The Reef Roamer (The Roamer Series Book 1) Read online

  “You can unpack later,” Donald suggested. “We want to go over the dive tours with you and get our boat time reserved. Elbow Key and Sunshine Valley are two of the sites we would recommend and have tentatively scheduled for tomorrow. We wanted to check with all of you first, though.”

  Arrangements were made, and pre-dive planning began over a sumptuous dinner of crab and conch. The twelve friends had dived together as often as possible, new people joining the group, others leaving for various reasons. The constant ‘members’ were Jayme and Donald, Hope, Mary, Julie, Steve, and the two instructors, John and Dave. The days rolled by with the pleasure of finding new and exciting things under the warm, clear blue water. Every area sported a different species of fish, from the blueheaded wrasse and fairy basslet, to the easily recognized queen angelfish and blue parrotfish. The Bahamas waters were also home to numerous ancient—and recent—shipwrecks, all waiting for the soundless appreciation of scuba divers. The weather offered no surprises that year, with constant sunny skies and 85 degrees during the day, and starry nightscapes, light breezes and 80 degrees after sunset.

  The group was scheduled to leave on the following Saturday, and since there would be no diving done on the day of departure with air flight involved, the final dive the day before was always special. This was to be no exception. The dive master planned to take them to a seldom-visited wall, an hour boat ride out into the vast blue-green Caribbean. The excitement was high as they prepared their gear. Jayme put a freshly charged battery pack into her video cam and a new tape as well. She gently wiped the edges of the housing, removing any possible moisture, and snapped the case shut, creating a water and pressure proof environment around her camera. When they slowed, telling them they were near to the site, the divers suited up. Waiting for the dive master to come back from his initial dive was always the hardest.

  “Okay, listen up,” said Miguel, the dive master. “We’re south of the wall. We’ll drop down to the bottom, about sixty feet, regroup, buddy up, and I’ll take you over the edge. We’ll go to eighty feet for twenty minutes and then ascend to fifteen feet for a five-minute safety stop. There are some really nice tunnels and caves along here. I think you’ll get some really nice shots, Jayme.”

  Miguel had been guiding this group on dives all week, Jayme and Donald for two, and he thought highly of them as divers and as people. That was one of the reasons he brought them here to his special wall, plus, he loved showing off his islands for the camera.

  “There were some reports a few weeks ago of sharks, so I want everyone to stay close, stay alert, and don’t go wandering off!”

  Jayme liked Miguel. As a dive master he was one of the best, and he didn’t take chances with his charges. As a person he had integrity, a calm demeanor, and a sense of fairness, all of which Jayme considered redeeming qualities.

  On Miguel’s command, they all slid into the vast coolness of the deep, blue-green Caribbean water.

  The descent was one of Jayme’s favorite experiences. It always gave her an adrenaline rush to watch the waters close over her head, giving her a controlled sense of vertigo, drifting down instead of falling. The sensation was addictive. Refocusing her attention downward, she could see the bottom coming up quickly and adjusted the building pressure in her ears. Sixty feet wasn’t really that far down. Then they went over the wall, hovering at eighty feet from the surface, over an endless, fathomless abyss. The feeling most often experienced was one of awe, of sensual awareness in a world where all senses were stripped away save for sight.

  The corals on the wall were magnificent. Ivory tube coral, green cactus, flower coral, and even stag horn coral, unusual for this depth, all in muted colors from the filtered sunlight. Miguel had saved the best for last. The tunnels and caves were breathtaking, and Jayme got some wonderful footage of the Blushing Star coral and Elliptical Star corals that nestled in the caves. Caves were acceptable, though the tunnels were off limits due to her claustrophobia.

  Jayme was hovering, buoyant in the saltwater, taking careful camera aim at the unusually colored scrawled filefish hiding in a small cave in front of her. Her thoughts were random, running from excitement to perplexity. Something wasn’t right. This fish was hiding, and the other fish had disappeared. Jayme knew that should tell her something, and her mind was groping for the answer when she felt a pressure on her shoulder, shoving her sharply downward. Momentarily angered at her missed shot, she pivoted in the water, camera still running, to see who had shoved her. She was horrified when the looming mass of a large shark missed her by inches, the displaced water of its bulk pushing at her. Only then did she see its target.

  Donald!

  Even though the back of his thigh had been ripped open by those massive jaws, he still managed to push her out of the path. Jayme dropped her camera, unconsciously knowing it was tethered to her, and lunged the few feet where Donald was now twisting helplessly in the salt water.

  Dave had seen and was immediately at her side. He pulled at her arm to get her attention and held up his ever present diver’s knife. At first Jayme didn’t understand, and then reality dawned on her. The shark would more than likely be returning! She nodded and reached down to her ankle to release her own knife, preparing to defend Donald against further attack if need be. John was only a foot away now, rapidly tapping on his tank with the steel butt of his knife, getting the attention of the other divers.

  By silent signals, they formed a circle around Donald’s writhing figure, all facing outward, prepared to deliver a sharp kick or a blade jab on a sensitive snout, the only defense tactics with a shark. Miguel held onto Donald’s tank and started upward, closely followed by Jayme, who held Donald’s regulator firmly to his mouth. Although a safety stop at fifteen feet below the surface for three to five minutes would normally be called for, these were far from normal circumstances. Miguel headed straight for the surface, knowing they had not been down long enough for anyone to be in any real danger of decompression sickness, better known as the bends, but that there was a real danger of more sharks being drawn to the area from the blood.

  Breaking the surface, several of them began waving their arms back and forth. To anyone else, it would have looked like they were waving hello to the people on the nearby boat. The trained crew on the boat, however, recognized the diver’s signal for distress. The boat master knew immediately something was very wrong. These were experienced divers Miguel had taken down. He maneuvered the back of the boat in their direction as quickly as possible. All hands began pulling divers out of the water, not waiting for the usual delivery of weight belts and fins first, when they heard that dreaded word: shark!

  Jayme’s eyes kept darting around, looking for that telltale sign of a fin, fearful now that she had noticed not everyone had surfaced. What she didn’t know at the time was that three of the more experienced divers, John, Dave, and Steve, were hovering below them, guarding their vulnerable legs that kicked and swirled in the blood-darkened water.

  As the last of the human cage was pulled from the ocean, the three below surfaced and quickly climbed aboard. With them barely on deck, the boat lurched forward to begin its high-speed trip home.

  ***

  “Help me cut his suit off! I can’t see the wound!” Jayme cried. Something came over her when she saw her husband lying motionless, and all her medical and first aid training took over her flooded senses. “Get me a rubber hose or tubing so I can make a tourniquet!” She barked commands like it was a drill and not the real thing. “This isn’t helping!” she said more to herself than to anyone around and pushed her fingers deep into Donald’s thigh, trying to find the source of the gushing blood. “I think his femoral artery’s been cut. We have to keep pressure on it!”

  Everyone could feel the mounting panic in her voice, could see it in her eyes when she noticed she was covered with the blood of her dying husband.

  “How soon will we be docking?” Jayme screamed to the boat master.

  “Very soon,” he lied. Ever
yone knew it took them an hour to get out; it would take them almost that long to get back even at the high speed they were traveling.

  “I’ve already radioed in. They’ll be waiting for us with an ambulance at the dock. We’re going straight to Marsh Harbor; it’s closer, and they have a good medical facility. We’ll make it, Jayme. He’ll be okay,” Miguel said, trying to comfort her, though his words fell flat. He had seen shark attacks before, and this one didn’t look good.

  By the time they reached the dock forty-five minutes later, everyone except Jayme had noticed Donald wasn’t breathing anymore. The medics lifted Donald out of the boat and onto the stretcher. Heading for the waiting ambulance, with a bloody and disheveled Jayme at Donald’s side, they glanced at her and then at each other, saying nothing.

  A five-minute ride delivered them to the emergency clinic. Once inside, the stretcher was pushed through double doors, and someone grabbed Jayme by the arm.

  “The doctor will do everything possible for him. I need to know a few things,” a gentle island face pleaded with Jayme. No sooner had she given the receptionist Donald’s stats when the front door opened again and John, Dave, and Julie entered. They had left the others behind on the boat to take care of the gear.

  “Have you heard anything yet, Jayme?” Julie inquired, nervously glancing from Jayme to the receptionist.

  “No, I…”

  The stainless steel door behind her opened. The young doctor paused in the doorway, mentally trying to assess the relationships of the people in his lobby. Friends or only companions? Friends, they arrived quickly. Good, she’ll need them, he thought.

  “Mrs. Haller?” The doctor hesitated. “I’m sorry. Your husband lost a great deal of blood before he got here.” She turned accusing eyes on him. “There was nothing more I could do,” he said. He looked deeply into her face, watching his words register, mentally calculating how much tranquilizer he’d have to prescribe for her. He was momentarily mesmerized, caught up in her earthy beauty. Her eyes distracted him; they were the greenest he’d ever seen.

  Jayme collapsed.

  ***

  The next twenty-four hours eluded Jayme’s over-sedated memory. She somehow arrived home with all her luggage (that she didn’t remember packing), her gear (that she didn’t care about)…and Donald.

  The following week was a blur. The only thing Jayme remembered about the funeral was the first time she saw Donald lying in his coffin. All else was lost in the fog of her mourning. His blond hair was neatly combed, his face still tanned, his blue eyes forever closed. The hardest part was trying to comfort their only child, eighteen-year-old Alan, who’d rushed home from boot camp, when she herself needed comforting.

  ***

  The meowing of her cat, Muffin, brought Jayme out of her memories.

  “What’s the matter, girl, you getting hungry?” Jayme reached a wet hand out to scratch Muffin’s head, knowing the cat would bounce away from the water. She grinned at the cat’s antics. Some things never changed. And some things did. That’s when she realized she was still dry-eyed. Reliving all the pain, all the heartache, failed for the first time to make her cry.

  “It must be time to go back,” Jayme announced to no one.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Jayme paused outside the large double glass doors, a smile creeping across her face. The snow crunched under her feet as she shifted her weight from foot to foot while she took in the view on the other side. It may be winter outside; however, Katherine Konoly managed to make the travel agency look warm, tropical, and inviting. She remembered the day Katherine decided to open her own agency.

  ***

  “You do more of the work around here than any of the other two agents put together, Katherine. Why don’t you open your own place? The commissions on me alone should pay your rent!” Jayme had teased in a hushed voice.

  The two women had been friends since high school. Not best friends, though close and constant friends, the kind you could lean on when times got tough, and for a while they had gotten very tough for Jayme. Katherine had known Jayme needed some time away to heal her broken heart and knew just where to send her: Aruba. That was the beginning.

  “You really think I should open my own place?” Katherine questioned, although the same thought had been on her mind lately. “What should I call this mythical agency?”

  “I’ll think about it. For now, though, it’s time to travel.”

  ***

  Jayme pushed open the large glass doors with ‘It’s Time to Travel’ etched in large letters surrounded by palm trees and exaggerated waves and stepped into another world. Large tropical plants, green, glossy, and lush, graced wide windowsills and tiled floor space alike; ferns draped over the baskets that hung from the ceiling; a small and flowing fountain tucked into a corner added sprays of humidity into the warm air. A merchandise exchange with the florist next door kept the plants fresh and lively.

  Katherine’s desk, an oval sheet of smoky beveled glass set on four tall hand woven baskets, was flanked by rattan chairs with overstuffed blue and green seat cushions. The walls of her spacious cubical sported a full-sized tropical mural. The feeling her office space gave a person was one of sitting on a verandah somewhere in the tropics during the late morning hours, looking over acres of gardens to a cove of the deepest azure blue. Katherine had copied the idea from Jayme’s dining room and expanded on it. The result and ambiance were incredible.

  Katherine looked up from her computer terminal as she felt rather than heard the presence. “Jayme! It’s good to see you! I was just thinking about you. One of my clients brought back one of your DVDs that I sent her home with. They are in love with Cozumel now. She said it was the most complete video travelogue she had ever seen. Although I must admit she was a bit unsure at first by ‘The Reef Roamer’, since her and her husband only snorkel, but you now have a new fan. She wants to look at all your DVDs eventually.” Katherine paused. “You know,” her fingers moved swiftly across the computer keys, “it’s been five months since you’ve gone anywhere. The last time was to Cozumel, and that DVD has been a hit across the nation. Are you ready for another assignment?”

  Jayme laughed. “I haven’t even said hello yet and already you’re sending me away?” She settled into the comfortable chair across from her friend, resting her head on the back, staring momentarily at the fishnet-covered ceiling. The mood abruptly shifted.

  Katherine was silent for a moment and then said gently, “The dreams are back, aren’t they?”

  Jayme nodded, still staring at the ceiling. “My agent called last month and said the Abacos would be a good spot. He’s had a lot of requests, mostly from the Bahamian government, I think. The Abacos still aren’t very popular, although the diving is good, and they’re anxious to start drawing tourists in.”

  Katherine took the change of subject in stride and let her fingers begin their dance on the keyboard. “How about…two weeks at the Vista and then two weeks on Fantasy Island? I can get you a flight in three days. This Saturday.” Her hands paused. Were they treading on dangerous ground? Katherine was well aware that the Abaco area was where Donald died.

  “Two weeks in each place? I usually stay one week at four different places, for a better overall view and experience of the area. I can see all I need to in a week.”

  “They only have the two places, Jayme. It’s a small island. Tell you what, though.” Her red tipped fingers began their dance again, paused, and then began once more. “There is an out island that is trying to establish a tourist trade. Let’s go for a week in the Vistas, a week on Fantasy, and two weeks on Holm Cay. Three selections instead of four. Holm Cay sounds like a real paradise. A visit from the Reef Roamer would be a real boost to them.”

  “No one knows they’ve been visited by the Reef Roamer until after I’m gone,” Jayme protested.

  “That’s the beauty of it. They all try harder with everyone who visits, because they don’t know who the Roamer is. It could be anyone. They hope that som
eday the Roamer will visit them.” The concept of the travelogue was Katherine’s, but the tag and the development of The Reef Roamer had been all Jayme’s.

  “Okay, the Abacos it is. I’ll be back on Friday for my tickets.” Jayme stood, stretching out her back and mumbling to herself. “I’ve got to get new memory cards, thumb drives, blank DVDs, and some new battery packs, check the camera and the recorder, call the house sitter and the pet service…” She was still listing things that needed doing as she pushed the glass door open again, stepping into the chilled air.

  Katherine smiled. Jayme would be all right; she just needed something to do. Four years ago it had been the same thing. That was when The Reef Roamer had been born.

  ***

  They had been sitting across from each other at the weekly Rotary meeting having lunch. Katherine had been having lunch; Jayme had been pushing food around her plate. Jayme had put her fork alongside her plate, deliberately setting it perfectly square to the napkin. Katherine noticed Jayme’s hands were shaking. A glance at her face revealed a disturbing haunted look in her eyes.

  “I can’t stay here,” Jayme murmured to no one and slid her chair silently backward, almost in slow motion.

  Not ‘I have to leave’, or ‘I have to be someplace’, but ‘I can’t stay here’. Katherine frowned, as these thoughts sped across her mind, and then followed Jayme out the back door, unnoticed by most.

  There was a light rain falling in the early autumn afternoon, more like a soft mist, and Jayme appeared not to notice as she sat down in the freshly mowed grass on the bank of the town Millpond. Katherine sat beside her and waited, watching her friend.