Disclaimer: If you think Dare or I own any of this, you're freakin' crazy. Thanks for the thought, though.

"Bait"

A Cass-7/Dare-Sonar Project

Introduction

It was late in the evening, around 10 p.m. or so, when the last tour was going through the Sunken Ship at Shark Reef in the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada. Three children, two sets of parents, and one man trying to avoid the call of the casino chips watched a nurse shark swim gracefully by from one side of the exceptionally thick plastic-glass and felt strangely calm in the face of such a cunning predator. One child stood near the barrier and gasped as the newest addition to the Sunken Ship, the Great Hammerhead, glided passed him. It was only a baby, so it still had at least another eight feet left to grow, considering that it was only seven feet long.

The man trying to avoid the casino stood directly at the front of the Sunken Ship, his eyes fixated on the sea turtle that was contented just to fly gently through the water and be watched. It was quiet in the ship look-alike, not even the children made noise. It was peaceful, and for that, the man was grateful. The ringers, bells, and whistles in the casino upstairs were too much and pulled at him too often. Down here, however, the serene silence was a blessing. Here, he could focus, gather, and organize his thoughts.

One couple and their daughters left through the tunnel to the man's right, the youngest daughter begging her father to pick her up so that she would not have to walk on the glass panels of the already glass tunnel, while the teenager rolled her eyes and walked through with no problems. The man watched them leave, and then returned his gaze to the 1.3 million gallons of deep blue seawater.

"Come on, dear, we need to get Jimmy up to bed. He's been up since eight this morning, and we've done nothing but walk all day long. Besides, you wanted time to gamble, and once Jimmy is in bed, you can." The wife urged, picking up her son from under his armpits and holding him in her arms, the man's eyes flicking away from the tank and to the family.

Just as the husband had agreed to it and the couple turned their back to the glass, there was a flicker of rapid movement that the man saw out of the corner of his eye. The little boy, who was half asleep, looked up with rapt attention. The man looked once more at the tank and saw that all of the sharks were moving swiftly to the surface of the water, out of his view.

An aquarium assistant came around the corner to the Sunken Ship and moved quickly to the man's side.

"Do you normally feed them at night?" the man asked, pointing up at the sharks.

"No, we feed them when people can watch, I don't understand what's going on." The assistant answered.

Red smoke stained the deep blue and moved its way downwards into the man's sight, followed by the thrashing of several shark tails.

"Oh my god! Someone call 911!" The assistant cried, reaching for her walkie-talkie, "Get me the curator, quick! We have a major problem!"

The man dialed the police on his cell phone, and then his colleagues. As he snapped his phone shut, he could see a shoe float down towards the tank's bottom, blood running from it, and then a shark sailed by after it.

The child shrieked and the couple sprinted the way they had come to get to the Sunken Ship. Sirens were heard from the lobby of the hotel, and once the police and medics arrived, it was already over and the scene was handed over to the man's fellow CSI's.