Adrift

The last green marker on Mike’s GPS vanished beneath the bow spray as they cleared the Mississippi mouth.

Behind them, the river spread into brown fans across the Gulf, carrying branches, foam, and the dark slick of everything Louisiana had washed downstream. Ahead lay open water, blue-gray and hardening beneath a pale morning sky. The four jet skis climbed and dropped over the swells, engines snarling through the salt wind.

Mike eased off the throttle and lifted one gloved hand.

The others fell in around him. Danny came up on his left, Tyler on the right. Cole stayed behind, riding high over the chop, his red life vest flashing each time the ski rose.

“Twenty miles,” Danny shouted through the helmets.

Mike checked the GPS again. The screen showed their route, a thin digital line stretching back toward Venice. Twenty miles offshore. Far enough that the river was gone behind the curve of the sea, far enough that the cabin might as well have been another state.

He tapped the fuel gauge, then pointed toward the deeper water.

“Find the fish,” he called. “Get back before dark.”

Danny laughed. “That’s the whole plan?”

“That’s the plan that keeps us from sleeping in the Gulf.”

Tyler throttled forward, spraying Danny across the chest. Danny cursed and chased him. Cole followed, his engine note rising until it blended with theirs into one hard mechanical roar.

Mike grinned inside his helmet. This was what he had wanted when he rented the cabin with them: a clean run offshore, lines in the water, enough fish to make the ride home worth it. No schedules. No wives calling every hour. No one standing over a grill pretending not to watch the weather.

He opened the throttle.

The ski leaped over a swell and slammed down. The handlebars punched his palms. Warm spray struck his neck, then turned cold as the wind tore it away. He kept the bow angled into the waves and watched the water ahead for floating debris.

Something black cut across the surface.

Mike released the throttle.

The jet ski dropped into a trough. For a second, all he saw was a wall of water. Then the shape appeared again, thirty yards ahead and moving fast.

A dorsal fin sliced through the chop.

Not a dolphin. Too straight. Too deliberate.

“Hold up!” Mike yelled.

Danny swung around beside him. Tyler’s ski fishtailed as he braked. Behind them, Cole came down hard off a wave and nearly clipped Tyler’s stern.

“What?” Cole shouted.

Mike pointed.

The fin vanished. A second later, it surfaced farther out, cutting diagonally across the swells. The body beneath it showed for an instant - a thick gray back rolling just under the skin of the Gulf.

Danny stared at it. “That’s a shark.”

“No kidding,” Tyler said.

“Big one,” Cole called from behind.

The fin disappeared again. The water closed over it without a splash.

Mike kept his hands tight on the bars. He scanned the surface, searching for the next break in the chop. Nothing. Only whitecaps, oil-dark troughs, and the four idling machines vibrating beneath them.

Danny nudged closer. “Bull?”

“Could be,” Mike said.

“Could be a great white.”

“Out here?”

“Sharks don’t check charts.”

Tyler turned his head toward the open water. “You think it’s following us?”

Mike wanted to laugh, but the sound stayed trapped behind his teeth. The idea was ridiculous. Four jet skis, four engines, noise and exhaust pounding into the sea. Whatever they had seen was hunting something else.

Still, he looked down.

The water below the ski was clear enough to show pale green depths dropping away. A few strands of weed drifted past. His own shadow trembled beneath him, stretched and broken by the waves.

“Lines in the water,” Mike said. “That’s what it’s following.”

Danny’s eyebrows lifted. “You planning to bleed on yours?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“You just said it was nothing.”

“I said we’re fishing.”

Cole revved his engine once. “Then let’s fish.”

Mike looked back at him. Cole’s face was hidden behind tinted goggles, but his posture had changed. He was sitting straighter, elbows loose, eyes moving over the water. The sighting had gotten inside him too.

A dark cloud sat low on the western horizon.

Mike checked the time. They had made good distance. The weather app on his phone had promised scattered showers, nothing that would ruin the day. The sky above them remained bright, but the cloud bank had a flat, bruised underside, and beneath it the sea looked darker.

Danny followed his gaze. “That moving our way?”

“It’s a squall.”

“Looks small.”

“It’s twenty miles offshore. Small doesn’t mean harmless.”

Tyler gave a dismissive wave. “We’ve got hours.”

Mike turned toward him. “We don’t know that.”

Tyler’s smile faded. “We just got here.”

The argument died under the engines. Mike knew the look on Tyler’s face. They had driven all the way from Louisiana’s interior for this weekend, hauled the jet skis down before sunrise, and crossed the river mouth without stopping....