Kevina started at the proximity, at the intrusion to the perfect morning. Then she gaped. The breaching thing was big. Huge. Water ran in sheets from a midnight-blue head that had to be twenty meters across. She had a momentary glimpse of dark, water-sleek hide, and a midnight-black eye the size of a dinner plate. Some long, thin, and moon-blue creature thrashed in the giant’s three-jawed mouth. One of the torpedoes?

As the launch barreled past, Kevina thought to reach for the recorder. By the time she pulled it up and hit the record button, only foam-white turbulence and spray remained where the beast had been. It had vanished as quickly as it had appeared.

“Zambo!” Felix cried. That was kid-speak on Ashanti for “Wow!” He was staring back, unease reflected from his posture. “What was that, Mama?”

“I don’t have the first idea,” she told him, thinking of the way a great white shark came from below to nail a sun-basking seal. But this leviathan had taken a moving target. And it had been huge. A shiver tightened her spine.

What if that monster wanted to take the launch?

She tried to calculate the size of the great three-jawed mouth. Big enough to engulf a thirty-meter boat? Maybe. The torpedo in its jaws had looked to be about ten meters in length.

Suddenly the morning, the sunlight, the smooth rolling water had taken a more ominous turn. Kevina couldn’t help herself; she clicked the throttle up a notch to send the launch flying across the swells.

She remembered Michaela Hailwood’s warning. “You’re just taking the launch out and back. Drop the sensor buoy and collect your water samples. Don’t deviate from those two things, and in particular, don’t get too close to anything that might be alive. We’ll have time for that after we develop a protocol.”

“Wish Daddy had come.” Felix interrupted her thoughts. “He would have liked to have seen that Big Mouth Thing.”

Big Mouth Thing. The shorthand would be a BMT. She couldn’t think of a better name for it.

“Daddy is putting a submarine together today. He’s going to test it this afternoon.”

Truth be told, Kevina would have liked to have had Yee come. Ever since they’d hooked up aboard Ashanti, they’d hardly ever spent time alone. Well, maybe a few stolen moments in an empty corridor, but nothing significant. And since Felix’s birth, there had been nothing that resembled “family” time.

Their relationship had just happened. If she were going to choose a mate, it wouldn’t have been Kim Yee. His training had been in sonar, remote sensing, deep-sea resource extraction and drilling. Nothing in his character was particularly outgoing, engaging, or charismatic. Yee was, well. . . . Okay, so he was boring.