As the shark pushed the cage forward, the cage tilted, and Sam saw his chance. He jabbed the aluminum shaft into the skin at the base of the tall dorsal fin and immediately withdrew it, pulling it back inside the cage. The shark seemed not to have felt it or noticed. The barb was set, and the bright yellow shark tag, with its six-digit number, trailed from the base of the fin, looking tiny on the enormous fish.

The shark swam below the cage, and Sam and Remi waited. They half expected him to turn around, build up even greater speed, and ram the cage again, this time snapping the careless welds and breaking open the cage and spilling them out in front of his big, toothy mouth. But he continued about his business, farther and farther away, until he was gone. Sam reached up and tugged on the signal rope three times, then three more times. Somewhere in the other world above them there was the vibration of a motor, and the cage jerked, then began to rise.

They came up out of the water, lifted entirely up into the air in the bright sunlight, and swung onto the deck of the yacht. Remi took off her mask and mouthpiece, and said to Sam, “So what do you think it was—that we didn’t look appetizing enough for a second try?”

“Don’t worry,” he said. “You look scrumptious. I’ve been practicing looking indigestible to prepare for this.”

“My hero.”

He pulled back the hood of his wet suit, smiling. “That was amazing.”

“Thanks to you, I’ll never run out of subjects for nightmares.” She kissed his cheek as they stepped from the cage and walked toward their cabin to change out of their suits.

A few minutes later, Sam and Remi stood on the foredeck of the chartered seventy-eight-foot Marlow Explorer. It was a modern luxury yacht that could do twenty-four knots wide open, but, in the two weeks they’d been aboard, Captain Juan Sandoval never had the need to open up the twin Caterpillar C30 diesels. They were not in a hurry, crossing stretches of ocean to look for promising spots for finding great white sharks, occasionally putting into pleasant Mexican ports to refuel or buy provisions. The yacht was a bigger vessel than Sam and Remi needed. It had three full staterooms with their own baths, as well as separate quarters for the three-man crew. Captain Sandoval, mate Miguel Colera, and cook George Morales were all from Acapulco, which was the charter boat’s home port. Sam and Remi had chartered the boat to take them to Isla Guadaloupe, about one hundred sixty miles off the coast of Baja California, because it was a well-known spot to see large sharks.