Undercurrent

Four

May 6th

"I was just-"

"Actually, save it. You don't deserve to be here. You don't deserve anything until you tell everyone, especially me, what really happened that day."

His sapphire eyes that mirrored Adam's save for the darkness I saw brewing beneath their beautiful facade cut me to the core, and it was all I could do to keep from looking away. I couldn't look weak in front of him and give him what he wanted.

"I have told the truth countless times, the only problem is that no one seems to want to believe me!"

He took a dangerous step towards me but I stood my ground, even when I thought I would faint at being so dangerously close to such a gorgeous specimen of a man.

"Your 'truth' is a ridiculous made up tale from someone who was oxygen deprived and seeing things. I wanna know what happened before that, why Adam went under in the first place. I've asked you time and time again and still you won't give me that."

"Because I've already told you! I was at the top of the cliff and he was above the water when I jumped off, cheering me on to jump! It's not like I intentionally-"

A sudden commotion from the rescue teams cut me off and grasped our attention immediately, the cable that had been lowered slowly and steadily into the water began unspooling from the truck rapidly, so quickly that smoke began unfurling from the rope with the friction.

"What the..."

"Its the current! The diver who went to get Adam's body got caught in the current too! I have to go warn them and-"

Beck's arm caught my own with a sharp intensity that sent unwelcome shivers down my spine as I began to dart towards the failing rescue mission, his eyes holding something dark and stormy within his gaze.

"It's illegal to even be on this property, and given the fact that you've broken the law twice already and gotten caught, I don't think they'll let you off with a warning this time."

"Since when do you care?" I asked him, the suspicion laced in my tone harsh and imposing.

He dropped my arm quickly as if it had burned him and a sneer snaked its way onto his gorgeous face, a face that I couldn't help but love because of its previous owner.

I could still hate the current owner of that face, however, and still love the face. That wasn't complicated at all, right?

"I don't, I'm just not trying to get caught with you," his excuse was paltry at best but I ignored it, the more pressing matter at hand being the diver that would most likely not survive if the rescue teams didn't pull him up soon.

Before I could act on the terror coursing through my veins, more vehicles pulled up, however these seemed quite different compared to the EMT's and police cars that had already shown up.

These vehicles were government, that much I was certain of, as a vehicle that looked identical to my father's government issued black unmarked SUV pulled up directly beside the firetruck closest to the water bank.

I could barely hold back a surprised gasp as none other than my father stepped out, his black suit a stark contrast to the sunny disposition of the late Spring day.

"What's my dad doing here?" I wondered aloud, quickly forgetting that Beck hated me and couldn't care less about what my father was doing there, more concerned with why so many people were combing the area for his brother's body nine months after the fact and after so many failed attempts at finding his already decomposing body.

Hair dark as night that matched my own shorn close to his scalp and standing at a solid six and a half feet, my father was an imposing man with hazel eyes that held more secrets than the American government, probably because he was so high up in leadership that he actually knew most of those said secrets.

His work was so secretive, he couldn't tell us where he was going most days, and the reason for us living in Arkansas my entire life when his job took him to so many different places was beyond my knowledge since he never answered that question when I would ask him over and over again, always getting the same response to leave it alone.

My family was originally from California, however when my parents found out they were expecting me they moved to Arkansas because a lucrative job opportunity presented itself to my mother at the local college that paid more than anything she'd been paid before in California. My father didn't want to lose us so he followed my mom and they got married a few years after I was born.

It seemed a bit odd that a local college in Arkansas would pay more than the state college she had previously been working at in Sacramento, but I didn't question it as it was the same story I'd been told my entire life about my parent's past.

I was dangerously considering breaking away from Beck to go to my father, consequences be damned, when suddenly the cable that had been unspooling at a dangerous rate stopped on a dime. The length of the wire had run out, and the firefighters began the process of trying to bring the diver back up with manual labor, two men at the anchored wench attempting with all of their might to bring up the man they had lost in the water.

As hard as they tried to bring the cable back up, the water protested with a aching gurgling and suddenly the fire truck that the cable was being spooled out of began groaning with a metallic whine, the engine hissing with the strain of the pressure being forced against it.

The men began scrambling and my father gave a few orders shouted out above all of the noise and it was all I could do to stand there in awe, only slightly aware of Beck's presence behind me.

A fireman got behind the wheel of the firetruck and began putting it in reverse to see if that could help bring the cable and distressed diver up from the murky pit below their feet but the second the driver put his foot to the gas, the metal bar that had been unspooling the cable began groaning unnaturally and bent at an awkward angle, the metal breaking off at the middle and falling off of the firetruck completely and into the cursed water.

They all stared at the remnants of the cable wench in awe, myself and Beck included, as the diver's body appeared on the surface after the metal rod had been sucked down underneath the treacherous waters.

Floating on his back as if a dead fish in the sea, my father shouted out orders at the astounded rescue teams and they quickly retrieved his body, ashen looks befalling everyone's faces.

"What the hell just happened?!" Beck asked to no one in particular.

"Pretty much the same thing that happened to your brother. Do you believe me now?"

I turned to look into his stormy blue eyes and the confusion and pain that they held almost made me want to comfort him, but I refrained as the memories of the pain that he'd caused me proved too much in that moment.

"What are we supposed to do about it? There's no way that's natural, what just happened here proves that!"

"What do you mean, what are we supposed to do about it? Shouldn't we leave this to the police?" I asked him, but the second the words came out of my mouth I knew I was wrong.

Glancing back at my father speaking agitatedly on the phone with someone across the water from us, I knew that what had happened there that day and nine months previously was no natural accidental occurrence.

Something that the government and my father were tied up in directly caused the death of my best friend and the man that I was in love with, and I wasn't going to lay down and allow them to cover it up, I was going to fight tooth and nail to uncover the truth, and I was going to need some help.

"We can't leave this to the police, you just saw how good of a job they did trying to recover his body! They-"

"You're right."

"Excuse me?"

"I said you're right. We have to get to the bottom of this. For Adam."

His eyes adopted a steely quality and the air between us became electrically charged.

"For Adam."