“I’m giving a nod to the big guys footing the bill,” said Bonnie with a smile. Putting her arms out wide, she turned in a circle, modeling the outfit. She tugged on the shirt front. “Too much?”
Gena raised her hand and made a small pinching gesture with her thumb and forefinger. “Just a little.”
Bonnie frowned. “They’ve saved our bacon more than once this year alone. I really want to make a good first impression on the bigwig they’re sending to talk with us. They’ve been funding our research for years now without ever setting foot near us or meeting any of us in person. At least no one from the new team. I found a few notes from the older teams—Ray’s days and before. The place was active then. Now they just toss money at us. Now that they’ve requested face time, I want things to go right. I’m kind of scared they’re requesting a meeting in person to tell me they’re shutting us down or slicing our funding.”
“I’m sure it will be fine. You can probably pare down to maybe just the shirt. Ohmygods, is their logo on your sandals?”
Sure enough, it was tiny but there.
Gena shook her head. “Way overkill. Tell me you’re not wearing undergarments with their logo on it too.”
Bonnie laughed. “Hey, I got a sale on custom items. When I went to check out, the online cart offered me huge discounts on more items. I have a bottle opener and a calendar in my car. Want one?”
Gena’s eyes widened. “Uh, no. I’m good. Thanks though.”
Bonnie shrugged. “Suit yourself. But when you’re in the middle of nowhere and need to open a bottle, you’ll be sorry.”
“That has happened so many times in my past, I’m unsure how I’ve survived this long without one,” returned Gena with a wink.
Bonnie laughed. “Smart-ass.”
“Thanks. Hey, I was checking over the new data this morning and everything looks good, but there are a few discrepancies that I think you might want to look at before we take all this to our meeting,” said Gena, nodding to the laptop in front of her.
“Are they like the others?” asked Bonnie, referencing what had happened over the past month. Their system had been glitchy at best. To the point they were sure they’d had a virus or that one of the new pieces of equipment was malfunctioning. For a brief period, they’d feared one of the BRUVS had shorted out. But that didn’t seem to be the case.
Gena nodded. “Yes. Same.”
“I’m going to change and then I’ll put in a call to Colin. He swore to me he had that all figured out the last time, and the time before that, and the time before that,” said Bonnie, looking frazzled. She and the IT guy—who was twenty if he was a day and didn’t roll out of bed until close to noon, only to show up in his pajamas—never really saw eye to eye.
His work ethic was nearly nonexistent.
Bonnie’s was go, go, go.
The two tended to clash.
Gena lifted a brow. “Want me to call in Colin for you? You get annoyed with him two words into a conversation. I, on the other hand, speak fluent socially awkward.”
Bonnie set a hand on the counter as a tired look came over her face. “Yes. I guess. If we have to. I should really learn how to code and repair computers.”
“Add that to your laundry list of degrees,” said Gena, amused at how much Bonnie dreaded dealing with the tech guy.
“If he starts talking nonstop about the newest video game that he’s into, I can’t promise not to maim him,” warned Bonnie as she removed her sunglasses, setting them next to the box on the counter.
“Understood,” said Gena, giving in and laughing at her friend.
Bonnie’s attention returned to the box of mail. She pulled out an envelope that screamed “government issued.” She tore it open and read the contents. “Damn,” she said in a hushed whisper, a forlorn look on her face. “We really needed that.”
Gena tensed.
Bonnie had been hoping to get a grant for additional funding, but apparently, the government wasn’t much into helping save sharks. No real surprise there.
“We can apply for other grants,” said Gena, trying to be optimistic.
“I bet Ray got funded,” she said snidely, her dislike of the man she liked to refer to as a pseudo-scientist abundantly clear. “He’s probably greasing palms again. Jackass.”
Gena remained quiet, knowing Bonnie needed a second to come to terms with the news they’d not gotten the grant she’d been hoping for. Gena hadn’t been part of the program when Dr. Ray Roberts had been on staff. But she’d heard talk of what the man had been like to work with.
A total creeper.
He made lewd remarks to the women on staff, talked to them in demeaning ways, and assumed they were nothing more than tits and ass—no brains.
Gena also heard he’d been forced out on questionable terms, but that he was tight with the company that handled the lion’s share of the financial needs of the research team. Her guess was, it was simply a matter of time before some higher-up got the bright idea to put him back on the team. Maybe that’s what the meeting they’d been prepping all week for was about.
Bonnie would be livid if that was the case.
While Colin may rub her the wrong way because of how different his approach was to most things in life, he was a nice young man. Not a creeper at all. Just really into gaming and vintage T-shirts.
Bonnie stared at the rejection and righted herself, pressing a smile to her face. She then lifted a brow. “Wait a second. Didn’t we agree that you’d take the morning off and then come in to go to the meeting?”
Gena shook her head. “No. You told me I was working too much and needed to take the morning off. We never agreed to anything.”
“Gena, you have to take a little time for yourself every once in a while,” warned Bonnie. “You remind me of myself when I was starting out. Careful, or you’ll blink and realize this job is all you have in the world.”
Gena bit her lower lip and nodded. The job was already pretty much all she had in her life. While she did have her parents and her brothers and a sister, they were all spread around the globe, each doing their own thing. They always said they’d make time to get together in one location, but that, as of yet, had not happened. Everyone was just too busy. And her childhood friends in the area had been well-meaning by reaching out to her, but Gena’s job kept strange hours, so it wasn’t always easy to find the time for those who were outside of the field.
Bonnie sat on the edge of the worn desk, glancing at the monitor and the data displayed on it. “Seriously, Gena. I don’t want to see you burn out. It happens more than you’d think. You should find a balance now.”
“I’m fine. I swear,” countered Gena. “I love what I do.”
“I love what I do too, but I wish I’d have taken a little time for myself,” said Bonnie. “I have regrets.”
She’d heard Bonnie mention once before that she’d been engaged at one point in time, but that she’d dragged her feet on picking a date and making the marriage happen. Her fiancée, who, if memory served, was a geologist, wasn’t in the picture anymore that Gena was aware of. Gena had liked Ruby. She’d been nice and funny. It had been hard to watch Bonnie go through the breakup and even harder to be unable to offer any sage words of wisdom on how to move on with her life.
Gena had no relationships in her past to have life experience with. All she’d been able to do was take Bonnie out for ice cream. The two had bought more while at the ice cream shop and taken it back to Gena’s houseboat, where they’d proceeded to gorge themselves to the point that they’d ended up with sugar overload. They’d woken up on the deck with spoons by their heads and a partially melted tub of ice cream near them.
Bonnie tapped the top of the open laptop. “You spend all your time here. Don’t get me wrong. I love a dedicated associate as much as the next person, but I’ve lived through what this job can do.”
“We’re doing important work,” said Gena.
“Yes, but we’re important too. Never forget that.”
Gena thought more on it and nodded. “I get it. I do. But I don’t have anyone in my life to worry about.”
“What about those girls I saw you having lunch with a few weeks back?” asked Bonnie. “They seemed nice.”
“Nicolette and Clara?” asked Gena before smiling, thinking of her friends in the area. “I’ve known them since I was little. Our parents are all friends. They’re all part of the same support group for parents of adopted children. I think they all might have even been adopted around the same time. Not sure. I just know they’re some of the few people my parents stay in contact with.”
“Ah, the famed parents,” said Bonnie, laughing slightly.
Gena groaned. Her parents were scientists and die-hard conservationists who were well known in the scientific community, publishing often, and even going rounds with poachers and other illegal animal traders. They were fantastic, loving, passionate people who’d opened their home to four orphaned children all at the same time, but they did have very different views on child-rearing. Gena’s first and pretty much only toys were all educational ones meant to help develop and increase intelligence. Not really for fun or anything.
Her family never had a television growing up, and the first time she’d ever played a video game was in college, when someone living on the same floor of her dorm hosted a gaming night.
It was then she’d found herself the center of attention, when she’d casually mentioned all the places she’d lived while growing up, and how she’d not seen any of the movies or television shows the others referenced often.
Her family didn’t have a home base, so to speak. They were always on the move, always part of this research team or that one. Wherever the research or cause took them was where they hung their hat for the time being. That meant the world had been Gena’s backyard. Everywhere had been her home—at least it felt that way.
She’d spent time in the rain forest in her early years, been on numerous African safaris, chased down poachers, and her favorite by far had been when her parents became active in ocean-related conservation—whitetip and tiger sharks. That had given Gena a front row seat to the vast wonders of the sea and exposed her to regions the sharks were known to frequent.
Costa Rica was probably the closest thing to a real home she’d ever had, as they’d spent a full year there when she was younger. That had been record-breaking for her family. Sadly, it had been her fault that they’d had to leave when they did.
Had she only listened when her father told her to stay close as he and her mother worked on one of the small islands, in an area that was now protected, they’d have probably lived there another five years. Maybe longer. But her curiosity and natural-born pull to the ocean had left Gena wandering away from the watchful eye of her father and far from the rest of the group working there. She’d ended up on a rocky cliff edge and had just wanted to peek over the side to see the waves lapping against the rocks below.
It was then she’d seen finning for the first time. It was a grotesque practice that haunted her to this very day. Watching helplessly as countless sharks were pulled up before having their fins sliced off and their bodies tossed back in the sea had been too much for her at that impressionable age.
As it would have been at any age, really.
The sight of it all had startled her to the point she’d lost her footing on the cliff’s edge, slipped, and fallen over, straight onto the rocky base below, then right into the open ocean. Gena could still remember seeing the water coming upon her quickly, and then the next thing she remembered was being deep in the ocean, the current pulling her away as the water turned red from her blood. The pain in her head had been great. Too much so to think or do anything but be ripped under the water.
During the fall, she’d struck the back of her neck on the rocky cliff face and ended up with a nasty scar that she still had to this day—along with one on her right forearm that had come from events in the water. The scar on the back of her neck was in a spot no one saw unless her unruly long hair was pulled up tight. Whenever it was up loosely, with tendrils hanging down at the nape of her neck, the scar was basically covered. The one on her arm wasn’t angry and purple anymore as it once had been. It was now taut, white but still visible with ease from the sheer size of it.
Others liked to tease her for her account of events from that day seventeen years ago, saying she had a vivid imagination as a child. That she’d been too young to properly remember what had occurred. But Gena knew she hadn’t imagined what had happened to her. That as she’d been sinking downward into the ocean’s depths, out of the darkness below her came the most magnificent creature she’d ever seen.
A white shark.
The biggest great white she’d ever seen, and had ever seen since. It had also been the most beautiful creature she’d ever laid eyes upon.
The great white had zeroed in and come at her like a torpedo. Yet not an ounce of fear had come over her. Deep down, even then, she’d known its intent wasn’t to harm her, it was to help her.
And help it had.
It pushed her upward, to the surface of the water, catching her arm with its teeth in the process before it stayed near, circling her, pushing her back up as she sank under time and time again. While she’d been able to swim at that age, the blow to the head she’d taken in the fall, and the fact she’d been sure she’d broken her leg, had made it nearly impossible for her to tread water with any sort of proficiency or for any length of time.
The white had stayed close, keeping all the other types of sharks at bay. She felt as if it had been silently telling the others that they could look at her, out of curiosity, but they weren’t to touch her.
The ordeal had single-handedly set her on her life’s path of shark conservation.
It was also closely tied to the dreams she’d been having as of late. Though, in addition to Gena being fully grown in them, the shark wasn’t just a great white. One second it was the same majestic beast that had saved her life and in the next breath, it was changing into a hot blond guy with a body to die for. And in the dreams, the mystery man did way more than save her. He rocked her world in the biblical sense—in the water and out of it.
She nearly moaned thinking about it.
“So what do you say?” asked Bonnie.
Gena blinked and stared at her friend, wondering what it was she’d missed while she’d been deep in thought.
Bonnie laughed. “You didn’t hear a word I said, did you?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Daydreaming about your dream lover again?” asked Bonnie with a knowing smirk.
Gena groaned. “I’m really sorry I ever told you about the dreams.”
“No, you’re not. You love me and my witty repartee,” said Bonnie with a wink, making Gena laugh. “Spill it. Were you in here at the crack of dawn because you had more dreams of the hot shark-dude?”
Gena bit her lower lip and considered lying to avoid discussing the topic. “Um, yes. Can we maybe call him something other than shark-dude? It’s weird enough I keep having the dream at all, let alone that a shark changes into a man. I really do not want to dwell on what my mind is trying to tell me.”
Bonnie licked her lips and waggled her brows. “I think your inner self is telling you the same thing I did—you need more in your life than just this job. Or you need a shark to turn into a hot guy and rock your world.”
“Okay, since option two isn’t plausible, I guess I’ll work on getting a life,” said Gena before she pointed at her friend. “But I refuse to let Rene set me up on a blind date or sign me up for any of those dating apps she’s always on.”
“Smart,” said Bonnie. “We should grab her after our meeting with the Donavon Dynamics fancy pants and have some drinks. You in? We can launch Operation Get Gena a Life or a Hot Guy Who Can Turn Into a Shark.”
Gena would have usually passed. Her idea of a nice night was reading a book and staying home, away from crowds. But Bonnie had a point. She did need to lea
rn to live a little for something other than work, and Rene, who was the senior biologist on the team, was fun and turning into a good friend, just like Bonnie. “Yes. I say yes.”
Bonnie clapped and stood fast. “I’ll text Rene.”
“Want to see if she’s up for hanging with me while you go in and meet with the bigwig from Donavon Dynamics?” asked Gena.
Bonnie put a hand on the counter and faced Gena fully. “Mr. Bigwig’s assistant was very clear. He said you were to attend the meeting too. Just you and me.”
“Really? I’m a no one,” said Gena.
“Hardly,” replied Bonnie. “I’m heading to my office to change my clothes.”
“And not be a walking billboard? I’m almost disappointed,” said Gena with a laugh as her boss headed down the hallway.
Her attention returned to her work. BRUVS had been a game changer, and Gena couldn’t wait for the next invention that would take researching marine life even further.
When she’d first learned about all that the BRUVS could do and the wealth of information they had opened to those who study anything to do with underwater research, she’d moved heaven and earth to be sure she was part of a group open to the usage. She’d lucked out and was able to get in on a project whose goals aligned with hers.
Protecting the shark species as a whole.
That was part of how she’d ended up in Savannah to begin with. Another reason was because of Clara and Nicolette. They’d been childhood friends of hers, despite the fact she was a little bit older than them (not that anyone would have guessed, considering how tall Nicolette had always been), and that was something of a rarity for her and her family, considering the unorthodox upbringing she’d had.
The memory brought a smile to her face as she checked over the data before her. Once she was sure everything was not only listed in the report but also checked three times for good measure, Gena backed up a copy of the file to the cloud server before hitting print to make sure a hard copy was on hand should it be needed.
She didn’t want to risk a technological error hampering any of the findings. They were proof of the importance of shark conservation and the need to put a stop to finning for good.
Wrecked Intel (Immortal Outcasts®): An Immortal Ops® World Novel Page 5