The previous night I’d seen images of Bob Rosado’s murder at a dive site called the Mercedes. The congressman’s wife was on the stern of their yacht, drinking a martini, filming him, joking with him as he floated on the surface. He was waiting to make his descent when a bullet struck the back of his neck and a second one pierced his tank, sending him pirouetting into the air. Copperhead.

There was every reason to suspect that Carrie was in the Fort Lauderdale area. She’d flown there under an assumed name with her partner in crime at the time, Rosado’s sadistic son, nineteen-year-old Troy, a sex offender, a pyromaniac, Carrie’s latest monster boy toy. I knew this and yet I wasn’t worried.

Why?

Most importantly it didn’t seem to penetrate my conscious mind that she might be thinking about me.

Why?

I’m anything but a careless, unobservant person.

Why did you feel safe?

Maybe I was simply in shock. The night before I flew to Florida I was sitting in New Jersey, having just found out from Lucy that Carrie isn’t dead, that she’s been living in Russia and Ukraine for at least the past decade. After the pro-Russian President Viktor Yanukovych was ousted, Carrie fled and returned to the United States. Using the name Sasha Sarin she began doing dirty work for Congressman Rosado and chaperoned his troubled, increasingly violent son, Troy. So I was astonished and maybe I was in denial when I found out all this. Maybe that’s why I wasn’t worried. I don’t know and I think back, conjuring up every detail I possibly can.

I remember floating in the bright blue water on the bright sunny afternoon, bobbing, waiting for Benton. I envision him striding off the dive platform, splashing, floating, smiling, giving me the okay sign and I gave it back. I placed the regulator into my mouth, bled the air out of my BCD, and reached up to turn on my mask’s mini-recorder. I wasn’t afraid. I wasn’t wary. Carrie had just murdered Bob Rosado. Or maybe Troy was to blame. Or maybe Carrie had murdered Troy too, possibly in this very spot barely a mile offshore, and yet I wasn’t worried.

What were you thinking?

I hit PLAY again and resume watching the video on the small display, the volume turned up as high as it will go. Bubbles blast up past my mask, and the sound of them is loud as I touch the mooring line, following it down, pinching my nose to clear my ears, down and down. Glimpses of my legs, my fins, my gloved hands, and the water is a darker blue as I descend deeper. Benton is above me and I don’t look up at him. My attention is directed down, looking straight down through bubbles.