I realize I’ve stopped breathing.
I gasp in a breath. The gasps come fast in quick succession, panicked pulls on life. Grasping.Oh shit oh shit oh shit.I look up. The sun dancing silver above. Ten meters up. I have to get out of the water. Now.
I flail out of Mark’s grasp, kicking as hard as I can, up. Up and away from the plane. From the death.
A hand grabs my ankle and I jolt to a stop as it pulls hard, yanks me down. I can’t get away. It’s Mark. Mark holding me down in the water. Protecting me from rising too fast, from hurting myself. I know it’s for my own good but I don’t want it. I need to get out of the fucking water, right now.
The surface is still about eight meters above us. I suck in breaths as I struggle to get free. Free from him. He clambers up me to eye level and seizes me by my shoulders, strong and steady. Trying to muffle the panic. Stanch it. He catches my gaze.Stop, Erin. Stop,his eyes say.
Breathe.
He’s got me. It’s okay. He’s got me. I’m okay. I breathe. I relax into his hold. Calm. Calm.
I’m okay.
The panic sucks back into its hole and the trapdoor slams shut behind it.
Stillness. I breathe. I signalokay. Mark nods, satisfied. He loosens his grip.
I’m okay. But I’m not going down there. There’s no way on earth I’m going down there.
I signalup. I’m going up.
He looks at me for a while before he replies. He signalsokay.Then,You,up.
He’s still going down. Alone.
I squeeze his arms and he releases me. I watch him descend as I kick up slowly. A controlled ascent, now the panic has dissipated. He disappears into the murky darkness as I rise.
Once I hit the surface I remove my tank immediately in the water and haul it onto the boat. I strip off my suit and leave it like a husked skin on the floor. I slump there shivering and wheezing, struggling to catch my breath, elbows on my knees as the tears start to well in my eyes.
Images flash across the backs of my closed eyelids. Their faces. The passengers’. Distorted, distended. The terror. I slam my fists down hard onto my legs. Pain flashes through my body. Anything to stop the images.
I get up and pace the deck.Think about something else. What does it mean, Erin? Yes, think about that, concentrate on that. What does it mean?
It means the bag was on a plane and the plane crashed. A storm in the South Pacific. Something happened and they had nowhere to land. We’re about one hour by air to Tahiti. I guess they couldn’t make it there. Or maybe they didn’t want to land in Tahiti. It’s obviously a private plane. A private jet. They had money. Other than the money in the bag, obviously. Perhaps they wanted to stay away from public airports. I think about the diamonds, the money, the gun.
Perhaps they thought they could outrun the storm. But they didn’t. I look at my watch. Mark must be in there by now. With them.Stop it, Erin.
I turn my mind to the logistics of the flight. Wherewere they going? I’m going to need to look some stuff up once we’re back. I rummage through the boat locker until I find what I’m looking for. A pad and pencil. Right, I know what I need to do, what I need to focus on. Not the plane down there. Mark’s got that covered.
I note down:Flight paths over French Polynesia??God, I wish I’d noted down a tail number or something from down there. I’m sure Mark will.
I jot down:Plane type, aircraft tail number, max speed, & distance achievable nonstop??
Planes can only travel so far without refueling. We can try to work out where they might have been heading. I doubt the flight was logged, but we can search online and see if anyone is missing.
At least now our question has been answered. What we have found is flotsam. Our bag was most certainly not deliberately jettisoned. Somehow that canvas bag made its way, along with those bundles of papers, out of the plane’s breached hull and up into the Polynesian sunshine. But—and this is a big one—technically, what we have is neither flotsam nor jetsam. This is not a shipwreck. This is a plane crash. What we have is a big bag of evidence from an underwater aviation incident. I take a shuddery breath of cool tropical air.
Our honeymoon feels a million miles away and yet just within reach, if only we could—
Mark breaks through the waves on my starboard side. He fins toward the boat. His expression blank, controlled. For the first time, I truly appreciate how useful his masked emotions actually are. I think if I ever saw him truly scared, then I’d know for sure that we were done for.
He drags himself up the ladder at the stern of the boat, exhausted.
“Water, please,” he says as he jiggles his tank off onto the deck. He peels off his suit, discards it like mine, and drops heavily onto the teak seating. I fetch a water bottle from the cooler box and hand it across to him. His eyes are tight in the sunlight, brow tensed against the glare.
“You all right?” he asks. He’s watching me, concerned.
