The air on Waikiki Beach was a warm, sweet perfume, a world away from the cold, salt-scrubbed shores of Norchester. It smelled of plumeria and coconut oil, of paradise found. A brilliant, pearl-like moon hung in the black velvet sky, spilling a path of shimmering silver across the gentle, bath-warm surf.

  It was the last night of their vacation, and for Chloe and Ben from Columbus, Ohio, it was perfect.

  “I can’t believe we have to go home tomorrow,” Chloe sighed, leaning her head back against Ben’s chest as they floated in the calm, shallow water. “I want to stay here forever.”

  “We could,” Ben said, kissing her shoulder. The water lapped gently around them. “We could quit our jobs, sell the condo, and just… live here. I could learn to surf. You could open that little bakery you always talk about.”

  Chloe laughed, a soft, joyful sound that was swallowed by the immense, peaceful quiet of the night. “You, on a surfboard? That I’d have to see.”

  They were alone. The beach, a chaotic sea of tourists and families by day, was utterly deserted now, their private slice of heaven. It was the most romantic, most perfect moment of their lives.

  That’s when the water moved.

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  It wasn't a wave. It was a disturbance. A sudden, powerful swirl in the dark water about twenty feet away, as if something immense had just shifted its weight on the sandy bottom.

  “What was that?” Chloe asked, her voice losing its dreamy quality. She sat up, treading water, her eyes scanning the darkness.

  “Probably just a turtle,” Ben said, though his own heart had beat a little faster. He pulled her closer, his gaze fixed on the spot where the water had churned. “Or a big fish.”

  The swirling stopped. For a long moment, there was only the gentle sound of the surf and the vast, peaceful quiet of the night. The moment stretched, thick with an unspoken tension. Chloe was about to laugh it off, to dismiss it as their imagination, when Ben was suddenly gone.

  He didn't cry out. Something simply pulled him under, vanishing from her arms with a force that spun her around in the water. One second he was there, a warm and solid presence, the next there was only an explosive eruption of white water where he had been.

  Chloe screamed, a raw, terrified sound. "Ben!"

  She thrashed in the water, her hands finding nothing. Before she could draw another breath, something slammed into her from below. It was a battering ram, a solid wall of muscle and bone that hit with the force of a car crash, lifting her halfway out of the water before dragging her down into the black.

  The sound of the gentle Hawaiian waves, lapping peacefully against the shore of a perfect beach on a perfect night, swallowed her scream whole.

  In the moonlight, the silver stained the water with a spreading cloud of darkness. Then it turned red.