In Too Deep by Tracey Alvarez Page A

when they were
horsing around as teenagers. Piper’s hand itched to discover if his
skin remained silky and hot-to-the-touch.
    He glanced over his shoulder and
she diverted her attention to the sky, fiddling with her wetsuit’s
pull tag.
    “ You scared? Want to pack up and
call it a day?”
    The thought of going in sent tiny
stabbing pricks across her scalp. She let her gaze skim
disdainfully over the cage, as if she often hopped into the
territory of two-ton creatures with teeth sharper than Shaye’s
paring knives.
    “ Hardly. I grew up diving these
waters too. I’ve seen the sharks.” Safely aboard a boat—and never
up close. Except for that one time, which she would not think
about now .
    His grin was as dangerous as what
might lurk in the fathoms below. Almost as if he read her mind.
“All right, then. It’s simple. You get in before the paying guests
and you help them into position. During the dive you’ll signal me
if there’s a problem. Most importantly, you prevent any fool from
sticking their cameras or limbs outside the cage.”
    “ Got it.”
    “ Normally I’d be attracting the
sharks with some bait chunks, but today I didn’t pack any. You only
warrant a dry run, sorry.”
    “ I’ll survive the disappointment.”
Piper’s voice came out smooth and even, not revealing the tremble
gathering momentum in her knees.
    Stepping to the boat’s edge, she
gazed into the water. Clear blue and sparkling, good visibility. If
she’d paid for this opportunity she couldn’t have picked better
shark-viewing conditions.
    “ Into the floating metal lunch
box, then,” she muttered and tugged on the wetsuit hood.
    West’s snicker made it through the
layer of neoprene. She pulled her mask into place and descended
into the hole until her shoulders were submerged. Glad he found
some humor in the situation, as right now it took all her years of
training not to bolt back onto the boat. And not only because the
sea was freakin’ icy.
    He laid out some air hose and
handed her the regulator. “Ready?”
    “ Born ready.”
    With the regulator plugged in, she
slipped under the surface. The frigid water slapped at her exposed
cheeks as she glided further into the cage, floating in a
slow-motion semicircle.
    The water was a pretty turquoise
blue, darkening to azure under The Mollymawk’s motionless
propeller. Gentle waves buffeted her, shifting her neoprene
slippered feet on the cage’s mesh bottom. Her breath rasped in her
ears, and she held the cage’s handrail to keep steady.
    Glancing up over her shoulder, the
blurry shape of West leaned against the gunwale, watching. See,
smartass? She was okay. She could totally do this. A smile formed
behind her regulator and she faced forward again.
    Dull grey cut through the
turquoise right in front. Jagged teeth and scarred off-white flesh
flashed away to the left. Metal shuddered under her fingers as the
Great White’s tail struck the cage. Sonofa —her heart whomped
into triple time while her lungs squeezed shut.
    Piper thrashed backward, her
shoulder blades bumping the bars behind. Incomprehensible shouts
overhead. A flurry of bubbles swarmed around her face as the
reptilian part of her brain remembered to breathe, even as the
mammal part wanted to curl into a ball to make the smallest
possible target. Her fingers cinched on the hand rail again—a small
miracle it didn’t snap off at the weld.
    Her gaze zeroed in on the shark
cruising past; it was close enough that if she stuck her arm
through the gap that allowed tourists to take photos, she’d touch
the creature’s battered dorsal fin.
    A hollow banging sound above.
Piper twisted her head up. West leaned over the boat edge with a
fishing gaff in his hand. He tapped the cage again, held his other
hand further out so she could see his thumbs up signal. She
returned his “come up now” gesture by showing him her back. Then
she raised a hand, one digit extended from her fist.
    It wasn’t her thumb.
    Give no