Today, though, he could see clearly the topography below him. On one large rock, a group of sea stars of various colors formed a constellation. To the right, a moon snail made its slow trek across the sand, leaving behind the peculiar egg case that resembled a piece of broken pottery. Tiny crabs, orange and red and brown, skittered in and out of cracks on their endless search for the bits of detritus upon which they feasted.

And all around him was the kelp. It was the kelp that made the place so special. It rose from the bottom in thick strands, reaching for the light. The fronds swayed lazily, rocked by the gentle current, and schools of dusky orange cigar-shaped señoritas darted through it like herds of silent jungle animals, hunted or being hunted, it was impossible to tell.

Descend like an angel, Ben thought again. An angel falling out of heaven. He disagreed with the last part of his instructor’s description of the proper way to begin a dive. It wasn’t falling out of heaven; it was falling into it. No place, he thought, was more beautiful than the world beneath the water.

As he neared the bottom, he added more air to his suit, until he was hovering less than two feet above the ocean floor. He looked at the dive computer strapped to his wrist. Twenty-nine feet. The vis was even better than he’d thought. Maintaining his position in the water, he looked up. The early morning sun streamed through the kelp, turning it a golden green. Kelp greenlings hovered in the shafts of light, and the sandy bottom was alive with shadows.

Ben set a heading on his compass and began to swim. He’d visited the site so many times, he didn’t even need the compass to get where he wanted to go. Even in low vis he could find it simply by following familiar landmarks. But he was a creature of habit, and so he continued to wear and use the compass, despite the fact that he rarely looked at it.

He swam slowly, unhurried. He had time. He’d cleared his schedule for the day in anticipation of the event to come later in the afternoon. That particular appointment he wasn’t as relaxed about, which is why he’d come to his favorite dive site. He needed time to prepare, to try and ready himself for what was certain to be, at best, a difficult encounter and, at worst, an unqualified disaster. It could go either way.

He pushed the troubling thoughts from his mind and concentrated on the world through which he moved. Swimming parallel to the ripples in the sand, he headed northeast, across the bottom of Whaler’s Cove toward the sandstone-and-granite formation known as the Middle Reef. Neatly bisecting the cove, the reef stretched out into the Pacific to a depth of more than seventy feet. Its numerous crevasses and outcroppings provided protection for a host of undersea life, and it was there that Ben sought his treasure.