He’d grinned, but he had been serious, too. He was ready to head home.

Where was Anita? Had she gone up without her?

Yes. Katie was going to be in serious trouble. She hadn’t been paying attention to her dive buddy.

Quickly, get up there and face it.

She was generally a good kid. She was an excellent student. Most of her friends were boy crazy. She had nothing against boys, especially cute ones, but her interest in Brad was levelheaded. She never let liking him interfere with her family or school.

Surely her parents would bear all this in mind.

The boat had been anchored by one of the reefs in about thirty feet of water. There was no reason to worry about coming right up: she hadn’t been deep enough to need to decompress. And so she followed the anchor line to the rear of the boat, removing her mask as she arrived and tossing it onto the little dive platform, detaching her regulator and doing the same with it.

She figured her father might be there, or her mother, or even Anita. They would be staring at her angrily, perhaps with their hands on their hips. They wouldn’t scream or yell; they would just announce the consequences for her behavior.

But there was no one anywhere near the dive platform.

“Hey!” she called, banging against the edge of the platform as a wave took her unexpectedly.

Still, no one arrived.

She had, of course, learned to remove all her equipment—and put it all back on—while in the water as part of her training. She removed her tank and buoyancy-control device and flippers, setting them atop the platform, too. Then she crawled up the little two-step ladder.

That was when she first saw the blood.

A spatter of small, diluted drops on the dive platform. It couldn’t be blood. Or maybe it was fish blood. That had to be it. A fish. Except her parents didn’t go fishing. Maybe those other people had wanted to fish. The doctor—Neil Browne. Or his girlfriend, Jennie whatever. And her folks might have complied. They weren’t against responsible fishing, they just didn’t care to fish themselves.

“Hey!” she called again.

Nothing.

Then it came over her—a sensation of pure dread and terror. She had to force herself to move on from the platform to the deck. She looked up the four steps to the helm of the boat. There was no one at the wheel.

But the deck, leading to the cabin below, was covered with blood. Not thick but diluted blood, as if someone had thrown down buckets of water, or as if there had been a storm that had ravaged all aboard...

“Mom! Dad! Anita! George!”

Compelled though terrified, she walked down the steps to the cabin. Blood. Everywhere. As if a slew of razor-sharp propellers had ravaged the cabin, tearing into flesh and bone and...

Bodies.