Page 300 of Hidden Depths

But I couldn’t look away from the coordinates Piers had captured with Ivy’s camera.

Grandpa had warned us about that place.

Once.

Only once.

I was sixteen years old.

Calle was fifteen.

He had drawn a circle on one of his nautical charts.

Then covered it with his hand when he realized we were watching.

Grandpa never hid the ocean from us.

He taught us to respect it.

To understand it.

To never fear it.

But that night...

He was afraid.

“Storm?” Ward said.

I forced myself back to the present.

“The Blackwater Trench is what Grandpa called a deep underwater ravine southwest of Maui.”

“Is it on navigational charts?”

“Not by that name.”

Calle shut down the damaged port engine.

The alarm finally stopped screaming.

“It may be part of the Molokini fracture system,” she said. “But Grandpa believed it extended much farther than the official surveys showed.”

Ben watched the stranded fishing boat through his binoculars.

“How deep?”

“No one knows,” I answered.

“Grandpa said the bottom had never been properly mapped.”

Nathan studied the photograph again.

“Why would he forbid you from going near it?”

“Because he saw something there.”

The deck grew silent. Everyone was on the deck. Since we weren’t being shot at.