Jack Rogan - The Ocean Dark

Josh was a liar after all, and his lies were about to put her in a bad spot. She could feel it, even as she unzipped the backpack again and dumped its contents onto the floor. There were a couple of paperback books in there that she hadn’t seen, stashed under the sweatshirt, but the last thing to tumble out was in a black nylon bag. It could’ve been a flashlight or an electric razor, but seemed too big to be either.

Tori loosened the string around the mouth of the bag, reached inside, and drew out a bulky black plastic thing that looked like a combination walkie-talkie and telephone receiver. She’d seen enough movies to know what a satellite phone looked like.

“Son of a bitch.”

This time, she didn’t whisper.

Whoever Josh really worked for, it sure as hell wasn’t Viscaya Shipping. The ice inside her started to melt, replaced by a streak of fear that made her skin flush. Jesus, she couldn’t go to prison. How much did Josh know? Was his name even Josh? Had the whole thing with her — the flirtation, the sex — been an act, or had he just fucked her because he could, knowing all along that when the voyage was over she would be in prison and he’d be moving on to another case?

Tori had been totally falling for him and now she wanted to scream, but there was nowhere to hide on board the Antoinette . Nowhere she wouldn’t be found.

Her heart raced. Breathing through her nose, trying to fight the nausea rising in her, she stuffed his things back into the backpack and jammed it under the bed. Her hands fluttered as she stood, looking for something to do, as if fixing her hair or tucking in her shirt might somehow make her feel better.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this , she thought. This isn’t how my story goes .

Alena Boudreau loved the silence under water, the only sound around her the steady rhythm of her own pulse inside her head. She could think down here in the gloomy depths, and so she took her time exiting the Donika Cave, swimming languorously, her gear weightless in the water. The antidote to gravity, her own buoyancy tried to force her up, and reluctantly she began to rise, swimming toward the surface, thinking about the extraordinary things she had seen in that cave.

White, eyeless spiders without webs chased their prey with deadly speed. Leeches ate worms through mouths they were not supposed to have. Water scorpions darted in the murk, bearing poison deadly to the tiny blind toads with which they shared the stagnant pools, both so white that observers could see the blood running through them. The level of carbon dioxide in the cave reached ten times the norm, so the team inside the cave had to keep their O 2tanks on while working.

Remarkable .

Alena had spent most of her life pursuing the remarkable, and had seen things that people with ordinary lives simply would not have believed. Yet the wonder of it all never completely vanished, and the amazing never became mundane. Radioactive crystal formations in Utah caverns and giant rats in Indonesia; ancient toxins trapped in Antarctic ice and warring species of poisonous frogs; lost worlds and cryptozoology; arcane artifacts and genetic anomalies. They were all her job, and had been for more than forty-five years.

Turning toward the rock face, she angled toward the surface and came up only a dozen feet from the metal platform that the joint EU bio-science team had bolted into place. Officially, the people in charge of unlocking and studying the secrets of the Donika Cave were part of an independent organization called Alliance Européenne pour l’Exploration Scientifique, but in reality they answered to the current president of the European Union. Upon her arrival in the nearby town of Rovinj, it had been obvious that the Croatians resented what they naturally considered interference by the EU, but with Croatia still awaiting approval to join the European Union, they had to play ball.

The resentment of the Croatian biologists and geologists worked significantly in Alena’s favor. She was the lone American on the scene, there as an official observer and representative of the U.S. government, and the Alliance Européenne pour l’Exploration Scientifique hated her with a fiery passion. It was adorable, really, the snits they got in whenever she showed up at a dig or discovery. But since both the Croatian government and the leaders of the EU had issued an invitation — under pressure from the U.S. State Department — they really had no choice.

Alena didn’t mind. She’d transcended any need to be loved decades ago. That wasn’t to say she couldn’t enjoy fondness and affection, but she never troubled herself searching for them.

Reaching up, she grabbed hold of the ladder and emerged from the Adriatic Sea, water sluicing off her skinsuit as she climbed to the platform. Half a dozen techs and assistants were camped there, monitoring transmissions from the cave. The team medic, an attractive Austrian man, watched Alena as she pulled off her goggles and slid them onto her arm. She pulled off her gloves, tucked them into the belt on her suit, then tugged back the headpiece and shook out her shoulder-length silver hair.

From the corner of her eye she caught the medic watching the show and it made her smile. She figured the guy for mid-forties, handsome and fit. Alena’s daughter, Marie, had turned forty-seven in February — she herself had celebrated her seventieth birthday only a week ago — and the Austrian studied her with an appreciation that might embarrass him if he knew her age.

Alena pushed her fingers through her hair and shook it out again, then bent to remove her flippers. She carried them, hooked on her fingers, over to the metal walkway that led to the top of the cliff. As she passed the medic, she tipped him a smile and a wink and he grinned happily, knowing he’d been caught.

“Fresh air and red wine. The secret of eternal youth,” she said.

“I must drink more wine,” he replied, his accent thick.

His eyes were alight with mischief — a come-on. Sex with older women had come into vogue in recent years— thank you, Helen Mirren —but still men often seemed astonished to learn her age. Even Alena herself was a bit astonished. Seventy, my God .

She considered flirting further, even suggesting some wine later on, but she had been traveling too much lately and knew she would not have the patience for a dalliance during this trip. It would be a brief visit. For all of their arrogance, the EU team was doing a perfectly competent job of cataloging the new species discovered in the cave. There were other things that interested her about the microcosmic ecosystem there that had nothing to do with bugs and worms.

As she walked up the metal stairs that made up the last dozen steps to the top, Alena didn’t bother looking back to see if the Austrian might still be watching her. If she caught him studying her ass, she might be tempted to go back. A bottle of red wine would go well with dinner tonight.

Then she saw Martin Jungling hurrying toward her from the hastily arranged camp headquarters — a series of box trailers arranged in rows to provide lab space and sleeping quarters for the EU team and their Croatian counterparts.

“Ah, Dr. Boudreau. I feared you might never return,” Jungling said, with a faux-pleasant smile. Tall and painfully thin, the Belgian had an aspect of the reaper about him, with sunken cheeks and humorless eyes.

“Feared, or hoped?” Alena asked, arching an eyebrow.

“You wound me,” Jungling replied. He had perfected the face of diplomacy, the one that said, I’m just being polite and I don’t care if you know it .

Alena smiled. “You’ll be happy to know that I expect to return to the States tomorrow. If you’ll keep me apprised of any new developments, my superiors and I will be grateful, but otherwise I suspect I’ve got what I need to make my report.”