Take Your Last Breath

  By standing on the drinking fountain, she managed to haul herself up and through the opening without great difficulty. The window accessed the little booth where the projector and audio equipment were kept. The carousel containing the slides from last week’s briefing was still sitting on the desk next to it. Ruby slotted the carousel in place, flicked the switch, and listened to the projector as the fan began to whir and the light beam caught the dust particles, which moved like plankton in and out of the darkness.

  Ruby went through the slides slowly, pausing on each one, carefully studying them.

  The swimming boy, Tommy Elson.

  The smiling couple, Hallie Grier and Lyle Greene.

  The surfer girl, Billie-May Vaughn.

  The kid with the fishing rod, Danny Fink Junior.

  Ruby wasn’t sure about Hallie and Lyle, but the others were most definitely pretty young. She took out the slide of the smiling couple. There was a label at the bottom which read:

  That was the connection.

  That was why she’d been thinking about her mother’s words: it was to do with teenagers — kids.

  Everyone who had heard the whispering was either a kid, or not yet quite an adult. This included Ruby herself, of course. She had read somewhere that kids and teenagers could hear sounds that adults couldn’t — higher frequencies — just like dogs. As you got older, your ears became less sensitive, and these high tones started to fall out of reach.

  What if the reason no one was taking these reports seriously was because no adult had heard the whispers? You had to be a kid to hear them.

  So supposing the whispering was a fact, but could only be heard by kids, where was it coming from? Who or what was generating this sound? Red had heard it during the swimathon. Ruby herself had heard it when diving the wreck. Sailors of bygone times had heard it too, and sailors in those days were often boys, not yet grown men.

  What was that thing Martha had said? A whispering sea devil? Could there really be such a creature?

  Ruby headed out the way she came in — pushing herself backward through the tiny window — feeling around with her feet for the drinking fountain. It was higher up than she remembered, less stable too, and then she realized why; her feet were not resting on the fountain, they were resting on someone’s shoulders.

  Ruby’s heart skipped.

  Then . . .

  “I’d recognize those sneakers anywhere,” said a voice.

  “Man! You nearly gave me a heart attack,” hissed Ruby, peering down at Hitch.

  HITCH: You might well have a heart attack if Agent Trent-Kobie discovers you here. What do you think you’re doing?

  RUBY: Research. I needed to look at those slides again, the ones Kekoa presented last week.

  HITCH: So why didn’t you ask permission?

  RUBY: In case they said no.

  HITCH: That’s not a good reason.

  RUBY: {Silence}

  HITCH: At the very least you could have asked me.

  RUBY: You weren’t around.

  HITCH: I’m contactable, ever think of that?

  RUBY: I couldn’t be bothered.

  HITCH: Am I hearing this?

  RUBY: I mean, time was a factor.

  HITCH: Well, it took you long enough to get the scuba-sub started.

  RUBY: What? You followed me?

  HITCH: Not exactly. I was looking for clues at Desolate Cove, then I saw you.

  RUBY: So why didn’t you help me get it started?

  HITCH: I wanted to see if you could manage, and it turns out you can.

  RUBY: So how did you get here?

  HITCH: There’s more than one scuba-sub.

  RUBY: I guess there is.

  HITCH: You find out what you needed to find out?

  RUBY: Yeah.

  HITCH: Then I would advise that we get out of here before you get in deep trouble.

  When both scuba-subs had reached the shores of Desolate Cove and both agents were walking back across the pebble beach, Hitch quizzed Ruby about her findings. She was about to fill him in when his watch flashed green.

  “Got to take this,” he said.

  The voice coming through was LB’s, and she did not sound happy. “I’ve been trying to locate you for the last forty-five minutes.”

  “Had to check something out at Sea Division,” he replied.

  “Well, you’re needed in Spectrum. Something’s come up.”

  “On my way. Over and out.”

  He turned to Ruby. “Sorry, kid, you’re going to have to hold that thought. We’ll catch up later, OK?”

  Ruby shrugged. “Guess so,” she said.

  “Just hold that thought,” he called as he strode across the iron-gray stones.

  Ruby retrieved her bike and rode back to Twinford, all the while thinking, Could there really be some kind of sea monster out there? Or am I beginning to lose it?

  To help answer both these questions (one preposterous, the other highly likely) she started heading for the place she knew would have most books on the subject — and then she had a better idea.

  She turned her bike around.

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, RUBY PULLED UP outside the Crew mansion. She knew how to disarm the security gate and was inside in a second. She then slipped around to the west side of the house and climbed up the vine to Clancy’s bedroom.

  It was a cinch. The house was built in the Parisian style and resembled a sort of mini chateau covered in creeper. She elegantly stepped from the vine into the room via the balcony window with musketeer-like ease.

  “Hey, Rube, you didn’t say you were coming over,” said Clancy.

  Ruby screeched in a most un-Ruby-Redfort-like way.

  “Sorry, Rube, didn’t mean to alarm you,” said Clancy.

  “You’re skipping school again?”

  “It’s swim practice,” explained Clancy. “Anyway, you’re the one doing the breaking and entering.”

  “Yeah, sorry about that. But you’re pushing your luck, my friend. Two Mondays in a row, they’re gonna cotton on sooner or later.”

  “Yeah, I know. That’s why I’m lying low. Anyway, what’s your excuse?”

  “I want to take a look at your sea monster books,” replied Ruby.

  “You cut school for that? Kinda weird emergency if you ask me.” But he simply shrugged and pointed to the giant stack of books next to his bed. “Be my guest.” He seemed a little puzzled, but happy to oblige.

  Ruby sat on the floor, flipping through page after page. What she was looking for were stories and legends that might relate back to accounts of a whispering sound, strange noises heard at sea.

  She found many myths of sea monsters and strange creatures who would call to earthly folk: the Blue Men of the Minch who lived in underwater caves; the selkies, seal people who lived off Scotland and Iceland; mermaids calling sailors to join them under the waves; sea witches and pied pipers who lured children from the shores down to watery graves. Then there were the giants of the sea: the prehistoric monsters from the deep that dragged entire boatfuls of men to their deaths and devoured whole ships.

  Most of the legends appeared to Ruby to be a way of explaining things that simple people couldn’t understand, giving some reason for the random deaths in the cruel seas during harsh ages.

  However, some of the tales seemed to have more substance, and told of sightings of strange and improbable beasts. The recurring theme of mysterious singers and whispered callings in particular appeared in various accounts connected to Twinford.

  There was one tragic account of a cabin boy named Robin Farthingale who swore he could hear a woman calling to him in the fog, her mournful whispers, cries for rescue. He dove in and was never seen again.

  There was the Mary-Belle, which was smashed to pieces on the Sibling cliffs after the youngest of the sailors steered the vessel off course, believing that there were mermaids whispering in the darkness, saying, Help us, we beg you, help us.

  There were whispers in storms, urging crew
s to jump ship. Most of those who did so jumped to their graves, their drowned and battered bodies found much later, if at all, washed up onshore.

  There were a few theories as to the cause of these eerie sounds. Most believed that far from being an actual creature, the whispering came from the ghosts of the lost sisters of the Sibling Islands calling for help. The less romantic said the sound was merely the sea pulling gravel along the ocean floor.

  Others said it was the wind. But some claimed to have seen the sea whisperer, a giant and terrifying creature, bigger than any whale. A creature so strong that it could pull the burliest of fisherman from his boat and strangle six men at a time; some vowed eight.

  After forty-six minutes of watching Ruby read, Clancy asked, “So what kind of sea monsters are you interested in?”

  “The kind that attack sharks,” said Ruby.

  “Mythical ones, right?” asked Clancy hopefully.

  “Uh-uh, real ones,” said Ruby.

  “A creature that attacks sharks?” exclaimed Clancy, and his arms started to flap.

  “And killer whales,” she added.

  “Oh, brother!” said Clancy. This made him feel even worse: now there was something even bigger to fear, more dangerous than a shark, bigger than a killer whale.

  “Clance, where are the factual marine-life books about the deep? The deep deep, I mean — about creatures that people aren’t sure exist but think might?”

  “They’re in the closet,” said Clancy. “Ever since this whole swimathon thing I haven’t been able to look at them.” He pulled a whole bunch of books out and slid them across the floor.

  She went through each one; there was a lot to learn when it came to the deep, and she couldn’t help reading facts out loud.

  RUBY: Did you know that we have only explored five percent of the ocean?

  CLANCY: Yeah, I did actually.

  RUBY: Did you know we know more about the surface of the moon than the bottom of the ocean bed?

  CLANCY: Yeah, I know.

  RUBY: Did you know that a new species is discovered every time we explore the depths of the ocean?

  CLANCY: Actually between four and six new species. But yeah, I know.

  RUBY: I didn’t know you actually read all of this stuff.

  CLANCY: What did you think I did with it?

  RUBY: I don’t know, look at the pictures and hide under your bed?

  CLANCY: Yeah, funny, Rube. Excuse me while I die laughing.

  RUBY: Hey, but really, Clance, how come you read all this stuff if you hate the ocean so much?

  CLANCY: I don’t hate the ocean, I just don’t want to ever go in it. There’s a difference.

  RUBY: You know you’re gonna have to get over this, you can’t —

  She didn’t finish her sentence. Her eyes had alighted upon something she recognized. A photograph that had fallen from the book, but didn’t belong to it.

  It was a half page torn from a magazine and tucked into the book. The picture was of a young man, the face a little out of focus, but it showed him smiling in a wet suit, standing against a blue Mediterranean Sea.

  But it wasn’t the man that Ruby recognized, it was the bag at his feet. Yellow with a blurred blue shape printed on the left side. She took her watch from her wrist and swiveled out the refocus magnifier and laid it over the blue. The blue became a logo, an animal — a dog? Something like a dog anyway. This bag was the same yellow bag she had seen the stranger carrying, but the man in the photo looked a good deal younger than the stranger, which made sense, because it looked like it had been taken a while ago.

  In the photograph he had obviously just returned from a dive, and his boat was moored behind him. The name of the boat was partially obscured, though the last word could easily be read: MARE, the Italian word for sea. The middle word couldn’t be seen because the smiling man stood in front of it and the other letters spelled UPO. Well, that didn’t mean anything. UPO ___ MARE?

  Unless of course the first letter of the word had been cropped by the photographer in which case it was likely to be an L . . . an L for LUPO, meaning “wolf.”

  LUPO DI MARE — the Sea Wolf.

  The boat her father had dived from all those years ago in Italy. The boat that belonged to that marine biologist guy.

  It was all adding up.

  “What have you found?” asked Clancy, scooting over to where Ruby kneeled in a sea of books.

  She pointed at the photograph. “This picture, where did you get it from?”

  “Beats me.” Clancy shrugged. “Most of these books are secondhand; I’ve never seen this picture before. What’s the big deal about it?”

  “This guy, I know who he is. Francesco something-or-other. I’m pretty sure my dad used to be part of his dive crew. In fact I’m sure of it. And I think he’s been following me around too.”

  “You do?” said Clancy uncertainly.

  “Look, can I use your phone?” Ruby had already picked up the receiver and was halfway through dialing.

  “Be my guest,” said Clancy, shrugging.

  Ms. Blanche put her through right away. Ms. Blanche had no doubt her boss would want to speak to Ruby. Brant Redfort always took his daughter’s calls.

  “Dad, what was the name of that diver guy you worked for in Italy?”

  “Fornetti,” said her father. “Francesco Fornetti. Why are you asking?”

  “You said he was a genius?”

  “Oh, yes. He was a genius all right,” replied her father.

  “What happened to him? You mentioned he was laughed out of town. If he was such a genius, how come he was discredited?”

  “He sort of lost it, was raving about a sea monster and crazy stuff. He even wrote a book about it.”

  “What was it called?” Ruby asked.

  “I don’t remember. All I know is he went AWOL after that. Some said he had sunstroke or maybe had swallowed too much saltwater; perhaps he was hallucinating.”

  “Did you believe him?” said Ruby.

  “I didn’t know what to think. I never exactly knew the fellow, not really. I just admired his work.”

  “But you spent time with him, right?” said Ruby.

  “Only once after Italy. He happened to be in Twinford and we met while your mother and I were sailing around the coast. We were taking it easy because it was that crazy summer that your mom broke her arm and I dislocated my shoulder. Fornetti was free diving and joined us on our boat. Nice guy and . . . heroic too, but then I guess he just sorta went right off the rails.”

  Heroic: now that was a strange word to use.

  “Look, sorry, honey. I’m due in a meeting any minute . . .”

  “OK, but just tell me — did I meet him?” asked Ruby.

  Her father hesitated. “Not really. Sorta. You were just a tiny kid.” Ruby had the sense he was being cagey about something, which wasn’t like him.

  “How old was I exactly?” she asked.

  “You were a baby, no more than a toddler. You wouldn’t remember.”

  It was true, she didn’t remember.

  “So this Francesco Fornetti, would he recognize me if he saw me now?”

  “No, how could he? Why are you asking?” said her father.

  “Oh, you know, no reason,” said Ruby.

  “Shouldn’t you be in school, by the way?” said her father.

  “Yeah, you’re right. Gotta go.”

  She hung up.

  There were two certainties in Ruby’s mind, and both of them worried her.

  One: she was sure that Francesco Fornetti was following her.

  Two: she was sure that her father was keeping something from her — something that might explain why.

  Was this guy dangerous?

  AFTER PROMISING THAT SHE ABSOLUTELY WOULD, on pain of death, call Clancy later, Ruby climbed back out of the third-story window and headed on down to the secondhand bookstore. It was named Penny Books after Ray Penny, the owner, but it had a sort of double meaning because a lot of the bo
oks were pretty cheap. It was one of those shops that was stuffed full of things that daylight would never see due to the sheer quantity of it all. Books stacked three deep one in front of another; books spread on rickety tables and piled in teetering towers on the floors of the narrow passages between the shelves.

  Ruby started scanning the rows of paperbacks, hardbacks, and pamphlets, lost in a world of her own until she heard a raspy voice call.

  “What are you looking for there?”

  Ruby turned to see Ray standing at the counter, his broken glasses wedged on his nose. Ray knew Ruby pretty well and liked her a lot; she was one of his regulars, always in browsing, particularly the old graphic novels.

  “I’m looking for a book by someone named Fornetti,” she said. “Francesco Fornetti.”

  Ray scratched his cheek in a thoughtful sort of way.

  “That name kinda rings a bell with me,” he said. This wasn’t surprising — Ray seemed to know most books; if you couldn’t remember the title, he could usually identify it just by a description of the cover.

  “Fact or fiction?” he asked.

  “Fact, I guess,” said Ruby.

  “Subject?” asked Ray.

  “Marine biology, the ocean,” replied Ruby.

  “Oh yeah. That guy, I know. So which book were you interested in?” asked Ray. “If I remember correctly, he wrote a whole lot.”

  “I guess the one I’m looking for he might have written around nine or ten years ago,” said Ruby. “It probably would have been the last thing he had published,” she added, thinking of what her dad had said about his reputation.

  Ray nodded. “Can you just give me an hour or so? I need to search the back there.” He pointed to the area at the rear of the shop, the area where the floor disappeared under a cascade of paper.

  “Sure,” said Ruby. “I’ll go get a fruit shake from Cherry’s. I’ll be back.”