He knew Ash would be staring daggers at him but refused to give her the satisfaction of acknowledging that look. They had been friends since college, thrown together by politics and then left stranded together when most of the others who claimed to share their passion decided they had never been that passionate in the first place. Since then, humankind had gone about the slow, inexorable process of destroying the global ecoystem, poisoning the ocean, exterminating species on both land and sea. Feole and Ash moved from group to group, eventually settling into positions with SeaLove, admiring the intellect and aggressive tactics of the organization.
“You calling me an idiot?” she asked.
Rolling his eyes, he shot her a sidelong glance. “Have I ever hesitated to call you an idiot to your face if I thought you were being stupid? I never have. And you’ve done me the same courtesy, Ashleigh. It’s why we’ve been able to stay friends as long as we have. So the answer is no, I’m not calling you an idiot, but shooting at people—especially people who just took your picture—would be pretty damned idiotic. Now, do you need me to hold your hand some more, or can we get on with—”
She punched his shoulder, one knuckle pointed to dig into the muscle. It hurt.
“Fuck!” Feole barked, jerking away from her.
Ash marched after him, poked him hard in the chest with one stern finger. “I don’t need anyone to hold my goddamned hand, and if I did, I sure wouldn’t come to you.”
He exhaled, guilt washing over him as the pain in his shoulder subsided. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, okay? But we won’t help ourselves and we damn sure won’t help our cause if all we succeed in doing out here is getting our asses tossed in prison. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I could live on prison food, and I shudder to think what the coffee must be like behind bars.”
“Shit,” Ash replied. “I shudder to think.”
She offered a weak smile, but it was more than he’d anticipated, so he would take it.
“So we stick with the plan?” he ventured.
“For now. But let me ask you this: If we can’t jam their signal, and what they’re doing doesn’t end up killing a bunch of seals so we can have visual evidence that it’s causing real harm, where does that leave us?”
Feole softened. “It leaves us where we’ve always been. Studying the data, searching for their secrets.”
“You know as well as I do that any negative impact of exposure to this acoustic signal could take years to show up in the seal population.”
“Ash,” he said, “this work is important. I’ve dedicated my life to it. But I’m not willing to die for it, and you shouldn’t be, either. We follow protocol, simple as that.”
She rubbed at the spot on his shoulder that she’d hit. “Okay.” Then she gave him the mischievous smile that always worried him. “For now.”
* * *
Ash cared a great deal for Tony Feole, but over the past year or so she had developed a powerful urge to strangle him. Her own desire to fight for their cause burned ever brighter inside her, but Feole seemed to be growing more cautious. It would not surprise her if this turned out to be his last field trip. He might not have been losing his heart, but he certainly seemed to be losing his nerve.
Rain plastered her hair against her head. She slid a wet lock away from her eyes as she strode across the wet, heaving deck and headed beneath the overhang that served as shelter on this tub. The boat wasn’t big enough to have anything that could be called a wheelhouse and she had no idea what sailors would call this. The helm? The pilot’s station?
Their pilot was a monstrous blond guy named Ivor Blount. A guy that size and with a name like that needed a beard, and Ivor sported a beauty, complete with three iron rings tied in its tangled length, both for decoration and to tame the unruly bush.
“Powell’s below?” Ash said.
Ivor nodded, keeping his hands on the wheel.
Ash ducked down through the hatch and descended the steep ladder into the small cabin space. The door to the head swung back and forth, so she yanked it shut until it clicked, ignoring the shit and chemical smell that never seemed to go away.
Eric Powell sat at a small galley table with his laptop, tapping away. Though he must have heard her come down, he did not look up from the computer. Ash didn’t like the way his brows were knitted together.
“Problem?” she asked.
He blinked and glanced up as if coming out of a trance. “Not really. At least I hope not. It’s probably just the storm causing interference. Ivor might have to get us closer to them for it to work.”
Ash propped her hands against the low ceiling and stood looming over him. Only in a space as cramped as this one could a woman of average height feel as if she were looming, and she liked it very much.
“But you do think it will work?”
Powell scowled. “Would I be here if I didn’t?”
She planted herself next to him and leaned in to stare at the laptop. The numbers on the screen meant nothing to her.
“What I can tell you,” she said, “is that right now? Your program isn’t jamming shit.”
Powell stopped typing. His eyes seemed to darken. “Give it time.”
She nodded slowly. “Absolutely, Eric. I have faith. You know that.”
The words were hollow, but her insincerity didn’t shock either of them. Ash rose and went back to the ladder, then up through the hatch, which she closed behind her to keep the rain out. At the wheel, Ivor glanced at her, one eyebrow raised.
Ash looked around, made sure Feole was too far to overhear them with this wind, and she moved over next to their skipper.
“It’s not working?” Ivor asked, iron rings swaying from his beard.
“Not yet,” Ash confirmed. “In a little while, if he can’t get it going, he’s going to ask you to get closer to the WHOI ship.”
The captain opened and closed his enormous hands on the wheel and grunted, exhaling like an unhappy grizzly bear. “And if that doesn’t solve it?”
Ash moved nearer to him, shoulder to shoulder, peering out through the windshield.
“They’re fucking with the natural instincts of an entire species,” she said, staring at the WHOI ship as it plied the dark water. “That’s wrong, Ivor. It’s a crime against nature, and unlike some of our friends, I know you take that as seriously as I do. So if Powell’s tech doesn’t work, we’ll do whatever we have to do, right down to putting this boat in their path.”
“You’ll sink us,” Ivor said in his gravelly earthquake of a voice.
“Would it also sink them?”
Ivor heaved another breath, another grizzly bear sigh. “It might well.”
“Well, let’s hope Powell can do his job, then, right?”
Ivor gave a snort that might have been laughter, but he kept his hands steady on the wheel. That was what Ash liked best about him. The giant man was nothing if not steady. When the time came, if he had to risk them all he wouldn’t shrink from it.
CHAPTER 12
Wolchko stood watching the smaller boat, which seemed to be keeping pace with them but otherwise not doing much of anything. For the moment, anyway. Like the others he was wearing rain gear, but it made him feel claustrophobic and he wanted to get below and dry off, fix himself a cup of coffee now that everything seemed to be working properly. Rosalie would keep an eye on the incoming data stream, make sure there were no significant changes in the signal output. But something about this chase boat, their nautical stalker, had gotten under his skin.
“I’m telling you,” he said, wiping rain from his face. He turned to face the others, raising his voice over the wind. “Specs is up to no good.”
Kat still had her binoculars up, studying the chase ship. “No markings,” she said. “Not even a name on her.”
“Or they covered the markings for this jaunt,” Naomi observed.
“I don’t know,” Tye said. “So the guy in the glasses—”
“Specs,” Wolchko s
aid.
“We don’t know his name,” Tye reminded Wolchko. “But okay, we’ll call him whatever you want. Point is, ‘Specs’ was an asshole to you, but he didn’t do anything other than antagonize you. No vandalism, no threats, no—”
Naomi swore. “I’ll tell you what he was trying to do. Stir shit up.”
Wolchko nodded. He had told them about his encounter with Specs outside the Cosmic Muffin, including the way the guy had tried to get him riled up and turn him against Naomi.
“No question, but to what end?” Kat asked.
“Maybe just to make things ugly,” Naomi replied, shaking rain off her ruined baseball cap and then slipping it back on. “Maybe he’s got something against me personally, though I don’t think I’ve run into him before. Or maybe he thought if he got Eddie pissed off enough he would start a fight that would delay the experiment.”
The boat pitched steeply to port and they all held on. The storm wasn’t much in the scheme of things, but the seas were rougher than Wolchko had anticipated and there was worse on the way. They were only supposed to get the by-product of the larger storm, the wind and rain at the edges of it, but this was enough to annoy the crap out of all of them. He wondered if Naomi had taken Dramamine or if she was just a natural sailor. Most people Wolchko knew would have been at least considering heaving their guts up by now.
“Maybe he thought he could scare me off somehow,” he said.
A frown creased Kat’s forehead. She lowered the binoculars and turned to exchange a troubled look with Tye.
“You think?” Tye asked her.
“Could be.”
“Could be what?” Wolchko said. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this, so I don’t have a lot of patience for secrets or meaningful glances.”
Tye nodded toward Kat to indicate it was her story to tell.
“It seems like a stretch,” she said.
“Try us,” Naomi chimed in.
Tye seemed irritated that she would speak to them as equals, but Kat didn’t flinch and Wolchko admired the girl’s confidence, particularly after all she’d been through.
Kat shrugged. “Middle of the night, I had an asshole outside my bedroom windows, banging on the wall and making threats.”
“Hang on, what kind of threats?” Tye asked. “You didn’t tell me that part.”
“Just that he was coming in, but I don’t think he really would have.”
“You don’t know that,” Tye said. “If I hadn’t shown up—”
Kat shot him a dark look. “I’d have handled it. I don’t need your protection.”
Tye threw up his hands. Wolchko hadn’t missed the implication that Tye had been at Kat’s place in the middle of the night, but it was none of his damn business and he had no intention of poking his nose into that particular hornet’s nest. Naomi studied them with open curiosity. Apparently she hadn’t missed that bit of information, either.
“We don’t have any reason to think there’s any connection here,” Wolchko said. “It could’ve been bored teenage pricks or some pervert trying to get a peek.”
Kat gave him a lopsided grin. “Thanks, Eddie. That’s reassuring.”
It was the sort of moment that always made him wish he could read people better. He wasn’t sure if Kat’s gratitude was sincere or sarcastic, so he chose to ignore it.
“So what do we do about Specs and his buddies?” he asked.
Kat shrugged. “We keep an eye on them. Otherwise, we do our jobs.”
Heads nodded and Kat took a last look through her binoculars, but by silent consent they all began to move away from the railing. Wolchko caught Naomi taking his picture again and shook his head, rolling his eyes a little. It was a good-natured eye roll, though. The girl had started to grow on him.
Rosalie appeared from around the side of the wheelhouse. “Eddie, check this out!”
He followed her, Naomi trailing behind them both as Rosalie led him aft again. They passed the wheelhouse and he wanted to chide her for abandoning the instrument panel, but he could see she was excited about something.
The rain had turned cold and it slid down inside Wolchko’s collar. He felt like his skin might slough off, as if he were not a person at all but a figure built of papier-mâché. Even with the rain gear, the moisture snuck in.
At the bow of the boat, Rosalie pointed at the seal herds spread out to port and starboard and for what seemed at least a mile behind them. Wolchko felt sure there were more than there had been.
“It’s going as we’d hoped,” he said, turning to Rosalie. “What am I looking at?”
But the answer came from behind him. From Naomi.
“The fins,” she said.
Wolchko took another look at the dark seas, noticing now what he had missed the first time. He had expected sharks, so he had not immediately seen that things had changed. As he watched, a Great White surfaced with a seal in its jaws and then submerged again. Before he could turn away, another shark darted across the boat’s wake and tore into two different seals with a twist of its massive head.
“There are more of them,” he said.
“Way more,” Naomi said, barely loud enough for Wolchko to hear. “Way the hell more.”
“And they’re going nuts,” Rosalie added. “Bastards are eating like it’s their last day on earth. All the arguments over the morality of letting people hunt them, and now they’re getting culled anyway. The good news is, the sharks have to get full at some point.”
Wolchko saw another attack, fifty yards or so back and off the port side. Rosalie had to be right, of course, but as he watched the sharks at work now, tearing through the herds, it didn’t appear as if they were going to stop killing anytime soon.
CHAPTER 13
Jamie Counihan sat on his usual stool at the Salty Dog with a cold pint sweating on the bar in front of him. He took a gulp of beer and soaked in the fish-and-chips ambience of the place as he waited for Walter to arrive. In recent years Jamie had noticed the habit of people waiting at bars to spend their idle minutes staring at their phones, probably checking social media or sports scores. Jamie owned such a phone, but as a rule it never came out of his pocket in public. He didn’t like the way society had embraced the hunched hostility inherent in that trend. People thought they were never alone as long as they were connected to the Internet, but he had never seen anyone as alone as the guy sitting three stools down from him. The Red Sox game played on the television and music pumped through the speakers around the bar. There were people all around, but the guy never lifted his eyes from the screen of his oversized “smart” phone. Jamie figured people like this guy weren’t just antisocial … they got lost in their phones because they were afraid to be lost in their own thoughts.
Someone bumped his shoulder. Jamie glanced around to see Mel Rice, scraggly beard, rheumy eyes, and all.
“I know what you’re thinkin’, brother,” Rice rumbled, voice low but close enough for Jamie to hear. “Guy makes me nervous. Probably the friggin’ Unabomber, part two, right?”
Rice must have been on his way back from the bathroom. He wiped water from his hands—at least Jamie hoped it was water—and dragged his fingers through his scraggly beard to make himself presentable before returning to the group he’d come with.
“Maybe not quite that bad,” Jamie said. “But he’s not gonna make any friends.”
Rice shrugged. “Some people don’t want friends.” He narrowed his eyes as if realizing for the first time that Jamie was by himself. “Say, you wanna join us until Walter shows up? We’re talkin’ politics and old monster movies. Two of your favorite subjects.”
Jamie arched an eyebrow. With a quiet laugh, he raised his beer. “I do like old monster movies. If Walter hasn’t shown up by the time I finish this pint, I’ll come and crash your party.”
Rice clapped him on the shoulder, but not hard enough to spill his beer. “Fair enough.”
That’s what I’m talking about, Jamie thought. He glanced around the bar, saw
half a dozen people checking their phones, and shook his head. The Salty Dog had been attracting more tourists lately, which meant it was going downhill fast. He didn’t like to think about the idea of having to find somewhere new to hang out.
Laughter erupted from a corner table. Then the door opened and Jenni McGrath came in with her new husband. Voices rose in greeting and Jenni and her groom—whatever his name was—made their way to a table for two. On the way, they stopped to say hello. Jamie had known her since high school, so even though the groom seemed like just another handsome asshole from away, Jamie hugged Jenni and congratulated them both.
Then he looked at his watch. Going on seven thirty. Given that he and Walter would be up around three thirty in the morning to take the Little Martha out again, he was growing impatient.
When he glanced up again, he found Alice leaning on the bar, studying his face. Her eyes gleamed with mischief.
“Looks like you’ve been stood up,” she said. “It’s a damn shame, a perfectly good man like yourself cast aside for another man.”
Jamie laughed. “You’re a fresh little thing.”
“That’s news to you?”
“Not hardly. Anyway, Walter hasn’t stood me up. He’s just runnin’ late. Got a text from him before I came in.”
“Funny you didn’t argue about him finding another man,” she teased.
Jamie shrugged. “I’m kind of numb to jokes about Walter being my boyfriend. Hell, we joke about it ourselves pretty much constantly.”
Alice slid her hands into her back pockets, arching her back a little as she studied him. The move stretched the cotton of her shirt taut against her breasts, but Jamie did his best not to let his gaze linger. Not that he didn’t appreciate her figure or the work she put in to stay fit. He just figured it was polite to keep that appreciation to himself. Alice knew she looked damn good, but she didn’t put the effort into it so men would leer at her.
“Still, it does kind of stink, doesn’t it?” she asked. “Ever since he started dating Micah, you don’t see him as much. Happens pretty much any time a friend gets a new boyfriend or girlfriend. They get caught up in the emotional whirlwind of it all, kind of lose track of everything else.”
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