Chapter 13: His Own Screen

The brass lock was older than I was.

I put the tip of my dive knife into the gap under the lid and leaned on it.

The wood split with a crack in the empty building.

I froze.

Nothing moved in the hall.

I lifted the glass lid.

The yellow hose was stiff and cold in my hands.

I turned the cut end toward the window.

One clean slant, through the tether and the air line both, where the tape had held them together.

A knife cut, not a fray.

I'd been told for nine years that I unclipped myself.

My clip was still on the other end, somewhere at the bottom of the north cove.

I put the bag with the camera card in my shirt pocket and buttoned it.

I coiled the hose over my shoulder.

Then I heard the front door.

Voices, and boots, and the coffee machine in the mess starting to grind.

I'd forgotten the net crew.

Barrows ran the boat out at six now, every day, dragging the north cove.

I walked out of his office with the hose on my shoulder.

The hall was full.

The postdoc, three deckhands in bibs, the tech who used to borrow my headphones, two women from the lab with travel mugs.

And Barrows, at the end of it, in his fleece, with his car keys still in his hand.

Everybody stopped.

He looked at the hose.

For one second, his face went completely empty.

Then the soft voice came back.

"Abbie," he said. "You're trespassing. Again."

"I'm collecting my property."

"That's station equipment."

"It's my air hose," I said. "From my dive. The one where I swam off alone."

Nobody in that hall moved.

The tech looked at the hose, then at Barrows.

"Call the police," Barrows told the postdoc pleasantly. "Breaking and entering. Theft."

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