huh,” was all Emery would say, which made me even more self-conscious.

Why isn’t he talking?

The yacht blasted backward. Being in the process of forcing my other leg into the wetsuit, I lost balance and did a face-plant into the bed.

“What the . . . ?” I said, pushing my leg through. I sprang to my feet.

“He’s finishing anchoring,” Emery explained, working the wetsuit over his torso. Catching myself staring again, I gave my face a sharp smack and pivoted to the bed.

What is wrong with me?

“Oh,” was the only thing I could think to say. I punched my right fist through the sleeve hole.

“How’s it going?” Jared called from above, interrupting the awkward silence that had once again fallen over the tight quarters. He climbed down the ladder.

“Good,” I lied, trying to zip the wetsuit. Putting the stupid thing on hadn’t been that difficult earlier.

“I’ll get it,” Jared offered, lifting my hair. He pinched the zipper slider and smoothly pulled it up my back.

I cleared the embarrassment from my throat.

“Thank you.” I turned around to face Jared. Looking into his eyes, a tsunami of guilt crashed over me. The corners of his mouth curled into his slow smile that I loved so much. I felt even worse.

“You’re welcome,” he said, tugging my hair.

While Jared walked to the built-in leather sofa where his gear had been laid out, I braved a glance at Emery. He stared back at me, wearing his standard relaxed expression, and his wetsuit and hood. I suspected he had finished dressing while I’d been wrestling with my wetsuit. Why hadn’t he offered to help me, like Jared had?

Because he caught me staring at him
.

Horrified, I busied myself with my hood.

~~~

“Cass, what do you do if you lose your regulator?” Jared quizzed as he double-checked the pressure gauge on my scuba tank.

“She’ll hold her breath until we ascend,” Emery gave a smart-aleck answer on my behalf. Grinning at this cleverness, he checked his own pressure gauge.

The awkwardness between us had dissipated once we’d escaped the claustrophobic cabin—or it had for me, at least. I was positive the mortification had been one-sided.

“If I did hold my breath, trapped air would expand in my lungs and would probably burst my eardrums, or give me
the bends
, even if I ascended just a little,” I quoted Jared and stuck my tongue out at Emery. Jared had chewed me out earlier for holding my breath during our practice. He fretted about my safety like a mother hen. “Which, by the way, would heal—”

“After causing insurmountable pain,” Emery interrupted.

“Nothing compared to having your skull cracked with nunchucks.” I gave him a smug look. “To answer your question,
Jared
: I capture my regulator by sweeping the cord thingy with my arm, like this.” I demonstrated.

“Don’t let her fool you,
Jared
. She’ll hold her breath, even at the risk of rupturing eardrums, or her lungs. You didn’t mention lungs,” Emery said to me. I rolled my eyes. To Jared, he added, “She rarely does what she’s told.”

“Correction: I rarely do what bossy boys tell me to do, but I’ll do whatever you tell me, Jared. Really, I will.”

“
Hmmmmmm
. . . Somehow that doesn’t breed a ton of confidence,” he joked, then inhaled a quick breath from my regulator to make sure the air was flowing properly. “Speaking of ruptured eardrums, whenever you feel pressure building, clear your ears by swallowing, moving your jaw—”

“Or pinching my nose and blowing. I know, I know. Now, stop worrying. I’ve got this.”

“No doubt. But humor me. Let’s go over ‘Bruce Willis Rocks Action Films’ again—”

He had no clue how close I was to discarding the stupid gear and just diving in.

~~~

After Jared felt confident that I wasn’t going to drown myself or risk bursting something, he and Emery did buddy checks for equipment, and we were finally ready to go. Emery turned on the dive light tethered to his wrist and went in first, taking a giant step off the platform and disappearing into the dark water.

He bobbed, cleared his mask, and sank back under. Icy fear slid through my stomach. I didn’t want him floating in that dark water alone.

Jared motioned for me to go. I didn’t hesitate. I turned on my dive light, extended my leg, and dropped into the lake, the chill of the water only touching the exposed skin of my face. Instinctively, I wanted to hold my breath, but forced myself to inhale the breathing gas—deep, even breaths, just as Jared had taught me. The mask instantly began to fill with water, so I swam to the surface and lifted the mask to empty it, as I continued to breathe through the regulator.

Jared bobbed up next to me, cleared his mask, and gave me a thumbs-up. I nodded. Deflating our BCD jackets—which Emery called “glorified life jackets”—just a little, we exhaled slowly and sank below the surface, then swam to the anchor chain where Emery waited for us.

Emery held his wristwatch under his dive light, noted the time, and gave us a thumbs-up. It was strange not to be able to hear him, or hear anything for that matter, other than my own breathing through the regulator. The inhalations sounded like Darth Vader’s ominous breathing; the exhaling of bubbles looked and sounded like I was trapped inside a fish tank filter.

There was still enough light from the surface for some visibility, but below us, the heavy chain sank into what appeared to be a bottomless black hole.

But it isn’t like we’re in Puget Sound
,
where there are creatures big enough to eat us
, I reminded myself, recalling Jared’s warning:
What’s down there isn’t dangerous; it’s the getting back up.
I moved my jaw around to clear my ears.
This is a piece of cake—
I breathed out and sank more. Emery and Jared, only feet away, sank, too.
Especially compared to swimming across the Puget Sound
without a tank, BCD jacket, or wetsuit, and in the dead of winter, and I never once popped my ears—

Suddenly, pitch black enveloped me. I froze. The absence of light was abrupt, as though we’d crossed a definitive border into a frightening new universe. My cockiness escaped with the air bubbles streaming past my face—bubbles I could hear and feel, but not see anymore.

The boys angled their dive lights downward, continuing to sink.

Keep moving
, I commanded myself, releasing air from my BCD jacket so I could catch up with them, which also proved my inexperience. I began sinking as though I had suddenly packed on twenty more pounds.

Emery caught me in his beam and grabbed my arm as I started to pass him. Jared appeared at my side. He pressed the button on my BCD jacket, giving it a hit of air, and
voila
! The additional twenty pounds melted away.

Jared asked if everything was okay with a thumbs-up. I nodded, feeling like a complete idiot. Then he pinched his nose to remind me to clear my ears.

Emery pointed down. We emptied our lungs and continued into oblivion.

I can’t forget anything else
. I wished I’d paid more attention to Jared’s tutorial.

As we sank, Jared kept his beam aimed below us, watching for obstacles, while Emery and I swept our beams over the darkness that ravenously swallowed the light. Blackness pressing in on the cylindrical beams, our dive lights pierced about ten feet into greenish water and abruptly disappeared, as though the light had been chopped off with a hatchet. I could push my vision out another twenty feet beyond where the light beams reached. I almost didn’t want to know what was out there.

My Darth Vader breathing, the darkness, the jolting shock of seeing fish caught in our beams, the building pressure that made me feel like a giant hand was slowly crushing me like a soda can—this was, hands-down, the creepiest experience of my life. It was like watching a deep-sea horror film, except for the fact we weren’t watching. We were living it.

Forty-three feet under water
, I noted, checking my depth gauge. I cleared my ears again. My gaze followed Jared’s beam down. I had hoped to see the lake floor littered with fallen trees, not a bottomless pit.

Only another twenty-eight feet to go . . .

Inhaling slowly, I pushed down rising panic. I had to keep my wits. Otherwise, Emery or Jared could get injured trying to help me.

My dive light beam spotlighted a tree, standing erect and limbless, covered in algae with water critters darting in and out of it. An underwater hotel. Another ravaged tree trunk appeared, and then another. We had entered the sunken forest.

Emery brought his hand into his beam and held up five fingers and then three to let us know we were almost at the bottom, not that he needed to. Jared’s beam had collided with a thick tree trunk lying across the muddy lake floor. He had cautioned me about not touching the bottom or the trees. Doing so could damage the delicate aquatic ecosystem. Plus, the lake floor appeared deceptively solid. The mud would swallow me like quicksand if I tried to stand on it.

Emery hovered over the humungous tree trunk that Jared had spotlighted. The anchor was sunk into the lake floor next to it. He checked the depth gauge on his wrist, then motioned for us to swim left, into a cluster of rotting trees that rose from the mud like skeletons.

Of course this is where Emery would want to search
, I thought, as the beam from my light grazed crooked branches that reached out like sinister fingers, long strands of algae hanging from them like streamers.

Decorations left over from a party for the dead
, skittered through my mind as I followed Emery deeper into the dark, drowned forest. My beam uncovered twisted, corroded metal, debris from a shipwreck or a plane crash.

Wonder if there were survivors?
I shivered. I couldn’t get out of there soon enough.

Don’t psych yourself out
.
There’s nothing down here but rotting trees and fish.
My eyes caught movement from the left corner of my mask. Heart in my mouth, I swept my beam toward it. Something ducked behind a tree.

It’s just a fish, it’s just a fish
, I chanted in my head. Gasping in breathing gas, I turned my dive light off and on three times to signal the boys, and then swam toward the spot where I’d seen movement. It occurred to me that was exactly what all stupid characters in slasher flicks do: investigate, instead of running for their lives.

Just a fish, just a fish, just a fish . . .

A man moved from behind the tree into the open. I screamed, sending a barrage of bubbles up my face.

He didn’t disappear when the bubbles cleared, as I’d prayed he would. Sebastian Romero, the missing owner of Champion Health Clubs, hovered over the lake floor like a phantom, staring back at me. His dark hair moved with the water, and he wore a purple T-shirt with his club’s logo, Speedo warm-up pants, and no shoes. Green algae wrapped around his toes. His toenails were long and chipped, as though he hadn’t cut them for weeks.

He breathed water in and out, studying me, as if contemplating what to do. Emery’s and Jared’s beams struck his face. Squinting, Romero raised a hairy arm to shield his eyes from the light. Then he tilted his head to the side, as though he were listening to something. His eyes wandered to the right.

Petrified, my eyeballs trailed his gaze. A scream stuck in my throat. Mr. Levy floated half a dozen feet away, barefoot, arms and legs crossed, like a genie from a bottle.

Levy stared back at Romero, showing no signs of recognition, or concern about our presence. His thin lips puckered, as though he and Romero were talking, and he didn’t like what Romero had to say.

I allowed my eyes to move from them to a female and another male who had emerged from hiding, too. I thought I recognized the woman as one of the missing people from the news, but I wasn’t sure. How could I be sure of anything at that very moment?

Mr. Levy’s head pivoting on his pencil neck grabbed my attention. His gaze fixed on an object behind me.

My spine stiffened. Whether Levy’s reaction tipped me off or some internal alarm did, I knew danger was afoot. Instinct kicked in.