Hook went back into the cabin and stretched out in one of the bunks. Through the door he could see Liz sunk down on the deck now, huddling in her windbreaker as if it were a womb. Across from her, Douglas stood scowling out at the water, occasionally taking a pull at the bottle. After a few minutes he called out to Parnelli, who apparently had surfaced again, and then he leaned out over the side of the boat and discussed something with him for a few moments. Then he came to the cabin door.

“Hate to disturb you, friend. But I’ve got to be up in the cockpit for a few minutes. Will you watch him?”

Going back onto the deck, Hook saw Parnelli taking another red snapper off a spear. After he had gotten it into the gunny sack in the raft, he towed the raft over to the boat. Then he removed his breather and pushed his face mask up onto his head.

“Here, give me a hand!” he shouted, and held the sack of fish up towards Hook, who swung it into the stern, amazed at the snappers’ eyes, which looked like ping-pong balls freshly burst out of their heads.

“Now the raft!” Parnelli commanded, and Hook hauled it up onto the deck.

That left only Parnelli himself, and he was already holding his large rubber-gloved hand up for Hook to take hold of and help pull him up the ladder. And Hook reached for the hand—too late seeing the smile that cut as viciously as a razor across Parnelli’s face. For one desperate moment Hook tried to turn and grasp something with his free hand and hold on, but there was nothing, only air, and immediately he felt himself being yanked powerfully out of the boat, down over Parnelli’s crouched, side-turning figure on the ladder, and then striking the water, plunging into it back-first, flailing in the boiling darkness. He tried not to panic, screamed at himself in his mind that he must not panic, but the sea was not his home, was a great deep maw of death snapping shut over his mind and he could not control himself. He fought it for his life, this sea, fought it as if it were a school of attacking sharks. He was still fully dressed—in shoes, raincoat, trousers, everything—and the sudden sopping weight of it all only added to his terror. Trying to surface, he bumped against something solid and realized it was the bottom of the boat, a coffin lid holding him there underwater. And he felt death’s own true messenger, shock, steal like morphine into his body. His limbs became stone, his mind a small light receding rapidly into the distance. They were murderers, then. They had killed his son, and now they were killing him. Then suddenly he broke through the surface of the water and felt his lungs balloon with air. And he heard a voice—Parnelli’s.

“Hey, shitkicker! Any sharks out there?”