New Year Island (39 page)

“We have to show the other directors.” Jacob’s voice broke. “Karen should go to jail for this. To fucking
jail
!”

“They give some fines. That’s all.” Even Dmitry sounded unhappy. “Like last time, when they tease sharks to make Discovery show—”

“This is so a thousand times worse.” Heather’s hand shook on the wheel. She felt like crying. “The fines are a joke. They only paid a few thousand—oh, shit, Raja’s going to have a heart attack when he sees this. Get the Nikon.”

As she bumped the ORCA up against the dock, a terrible thought struck her.

“What if Karen tries to play dumb and pretend she had no idea what they were going to do?”

Dmitry laid a hand on her shoulder, and the other on Jacob’s. “We go to station now,” he said. “Collect papers, bring them back to boat. Then we find somebody in charge, talk to them, make them understand. They help us put back the right way. To restore.”

“It’s too late,” Jacob said. “The pinniped populations will take decades to recover from this, and that’ll impact our babies, too.” He clumped down the dock with fast, angry strides, toward the three old warehouse buildings that made up the station. Then he burst into a run. “Oh,
fuck
, the station’s wide open!”

Heather and Dmitry had trouble keeping up with him. In the distance behind them, she could see people spilling out of the two houses to the south and running toward them. But Jacob was focused on the yawning door of the science station. His voice shook with anger and disbelief.

“They bashed our fucking door in!”

A slim blonde woman whipped around the corner of the station building, aiming something she held in her hands: a speargun. Heather froze. The woman’s face and hair were dirty, but underneath the layers of grime, she was stop-traffic gorgeous. Still, Heather found it hard to focus on anything but the pronged stainless steel spear that swiveled in a tight arc between her own chest, Jacob’s, and Dmitry’s. The woman holding the speargun wore a ragged, stained dress that ended just above her knees. Shockingly, her feet were bare and covered with dirt, scabs, and bloody abrasions.

“Who the hell are you guys?” she demanded.

“Who are you?” Heather asked in surprise.

Ignoring her question, the blonde woman stepped closer. “How did you guys get here?” Anger hardened the line of her jaw and crackled like electricity in her wide green eyes.

“Jacob…,” Heather said in a warning voice.

But Jacob was too agitated to realize the danger. “Do you have any idea what you’ve
done
?” he shouted. “How many laws you’ve broken?”

The woman took two steps forward and touched the speargun’s point to the hollow of Jacob’s throat. “Shut the fuck up. I don’t care.” She looked toward the breakwater, which hid the dock from view. “How big is your boat? We all need to get out of here.”

“So, you think you can just run away?” Jacob’s eyes twitched with uncontrollable blinks. “It’s not going to be that easy. You people are going to pay for this.”

“You’ve got them,” a man’s calm voice said from behind Heather. “Keep them here. I’ll make sure the boat doesn’t leave without us.”

Startled, Heather whirled about to stare at the dark-haired man standing behind her. Where had
he
come from? She realized he had flanked them, coming around the seawall and up behind the three of them while the woman held their attention.

Was everybody here so good-looking? The man was dressed head to toe in black, and he and the woman looked like a matched set. Undoubtedly TV people—actors—but they weren’t acting the way she imagined TV people would. Heather’s eyes widened, noticing the dive knife the man held in his hand, inches from Dmitry’s spine.

These people were dangerous. She could see Dmitry understood that, but did Jacob?

To her relief, the man in black turned away and stalked toward the breakwater. He moved like a jungle cat: fast and without a single wasted motion. Standing at the top and shielding his eyes with his hand, he looked toward the dock for a moment, then headed back. More people were coming down the path from the old lighthouse keepers’ houses.

A man and a woman arrived first, together. The man wore a suit. Lawyer, maybe? The woman was dressed in jeans, petite and pretty with dark, curly hair. Both were injured—they looked as though they had taken quite a beating. Cuts and bruises discolored the man’s mouth and chin. One lens of his glasses was shattered. The curly-haired woman’s nose was swollen and taped—probably broken—and her eyes were ringed with purple. She sounded angry—scared, too.

“Don’t point that at them, Jordan,” the woman with the taped nose said.

“Whatever. Just go get everyone.” The blonde woman prodded at Jacob with the speargun, forcing him back, jabbing the point right beneath his bobbing Adam’s apple. His eyes widened, and at last Heather saw fear in them. Good. It looked like Jacob had finally realized what would happen if the blonde woman—the one called Jordan—were to pull the trigger.

Eyes steeled with anger, she nestled the spear point in the hollow of Jacob’s throat again. “How could you possibly think you could keep us here after what happened?”

The woman with the broken nose stepped forward and wrapped a hand around the barrel of the speargun. “Put it down before you kill him.”

Jordan’s eyes narrowed. “Let go,
sister.
”

Two more women jogged up the path: a well-dressed blond woman in her late thirties or early forties, and a Japanese or Korean teenager in a gray hoodie.

“Are these Julian’s people?” the older woman demanded in a hoarse, ragged voice. Purplish bruises ringed her throat. The cold ferocity burning in her pale eyes scared Heather even worse than Jordan’s speargun.

“No, Veronica,” the woman with the broken nose said. “They aren’t.”

“Who’s in charge here?” Jacob asked, belligerent again.

“Looks like nobody.” The man in black was back. He reached out and, to Heather’s relief, pushed the tip of the speargun away from Jacob’s neck. Jordan looked at him, a question in her eyes.

“Boat’s at the dock,” he said. “No one on board.”

He looked at the three scientists, his dark eyes intense. “You need to get on the radio, get the Coast Guard out here right away.”

Jacob rubbed his neck. “Goddamn right we do. Dmitry, go call them. Everyone needs to see what you people have done to this place.” He pointed at Jordan, who still held the speargun ready. “And she assaulted me with a deadly weapon just now—”

“Jacob…,” Heather warned.

Dmitry looked at the man in black, who nodded a curt approval, and then set off at a jog toward the breakwater, almost bumping into a big, husky gray-haired man coming up the path. The big man turned to stare after him, scratching the side of his head. Then he looked at Heather and Jacob, and his eyes widened. The man grimaced when he saw the speargun in Jordan’s hands. Then he sighed.

“I should be grateful. It seems we’ve managed to avoid more injuries. But thank God you’re here. We need your help.”

Jacob put his hands on his hips. “You people are in a lot of trouble.”

The curly-haired woman with the broken nose stepped forward, holding out a hand to shake. “Jacob, right? I’m Camilla.”

Jacob glared at her but didn’t take her hand.

“And I’m Mason,” the man in cracked glasses said. “You must be Karen? Or Heather?”

“Heather,” she said with surprise. “How do you know our names?”

“You’re the shark experts,” Camilla said. “We saw some of your papers.”

The man with glasses—Mason—nodded. “So perhaps one of you can shed some light on something for us. This morning, a woman—”

“Whoa!” Jacob held up a hand. “What the fuck?” He took a couple of quick steps away from them, then a couple more, squinting at something near the base of the seawall. “No fucking way. I am
not
seeing this.”

He turned back and beckoned, his voice dropping to a horrified whisper. “Heather?”

Nervously she pushed forward to see what he was staring at. A blackened fire pit, recently used, surrounded by large dark flayed shapes… She swung back to face the TV people, her throat convulsing with the sudden urge to vomit.

“You sick freaks!” she said. “What is
wrong
with you all? I mean, seriously, you’re killing and eating the
seals
?”

The Jordan woman’s face hardened, and her eyes went steel cold. She raised the speargun and pointed it at Heather’s face. Everyone froze.

In the tense silence, Dmitry’s voice floated up from beyond the breakwater. “Jacob, radio is not work. I try, but no signal.”

Jacob frowned at Heather, ignoring the spear aimed at her head. He ran to the seawall, grabbed the top, and pulled himself up. Getting his head and chin over, he yelled, “Go! Just go get them. These people are fucking crazy!”

“Go?”
Dmitry’s faint voice asked.

“Right now! The Coast Guard. Santa Cruz Auxiliary or Monterey.
Hurry!
”

The man in black suddenly broke away from the group and sprinted toward the breakwater, then up and over it to disappear from sight, descending toward the dock.

From beyond the breakwater drifted the sound of the ORCA’s engines revving. Everybody was headed in that direction now, jogging or running. Heather followed.

When she reached the top of the breakwater she could see that the man in black was too late. The ORCA pulled away from the dock, leaving a trail of white froth as the powerful engines churned the water, widening the gap. Halfway down the dock, the man in black slid to a stop and stared after the departing boat.

At the wheel, Dmitry gave a small wave as the ORCA picked up speed.

C
amilla stopped at the top of the breakwater and watched the boat pull away. Seeing it leave without them, she felt her heart beating uncomfortably fast in her throat, even though she knew that was silly.

Juan was a black figure on the dock below, staring after it.

Brent exhaled heavily next to her.

“The Coast Guard will be here in an hour,” she said to him.

“It’s about time.
They
can sort this mess out.” He squatted and eased himself down to sit on the rocks. “We’ll need to get law enforcement involved, too.” This was hardest on him, she realized. Anytime anybody got hurt, he probably felt that it was his fault.

The ORCA churned through the water, now fifty feet away, now a hundred, heading for the open ocean. The stocky blond scientist was braced in the cockpit, his hand jamming the throttle forward.

Mason spoke beside her ear.

“What’s that line in the water behind the boat?”

Before she could say anything, the line suddenly snapped taut, springing up out of the water to throw a fifty-meter line of white spray connecting the back of the boat to the end of the dock. For a frozen second, a thick chain of shiny silver links stretched arrow-straight above the water, shedding a shower of droplets as the boat was pulled up short. The pilot was hurled forward against the console, and a loud, splintering crash echoed back to the breakwater. Revving now to a higher, screaming pitch, the outboard engine ripped completely free of the boat, snapping up into the air in a wide arc.

The dock, jerked by the chain, heaved under Juan’s feet, throwing him to the boards as Camilla watched, stunned.

In his hurry, had the scientist forgotten to untie the line? But that made no sense. It was a chain, not a rope. And it was too long.

The engine splashed into the water fifty yards away, tied to the end of the chain. The boat coasted a few yards more, now powerless, its rear deck a split wreck of torn and splintered fiberglass.

The pilot struggled to his feet in the cockpit as the boat glided to a full stop. He shook his head as if dazed, staring back at the island as water rushed over his feet and ankles.

Camilla’s eyes widened. It was sinking. He had to get off before the boat pulled him down with it.

“Swim!” she screamed at him. “Get away from it.”

Then she thought of Lauren.

• • •

The boat went down fast, listing to its side as it sank. From the breakwater, everyone was shouting instructions.

“Raft!” From the dock, Juan hollered through cupped hands. “Grab the raft!”

Standing next to Camilla, Heather shook her head. “He can’t reach it,” she said. “It’s underwater already.”

Camilla didn’t answer. She was scanning the water around the boat in wider and wider circles.

The scientist leaped from the listing boat with an awkward splash. Surfacing, he swam toward a five-foot section of the boat’s wooden swim platform, torn loose when the chain wrenched the stern of the boat apart and floating some twenty feet away. He scrambled onto it as the top of the boat’s cabin disappeared beneath the waves behind him.

Paddling the platform like an awkward surfboard, he labored toward them, his progress slow—
so
slow.

And then Camilla spotted what she was looking for—what she had dreaded seeing: the dark triangle of a fin slicing through the water, coming around the northern side of the island.

She grabbed Heather’s arm, pointing. “We have company.”

As she watched, the distant shape slipped under the rippling surface, disappearing from sight.

Heather didn’t seem too bothered. “They have good hearing,” she said. “It’s just coming to investigate the crash.”

“It killed and ate a woman this morning,” Camilla said.

“No,” Heather gasped. She shook her head. “That doesn’t happen. A test bite, perhaps… a mistake…”

Camilla understood the scientist’s confusion. She knew a little bit about great white sharks herself, because of the clown fish. One of the other characters in that film was a shark. Even though it was an animated children’s film, she had insisted that her studio do their homework. She even flew an expert in from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution to hold a private seminar for her whole team. She had been fascinated and had learned a lot. Her team made their animated shark scary, but that was mainly because the other characters were fish—its normal prey.