“Let Leia take a look.” Bane scooted back and put his arm around Eva. Candace moved back a few inches, but her gaze stayed on Tony. Leia knelt by Tony’s side. Eva’s shoulders trembled, and Bane squeezed her arm reassuringly. She stuck two fingers in her mouth and sucked on them.
Leia pressed her fingers on Tony’s neck, then lifted his lids and peered into his eyes. “Call for the Coast Guard to get over here!” she told Candace. She began CPR. The next few minutes passed in a blur, but when it was all over, Bane knew Tony Romero would never flash his famous white smile again.
A weeping Candace, Tony’s body, and the rest of the divers were loaded onto the Coast Guard boat that had been in the area, but Bane and Leia stayed behind to bring the boat back. Bane pulled Leia aside and pointed to Tony’s gear still heaped on the deck of the Mermaid. “What happened to his weight belt?” It wasn’t among his things.
Leia seemed as confused as Bane. “He wouldn’t just drop it off. We both saw him trying to slow his ascent. You want to go back down and try to find it?”
“I was thinking the same thing,” he said grimly.
Three
Leia hovered at about forty feet below the surface. A school of highfin chubs congregated along the underground cave entrance in front of her, and she swam in the midst of them as they nosed around her curiously. Bane’s bright halogen light joined hers to penetrate the inner reaches of the cave. The beam illuminated a sleeping reef tip. She saw the eagerness in Bane’s eyes. He’d be back. Cave exploration was his favorite pastime.
They turned in unison and swam down past the opening. She kept an eye on her computer to make sure she didn’t go too deep. The rest of the divers had been exploring the reef along here when Tony shot toward the surface. Leia paused to let her light probe a mass of antler coral. A school of bright yellow tang scattered from her gloved hand as she gently moved the coral out of the way to probe at the sand under it. Tony had been right here before his ascent. His weight belt should be on the sandy bottom fairly close.
The currents were strong around Moloka’i, but the belt shouldn’t have gone far. Leia swung her light around, and the powerful beam caught a moray eel peering from behind a rock. She moved her light onto a mass of finger coral. Bane swooped in beside her and examined the coral but came up empty-handed. They searched the seafloor until their air began to run out. She turned to motion Bane it was time to go up and saw him and Eva swimming away. She followed, then realized he’d found his plane, down about a hundred feet.
He made a triumphant gesture with his fist. She smiled and jabbed her finger toward the surface. About twenty feet from the top, Bane grabbed her arm and pointed toward two dark shadows looming toward them. Tiger sharks. Tigers accounted for most shark attacks in Hawaiian waters. A burst of bubbles escaped as she exhaled. The tigers veered at the bubbles, but they circled and came back for another look.
Eva had seen them too. She started to swim toward the boat, but Leia grabbed her arm and held her tight. She thrashed to free herself, her blue eyes wide with terror. Leia embraced her, patting her back for comfort until her sister calmed. Bane grabbed his octopus regulator and purged it. The sharks turned at the explosion of bubbles and with a flick of their tails vanished into the dark blue water. Leia finned toward the boat as fast as she could go, Eva at her side. Bane was right behind them. Her head broke the surface, and she struck out for the boat. No matter how often she dived, seeing a shark always unnerved her.
Leia kept an eye out for any approaching shark fins until her sister was aboard the boat, then climbed the steps herself just ahead of Bane. She shrugged out of her tank and unzipped her wet suit, rolling it down to her waist. “I thought sure we’d find his weight belt. It has to be down there somewhere,” she told him. “But at least you found your plane. We need to mark it with a buoy.”
Bane unzipped his wet suit and peeled it off. “I’ll call it in. The Coast Guard is right over there.” He nodded toward the cutter anchored about half a mile away. “Something doesn’t smell right, Leia. Tony wouldn’t die at the surface just from losing his weight belt. He was a smart diver and would have exhaled to prevent his lungs from exploding, but he was dead when I got to him. I think something else happened to him down there. And now we can’t even find the weight belt. It doesn’t add up. It should have dropped right to the seafloor. It’s too heavy for a marine animal to carry off.”
“We need to have an autopsy and see what killed him. From the blood, I’d guess his lungs ruptured. But he knew to exhale as he ascended.”