Her gray figure stayed the same distance in front of him. No closer. No farther. Every few seconds she would make a slight course change. Each time turning her head to see where he was.
She swam past a large concrete support structure and her shadow almost disappeared in a shadow from the structure above. He glanced up. The remnants of an old metal bridge loomed overhead.
Love turned hard around the concrete support footing and disappeared in the murky waters. Jake followed her around the concrete structure but she was gone.
Nothing.
Vanished like a ghost in the murky waters.
Jake relied on his Navy training. A trick he'd learned to locate his dive buddy after being separated was to stop scanning the bottom and look higher — for bubbles. Within thirty seconds, he'd picked up Love's bubbles and feverishly kicked in her direction. Another thirty seconds later, he reestablished a visual on Abigail Love.
Jake checked his air pressure. Between the two tanks, he had over 2500 pounds. That meant Love probably had less than 1000. Her air was running out. And so was her time.
She slowed and now Jake had a clear view of her when a small stone and cement building appeared, becoming distinctly visible as he approached. Built with the same type stone as the wall he'd just seen, the building sat alone on the barren muddy bottom. Love swam inside a large window opening. He guessed the small building was only about fifteen feet wide. He slowed as he followed her inside only to discover she was already exiting out of a rear opening. She has to be getting tired.
He'd lost precious ground and needed to move faster in order to catch her. The structure had no roof so he swam up between the few trusses that had remained intact from years of decay and looked in the direction Love turned. She had stopped and was wielding her knife. She was prepared to attack as soon as he followed her through the door.
His sudden appearance above caught her off guard and she swam away, but not before Jake closed the gap to less than ten feet. Once again the sprint was on.
He checked his gauges, 1750 pounds. Love was getting dangerously low on air. No way could she have enough for proper decompression stops. A critical mistake.
Two minutes later another structure from the flooded town of Old Butler appeared — a covered concrete building with walls on three sides and windows in the rear. Love was heading for one of the two openings on the front. She was slowing. The gap closed to five feet and when he extended his long arms, he felt the wake of her kick. With his outreached hand, he could almost touch her fins.
This race was almost over. She swam into the structure as Jake closed in. When he entered behind her, he knew the chase had ended.
She was trapped.
Bars.
The building appeared to have been an old jail. There were bars on the windows and no way out except the way they came in. Behind him. She stopped suddenly and he crashed into her. She spun around wielding the dive knife.
Her right arm thrust down toward him with a powerful slash. He blocked it with his left forearm then jabbed the butt of his palm into her abdomen. Her BCD absorbed most of the blow but the impact knocked her against the concrete wall.
He kicked backwards and motioned for her to stop but she came at him again.
She slashed her knife from side to side. He countered each swipe with a deflection until the blade tore across the arm of his dry suit. At first he felt the trickle of cold water soaking his arm. He hesitated, and it cost him the upper hand. She whipped the blade left and right at his midsection like a Samurai with a sword. He jerked back but not before the blade made contact and sliced a ten-inch cleft in his dry suit. The gash gaped open and his dry suit swallowed the cold lake water.
Jake grabbed Love's knife hand as it passed through his suit pulling her arm. The cold water washed down his legs and across his chest. Concentration on the battle with Love was being countermanded by the shock of the cold water to his body.
He had to end this now.
He never got the chance.
He squeezed her hand until she dropped the knife. He held her mask-to-mask and saw terror in her eyes. At that moment they both started tumbling as their legs were swept from beneath them. He caught a glimpse of the culprit. Another monster catfish. Or perhaps the same one from last night. Their underwater battle had spooked him from his hiding place. His sheer size and strength upended them both.
He lost his grip on Love and, for a split second, had forgotten about the cold water licking its way around the inside of his dry suit. She broke free and swam toward the opening. He reached out with one hand and grabbed her fin. She kicked him with her other fin. He tried to hang on, but she kicked his hand free and swam out of the old stone jail. He followed her and watched as she made a beeline for the surface. He made two kicks to follow then stopped.
Looking up, he saw her break the surface and start swimming. He followed her from below, slowly ascending until his dive computer signaled a deco stop at 60 feet. He stayed at that depth and continued following.
The shivering started within a couple of minutes, but he couldn't surface. Not yet. He held his depth as he tracked her from below. He knew the water would warm as he ascended above the thermocline. His only chance against the cold. At this temperature, hypothermia wasn't far away.
She swam toward the hull of a boat and disappeared from the water. Moments later he saw the anchor being hoisted and simultaneously felt and heard the vibration of the boat's engine. Within seconds, the boat was gone.
And so was the book.
He ascended to 30 feet, his next deco stop, waited, then ascended to 15 feet, his safety stop depth, and waited again. His shivering was almost uncontrollable but he kept on. His Navy training had taught him several techniques to prolong his time to hypothermia — he used them all. When he surfaced he was on the outside of the cove. The water on the surface was much warmer than below.
His bass boat was anchored alone in the cove and Barnett had taken Regan's boat.
Ashley Regan.
In the frenzy, he'd forgotten about her.
39
After today's events, Abigail Love swore she'd never get in the water again. Not even a swimming pool. And scuba dive? She'd rather jump off a cliff than strap on another tank. The last twenty minutes had been the most harrowing of her life. The fear of being eaten alive by the monster fish had overwhelmed her. In her fifteen years as a hired gun, she'd never had an emotional jolt like she'd experienced today at the bottom of Watauga lake.
The knife fight she could handle but the monster at the bottom of the lake with the long barbell whiskers hanging from its lower lip, no way. She saw it as soon as she entered the second small building on the bottom of the lake. But when she stopped, Pendleton slammed into her from behind. All she wanted to do was get the hell out of there, but he kept blocking her path.
He left her no choice but to come at him with the knife to get him away from the exit. She grabbed her titanium dive knife in case she needed it to fend off the fish. The monster fish made its move right after Pendleton knocked the knife from her hand. The knife fell on top of the fish, spooking him. She saw the monster's muscles contract on alternate sides as it whipped its mighty tail back and forth. The fish charged the exit and didn't seem to care that it was blocked. It wanted out, and so did she.
They could have both been killed. What was Pendleton thinking? And why didn't he follow her to the surface? She saw his bubbles following her and expected him to come after her but every time she looked down through her mask, the idiot was far below. What was he doing?