Trent cleared his throat. “Time to go.”
“Sorry,” Nash said, letting out a light laugh.
She laughed, too. “Be careful.”
His eyes held hers for a long moment. “Always am.”
The divers disappeared beneath the surface, leaving Amy and Trent alone with the sonar equipment and her racing thoughts. She focused on the screens while Trent monitored the communication systems, tracking the four blinking dots that represented the diving team as they descended toward the cave system.
Everything went smoothly for the first twenty minutes. The divers moved methodically through the passages Amy and Trent had identified, their voices crackling through the underwater comm system as they described what they found.
Then the sonar picked up something else.
Amy frowned at the display, adjusting the sensitivity while Trent checked the equipment calibration.
There—another set of signals approaching from the east. Fast-moving. Multiple vessels.
“Trent, look at this,” Amy said, her heart beginning to hammer.
He leaned over her shoulder, studying the screen. “That’s not good. Those boats are moving way too fast to be casual traffic.”
Amy reached for the radio while Trent tried the backup communications. “Brooks, this is Amy. I’m seeing three boats approaching from the northeast, moving fast.”
From the island, Porter’s voice crackled through on a different frequency. “Stone Cutter, we see them too. Fast-moving vessels, definitely not recreational.”
Static answered them both.
“Brooks, do you copy?” Trent tried his radio while Amy attempted the backup frequency. “Porter, Colt, anyone?”
Nothing but dead air from any of the systems.
“The whole comm system is down,” Trent said grimly, running diagnostics on the equipment. “This isn’t equipment failure—someone’s jamming us.”
Amy grabbed the marine radio, trying to reach Blaze on theLiberty. “Blaze, Chance, can anyone hear us?”
More static.
Both the island communications and underwater systems were completely dead.
Amy’s hands shook as she grabbed the binoculars, scanning the horizon until she spotted them—three sleek speedboats cutting through the water toward Bird Island. Even at this distance, she could see they weren’t pleasure craft. These boats meant business.
The Ferrantes. They’d found them.
“We need to get to the dive site,” Trent said, already moving toward the boat’s controls. “If we can’t radio them, maybe we can signal them directly.”
“What about the others on the island?” Amy asked desperately. “Porter and Colt can see those boats by now.”
“They’ll handle the perimeter,” Trent replied, his fingers flying over the radio controls, attempting different frequencies. “But they can’t warn the divers underwater. That’s on us.”
Amy tried the underwater comm one more time. “Nash, Trey, you need to surface now. We have company.”
Still nothing.
With no way to warn Nash and the diving team through normal channels, they had to try something else. The diving team was still forty feet underwater, completely unaware of the approaching danger. Porter, Colt, and Brooks on the island could see the boats now, but they’d be focused on defending their position—not communicating with submerged divers.
“Hold on,” Trent said, firing up theStone Cutter’s engines and spinning the wheel. “We’re going to get as close to that cave entrance as possible.”
The boat responded beautifully under Trent’s experienced handling, cutting through the swells as they pushed toward the dive site. Watching Trent navigate these waters was like seeing an artist at work—salt spray stung their faces, and the ocean challenged them at every turn, but theStone Cutterresponded to his touch like a well-trained horse.
