Her script was honestly good, based on history and legend. Once, the Florida Keys and the Bahamas had been areas of lawlessness, ruled by pirates. An infamous pirate captain, Mad Miller, and his mistress, Kitty Cutlass, had gone on a wild reign of terror, taking ship after ship, or so legend said. Then all had gone wrong. They had taken a ship bearing the beautiful and rich Dona Isabella. They had sunk her ship, killed most of the crew and, presumably, planned on ransoming Dona Isabella. She had been sailing from Key West to Spain, back to her wealthy husband, when she had been taken. But nothing had happened as planned. Legend said that Kitty Cutlass killed Dona Isabella in a fit of rage, and on Haunt Island, Mad Miller went really mad and massacred the remaining crew and many of his own men. Finally, his pirate ship had sunk off Haunt Island, caught in the vengeful winds of a massive storm. Vanessa had based her script on the legend, doing what research she could, with contemporary teenagers finding themselves victims of bitter ghosts risen from the sand and the sea. As a screenplay, the story provided amazing fodder for the imagination. Filming had actually been fun. There had been some amusing accidents along the way, but none that had caused any harm. Bill had fallen into one of the buckets of blood, and Jake had come bolting up out of the water once, terrified of a nurse shark. She liked the people she was working with, and so, for the most part, it had been enjoyable. A crash shoot—all of it done within three weeks. And Jay was right—it could hit big at the box office.
She still felt disturbed and uneasy, although she wasn’t alone. The tents were no more than a few feet apart. Jay, who had been bunking with Carlos, was next to her. Bill and Jake were on her left side. Lew, as secure a figure as anyone might ever want to meet, was just beyond Zoe.
But she was still afraid. It was as if Georgia’s gut-wrenching scream had awakened something inside her that knew something was coming, something that she dreaded.
At eleven o’clock, she was still staring at the canvas. She didn’t have anything really strong to help her sleep, but she decided on an over-the-counter aid. In another half an hour, she was asleep.
It might have been the pill. She slept, but she tossed and turned and awakened throughout the night. And she dreamed that Georgia was standing in front of her, giant tears dripping down her cheeks. “I told you, I told you there were monsters!”
Georgia’s image disappeared.
She dreamed of giant shadow figures rising over her tent and of seaweed monsters rising out of the ocean, growing and growing and devouring ships, boats and people, and reaching up to the sky to snatch planes right from the atmosphere.
She awoke feeling better, laughing at herself for the absurdity of her dreams.
She didn’t believe in seaweed monsters—sea snakes, yes, sharks and other demons of the real world, but seaweed monsters, no.
When she had nightmares, they were usually more logic-based—being chased in the darkness by a human killer, finding out she was in a dark house alone with a knife-wielding madman.
It had been Georgia. Georgia and that terrifying scream.
She blinked, stretched and rose. Taking off the long T-shirt nightgown she’d worn, she put on a bathing suit, ready to hit the beach. There were showers in the heads on both boats the crew had been using, the Seven Seas and the Jalapeño. Of course, one boat wouldn’t be back until Carlos returned. It was a bright and beautiful morning, and she felt that a good dousing in the surf would be refreshing.
She stepped out of her tent. The morning sun was shining, but the air retained a note of the night’s pleasant coolness. The sea stretched out before her, azure as it could only be in the Bahamas. Jay and Zoe were already up, and one of them had put the coffeepot to brew on the camp stove.
“Morning!” Jay called.
“Morning!” she returned. “How long till coffee?”
“Hey! As fast as it brews!” Jay told her.
Zoe giggled. “What? Did you think this film had a budget for a cook?”
Vanessa walked on out to the water. It was delightful; warm, but not too warm. So clear she could easily see the bottom, even when she had gone out about twenty-five feet from shore and the depth was around ten feet. The current of the Gulf Stream was sweeping the water around to the north; she decided to fight it and swim south, then let it bring her on back offshore from the campsite.
She swam a hard crawl, relaxed with a backstroke, worked on her butterfly and went back to doing the crawl, and then decided that she had gone far enough. She had angled herself in toward shore, so she paused a minute, standing, smoothing back her hair.
It was then that she looked toward the shore.
She would have screamed, but the sound froze in her throat.
She stood paralyzed, suddenly freezing as if she were a cube of ice in the balmy water.
The bones…the bodies…
Georgia’s terrified words of the night before seemed to echo and bounce in her mind.
Then she did scream, loud and long. And she found sense and logic, amazingly, and started shouting for the others to come.
The bones…the bodies…
They were there. There was no sign of the boat, but Georgia Dare and Travis Glenn were there—in the sand. Their heads, eyes glaring open, were posed next to one another, staring toward the sea. Inches away from each, arms stretched out of the sand as well—just as props had done in the filming. It was as if they desperately reached out for help as the earth sucked them down, leaving only those pathetic heads, features frozen in silent screams.
Jay had reached the scene. He was shaking and staring, in shock and denial. He shouted. “Travis, what is this, damn it! Georgia—no! No, no, no! Where is Carlos? What kind of a stunt is this?” Jerking like a mechanical figure, Jay went to touch the actor’s head, as if he could wake him up or snap him out of whatever game he was playing.
The head rolled through the sand. The body wasn’t attached.
Jay himself began to scream.
Frozen still, shaking from a sudden cold that threatened never to leave her, Vanessa remained just offshore. She didn’t move until Lew had gotten the authorities, until a kindly Bahamian official came and wrapped a towel around her shoulders, and led her away.
Chapter One
2 years later
Key West
Before him, frond coral waved in a slow and majestic dance, and a small ray emerged from the sand by the reef, weaving in a swift escape, aware that a large presence, possibly predatory, was near.
Sean O’Hara shot back up to the surface, pleased with his quick inspection of Pirate Cut, a shallow reef where divers and snorkelers alike came to enjoy the simple beauty of nature. It was throughout history a place where many a ship had met her doom, crushed by the merciless winds of a storm. Now only scattered remnants of that history remained; salvage divers of old had done their work along with the sea, salt and the constant shift of sands and tides and weather that remained just as turbulent through the centuries.
It was still, he decided, a great place to film.
He hadn’t opted for scuba gear that day—it had been just a quick trip, thirty minutes out and thirty back in, early morning, just to report to his partner, David Beckett, so they could talk about their ever-changing script and their plans for their documentary film.
Because Sean was an expert diver, he seldom went diving alone. Good friends—some of the best and most experienced divers