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    On the last dive, fifteen seconds disappeared in a flow of growing peace and self-esteem. She held her breath, triumphing.
    You’re beating the water again, she thought as she fetched her oysters. Every dive makes you stronger.
    Focused on her task, Kat barely felt it when a hand levered down on her head.
    In the back of her mind, she knew it was Yoko trying a new, more effective method of jarring Kat out of the way as she grabbed for the oysters that Kat was holding.
    Yoko didn’t usually make bodily contact.
    But…damn— damn ! There was something about the pressure on her skull, the claustrophobic weight heaving her down.
    As faint as the push was, its power roared over Kat like a storm wave, pinning her, mentally freezing her limbs into helpless stumps.
    In slow time, she felt the oysters slip from her hand, felt Yoko pushing off her body in a lunge for the booty. As Kat instinctively opened her mouth, a bubble of treasured air escaped upward, lost to the water.
    Panic bathed her, a terrible memory wiping over her eyes—the one from years ago, the one she fought with every dive: water, so gorgeous and deadly and blue as it sheened over her like a glass ceiling. Waves, ebbing, flowing, as Kat, who was only nine, lay on the bottom of the ocean, trapped by the undertow.
    Debilitating fear. A few moments that seemed like hours.
    But the horrific serenity was slashed wide open as the pressure of the tide spat her back out of the water, coughing, gripping for breath. Her dad had rushed to her side, helping her to expel the water from her lungs, carrying her to a threadbare towel where he dried her and whispered an urgent pep talk of recovery.
    Now, as she remembered, she could feel the water seeping into her like a transfusion of cold blood. It became a part of her, almost like the sea hadn’t forgotten. She’d been stolen from the ocean once, and it was taking her back, wasn’t it? Taking her…
    No. No it wasn’t.
    With an explosion of energy, Kat frantically lashed out with her clawed fingers, blindly catching Yoko as she grabbed for the falling oysters.
    Kat choked on a gasp of water, then, quickly shutting her mouth, latched on to Yoko’s arm. The other diver’s eyes widened under her mask, like they always did when she acted surprised that someone was freaking out about something she considered quite minor.
    Breath…air…need…air…
    Suddenly, the water was a trap, a box. Kat dugthrough it, trying to reach the surface, craving the open sky wavering beyond the flowing barrier.
    Reach…up…air…
    She burst upward with a screeching gasp, falling and hunching over her basket, wheezing. As she whipped off her mask, quivers wracked her limbs, and she tasted something sour in the back of her throat.
    “—gift shop where you can see the luster and spell-binding splendor of the pearl,” said the deliriously perky emcee. “Thank you for the honor of your company.”
    Applause leaked from an audience who couldn’t have seen the details of what had happened beneath the water, even though they could sure as hell see one majorly dazed ama now.
    Weakly, Kat turned her head toward Yoko, who’d also surfaced, taken off her mask, and a second later, begun to swim madly for the boat.
    Like that was going to get her away from Kat.
    Anger took over, helping Kat to reach the deepest strengths in herself. When she caught up to Yoko, she made damned sure they were sheltered from the audience’s view.
    Yoko only had time to hold up a palm in mercy. “I didn’t mean to—”
    Kat surged through the water and clamped her hands against the boat, caging Yoko, her face only an inch away.
    “You want to bully me?” Kat clenched her teeth.
    The other woman closed her eyes.
    “Then expect me to fight back.”
     
    “You don’t take any guff, do you?” Duke said. His voice, which, imaginably, once had possessed the strength of a hero in a jungle safari film, was now thready—hardly the bark of a man who’d