Phantom Prospect - Alex Archer [59]
“Cole thinks there’s something, well, fishy, about the shark.”
Hunter stopped. “What are you talking about? That thing killed Jock and then it killed Sheila. What the hell is left to figure out? It’s deadly and he shouldn’t be in there with it.”
“True. I tried to talk him out of it, but you know how he is when he gets his mind on something.”
Hunter sighed. “Yeah, I know. He’s pretty much unstoppable. Guy’s obsessed about stuff.”
“Yeah, seems as if you both get like that,” Annja said.
Hunter came to stand by the stern of the boat. “How’s he doing?”
Jax pointed. “It’s still cruising around out there, maybe fifty yards to the port side. It hasn’t approached the boat beyond thirty meters. I can barely see a thing except this occasional shape in the water.”
“Cole’s doing better under the water,” Annja said. “His spotlight’s got a bead on it.”
“At least he can’t be surprised,” Hunter said. “That’s a positive, I suppose.”
Annja watched Cole’s beam of light. It was just catching the dark gray shape moving through the water. The shark seemed content to merely observe right now.
“Maybe it’s still full from earlier,” Jax said. Then she blanched. “That came out sounding a lot worse than I meant it.”
“How did he ever attract the damned thing?” Hunter asked.
“Cut his hand open,” Annja said. “He waved the blood in the water and a few minutes later the shark showed up.”
Hunter groaned. “You’re joking.”
Annja shook her head. “Nope. You know he’ll do whatever it takes to accomplish his objectives. That apparently extends to include mutilating various parts of his body.”
“Wonderful,” Hunter said.
“Where’d it go?” Jax’s voice held strains of tension. “I just had it and now it’s gone.”
Annja peered into the darkness. But the shape in the water seemed to have vanished. “Is it gone?”
Hunter shrugged. “I could barely see it to begin with.”
Annja glanced down at Cole in the cage, but even he seemed unsure of the shark’s position. His spotlight cut back and forth through the water. He must have lost it, too, Annja thought.
“Great,” Jax said. “How can something that big simply up and vanish?”
“It must know these waters,” Hunter said. “That gives it an immediate advantage over us.”
“We didn’t have an advantage, anyway,” Annja said. “After all, we’re on the boat and it’s in the water.”
“I’m staying on the boat,” Jax said. “Things get out of hand, you can jump in the water if you want, Annja.”
Hunter frowned. “Why on earth would she do that?”
Jax bit her lip. “No reason. Just in case she felt like helping Cole.”
“By sacrificing herself?” Hunter shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. No one’s worth dying for like that.”
Annja kept scanning the waves but didn’t see anything. She frowned. This wasn’t going down the way Cole had predicted it would. Annja felt uneasy at the thought of Cole in the water. She wondered whether it was because something was wrong or just stress over the situation as a whole.
“It’s gone,” Hunter said. “I can’t see it moving around anywhere out there. Maybe it got bored or sensed that there really wasn’t any food at all, but that Cole was baiting it.”
“I wouldn’t think a shark cage would deter a forty-foot shark,” Jax said. “Especially considering that it attacked it once before.”
“Maybe that’s why,” Hunter said. “Maybe it didn’t have such a good time ramming it.”
“Cole has always insisted that they’re very smart creatures,” Annja said. “But I wish we’d seen it retreat or swim away rather than just vanish. I don’t like that.”
“Hey.”
They looked back down at the cage. Cole was poking his head out of the top.
Annja waved. “You okay?”
“I guess.” Cole glanced around, shining his spotlight all over the top of the water. He frowned. “I guess it’s gone.”
“Did you get a good look?”
He frowned. “Not really. It stayed too far away for me to see its underside.”
Hunter sighed. “And why would you want to do a thing like that? It’s not enough to see it barreling straight at you?”
“Genitals,” Annja said.
“What?”
“Cole couldn’t remember seeing any genitals on the fish earlier and that had him concerned.