In Too Deep by Coert Voorhees Page A

Nate, remember? On the cruise?”
    Things were getting out of hand. Never mind that a resort course doesn’t actually give an open-water certification, I wouldn’t trust a resort course graduate on a routine daylight dive, and this was hardly a routine dive, no matter how you sliced it. Even if she were sober, she’d have to conserve her air while controlling her buoyancy with pinpoint accuracy; otherwise she’d bounce off the walls or get her hoses caught on the coral.
    Josh stared at me. Everyone else was looking at Katy, even Alvarez, who seemed to nod slightly as though trying to talk himself into it. But Josh had his eyes—those ridiculous green eyes—on me.
    “Katy,” I said.
    “I can do it,” she said. “Besides, Wayo will be right there in case anything goes wrong.”
    “She can’t dive,” I pleaded. “She’s—”
    Katy narrowed her eyes and shook her head almost imperceptibly. The message was clear.
    I was trapped. Alcohol puts even an expert diver at a higher risk for nitrogen narcosis, decompression sickness, or just plain doing something stupid. But I couldn’t spill the beans about the margarita adventure, or Katy would kill me with her bare hands.
    Alvarez stood and paced in front of her, scratching the nape of his neck and frowning. “You’re small enough to fit.”
    “I’m going,” I said.
    Katy started to protest. “But—”
    “Just stop. You got certified on a cruise ship.”
    “You don’t have to do it, Annie.” The concern in Josh’s eyes was genuine, and surprising, and I wanted to kiss him for it, even though those same eyes were part of the reason I found myself in that position.
    “Katy’s going to kill herself if I don’t.”
    “You’re sure?”
    Katy took a step forward and threw a hand on her hip. “I’m not a complete jackass, you know.”
    I ignored her. “I’m sure, Josh.”
    I was surprisingly sure, actually, in the midst of it all. And once I’d said it out loud, I realized that my sudden conviction had nothing to do with saving Katy from certain doom. One thought overpowered all others. It was crazy—I knew it was crazy—but it still made sense: this was exactly what I’d been put on this earth to do.

TWELVE
    T he small boat skipped across the glassy midnight sea. I felt triumphant and light-headed at the same time, as though I’d just shoplifted a balloon and sucked the helium out. There was no way this was actually happening to me ! I looked up at the bright ivory sash of the Milky Way and couldn’t help but think of the poster in Mr. Alvarez’s room.
    “What’s funny?” Alvarez said.
    “Shoot for the stars.”
    “You’re going to do great. Wayo’s the best diver on the island.”
    The boat was a fourteen-foot fiberglass runabout with bench seats lining the sides and a canopy frame without the canopy. A single outboard motor whined against the water. “It’s a cute boat,” Wayo had said when we sneaked out onto the dock in San Miguel.
    I sat on the bench next to Alvarez and Nate, while Josh and Katy sat across from us. There was just enough starlight to see the tension on everybody’s face; it looked like the impending adventure had sobered them right up.
    I was wearing a shorty wetsuit, only 2mm because even at night the water was in the low eighties. I was used to the fifties water of the Pacific, so I probably didn’t need a wetsuit at all. But since I hadn’t packed a swimsuit of my own, I had to wear one of Wayo’s store samples, which fit me even more ridiculously than my sensible one-piece.
    Josh nodded to Alvarez. “You arranged this whole trip just for this?”
    “You heard Annie’s presentation. There’s over a hundred million dollars at stake here. I’m a known treasure hunter; I couldn’t just come down here by myself. People might have noticed, might have become suspicious. But a teacher? On a humanitarian mission? It’s the ultimate misdirection.”
    Katy said, “Josh is a movie star’s kid.”
    “Maybe,”