“Then let’s get under way,” Pitt said. “I’m curious to find out where Ann is going to take us.”

TRUE TO HIS WORD, Gunn had the Drake inching away from the dock a half hour later. Ann joined him on the bridge with Pitt and Giordino, watching the green hills of Point Loma drift past as they exited the harbor. Feeling more secure at sea, she opened up and explained their objective to Gunn and Giordino, then handed Pitt a small piece of paper.

“Here’s the coordinates where the two bodies were picked up. Apparently they were within sight of each other.”

“That may be a good indication the currents didn’t get too daffy with them,” Giordino said.

Pitt typed the coordinates into the Drake’s navigation system, which plotted the position as a triangle on the digital map display. It lay just beyond a small rocky island grouping off the Mexican coast called the Coronados.

“The currents run southerly along the coast,” Pitt said, “so that would likely define a lower boundary from which to conduct the search.”

“The coroner’s report placed their time of death between eight and ten hours earlier,” Ann said.

“That gives us something to work with.” Pitt drew a box on the map with a cursor. “We’ll start with a ten-mile-square grid, working north of the discovery point, and expand beyond that as necessary.”

Ann contemplated the size of the Drake, then asked Pitt, “How are you going to handle the recovery?”

Pitt tilted his head at Gunn. “Rudi?”

“I found a local barge and crane that’s waiting on call. It’ll come to the site once we find her. I guess I should have asked, but how big a boat are we looking for?”

Ann glanced at her notes. “The Cuttlefish was registered at forty feet.”

“We’ll get her up.” Gunn took over the helm and set the Drake on a path to Pitt’s grid.

Two hours later, they reached the site where a passing sailboat had found the bodies of Heiland and his assistant Manny. Pitt saw the depth was around four hundred feet. He decided to conduct the search using the vessel’s towed array sonar, choosing ease of deployment over the deeper-diving AUV. Crewmen at the stern deployed the bright yellow sonar fish, which was soon relaying electrical pulses to a processing station on the bridge via its tethered cable. Pitt took a seat at the controls and adjusted the cable winch until the fish was skimming a few meters above the bottom.

Ann stood glued to Pitt’s shoulder, staring at the monitor that displayed a gold-tinted image of the sandy, undulating seafloor.

“What will the boat look like?”

“We’re running a wide swath, so it will appear small in scale but should be readily identifiable.” He pointed to the screen. “Here, you can see what a fifty-five-gallon drum looks like in comparison.”