Read Soulprint for Free Online Page B

the distance, heading this way. I wait for Dom and Cameron to come over, but they’re arguing as they climb.
    â€œI need to wait,” Cameron says, watching the water.
    â€œThere’s not enough air,” Dom says. His voice cuts down to my stomach, or maybe that’s just the seawater. He’s holding something that looks like a walkie-talkie with a screen in one hand and his breathing device in the other. “Not for you to wait without being seen.” He points to the beams of light, stretching across the surface of the water periodically. “Not enough for both of you.” Cameron nods, like of course he knew that. Of course he does.
    He slips down the rest of the steel, not worried about drowning when he hits the water again. He comes back up beside me.
    He looks like he’s about to throw up.
    He looks like he’s about to break down.
    â€œShe’ll make it,” I say. He didn’t see the way she grabbed my arm and ran with single-minded focus. Or the way she did my hair, or switched our clothes. She’s going to make it.
    â€œOf course she’ll make it,” he says. And then he readjusts his mask, grabs on to a slack of the rope, and disappears under the surface again.
    For a second I wonder whether I’m expected to know how to swim now. Or whether I’ll be dragged by the rope. I see a beam of light coming, and I dip under the surface.
    Swimming feels like it should be easy. I push off from the cage, and I move my arms like I felt Cameron doing, and I kick my legs like he did, but mostly I’m just moving water around. And sinking.
    Then I feel his hand on my arm as he pulls me toward him, as he hooks my arm around his shoulder, and we start moving.
    We keep a slow pace—I don’t know how we know where we’re going, or how we’re going to get there with the air we have, but I don’t have any more options. Eventually Cameron stops, grasping a rope that’s tethered to a buoy, still under the water. I grip on to the rope as both of them follow it down, disappearing from my vision. I close my eyes. I am alone in the ocean, underwater. I count to ten, and I imagine shadows, shapes, circling me. Thirty seconds, and the water grows colder.
Forty-nine
… I jump when someone grabs my hand, pushing fresh equipment toward me. I open my eyes and the shadows disappear. Cameron holds his thumb up and keeps it that way, like he’s asking me. I do the same, mirroring his movement, and he nods.
    READY? YES
.
    We switch out our tanks, leaving one behind for Casey, and we start moving again.
    I realize that’s what Dom has in his hand. A GPS, leading us on a marked trail that they had set up previously. Like a path with lights along the way. We stop at two more points, swim some more, but by this point I am numb past the point of shaking. I no long worry about being found. Being captured. I no longer worry about if we will …
if we will
… I breathe through the mouthpiece, and the endless ocean falls away.
    Duérmete, mi niña, duérmete, mi amor
…
    The water shifts. It
moves
us. It pushes at us more and then pulls, in a rhythm. I open my eyes to darkness just as we are thrust against it. A darkness that is real and solid.
    A wall.
    I push off Cameron’s back. I am at the end of something. Or the start of something. An edge. I start clawing my nails at it, and one breaks off on the brick as I slide farther down. My eyes burn, even through the mask, as if I’m staring at the sun and trying not to blink.
    Someone pulls at my arm—I can’t feel it, only the pressure—and leads me toward a metal pipe. He pushes me inside first. It’s still full of water, and it’s pitch black, but it doesn’t matter that I can’t swim now—there’s barely enough room for me. My hands and feet push at the narrow, curved sides, propelling me along the steady incline.
    I start to breathe too fast, and I