Adrift

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. Going back now would feel like quitting before the first cast.

Mike wanted the trip on track as badly as any of them. He wanted to stop at the coordinates they had marked, shut down the engine, and hear something other than machinery. He wanted the first strike on his line.

He pointed toward the southeast. “We fish for an hour. Then we turn.”

Danny raised both hands. “Captain has spoken.”

“I’m not captain.”

“Then stop acting like one.”

Mike ignored him and accelerated toward the mark.

The water changed as they moved. The river’s muddy color thinned into a deeper blue, but the surface grew steeper, the swells shouldering against the skis from different directions. Each rise gave Mike a longer view. The squall had widened. Its leading edge dragged a gray veil across the horizon.

They reached the fishing spot and formed a loose circle.

Mike killed his engine. The sudden quiet felt unnatural. Without the motor’s vibration, he heard the slap of water against the hull and the faint ticking of cooling metal. Wind tugged at his sleeves. The other skis drifted around him, their bows lifting and falling.

Danny pulled a rod from its holder. “See? Perfect.”

Mike looked toward the cloud bank.

“Perfect,” Danny repeated.

Mike clipped his line and cast. The lure snapped out, flashed once, and vanished into the dark water. He began to retrieve, counting the turns of the reel. Tyler cast beside him. Cole stayed seated with his rod across his knees, watching the horizon.

“You going to fish?” Mike asked.

“Watching the weather.”

“Same thing.”

Cole shook his head. “No, it isn’t.”

A gust struck them from the west.

The four skis rocked together. Mike’s line went slack, tapping against the rod. The surface around them roughened in seconds, small waves building sharp ridges where there had been only rolling swell.

Danny reeled in. “That wasn’t in the forecast.”

Mike checked his phone. The screen showed a weak signal, then none. He raised it higher, as if the sky might change its mind.

The squall’s gray curtain had reached the horizon directly ahead. Rain fell beneath it in a solid sheet, blurring the line between sea and sky. Lightning flickered inside the cloud, silent at this distance.

Tyler pointed behind them. “We can beat that.”

Mike looked back toward shore. Nothing but open water and a thinning strip of blue.

“We’re done,” he said.

Danny stared at him. “We just got here.”

“Pack it up.”

“Mike - ”

“Now.”

The wind shifted.

It came hard from the west, then swung north, striking the skis broadside. Mike’s bow yawed. A wave slapped over the footwell and soaked his boots. The water was warm, but the cold that followed came from somewhere deeper, a sudden warning crawling beneath his skin.

Cole started his engine first.

The motor coughed, caught, and roared. He swung the ski into the wind, fighting the bow as the waves steepened.

“Stay tight,” Mike shouted. “No gaps.”

Danny fired his engine. Tyler followed. Mike clipped his rod down, secured the line, and thumbed the throttle.

The storm advanced with terrifying speed. Rain erased the horizon in strips. The sky darkened from gray to charcoal, and the sea turned the color of old steel. Wind hammered Mike’s helmet. Every breath tasted of salt.

Cole moved into the rear position.

Mike saw him glance back once toward the fishing ground. Then Cole turned forward and followed.

They pushed north toward the river mouth, engines straining as the chop grew taller. Mike kept Danny and Tyler within sight, their taillights flickering through rain. Cole’s red vest appeared and disappeared behind the rising waves.

“Slow down!” Mike shouted into the radio.

Static answered.

He tapped the transmit button again. “Everybody slow down.”

Danny’s voice broke through. “Can’t hear you!”

A wave struck Mike from the side. The jet ski rolled, handlebars wrenching against his wrists. He corrected and saw Tyler’s ski climb the face of a steep swell, hang at the crest, then crash down in a burst of white water.

The rain thickened.

Mike looked back.

Cole was there - small, red, and distant - riding the rear line as another wall of water rose between them.

Mike eased off the throttle, but Danny and Tyler were already ahead, swallowed by rain and spray. The wind screamed across the open Gulf. Cole vanished behind the wave.

Mike waited for the red vest to reappear.

Nothing.

He twisted in the seat, searching the troughs.

Then a burst of static cracked in his helmet, followed by a voice too broken to understand.

Mike reached for the radio.

Behind him, the sea lifted again, black and enormous, and the first white edge curled over the place where Cole had disappeared.

End of chapter one. 13 more chapters and about 24,552 words in the full book.