“That’s not what we’re here for,” she said, sounding bitchier than she intended.
“When the ocean offers up treasure, you take it, girl.”
“Sorry, you’re right. I’m just feeling pressure to find something that might give us answers and maybe stop the hunt.”
“Nothing we find is going to stop these guys. They pretend to listen to everyone, but they made up their minds already,” he said.
“‘They’? Isn’t it all on Mayor Lum?”
“I think there’s more going on behind the scenes.”
“Like what?”
Cliff was suddenly on the other side of Woody. “Money. Guaranteed, one of these parties is paying someone off.”
“That’s a big allegation and would be hard to prove,” she said.
“I know people who know people who say Lum is a crook. A ranch down South Point and fancy trips and cars, and who’s paying?”
Woody thrust out his chin. “He don’t care nothing about the‘aina, I tell you that.”
He turned to her and their eyes met. There was anger there but also a fire that made her feel like she had someone on her team. An ally in the truest sense of the word.
“So if the mayor and his nephew were taking money—say, from these shark tours—it would definitely be in their best interest to clean things up, and fast,” she said, not liking where this was going.
“Damn straight.”
Minnow brought them roughly to the location where she and Nalu had seen the chum, which she had triangulated in order to find itagain. The current line was like a huge conveyor belt of flotsam and jetsam, running through the area.
“You’d think we would notice a cage that big with floats,” she said.
They drove in and out, back and forth, covering a large grid, but there was no evidence of a shark cage or chum.
“Maybe the guy was mistaken. Coulda been something that got loose and was traveling in this current,” Cliff said. “There’s all kinds of weird shit in the ocean these days.”
Sad but true. The sea was home to unimaginable amounts of trash, from microplastics to airplane parts to automobiles. Minnow had seen it all. On the surface, you would never know it, but go below and strange things turned up.
“Or maybe whoever’s cage it was pulled it up because of the storm,” she mused.
“Two o’clock,” Woody said, nodding starboard and veering that way.
There was something small and round, glowing a pale aqua green, and beyond that, two similar objects. He throttled down and put the boat in neutral. They all leaned over the edge, tilting so far that Minnow had to grab onto the rail.
“Glass balls!” they all cried.
Cliff grabbed the net and gently scooped them each into the boat. Baseball-sized and covered in barnacles.
“One for each of us,” Woody said, smiling like a kid who had just reeled in his first fish.
“What’s that down there?” Cliff said, pointing up ahead.
Minnow squinted to see into the dark water. There, a foot or two below the surface, was something round and whitish. Woody pulled forward, and again they all peered over the side. Cliff tried to scoop the thing in, but it soon became apparent that it was attached to a line.
“It’s a buoy,” he said, eyes glinting in a ray of sun.
Something passed among the three of them, sparking inside Minnow. A sureness. “They tie off on this buoy and they can take the cagein when they need to. Maybe they brought it in because of the storm,” she said.
“Could be.”
