Killer Storm: The Fin Fleming Scuba Diving Series Read online

  Praise for Sharon Ward

  Sharon Ward’s IN DEEP is a stellar, pulse-pounding debut novel featuring a female underwater photographer. A heady mix of underwater adventure, mystery, and romance.

  Hallie Ephron, New York Times bestselling author

  Pack your SCUBA fins for a wild trip to the Cayman Islands. In Deep delivers on twists and turns while introducing a phenomenal new protagonist in underwater photographer Fin Fleming, tough, perceptive and fearless.

  Edwin Hill, author of The Secrets We Share

  How much did I love In Deep? Let me count the ways. Fin Fleming, underwater photographer, is a courageous yet vulnerable protagonist I want to sip Margaritas with. The Cayman Islands are exotic and alluring, yet tinged with danger. The underwater scenes and SCUBA diving details are rendered in stunning detail. Wrap that all into a thrilling mystery and you'll be left as breathless as - well, no spoilers here. You must read it to find out!

  C. Michele Dorsey, Author of the Sabrina Salter Mysteries: No Virgin Island, Permanent Sunset, and Tropical Depression

  Breathtaking on two levels, Sharon Ward’s debut novel IN DEEP will captivate experienced divers as well as those who’ve only dreamed of exploring the beauty beneath the sea. The underwater world off the Cayman Islands is stunningly rendered, and the complex mystery involving underwater photographer Fin Fleming, especially the electrifying dive scenes, will have readers holding their breath. Brava!

  Brenda Buchanan Author of the Joe Gale Mystery Series

  In Deep is a smart and original story that sucks you in from page one. Edge-of-your-seat suspense, a hauntingly realistic villain, and a jaw-dropping twist make this pacy read unputdownable until the very last word.

  Stephanie Scott-Snyder, Author of When Women Offend: Crime and the Female Perpetrator

  Killer Storm

  The Fin Fleming Scuba Diving Series

  Sharon Ward

  Copyright © 2022 by Sharon Ward

  All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact: [email protected]

  Covers by Milagraphicartist.com

  ISBN eBook: 978-1-958478-01-1

  ISBN Trade Paper: 978-1-958478-02-8

  ISBN Hard Cover: 978-1-958478-03-5

  Printed in USA

  First Edition

  For Jack, World’s Best Husband

  Milan, welcome to the family

  Erin L, Scott, Taylor, Cameron, Erin R, Colin, Josh, Jen, Ryleigh/Parker & Isaac—Love you all

  Molly, world’s best dachshund

  Contents

  Foreword

  1. 8 hours ago

  2. 6:30 AM

  3. Killer Storm

  4. A New Day Dawns

  5. Discovery

  6. An Accident Happens

  7. Checking in at the Lab

  8. Doc Returns

  9. Newton Comes Hom

  10. Police Stati

  11. The Drive

  12. Taking Care of Business

  13. Early Morning Dive

  14. New Hire

  15. Liam Leaves

  16. Justin

  17. Cookies

  18. Visiting Oliver

  19. Jet Skis

  20. Search

  21. Rebuilding

  22. Recovery Mission

  23. An Afternoon of Meetings

  24. Steroids

  25. Evening at Home

  26. Stingray City

  27. DNA Results

  28. Submarine Sighting

  29. The Golden Kelp

  30. A Daring Proposal

  31. Chaun Has an Idea

  32. Sneak Attack

  33. Aboard the Mega-Yacht

  34. Submarine Voyage

  35. Debrief

  36. Confrontation At Fleming Environmental

  37. Chico Pays a Visit

  38. Confession

  39. Maddy’s Place

  40. The Submarine Returns

  41. Fair Weather

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Sharon Ward

  Foreword

  Thank you to everyone who has followed Fin’s adventures. She and I both appreciate it.

  For those of you who have pointed out that an American Pygmy octopus like Rosie would only have a twelve to eighteen month life span—thank you. I already knew this, but because so many people were upset about the death of Harry the stingray, I decreed Rosie to be immortal.

  If that’s too far-fetched, think of her like the dog owned by Robert B. Parker’s Spenser. Pearl has been with Spenser since the beginning. Once she reaches the end of her days, Spenser gets another dog just like her and names her Pearl. Not Pearl Two. Just Pearl.

  Assume Fin has done the same thing with Rosie.

  Also, please remember Fin is a professional diver, certified in all kinds of technical diving categories well beyond the training and experience of recreational divers. If you’re a diver, don’t do what Fin does. Stay within the bounds of your training.

  Always plan your dive and dive your plan. Don’t dive alone. Don’t dive too deep. Don’t use mixed gases unless you’ve been trained. But have fun. Diving is a blast!

  Chapter 1

  8 hours ago

  STORM ADVISORY BULLETIN

  HURRICANE WILLARD ADVISORY NUMBER 38

  NWS TPC/NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER MIAMI FL

  DANGEROUS HURRICANE WILLARD THREATENS THE CAYMAN ISLANDS. PREPARATIONS TO PROTECT LIFE AND PROPERTY SHOULD BE RUSHED TO COMPLETION. MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS HAVE INCREASED TO MORE THAN 135/156 KM/HR WITH HIGHER GUSTS. THIS IS CATEGORY FIVE ON THE SAFFIR-SIMPSON HURRICANE SCALE. SOME FLUCTUATIONS IN INTENSITY ARE LIKELY DURING THE NEXT 24 HOURS.

  HURRICANE FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 90 MILES /150 KM FROM THE CENTER AND TROPICAL STORM FORCE WINDS EXTEND OUTWARD UP TO 175 MILES /280 KM.

  STORM SURGE FLOODING OF 8 TO 25 FEET ABOVE NORMAL TIDE LEVELS ALONG WITH LARGE AND DANGEROUS BATTERING WAVES CAN BE EXPECTED THROUGHOUT THE CAYMAN ISLANDS DEPENDING ON THE EXACT TRACK OF WILLARD.

  RAINFALL AMOUNTS OF 12 TO 30 INCHES POSSIBLY CAUSING LIFE-THREATENING FLASH FLOODS AND MUD SLIDES CAN BE EXPECTED ALONG THE PATH OF WILLARD

  Chapter 2

  6:30 AM

  I tossed the storm advisory aside. It was ominous, but our preparations were well underway at this point.

  Just to confirm that in my own mind, I looked out my open office window at the increasingly angry sea, watching Stewie, RIO’s director of dive operations, supervising the removal of all our boats to send them to drydock. The ocean swells had grown overnight, and whitecaps were licking at the top of RIO’s dock. The sky was a looming grey, and there was a bite to the breeze unusual for Grand Cayman.

  The smell of hot coffee made me turn around.

  “Dr. Fleming, you’re in early,” Benjamin Brooks, RIO’s CFO, said, sliding a steaming cup onto my desk. He smiled, and I realized again how lucky I was to have him as a friend and sort of boyfriend. He was more than a friend although less than a soulmate. I enjoyed his company, but I always held him at arm’s length even though he’d made it clear he wanted more. Not for the first time, I wished my best friend Theresa was around so we could talk about my confused feelings. Unfortunately, she and her husband Gus were traveling in Europe on Fleming Environmental Investments business.

  I returned Benjamin’s smile. “More like I stayed late. I’ve been here all night,” I replied as I popped the lid off the coffee. “Thanks for this. You can’t imagine how much I need it.”

  “Finola Fleming, you can’t keep burning the candle at both ends. It’s time to tell Maddy you need an assistant.”

  The ‘Maddy’ he referred to is my mother, Madelyn Anderson Russo, the founder of the Russo Institute of Oceanography, which we called RIO for short. I’d spent my childhood in the corridors at RIO or on the research vessel Omega, and since everyone around me called her Maddy, I’d always called her that too.

  I’d been working long hours at RIO covering for Maddy, its absent director and a world famous oceanographer on the order of one of the Cousteau clan or Sylvia Earle. I was so tired the thought of breakfast and some quiet time in my cozy home on Rum Point on the North Side of Grand Cayman made me sigh with longing.

  Benjamin was always thoughtful, and he immediately recognized the depths of my exhaustion. “But right now, you need a break. C’mon. Let’s get some breakfast and then I’ll drive you home before the storm hits.”

  My official job at RIO was supposed to be VP of marketing and chief underwater photographer, but with Maddy away working with the folks at the Woods Hole Oceanography Institute on a joint project, my workload had increased exponentially. I’d been struggling to keep my head above water, and that had never happened to me before.

  I already held down several jobs, each with a demanding load of details, but usually I handled my varied workload with ease. Now I was feeling overwhelmed, which was even more galling because the mountain of desk work had kept me from diving for the last several days. I was feeling the stress of being away from the ocean in addition to the work overload.

  I sighed. “Sorry, Benjamin. I can’t take time for b
reakfast. I’ve got to finish this spreadsheet today. And thanks for the offer, but I won’t need a ride home. I’ll be staying here through the storm. I have to make sure the research labs are okay.”

  “Fin, you’ve turned into a drone. You used to be fun.” His words were said lightly, but I could hear the concern behind his teasing.

  I looked at him over the tops of my new glasses. I’d been spending so much time on my computer lately that my eyes were feeling the strain. Then I looked back at my screen where I’d been working on finalizing RIO’s budget for next year. It’s a well-known fact that I hate spreadsheets. And numbers. “I have to finish RIO’s budget for the next fiscal year. We need to have it ready for the board of directors meeting.”

  Benjamin cleared his throat. “Too bad RIO doesn’t have an accomplished and highly experienced CFO on the staff to do those budgets for you.”

  Benjamin was RIO’s CFO, and he was definitely accomplished and highly experienced. But my fatal flaw—or at least one of them—is assuming everything is my responsibility, and because of that assumption, I tend to take on too much. I realized I should have delegated this project to him weeks ago.

  When he saw the realization hit me, he laughed. “And I believe I’m supposed to be the chief number cruncher around here. You’re the creative genius. Don’t waste your time messing around with spreadsheets instead of doing what you do best. You should be in the ocean, taking beautiful photographs, not sitting inside crunching numbers.”

  He walked around my desk to peer at my screen. “Departmental budgets? Piece of cake. Let me handle them.” His fingers hovered a half inch above the keyboard of my Mac. “May I?”

  I shrugged and swiveled the computer toward him. His fingers flew across the keys as he emailed the much-despised spreadsheets to himself. “I’ll have them back to you by end of the day. Now let’s go. Time for breakfast.”

  I’d always loved my job at RIO, mainly because it required me to dive every day, but lately, I’d felt chained to my desk. My mother had turned most of the day-to-day operation of RIO over to me last year while she’d been living in New York City. And now this new project with Woods Hole was taking up all her time, and she’d hardly set foot on Grand Cayman in almost a year.

  Plus, my father, Newton Fleming, had asked me to keep an eye on the operations of his business, Fleming Environmental Investments, while he too spent time in the states. At least his assistant, Justin Nash, handled most of Newton’s company’s routine decisions, and my brother Oliver was working there part time when he wasn’t at school in New York. That meant I only had to get involved in the really big issues. But the ocean is my happy place and sitting out my life on dry land had never been part of my plan.

  Still, I had responsibilities. “There’s a storm coming,” I said. “It could be dangerous. I need to stay here.”

  “The latest predictions say the storm will miss us. And anyway, danger is your middle name,” said Benjamin.

  “Not so,” I said, flipping the paper with the latest advisory his way. “Hurricane Willard is coming on with a vengeance.”

  Benjamin read the storm warning. “Yikes. Okay, I stand corrected. But anyway, I stopped by the dive shop on the way in. Stewie is already supervising the removal of all RIO’s boats to drydock to wait out the storm. He’s closed up the shop and put on the storm shutters. Eugene is buttoning up the main building, and per your orders, Vincent has taken the Omega out to deep water to ride out the storm. And since you’re crazy busy here, I was afraid you’d forget about your own house. I sent a couple of the maintenance guys over to your place to put up the hurricane shutters and stow all your outdoor stuff in the cabana. You can relax. Even your home is safe. Everything is as ready as it can be. Let’s go. You’ll be able to relax once you get home.”

  “Thanks, Benjamin. I did forget about the outdoor furniture at home,” I said. Now I was worried about what else I might have forgotten.

  “Forgetting things isn’t like you, Fin, You’re usually on top of every detail. You have to get some help around here,” Benjamin said. “You’ll drive yourself into the ground.”

  “Okay, you’re right.” I held up my hands to stop any further arguments. “Let’s get some breakfast from the café and then I’ll go home.” I dropped my blue-light glasses on my desk and slid my feet into the flipflops I’d kicked underneath.

  When we reached the café, there was a sign on the door saying it was closed because of the storm. I’d given the order for RIO’s café, gift shop, and aquarium to stay closed today when the storm seemed imminent. Another thing I should have remembered. Another oops. I rubbed my forehead in frustration.

  I pulled the café’s keys out of the pocket of my cargo shorts. “I guess, we’ll have to make our own breakfast.”

  We settled for toast and another cup of coffee, then we donned the traditional sailor’s yellow rain gear and walked out the back door of the RIO building onto the crushed shell paths leading to the onsite dive shop, the picnic area, and RIO’s marina. I nodded approvingly when I noticed Stewie had already stowed away the picnic tables from the lawn and closed the storm shutters on the dive shop.

  The team of contractors from the drydock boat storage facility was busy hauling all RIO’s boats out of the water, but they paused a minute to don their own raingear before going back to work loading the boats on the carrier. It looked like they’d have all our boats out of the water in plenty of time to beat the full fury of the gathering storm.

  The first drops of rain were beginning to fall, and according to the weather reports, it would be a deluge before long. The early raindrops were already big and hard and felt like angry pellets smashing into my skin. If this was any indication of the fury of the coming storm, we were in for a bad day. Despite the rain, Benjamin and I continued across the lawn to check in with Stewie, who had recently taken over dive shop operations.

  Stewie’s return from rehab several months ago had been a piece of unexpected good luck. He was a huge help to me now that he was clean and sober, and I hoped he could stay that way for good.

  He turned and smiled at me when I entered. As I did whenever I saw him, I discreetly checked him out for any signs of a relapse, but his weathered face looked lean and healthy under the brim of the hood of his yellow rain slicker.

  He pulled the last knot tight around the tarp he’d used to cover the tank compressor. “That’s done,” he said dusting his palms on his T-shirt. “I think the shop is ready. I’ll just go check with the boat handlers to make sure they’re on schedule, and then we’ll be all set to ride out the storm.”

  “Why don’t you take off now, Stewie. You’ve been working all night and I want to be sure you get home before the storm hits,” I said. “I can take care of anything else that comes up.”

  Stewie looked at the lowering sky and assessed the rising wind. “If you’re sure it’s okay, I wouldn’t mind leaving now. It’s been a long night.”

  “Go home and stay safe. Thank you for all your hard work coordinating the storm prep. I appreciate it.”

  He looked pleased at my words. “Fin, you be careful out here. This storm is a monster of a hurricane. Keep inside, out of the foul weather. And with a storm like this, conditions can change fast. Make sure you stay alert.”