Kronos by Jeremy Robinson Page B

been—”
    “It wasn’t a great white. It wasn’t a shark.”
    “A whale then? Orca? Sperm whale? Perhaps a blue hunting krill scooped her up?”
    Atticus’s face flushed crimson. “Do you know who I am now? What I do? Did you do any research before coming to see me?”
    “Atticus…You are an oceanographer. You do work for independent firms, sometimes for the military. You’re an ex–Navy SEAL, highly decorated. You wrote Ocean’s in Peril, which is a great book, by the way. I knew who you were when I found you choking on your own puke.”
    Atticus sat silently. He replayed the attack in his mind, slowed it down, took in the details. “It wasn’t a shark. It wasn’t a whale. I have never seen, nor has anyone else on the planet, seen anything like it.”
    Andrea sat down next to him. She put her hand on his shoulder, a gentle gesture from a kind woman to a hurting man. “I have,” she said.
    Atticus slowly craned his head around toward her. His eyebrows rose ever so slightly.
    “Yesterday…we were pulling a Frenchwoman out of the water…”
    Atticus nodded. He’d seen a thirty-second bit on the news about it. Her husband had been found too—drowned when the boat went down.
    “But we saw something. It was huge. And I mean huge. Swam directly beneath the chopper. The Frenchwoman managed to snap a few photos.”
    Atticus’s eyes went wide. “Where are they?”
    “Taken. Some boys from the Navy took the camera and flash memory card.”
    Atticus’s shoulders dropped.
    “But not before I transferred them to my thumb drive,” Andrea added with a slight smirk. She dug in her pocket and held aloft the small USB device. “Two pictures. Both from above. One shows the shadow, just beneath the surface. The other is of the footprint it caused when it dived.”
    “Must be one hell of a footprint,” Atticus said.
    “Bigger than I’ve ever seen.”
    With a shake of his head, he said, “I had a camera…Giona did too. When it…She still had her camera. Mine was video. Must have dropped it when I surfaced.” Atticus cursed himself. He should have held on. He’d been recording everything. He might have got the creature on film. It could have proved useful.
    “Speaking of surfacing,” Andrea said. “You’ve got a mild case of the bends. I don’t think it’s what knocked you out. The doctors say that and the vomiting was shock. You might feel some nausea or headaches—”
    “I know the symptoms,” Atticus said. “I was trained to deal with them.”
    “That was a long time ago.”
    “A SEAL never forgets.”
    Andrea eyed him with suspicion for the first time. Could she tell he was already plotting?
    “Just do me a favor and stay here overnight. The police have a guard outside the door.”
    “I thought I wasn’t a suspect.”
    “He’s not there to keep you in,” Andrea said. She jerked a thumb toward the window. “It’s to keep them out.”
    Atticus stood up and looked out the window. A crowd of reporters and news vans, even a few helicopters, all bearing news-station logos, swarmed outside the hospital.
    “Your distress call was heard by everyone. You were already front-page news because of the incident this morning. Nice work, by the way. When word about who had placed the distress call spread, a fire was lit under the butts of the media machine. Some reporters actually beat us here. Got some footage of you being taken out of the Jayhawk.”
    Atticus sighed. He was trapped. The media had to be avoided. He didn’t want anyone keeping tabs on him. No one could know what he planned to do…especially Andrea. Being with the Coast Guard, she could ruin everything.
    “So you’ll stay here then?”
    “Looks like I don’t have a choice,” Atticus replied.
    Her hand was on his shoulder again. Her honest eyes almost looked wet. “Atticus, I really am sorry about what happened. If you need my help, ever, for anything, please call me.” She handed him a piece of paper. On it was written her