Scavenger Hunt Page 5

  Pietre and Samantha looked at each other and started to laugh.

  “We’ll google it as soon as we’re out of here,” she said.

  A few minutes later, he heard what he wanted when Maria on Team Superior said they, too, would take the clue marked Evolving Issues.

  He felt good knowing that he had a secret alliance even within the public alliance. He and Emma would win the game.

  Chapter 5: Team Superior

  Emma - Galapagos Islands

  Emma Lehman was five foot three, short by most measures but still not the shortest girl on Team Superior. That would be Tanya. But Emma felt like the frailest, the one with the most to prove on such a physical challenge. She’d done everything she could to prepare for the dive, knowing she’d be terrified so far under water, knowing also that the slightest mistake could cause her serious injury. Or worse.

  She couldn’t help but think of the eighty feet of water above her. Eighty feet of heavy crushing cold water that seemed to be pressing down on her.

  Stop that, she told herself. Keep watching for something to sell.

  She was at one end of the wreck of what appeared to be an ancient pirate ship. The hull was cracked open and it looked like oak, just like the trim in her bookstore.

  The ship looked so real, and she could imagine the cannons shooting at Spanish galleons while pirates boarded and looted gold and treasure. The Jolly Roger would be flying high above the ship after each plunder, the skull and crossbones laughing at the enemy ship as it burned.

  That’s what it looked like.

  What it really was, she knew, was a special effect put here by Scavenger Entertainment. A real seventeenth-century ship would be much more decayed than this was. When they were waiting for their flight at JFK yesterday, Maria had checked all kinds of things on the Internet about the Galapagos, and about the tiny island of North Seymour in particular. Although scuba diving was popular there, she hadn’t found any hint of discussion about a real pirate ship being wrecked nearby.

  A hundred foot long ship in great condition would have been easy to find on the net. It had to be fake.

  That meant they should be able to find whatever it was that was valuable, but it wasn’t looking to be easy. The three of them, plus Rob, the cameraman, and their guide were all floating around on the floor of the ocean and had been for thirty minutes. It was the second and final dive of the day. If they didn’t find anything this time, they’d have to wait until tomorrow.

  They could stay down another 30 minutes before they’d be pushing their air supply, but time went so fast.

  Earlier, Tanya had gone into the hull. She was the bravest of the three. Sometimes Emma wondered where she got her fearlessness, and whether being gay had anything to do with it. In any case, she admired her. Tanya had pointed to Emma and Maria and waved to the outside, then swam inside the husk of the boat herself. She’d directed a bright flashlight ahead of her.

  Even though they’d talked about this, Emma still had misgivings. What if something went wrong inside the ship? Fortunately Rob had said that he could monitor that she was okay. She could just press the small panic button on the side of her GPS wristband.

  So far, she hadn’t pressed it.

  Emma flexed her hands to try to keep the circulation going. The water was so cold…

  They’d spent yesterday morning taking diving lessons. None of the three had ever gone scuba diving before, and only Tanya had even done any light snorkeling.

  The lessons took three hours before the guide would agree to take them out to North Seymour, which took most of the rest of the day. They’d slept on cots on the ship since there were no hotels or anything on North Seymour. There wasn’t much of anything, other than thousands of noisy pelicans.

  Now the boat was anchored above them, and the first mate would be watching around for any signs of trouble.

  As they fell backward into the water and started descending, the water seemed as clear as glass. Emma could see so far in all directions and when she looked down, she could see the tiny brown speck that would be the shipwreck. All of a sudden, she felt a horrible sense of panic, vertigo setting in. She felt like she was going to fall off an eight-story building and crash to the ground far below.

  Emma had to force herself to look up and away from the wreck.

  Schools of yellow and red fish swam past them as if they weren’t even there. Some of them were close enough for Emma to grab if she’d been fast enough.

  The vertigo left her slowly and they all started to swim down.

  A pair of sea lions swam alongside them for part of the journey down, but eventually they grew tired of the group of swimmers and left them on their own.

  Emma got nervous again when a hammerhead shark swam to within twenty feet of them, but their guide had warned them not to worry, that the sharks wouldn’t bother them. In fact the hammerhead swam on without seeming even to notice them.

  Where’s the darned treasure?

  She didn’t even know if it was a treasure exactly. They had to find “something” to sell for at least five hundred American dollars. But what?

  She moved to the very bottom of the ship, where it had crashed into the sandy sea floor. Using her hands, she scraped away some of the sand to see if there was anything weird about how the boat was sitting, but there was nothing. All she succeeded in doing was making a small cloud.

  For the next hour, she swam along the base of the ship, then the top, all on the starboard side. Maria was covering port. And Tanya was still inside, searching through whatever was in there.

  In her earpiece, she heard three short beeps. That was the sound from the guide that it was time to gather together and head back to the surface. Ten minutes of air left.

  Damn.

  It was going to be too dark to do another dive tonight, so they’d lost a whole day.

  She started to coast toward the prow of the boat where the guide was waiting. Maria was already there, and so was Rob.

  That’s when Rob’s GPS device started flashing red.

  Emma looked to the dark corpse of the abandoned pirate ship. Tanya had just pushed her emergency button.

  Rob - Galapagos Islands

  Rob Bohr had celebrated his thirty-fourth birthday the night before the first taping of Scavenger Hunt. He’d had dinner with a casual girlfriend who he’d dated occasionally over the past couple of years. They smiled and laughed over dinner and went back to her place for an hour of wonderful sex before he left her to go to his place and pack for the trip.

  This was the third show he’d filmed for Cynthia. She picked him out for House Arrest and then for Celebrity Dance, where he did some editing in addition to the camera work.

  Cynthia had always treated him wonderfully.

  And in return, he’d do anything for her.

  So when he saw that Tanya had pressed her panic button from inside the wreck, he didn’t hesitate for a second. His instincts took over and he swam toward the wreck, so he could find a way to help her. Because that would help the show. And that would help Cynthia.

  The problem was they were running out of air. He knew they had less than ten minutes. Before floating into the ship, he turned to Maria and Emma and pointed up. They shook their heads, but he wasn’t having any of that. They had to do what he told them or they’d be in breach of contract, and they knew that as well as he did.

  Fuck, get going! He wished he could yell at them. He couldn’t worry about them while he was trying to find out what Tanya’s problem was. He urgently pointed up and saw the two girls start to rise in the water.

  He aimed his flashlight into the dark entrance to the wreck.

  There were more than three million dead ships at the bottom of the world’s oceans, rotting husks that were unsafe and mostly disintegrated into flimsy bits of drift.

  Not this one. As he swam into the opening, he marveled how realistic it looked. He knew Cynthia and Rick had faked it, accounting for more than $100,000 of the show’s expenses. It lo
oked completely unsafe, like it could collapse at any moment, but it was reinforced with hidden steel supports that would keep it intact for the next few months. After that, the plan was to destroy it.

  Inside, there were fish everywhere. Red and blue and yellow, they all seemed to stare at him when he swam inside.

  He was careful not to get close to the actual wood. It could pierce his dry suit. The wreck might not collapse on him, but that didn’t mean it was completely safe.

  There was some kind of mossy stuff growing on the floor of the ship. As he kicked himself past it, he wondered if that was fake or if it’d really grown since the ship was placed here two months earlier.

  Tanya wasn’t in the first room. He kicked his fins and moved to the far end, squeezing himself through a tight opening into the second room. The ship was modeled after an 18th Century pirate ship and there were three main rooms with solid walls separating them. The main purpose of the walls was to provide structural support but they also allowed privacy. It wasn’t always easy to get from one room to the next, though. Rob watched as he moved his legs through the door and then flashed his light around. Still no Tanya.

  A bit of light shone at the far end, in the third room.

  Figures.

  He glanced at his tank to see how much air he had left. Seven minutes.

  The doorway had some jagged pieces of wood. He swam through and could immediately see Tanya at the far end. She waved her flashlight but he didn’t need that. She was the only thing in the room.

  He swam over to her and she clutched him. He pushed her back and held his hand up. Don’t panic, he wanted to tell her. He wouldn’t be able to help her if she panicked.

  He shone the light to the floor. Her foot was caught in the rotting floorboards. She must have pushed through a hole and gotten trapped. The boards were flexible and sprang back to catch her ankle. Yanking her foot would have only made the hold worse.

  He handed her his flashlight and then moved down to the floor. He pushed the boards down along with her ankle and that moved the wood apart. She could then lift her foot out.

  Once she was free, he took back his flashlight and pointed at the door with a series of points.

  Go, go, go!

  And go she did. She swam through the door as fast as she could. She was a lot thinner than he was.

  As she cleared the door, he checked his time again.

  One minute of air left.

  What the fuck?

  That’s when Rob felt the cold water around his ankle. He shone the light and saw that his dry suit was ripped.

  They knew the water temperature near the wreck would be below 60 degrees. The instructor suggested they use dry suits instead of wet suits.

  Before the training, Rob wouldn’t have had a clue there were different types of diving suits.

  Wet suits meant you had a bit of water inside the suit that acted as insulation. That was fine for warmer waters, but when it got really cold, it was more comfortable to use a dry suit. That was a rubber suit that had a layer of air between the diver and the suit, acting as insulation and keeping the swimmer warm.

  The air was connected to the tank that they used to breathe.

  Now, Rob knew his precious air was bubbling away from the rip in his leg. As he looked at the computerized display attached to his arm, he watched the tally of air change. To zero.

  Rob stared at the display, still not believing what it told him. The bubbles stopped floating out from his leg.

  He took a breath from the regulator but… nothing.

  Ahead of him, Tanya was gone.

  Rob flailed his arms and kicked his legs to start swimming out of the wreck. He kept sucking on the regulator, trying to force air out from the tank, but he couldn’t tell if he was being successful. If any air got to his lungs, it was overshadowed by the panic that was starting to build.

  Eighty feet. He knew he had to race to the surface. Forget the fucking bends. He was going to die if he didn’t get to the top fast.

  He knew a race to the surface would take at least two minutes after he got free of the ship.

  He kicked his feet and pulled himself through the doorway to the middle room. He felt his leg scrape against something, but that didn’t make any difference now.

  He swam toward the front of the ship but halfway there he swung his flashlight back onto the air tank, banging it. He did that three times before getting his mind back on track and swimming farther.

  The light went out.

  Banging the flashlight on the tank had damaged it.

  For a second, Rob was disoriented, not sure which way was up. Then his eyes adjusted a bit and he saw flickers of blue and yellow… luminescent fish and he could get his bearings.

  Two minutes.

  120 seconds.

  After he got out.

  He could feel his lungs complaining, telling him to get air. Ordering him.

  He sucked harder on the regulator and swam straight ahead. But he couldn’t see the doorway. The water was pitch black except for the tiny pinpricks of light from the fish. It wasn’t enough.

  Rob swam into a wall.

  Who the fuck put that there?

  He banged on the wall, trying to knock it down. His lungs were screaming at him now and he knew he had to get air.

  He bit the regulator, breaking a tooth and tried again to suck some air, but nothing came. He ripped the tank off his back and banged it against the wall, hoping that there was air on the other side and he would just have to break down the wall.

  His lungs were burning and he let some of the air he had escape and watched the bubbles as they disappeared in the darkness.

  He wanted to scream and then he did… he screamed and the cold, cold waters of the Pacific rushed into his lungs, silencing him forever.

  Chapter 6: Production

  Cynthia - Sixteen Months Earlier

  Cynthia Wright had never been sick much in her entire life. The occasional cold, not to mention the time she had food poisoning from that weird sushi bar she went one time with Rick. He’d heard of it from his sister, who always raved about it. Jeez. What’s wrong with cooked fish?

  That was a terrible time. She spent a day vomiting and having stomach cramps and diarrhea. She’d thought she was going to die from the dry heaves and the terrible pains.

  It was nothing compared to what she felt now. Had felt for the past three days.

  She kept hoping the pain in her left calf would go away, magically disappear itself into thin air like a special effect that was no longer needed.

  She lay in her bed, the constant throbbing of pain hitting her in waves. She touched the spot but she couldn’t really tell if that made it better or worse.

  She clicked a couple of buttons on her cell phone and tried to ignore the pain.

  “Hey, Cyn,” said Rick.

  “Come get me.” She found she couldn’t talk very loud, having been drained of her energy from lack of sleep. “Take me to the hospital.”

  Rick was all business. “What’s wrong. Tell me what’s wrong.”

  “Pain in my leg. I think it might be a clot.”

  “I’m phoning for an ambulance. I’m downtown now and can’t get to you as quickly as they can. I’ll meet you at Cedars Sinai.”

  “Shit. Rick?”

  “What?”

  She hesitated. What did she want to say?

  “Cyn?”

  “See you soon.”

  She clicked off and realized the door of her apartment was locked. The paramedics couldn’t get in.

  She swung her right leg to the floor and then dragged her left leg to match it. Fuck, it hurt. Her calf didn’t look unusual, but it felt like it was on fire.

  “Goddamn thing,” she whispered. “Fucking leg is not going to beat me.”

  She used the bedpost to steady herself. The pain had gotten steadily worse since Friday. She’d still been able to sleep on Friday night, but not since then. Saturday, she woke up and had trouble walking. It was like
she had a constant cramp in her leg — a cramp she couldn’t rub out or get rid of by standing on it.

  It got worse. Saturday night, she had trouble sleeping. She only managed bits and pieces and even that was troubled, with every small movement waking her up. The pain was just so much worse.

  Just like… Mom.

  Fuck that. It’s not the same.

  Saturday night, she had a bath, hoping the water would somehow ease the pain. She’d heard that sometimes joint problems were eased with hot water. She knew this wasn’t a joint problem — it was definitely in her calf –- but she just hoped it would help. It didn’t.

  Saturday night was torture. The only drugs she had in the house were some Advils from a couple years ago, and they didn’t seem to help her much. She thought of driving to the pharmacy but that would be so hard with her leg this sore. Besides, she knew it would clear up.

  Sunday morning. The torture continued and was worse. That’s when she knew she needed Rick.

  The ambulance took Cynthia to Cedars Sinai Hospital, where they knew how to handle celebrities. She was ushered into a private area immediately. Out of habit, she checked the time; it was just after 9:00 a.m. when she was admitted.

  Rick Sanderson arrived in her room an hour later. Nobody questioned his right to be there. Everyone in L.A. knew Cynthia and Rick. They were as famous as Steven Spielberg and Lady Gaga.

  “What have they found?” he asked. He pulled a chair close to her bed and took her hand.

  “Nothing so far. Nurses think it might be a clot. They were just checking me out. Took some blood and I guess that’ll tell them what’s up.”

  Cynthia turned onto her side and looked at Rick. She’d always loved his black hair but a gray streak was running along the sides now. And he had wrinkles in his cheeks. Where’d they come from?

  He looked back at her, and she wondered what he was thinking. They were between shows right now, working out ideas. Was he thinking about the next show? The bad publicity of her being in the hospital? Was he worried that if she was sick they wouldn’t be able to get financing?