"But after five minutes, I started to worry. I traced my way back along the freighter's rail. He knew what he was doing, I kept telling myself. He wouldn't have gone into the wreck without me. Was something wrong with his equipment? Had he decided to surface?

"I made my way up, expecting to find him bobbing there. I yelled to Son, on the boat, asking if he had seen him. Nothing. I made my way back down.

"I could feel panic coming on. The conditions down there were making it worse: mucky water, full of shapes. Fish swirling into my vision. Finally, I went inside the wreck. There was nowhere else he could be. Once I was inside, it didn't take long to find him. He wasn't far in: His body was trapped under a gangway inside the main cargo area. There was a gash in his temple. Fish were already making off with bits of flesh.

"I got him up to the surface. Son insisted on resuscitation. But I knew he was dead. He was dead when I found him."

"And in your opinion, how did he die?"

"It wasn't the cut—that was superficial. He drowned because something stole his regulator, his mask, his tank, everything. Once he lost his gear, he must have struck his head in a panic, lost consciousness. Without his mask and regulator, it wouldn't have taken long to die."

"And his regulator? The tank? The mask? Did you find them?"

The impassivity of the face like a blurred photograph, the tonelessness of the altered voice, brought Lawrence back to the island. To telling this story again and again. To the rangers, to the police, to the reporters. Accusations, disbelief—and, in the end, indifference.

"We never found them."

"But you searched the ship."

"No. I didn't. I lied about that."

"You lied?"

"I couldn't go back down there. I told the police we'd looked for his equipment, searched the whole vessel, but … I didn't look. I was afraid to. There was never a proper search."

She paused. "I see. And what did you do then?"

"The rival dive shop used the death to drive my customers away. My business began to fail. But in the end, it didn't matter. Three months after the incident, the evacuation began. For the record—I'm glad you guys bought the island. Now at least I know it will be protected. I knew every inch of Con Dao—every reef they destroyed, every fish they poached. It's better this way: Get everybody out, cordon off the whole archipelago. Defend it. That's the only way to protect it. I was one of the first to take your offer and leave. Generous compensation, a new start. It was lucky for me, maybe."

* * *

MAYBE. Walking away from the café in the rain, Lawrence wasn't so sure. The tamarind trees hissed in the wind. His poncho had a tear in the side of it, and he could feel a damp spot spreading through his clothes, cold on his skin.

"What did you see?" That was what they always asked him—the rangers, the police, the reporters. What did you see?

Nothing. He'd seen nothing. But he couldn't shake the feeling something had seen him.

And that feeling had followed him. He had been glad to leave the archipelago. But leaving wasn't enough—the feeling returned every time he thought of the ocean.

Con Dao had been his home—the first he had ever had. What happened at the ship took that from him. That was the story he had wanted to tell. But the woman from DIANIMA wouldn't have understood anyway.

Was she from DIANIMA? She had never said she was, had she?

It didn't matter. Maybe she was from DIANIMA, maybe she was from a rival company. The HCMATZ crawled with corporate spies, international conspiracies.

A week ago, he had gone to Vung Tau, to the ocean. He hadn't seen the water for months, had thought it was time to swim again. But he walked out before the waves reached his waist, got a drink at a beachside bar, then went back to his hotel room and checked out early.

Excerpted from The Mountain in the Sea by Ray Naylor. Copyright © 2022 by Ray Naylor. Excerpted by permission of MCD. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.