Stranded With Her Ex

Skull Rock, the islands’ most striking natural feature, loomed in the near distance. While most of the rock formations were jagged, jutting toward the sky like a row of wicked teeth, the Skull had a rounded shape and two distinctive, cavernous indentations. One went all the way through to the other side, giving the impression of a gaping eye socket.

It was a fitting place for a kill.

Jason saw the body before he did. “Starboard side, twenty meters,” he said, cutting the boat’s speed to a crawl.

Daniela turned her head, doing a visual sweep of the area.

Sean placed his hand on her shoulder. “There,” he said, pointing her in the right direction. She was trembling, and that would affect the video, but it hardly mattered. He’d taken some shaky footage himself.

A certain amount of fear was normal. Hell, if you weren’t scared of a lightning-quick predator with razor-sharp teeth and the striking power of a Mack truck, something was fundamentally wrong with you.

Of course, the shark was nowhere to be seen at the moment. Only the headless body of a California sea lion was visible, floating in a slick red bath. The water wouldn’t keep the color long, for the Pacific Ocean was a vast expanse, but while the animal bled out it was surrounded by a shock of crimson, pure and dark and undiluted.

“Wh-where is it?” Daniela whispered, camera focused on the corpse.

“Close by,” he said, dropping his hand from her shoulder. He wanted to keep touching her, to make sure she stayed put. Which was foolish, as no one in their right mind would leap from a boat in this situation. “Zoom in.”

She fumbled with the camera for a moment, familiarizing herself with the controls before she resumed filming. Her face was pale and drawn, her eyes stark.

Brent attached his underwater camera to a pole with a crooked arm and lowered it into the water. He didn’t talk much while he was filming, claiming that the man behind the lens shouldn’t be seen or heard.

Next to him, Jason Ruiz was silent at the helm. Although he was more loquacious than Brent, he knew shark behavior as well as Sean, and kept his comments to a minimum while they were out here. He was a good scientist, if a little overeager, and they got on well.

When Jason glanced up at Sean now, his eyes narrowed for a split second before he looked away.

The younger man’s disapproval wasn’t obvious, and Sean was almost convinced he’d imagined it. Over the past few days, Jason had treated him with deference and respect and damned near adoration. It was kind of annoying, actually.

Less than an hour with Daniela, and he’d switched sides.

Jason hadn’t known about their marriage, but perhaps he’d heard a few random details about the divorce. They’d separated after she almost died in a car accident, which didn’t cast Sean in a very positive light. His ex-wife also had a singular effect on people, especially men, and Jason had a weakness for the ladies.

He’d never met a beautiful woman he didn’t want to sleep with.

Sean could practically hear him thinking, “You dumped her? Are you insane? She’s hot.”

She’d dumped him, not the other way around, but almost everyone assumed the failed relationship was his fault. They were right, in a way. He’d been unable to protect her, incapable of comforting her and at an utter loss for the right words to say to her.

“Why isn’t it…eating?” she whispered, her voice wavering.

“A pause between the first strike and a feeding isn’t unusual. We think they’re making sure the prey is in no condition to fight back.”

This sea lion wouldn’t put up a fuss—not without a head. White sharks often attacked by ambush, rocketing toward the target from underneath and incapacitating it in one fatal blow. The current victim had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, swimming too far from the shallows and too close to the surface.

Although blood no longer gushed from the wound, the animal’s exposed vertebra was a grisly sight, and the air was thick with the smell of death. Seabirds waited on nearby perches, feathers fluttering, ready to snap up a meaty scrap.

Sean watched Daniela’s throat work as she swallowed back her nausea. She was holding up well, considering. As a marine biologist, she’d interacted with dangerous animals before. They’d worked in the field together on a regular basis, so he knew her level of expertise.

He’d seen her reach out to stroke the slippery back of a stingray, grin with delight when visited by a school of blue sharks, stand up to a braying Northern seal and get bitten on her pretty little backside as she beat a hasty retreat.

Daniela had a way with animals, a confidence gained from experience and a natural ease that couldn’t be taught. She wasn’t a shark expert, however, and the great whites at the Farallones were like no other predator on earth.

With her unsteady nerves and devastating personal history, she wasn’t the best candidate for this kind of research.

The sight of a white shark breaching, or propelling its massive body above the surface of the water during the initial attack was heart-stopping. There was also no way to predict this occurrence, so footage of it was rare. Unlike in the movies, most sharks didn’t advertise their locations by flashing fins before a bite.

Feeding frenzies were also unusual. After the kill, whites ate with economical efficiency, and they weren’t the most dexterous of fish. If their movements caused the surface of the water to bubble like a pot of seafood gumbo, it was because they were powerhouses, not because they were doing underwater gymnastics.

Sean knew what to expect, but the wait always created tension. Anticipating Daniela’s reaction made the situation more uneasy.

The whaler was only fifteen feet long, and it seemed to shrink as time dragged on. A patch of coastal fog settled over the upper half of the island, bringing with it an eerie quiet, a silence charged with dread and unholy glee.

At Skull Rock, beady-eyed scavengers shuffled their clawed feet.

When the shark broke through the surface of the water, Daniela startled, almost dropping the video camera. She took a series of short, quick breaths, fright apparent on her fine features, the rapid beat of her pulse visible in her slender neck.

Sean didn’t need a Ph.D to diagnose her anxiety, or any special intuition to realize she was reliving the trauma of the wreck. Her face was so pale, he feared she would faint. He considered dropping the tagging equipment to offer her his assistance. Brent, whose attention should have been focused on directing the underwater camera, seemed concerned by her distress. And it went without saying that Jason was enraptured.

Just as Sean was about to call off the shoot, Daniela pulled herself together. Spine straightening, she held the video camera in a steady, if white-knuckled, grip.

The evidence of her courage caused a strange welling of emotions within him. Pride, and sadness and regret. His eyes watered and his throat closed up. How ironic, he thought, if he turned out to be the one who couldn’t hold it together.

After a moment, the pressure in his chest eased and he was able to drag his gaze away from her. The white had moved in and was nibbling a big chunk of flesh from the decapitated sea lion’s side. By the looks of it, the shark was an adult, and good-sized, too. At least eighteen or nineteen feet.

“It’s Shirley,” Jason said, a grin lighting across his face.

“It sure as hell is,” Sean replied, returning his smile.

Shirley was a breeding female, and that was always a welcome sight at the Farallones. She had a crescent-shaped scar above her left eye, small but easy to recognize, and she was often spotted with her full-figured friend, Laverne.

The pair had been named by Sean a couple of years ago. Jason had seen them both last year, but hadn’t been able to tag either. The number of great whites in the world was ever-dwindling, and the circle of shark researchers was small. Although Jason and Sean didn’t know each other that well, they knew a lot of the same sharks.

They studied Shirley in reverent silence while she tore and chewed and swallowed. A flurry of greedy seagulls dogged her every movement, snatching up stringy bits of gore, wings flapping. While the effect wasn’t aesthetically pleasing, the mood on the boat was no longer sinister, and any hint of animosity from Jason was gone.

Still smiling, he eased the whaler in closer.

“Wh-what are we doing?” Daniela asked, one hand reaching out to grab the edge of the hull, steadying herself.

Sean’s blood turned to ice. “Keep your hands inside the boat.”

“Why? It’s over there.”

“One of them is over there,” he corrected, trying not to visualize Laverne breaching beside the boat, taking most of Daniela’s arm with her.

She snatched her hand back. And just like that, she lost her focus. Letting the camera sag, she searched the surface of the water with terrified eyes, pressing her palm to her lower abdomen in a way that was familiar and absolutely heartbreaking.

Sean wanted to kick himself. He didn’t know what he should have said differently, or what to say now to calm her down.

“Look at me,” Jason said.