In Deep: A Fin Fleming Thriller Read online

  Praise for Sharon Ward

  Sharon Ward’s IN DEEP is a stellar, pulse-pounding debut novel featuring a female underwater photographer. A heady mix of underwater adventure, mystery, and romance.

  Hallie Ephron, New York Times bestselling author

  Pack your SCUBA fins for a wild trip to the Cayman Islands. In Deep delivers on twists and turns while introducing a phenomenal new protagonist in underwater photographer Fin Fleming, tough, perceptive and fearless.

  Edwin Hill, author of The Secrets We Share

  How much did I love In Deep? Let me count the ways. Fin Fleming, underwater photographer, is a courageous yet vulnerable protagonist I want to sip Margaritas with. The Cayman Islands are exotic and alluring, yet tinged with danger. The underwater scenes and SCUBA diving details are rendered in stunning detail. Wrap that all into a thrilling mystery and you'll be left as breathless as - well, no spoilers here. You must read it to find out!

  C. Michele Dorsey, Author of the Sabrina Salter Mysteries: No Virgin Island, Permanent Sunset, and Tropical Depression

  Breathtaking on two levels, Sharon Ward’s debut novel IN DEEP will captivate experienced divers as well as those who’ve only dreamed of exploring the beauty beneath the sea. The underwater world off the Cayman Islands is stunningly rendered, and the complex mystery involving underwater photographer Fin Fleming, especially the electrifying dive scenes, will have readers holding their breath. Brava!

  Brenda Buchanan Author of the Joe Gale Mystery Series

  In Deep is a smart and original story that sucks you in from page one. Edge-of-your-seat suspense, a hauntingly realistic villain, and a jaw-dropping twist make this pacy read unputdownable until the very last word.

  Stephanie Scott-Snyder, Author of When Women Offend: Crime and the Female Perpetrator

  In Deep

  A Fin Fleming Thriller

  Sharon Ward

  Copyright © 2021 by Sharon Ward LLC

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  For Erin, Taylor, Cam, and Scott. Pat, Colin, and our other Erin. Josh, Jen, Isaac and Ryleigh. Thanks for being my family.

  And for Jack, the best husband in the universe.

  Maggie, I miss you.

  Contents

  Foreword

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Foreword

  Grand Cayman is one of my favorite places on Earth. For those of you who also love it, please know that I took some liberties with the geography of the island and a few dive sites.

  For example, I needed a convenient place to put the Madelyn Anderson Russo Institute, so I stuck one in.

  In general, if something bad happens at any location, the spot is more than likely a figment of my imagination.

  The restaurant where Fin and Lily have lunch is fictitious. Don’t try to get a reservation.

  For you divers, I added walls to a few dive sites where no walls exist, and I added some dive sites that aren’t real.

  And Fin and the other professional divers in the book engage in some very risky dive practices. They dive alone. They don’t check their gauges. They dive too deep and ascend too fast. Unless you too are a pro, don’t do as they do. Recreational divers should always obey the dive safety rules, and dive within the limits of their experience. Plan your dive, and dive your plan.

  If you haven’t been to the Cayman Islands, go. It’s a magical place.

  Chapter One

  It was just after dawn on the day of the first accident, and the scorching Cayman Islands’ sun was already warm on my shoulders. Before starting to load my gear onto the Maddy, my stepfather’s dive boat, I pulled on an old silver dive skin left over from one of the annual documentaries filmed by the Dr. Madelyn Anderson Russo Institute for Ocean Exploration. My name—Finola Fleming—was emblazoned in fluorescent pink letters down the right leg.

  I was still in the first month of my new job and trying hard to make a name for myself. After finishing my doctoral coursework in oceanography, I’d rejoined the family business—the ocean exploration institute we call RIO for short—as marketing director and principal underwater photographer, work I love. Mostly because it requires me to dive every day.

  My stepfather, Ray Russo, and his lifelong dive buddy, Gus Simmons, were sitting in the twin captain’s chairs waiting for me to finish loading up. Today, they were training for a deep apnea dive that we wanted to include in this year’s RIO documentary. My assignment was to film some of the training.

  I tucked my dive bag under the bench along the side of the 36-foot Munson dive boat that had been custom made for Ray back when he was a champion freediver and a world-renowned treasure hunter. Despite years of hard use in every ocean on earth, his boat still gleamed like new. Ray made sure of it.

  “All set, Ray,” I said when I’d put my tanks and photography equipment away.

  Ray gave me a devilish grin. “Is that all you’re bringing, Fin? You sure you don’t need any more stuff?”

  “Maybe another camera, a change of dive skin, some lip gloss?” added Gus.

  “Women never travel light, do they?” Ray said. “What is all that stuff?”

  Gus chuckled. “I don’t know, Boss. But there sure is an awful lot of it.”

  “Don’t need it…,” said Ray.

  “Don’t want it,” finished Gus.

  Ray and Gus both laughed, and I laughed along with them.

  After a lifetime of friendship, the two men were so close they often finished each other’s sentences, and to watch them dive together was like watching a single organism perform. I had been diving with them since I was a little kid, and they had trained me and taken care of me all that time. My heart swelled with love for them.

  We moored the boat on the rim of a flat reef that dropped off into a vertical wall that went more than two miles down. Ray used a small portable winch to lower a heavy metal plate on a guide rope marked in ten meter increments. They would use the rope as a visual scale while they practiced.

  Apnea diving can be tricky. Nitrogen narcosis, also known as rapture of the deep, can mess with your mind,
making you forget which way is up. It helps to have the rope as a guide.

  “Ready?” Gus asked.

  Ray nodded. “All set. Let’s suit up.”

  Ray and Gus wouldn’t be using any gear except a small face mask and an aluminum noseplug while they made a series of progressively deeper breathhold dives. No scuba tanks full of life sustaining air; no fins for propulsion. Nothing but their frail bodies against the cruel ocean depths while training to freedive to 330 feet.

  Down that deep, it’s dark. It’s cold. And it’s lonely.

  Not to mention treacherous.

  Since Ray and Gus would be in the water all day, they pulled on thick neoprene wetsuits for warmth. Before stepping off the Maddy’s platform, they strapped dive computers to their wrists to track their depth. The powerful computers were just a little bulkier than a regular wristwatch, but they were technical marvels. My stepfather loved technology almost as much as he loved diving.

  I entered the water to videotape their first dives. After filming their entries and exits, I’d have accomplished my assignment for the day, and I planned to spend the rest of my time working on the storyboard for a new promotional video I was planning for RIO.

  “Let’s start easy. Just 132 feet,” Ray said.

  Gus nodded. “You go first.”

  “One of us is up when the other one is down, right?” Ray said, repeating the safety rule for apnea divers. Although I wasn’t a breathhold diver myself, I knew the rule’s purpose was to make sure if the diver underwater ran into a problem, the diver keeping watch on the surface could come to the rescue.

  In theory, at least, that’s the way it works.

  While Ray floated on his back, calming his mind and body, sipping air in preparation for his dive, I sank beneath the waves to get in position for filming. When he was ready, he made a head-first descent, using his powerful arms and bare feet to propel himself straight down. He was sleek, fast, and focused. A perfect visual for film.

  At sixty feet, the ocean took over the work. Ray went still and relied on his body’s own negative buoyancy to pull him down. I followed him until at 132 feet, his dive computer beeped. He turned and headed for the surface, kicking hard to break the ocean’s hold on him. Shortly after he passed sixty feet, positive buoyancy propelled him to the surface with no further effort on his part. I followed him up, still filming.

  He broke the surface and removed his mask. “I am okay,” he said, while making the diver’s traditional hand on head sign. This was the required protocol in competition, and the custom looked good on video. Ray was always well aware of the impression he made on camera.

  For fifteen minutes after Ray surfaced, Gus studied him with care to ensure he wasn’t suffering any ill effects from the dive. This was an important part of the after-dive procedure. The prolonged lack of oxygen sometimes makes divers forget how to breathe when they surface after deep apnea dives.

  Once Ray’s breathing normalized, Gus prepared for his own descent. I filmed him too, and like Ray’s, his dive was perfect. Easy, even for Gus, who wasn’t as experienced as Ray. But then again, these 132-foot dives had been a mere warm-up.

  The human body needs time to adapt to freediving, and divers sometimes worked for months or even years to increase their tolerance by just a few feet. Soon Gus would be fighting to master every additional foot of depth, but for Ray, reaching the goal was a simple matter of reacclimating himself to the sport he’d once dominated.

  Their next dives went to 140 feet. At these depths, divers were no longer visible to watchers on the surface. The designated safety diver above relied on the dive’s elapsed time to decide whether to intervene. I climbed back aboard the boat to work on my video’s storyboard while Gus and Ray kept diving.

  By noon they’d progressed to 230 feet. Although Ray had gone much deeper on past dives, this was close to the maximum depth Gus had ever achieved. “One more dive before we break for lunch?” Gus said.

  “Sure thing. I’m starving,” Ray said. “I’m going to 260 feet on this dive.” He inhaled several times and then disappeared under the water.

  I checked my watch when he surfaced. Ray had been underwater for over three and a half minutes, still well under his personal best time.

  Ray removed his mask. “I’m okay. In fact, I’m fine, and I’m more than ready to eat. No sense in waiting any longer than we need to for lunch since we’re all starving. Fin can keep an eye on me. Why don’t you dive now, Gus?”

  “Okay, if you say so. I’m gonna try for 260 feet too.”

  “You sure? We’re not competing here.”

  Gus grinned. “We’re always competing, my man. And if an old guy like you can do it, I can do it too.” He floated on his back for a moment, then swiveled beneath the water.

  * * *

  As we waited for Gus to surface, seconds slid into minutes. I checked the timer on my dive computer. He’d now been under water for three minutes. For Gus, that was a long time.

  Gus wasn’t approaching world record times yet, but then again, he was not a world class breathhold diver. I could tell from how uneasy Ray was that we both knew he should have surfaced by now, or at least we should have been able to see him making his way back from the shadowy depths.

  At three minutes and fifteen seconds of downtime, Ray peered through his mask into the water for any sign of his best friend. I put my camera away and lifted my scuba tank over my shoulders.

  Just in case.

  Three minutes and thirty seconds.

  Still no sign of Gus. I could hear Ray’s fearful panting even from my spot on the boat.

  At three minutes and forty-five seconds, I saw growing alarm in Ray’s deep brown eyes. His breathing was rapid and shallow, and his panic over Gus prevented him from catching his breath. He wasn’t wearing tanks, and he couldn’t freedive now even to save his friend. He wouldn’t get past thirty feet before running out of air.

  I donned my fins and stepped into the water. This was a problem.

  A very big problem.

  “Save him,” he said. “Please.” His voice was raspy, breathless, and full of terror.

  I put my scuba regulator in my mouth and sank below the surface. While I descended, I turned in slow circles searching in all directions for any sign of Gus.

  At first, I saw nothing.

  At 100 feet, I spotted him, his foot tangled in the guide rope below me. He was very still, not even trying to swim for the surface.

  I swam as hard as I could. I reached him at 130 feet of depth. He was unconscious.

  I grabbed him and stuck my primary regulator into his mouth, switching to my spare for my own use. I clasped his torso with one arm, using the other to hold the regulator in his mouth in case he began breathing on his own. I began the long trek back to the surface, ascending as fast as I could and ignoring all safety stops.

  The alarms on my dive computer went crazy at my rapid ascent. I didn’t care. I had to save Gus, no matter the cost to my own health. My heart was pounding with fear and exertion.

  Knowing every second could mean life or death for Gus, it felt like forever before we emerged from the water. Ray pulled Gus’s limp body onto the Maddy’s dive platform.

  I scrambled aboard and dragged the emergency oxygen tank over to where Gus lay immobile. I clapped the mask over his face and started the flow.

  Meanwhile, Ray grabbed the radio and called RIO. “I need help. Get an ambulance and oxygen to the dock. Gus had an accident.” Heedless of the tears running down his face, he gave our location and then began CPR, working to save his friend’s life. “Please, God,” he whispered, over and over again as he pumped.

  I noticed the depth on Gus’s dive watch, which showed he’d been down to 330 feet. I pointed it out to Ray and asked, “Why would he go down that far?”

  Ray shook his head but didn’t break his CPR rhythm. I was sure we were both thinking about the French freediving champion who’d blacked out and suffered lung barotrauma because the judges had set th
e guide rope a mere ten meters deeper than he’d planned. Gus had gone so much further than an extra ten meters. Still, that injured diver had been able to resume his freediving career soon after the accident. I prayed Gus would be as lucky.

  Despite my desperate prayers, I was surprised when after a few minutes, Gus expelled a belly full of sea water, gasped, and at last, began breathing on his own.

  Ray’s sigh of relief was audible, and tears streamed down his face. He rolled Gus onto his left side to prevent him from choking. The color slowly returned to Gus’s lips and cheeks, and his eyes fluttered open. He tried to sit up, coughing and spitting blood.

  Ray put a hand on his shoulder “Just relax. Take a few minutes before you exert yourself.”

  Gus coughed again and nodded before he lay back down.

  After a few minutes, his breathing steadied and once more, he tried to sit up. This time Ray piled several life preservers behind him to support his back.

  “That diver tried to kill me,” Gus said. “I’m lucky I made it.”