The Ocean Dark

72

Tori had never been on a chopper before — she felt sort of silly even thinking of the thing as a “chopper”—but the experience turned out to be vastly different from what she expected. Instead of feeling in danger of falling, riding in the back of the helicopter with a handful of armed sailors gave her a sensation not unlike being on a bus. Sure, the chopper dipped and turned in ways a bus never could, but she felt safe and secure, even without being strapped in.

From the helicopter, the island had a pristine tropical beauty. Seeing it from above, she thought it looked like paradise — an island Eden — but she knew all too well that there were many things that seemed perfect and beautiful on the surface and turned out to be ugly and rotten inside.

“Are you all right?” Alena Boudreau asked.

Tori glanced over at the silver-haired woman, thinking Dr. Boudreau must be talking to her, but the question had actually been directed at Josh. He had laid his head back against the curve of the helicopter’s inner wall and closed his eyes. Now he opened them, blinking in surprise.

“Me? I’m good, yeah. Thanks for asking, Doc.”

His eyes were glassy. Tori had not noticed before, but now she stared at him, confirming it. She had seen the effects of drugs in the eyes of men too often to mistake it for anything else. Josh was high.

Of course he is, she thought. He got shot yesterday, and had the shit kicked out of him. He must be doped to the gills. Josh had already told her Dr. Dolan had given him painkillers, but she had been too focused on other things to wonder just how big a dose would be needed to numb the pain of a gunshot wound.

Now she was worried about him, and a part of her resented that. After the humiliation she’d felt upon learning of his deception, Josh Hart’s well-being ought to have been the last thing on her mind. And yet she could not help it. Despite the painkiller haze he must be in, his eyes met hers across the helicopter’s wide bay. They sat on benches opposite each other and she resisted the urge to look away. Why did you even come with us? she wanted to ask.

But she thought she knew the answer, and if she turned out to be right, it would only piss her off more. Better for her to tell herself he had come along for the helicopter ride, or because he wanted to see the island for himself, or to look out for the FBI’s interest in the case, than to think he wanted to watch over her and keep her safe. To hell with that. Tori had looked for men to protect her long enough. Far too long.

Dr. Boudreau glanced back and forth between the two of them with obvious curiosity but said nothing. The woman intrigued Tori. How had she come to the place in her life where she could push around branches of the military, not to mention the FBI? Her confidence and the calm that radiated out from her filled Tori with admiration and envy. She had a grandson, but if Tori had to guess, she would have said the older woman was single. No ring, for starters, but beyond that, she seemed so full of purpose that Tori found it hard to imagine Alena Boudreau relying on anyone but herself.

“So, Dr. Boudreau,” Josh said, “do you think Dr. Ernst will get a corpse for her dissection table?”

He had to practically shout to be heard over the helicopter’s rotors. Tori raised her eyebrows, thinking the question odd and abrupt, and wondered if that was the painkillers talking or if Josh had sensed the woman’s attention and hoped to deflect it.

“I hope so,” the woman replied. “But that’s a secondary priority.”

Paul Ridge, who sat next to Tori, perked up at that. She had been quickly introduced to him on the deck of the Kodiak, just before they had climbed into the helicopter, and thought he seemed interesting. Ridge also radiated a fear and anxiety that Tori considered totally appropriate. No matter what he’d been told — or what any of them had been told — they couldn’t imagine what they had gotten themselves into. Ridge knew enough to be afraid of the unknown.

“We’re all secondary priorities,” Ridge said, sharing a nervous smile. “The existence of these things creates so many questions that deserve answers, but pest control is job one, right, Alena?”

Dr. Boudreau nodded. “Unfortunately. But don’t worry, Paul. I’ll give you what time I can.”

Ridge turned to look out the window at the island as the helicopter flew lower. “Not nearly enough time.”

“I don’t get what’s so fascinating about this place. What makes it so different?” Tori asked.

Ridge, a handsome man to begin with, became even more so as soon as the topic turned to his chosen science. “On the surface, not much. Most Caribbean islands are volcanic or part of a system created by volcanic activity. The ridges and protrusions of black rock are volcanic, a combination of basalt and andesite. Lava flows formed the ridges when they cooled, and the rocks you see jutting out of the sand or the water are … well, chunks that were literally shot from the volcano during an eruption.

“But the samples that David has shown me also have trace elements that make the geology here quite different from the typical volcanic formations. There’s a hydrologic chemistry at work that must be a factor related to the bio-forms — the sirens, I guess we’re calling them — making the fissures and caves in the island’s foundations habitable for them.”

Tori smiled. “I think I only got about half of that.”

Ridge began to reply, but Dr. Boudreau interrupted.

“You won’t have time for the other half, Tori. I’m afraid I need you now. We’re going to make several passes over the island and I want you to point out the locations of any caves you remember, including the grotto you talked about—”

“The sweep team must have found it by now,” Josh cut in. “They’ve been on the island an hour or more.”

Alena Boudreau nodded. “They’re fairly certain they have, but I want to be sure we’re in the right place and there isn’t another similar location.” She looked back to Tori. “Dr. Ridge is going to mark everything on a chart. If you have any observations, definitely share them. Any detail could be important in ways none of us understand as yet.”

As she spoke, Ridge opened a sleek silver laptop and, with a touch of a button, pulled up a map he had already made of the island. The shape did not match entirely — apparently it was based on information the combined Navy/Coast Guard sweep team had gathered so far — but now Ridge would get to work refining it, starting with whatever Tori could tell him.

For the next quarter hour they circled the island and she shared what she remembered of the spots she had seen caves or any other protrusions of that black rock, including those that seemed to have split open the small mountain at the island’s center — what had once been an active volcano but now lay dormant save for the traces of steam that lingered above those openings. If the others who had been on the island with her — Bone and Kevonne and Pang — had been alive, they could have provided much more information. Tori had not even set foot on the half of the island they had explored.

“What about the two bodies you and Captain Rio found yesterday?” Dr. Boudreau asked, her tone neutral. “The men from the Mariposa? Can you show us where they had been left?”

Tori frowned. “Why? Didn’t you find them?”

“No. I’m afraid we didn’t.”

Frigid fingers seemed to trace along her spine and she shivered. “You mean they took the bodies away?”

Josh leaned forward, catching her eye, making her focus on him. “Hey. It’s okay. The tide could have moved them.”

Tori shook her head. “No. It was high tide when we found them, or near enough. They were well above the tide line. And those guys had been dead since at least the night before, so the sirens didn’t take them just to … to eat. They wanted us to find the bodies yesterday, maybe to freak us out or confuse us or whatever. But then last night, when they attacked us, the bodies had served their purpose, so then they took them.”

“Come on, Tori,” Josh said. “These things are animals. They’re primitive. They’re not smart enough to want to just mess with your head.”

“How do you know?” she demanded.

Josh had no reply to that. Neither did Dr. Boudreau, and that scared her most of all.