The Shark Rider (24 page)

“Ho, ho,” Marsh laughed.

Tristan thought he sounded like a fake Santa Claus who'd had a little too much Christmas cheer.

“Nooo, no. I just like to keep things relaxing for my fellow investors; a calm retreat in this busy, hectic world.”

“What sort of investors?” Hugh asked curiously.

“We do mainly pharmaceutical research and development here, young man. Did you all see my submersible on the way in?”

They nodded.

“We search the ocean for chemicals that can be used to make new drugs. My scientists collect samples, extract compounds, and then test them in the laboratory to see what effect they might have on cells and diseases, such as cancer. But enough about that. How's the food?”

“Good.”

Tristan's mouth was full and he wasn't sure what to make of Marsh, so he just muttered, “Fine.”

“Have you discovered any new drugs?” Hugh asked.

Marsh answered in an exaggerated whisper. “Son, I'm not at liberty to say.” He then nodded very obviously to Hugh. “So, I hear you're here to study coral reefs.”

At first no one responded. After an awkward silence, Tristan said, “Yeah, over the summer.” He looked sheepishly to the others and drank some of the lemonade the woman had returned with.

“Coral reefs are of special interest to my scientists. Many reef organisms use chemicals in defense against predators. Would you like a tour of the lab before going back to your ship?”

Tristan wanted to say yes, but his tongue had suddenly gone numb and he was starting to feel surprisingly sleepy. In fact, he could hardly keep his eyes open and his head up. He turned to Sam. Her head was already resting on her arms. She appeared to be sound asleep.
That's odd
, was the last thing Tristan thought before everything went dark.

19

AN AFTERNOON NAP

T
RISTAN
'
S HEAD FELT LIKE A LARGE BOWLING
ball. Just holding it up was nearly too much for his neck, which seemed to have turned into a weak, rubbery noodle. He tried to open his eyes, but that was difficult as well. When Tristan finally managed to pry open his eyelids, he discovered that they were back in the pelican suite. Sam and Hugh were slouched next to him on the couch. He couldn't remember how he got there or even finishing lunch.

“Like, dude, my head feels like it's gonna explode,” Ryder groaned from somewhere nearby.

“Mine too,” Hugh muttered. “What happened?”

“I'll tell you what happened,” Meg said angrily. “We were drugged.”

“Drugged?”

“Drugged,” Meg repeated. “The question is
why
?”

They heard voices outside the door. Seconds later, Mr. Marsh walked in. Another abnormally large ex-pro-wrestler guy in an equally big yellow shirt followed him in. The man held a strangely shaped silver gun, and it was pointed at them.

“Good afternoon. Hope you had a nice, relaxing nap. So good just after lunch to rejuvenate the mind and senses.”

“Are you nuts?” Tristan blurted out. “You drugged us.”

“Son, that's much too harsh. Just a little assistance for a midday siesta. Besides, you've got a big decision to make. First things first, though—those nice little black bracelets you're wearing. I'll take those, please.”

The campers hesitated until the big guy with the gun stepped forward as encouragement. They handed their tracker bracelets to Mr. Marsh.

“Marsh, what is going on here?” Meg demanded. “We'd like to go back to our ship
now
.”

“Meg, just
relax
, calm down.”

“Make that Dr. Gladfell, and don't tell me to relax. This is outrageous.”

Marsh walked over to her. His yellow-shirted ape guard stood by the door, watching attentively. Marsh took her hand. “I really tried to get you all to leave on your own. I thought for sure the little incident at The Baths and your escapade in Gorda Sound last night would do the trick. By the way, how did you get out of that pool in the boulders without help?”

No one said a word.

“Well, never mind that for now. We'll have plenty of time to discuss it.”

He patted Meg's hand condescendingly, dropped it to her lap, and picked up a remote control. A wall-mounted flat screen flickered to life. At first the picture was just clear blue water rushing past. Then a group of legs treading water in front of a reef came into view. One person was wearing fins. The other five had no need. The image circled around the group and then honed in on one person. Tristan was staring straight at the camera.

“Seems there's something quite unusual about your students, Dr. Gladfell.”

“I don't know what you're talking about.”

Marsh smoothed the front of his pajama shirt. “Oh, but I think you do. I was just going to frighten you all off, maybe cause an injury or two so you'd have to leave the islands. Even had some men standing by to get you out of that boulder pool. And my boat turned just enough to miss hitting you last night. But after I saw this, well . . . I know a good business opportunity when I see one.”

“
You're
causing the die-offs,” Tristan said. “That's why you're trying to get rid of us.”

After he said it, Tristan wished he'd kept his big mouth shut—again. Now his heart was pounding along with his head.

Marsh stared at him like a specimen to study. “Now, I checked your feet when you were
relaxing
. No Aqua-men in the room. So, tell me, how does it work?”

Tristan looked away, and the others were silent.
Tristan instinctively hid his hands and feet, even though they weren't webbed anymore. He turned angrily back toward Marsh, seriously wishing he was a whole lot bigger and stronger.

“Look, I'm really not a violent or bad man. I'm an entrepreneur, an investor, always on the lookout for a lucrative deal.” He waved his arms around. “And as you can see, I've been quite successful. I have partners all over the world and live quite comfortably. We could use young, bright minds like yours and your, shall we say, unusual physical abilities. Can you dive deep? How and when do the webs emerge?”

You could hear a pin drop in the room.

Marsh turned off the television and put the remote down. He headed for the door. “Look, I'll give you some time to think about it. I've got several of my investment partners coming in this afternoon. I know one of them is already very interested in the video feed from my sharks. You decide. Would you like the opportunity of a lifetime to work with us? Or are you going to turn down my very generous business proposition? And by the way, don't think your friends from that ship will be coming to help anytime soon. It really is an old, worn-out vessel. One never knows when the engine might fail or, god forbid, a crack develops in the hull.”

The men turned abruptly and left. Tristan got up and tried the door—locked. He looked out the sliding glass doors. The sheer drop from the patio was at least 100 feet, maybe more.

“I'm so sorry, campers,” Meg said. “I never imagined
that someone might purposely be causing the fish kills.”

“We don't even know how or why he's doing it,” Hugh said.

“I believe I do,” Meg told them. “In fact, I might have made our situation worse. I asked that doctor about the submersible and those large metal barrels we passed in the carts. Did you see them?”

“Yeah.”

“She said they're empty fuel drums. But that didn't sound right to me, so I asked what they did with the chemicals they use and experiment with in the laboratory. She gave me some lame answer about how they are shipped to a disposal station nearby. But there's no such thing. We have a real problem with chemical disposal at the institute in St. John. She was lying, and she knew I knew it.”

“You mean they're dumping chemicals into the ocean?” Sam asked.

“I get it,” Hugh said. “They're using the submersible. It's not just for collecting samples. They're using it to dump their waste. And it's black so they can do it at night.”

Meg nodded. “That's what I think too, Hugh. With the sub, they can go unseen and release their waste at different places, different depths, so there's no clear pattern in the impacts. And remember how the dead animals in the cave were more active at night?”

“We've got to stop him,” Tristan urged.

“Yeah,” Sam added.

“But first we need to get out of here,” Meg told them.

Rosina stared out the patio doors. “What's he going to do to us if we don't agree to work with him?”

They shook their heads. Tristan definitely didn't want to think about the answer to that question—some sort of
permanent
relaxation?

“How'd he know about the tracking bracelets?” Sam asked. The others shook their heads in response. “Well, at least back at camp they'll know where we are.”

Hugh turned to Meg. “So what do we do? Just sit and wait for them to figure it out and come get us?”

“That might take a while. They may not even realize we're in trouble, and it sounds like folks on the ship could have their own problems right now. Let's look for a way out.”

“And figure out what we're going to tell this guy. I don't like his idea of taking it easy,” Tristan added.

20

PAJAMA PANTS

T
HERE WAS NO WAY OUT
. T
HEY WERE TRAPPED
in Marsh's creepy psycho spa. Rosina stood by the patio doors staring out, while Ryder lay draped on the couch. Tristan and Sam paced like caged animals, and Meg sat nearby, tapping her fingers anxiously on a table.

Hugh picked up the television remote and began flicking through stations. The selection was slim: a local news channel out of Tortola, a propaganda video about Marsh's company, a video of nature scenes accompanied by bad elevator music and fake chirping, and The Weather Channel.

“Uh-oh.”

It was the tropical update. They were showing a satellite image of the Atlantic Ocean and Caribbean Sea.

Ryder opened his eyes. “Dude, like, so what? Who cares about the weather right now? It's rainy and gray outside. I can tell you that.”

“
Like, dude
, look again,” Hugh mocked.

Tristan knew immediately what had Hugh concerned. After all, he lived in Florida. “I thought it was too early for hurricanes.”

That got everyone's attention. A satellite image showed a lima-bean-shaped swatch of yellow and red, indicating a developing storm. Spiraling bands around it suggested the beginnings of rotation. It was still well to the south and east of the British Virgin Islands.

“It may be early, but that doesn't mean we can't get a storm,” Meg told them. “It's just less likely.”

Hugh increased the volume. “The storm is forecasted to intensify and reach hurricane status overnight. The models, however, are not in agreement about the track.” An image of colored spaghetti lines going in different directions from the storm came on. “Some have it going west into the Caribbean Sea; other models suggest it will take a more northerly track toward the British Virgin Islands.”

Tristan stared outside. The weather didn't seem much worse than before. A
hurricane
? That's all they needed. Wasn't being trapped and threatened by a drug-making nutcase bad enough?

“Even if the storm does head this way,” Meg said, “Looks like we still have some time before it hits. Maybe we can even use it to our advantage. Let's focus on getting out of here.”

“Hey, come look at this,” Rosina urged.

Meg stayed on the couch with her foot raised, but the others joined Rosina at the sliding glass doors.

“What?” Ryder asked, looking around outside.

Rosina pointed to some birds circling over the cliffs to their right.

“Yeah, they're birds.”

“Frigatebirds,” she told them. “Maybe they can help us.”

Ryder went back to the couch. “Like, how can
they
help?”

“Why don't we try to get their attention?” Sam suggested, turning to Rosina. “Maybe you can talk to them.”

“Happen to have any fish for them to steal?” Tristan asked sarcastically.

They searched for something to use to attract the birds. Hugh picked up a pair of the white pajama pants Marsh had left for them.

“Pants? Dude, I don't think they wear pajamas,” Ryder said.

“No, but maybe their eyesight's not great.” Hugh pulled the drawstring out of the top of the pants. From his pocket, he withdrew a smaller version of the multiuse tool he had carried around last year. “The other one was too big and not waterproof. Mom got me this to bring to camp this year.” He opened a small knife blade and cut off a short piece of the drawstring. He waved it in the air. “Kinda looks like a fish.”

“Worth a shot,” Tristan said.