Nikki Logan - A Kiss to Seal the Deal / The Army Ranger's Return - A Kiss to Seal the Deal / The Army Ranger's Return

‘Samples?’

Kate stripped the other elbow pad off but left the knee pads in position. ‘Come on over, we’ll show you. You might like to help.’

Let the sell-job begin. He had sudden visions of lifting traces of fur samples from the rocks, CSI style, and studying them for genetic variation under multi-million-dollar microscopes. Or extracting blood samples from the cute little fur-balls blinking at him. ‘Sure, why not?’

Kate threw him a pair of rubber gloves and a couple of plastic bags then handed him a large spatula as he grew close. ‘What do you want—vomit or scats?’

One of her team snorted. Grant just blinked at her.

‘Sorry.’ She was all innocence. ‘You did say you wanted to help?’

He had a sudden recollection of her joking about not wasting a valuable sample on smearing him with seal poop. ‘You cannot be serious?’

She sank onto one hip and braced long slim wrists on her waist. ‘Were you hoping for something sexier? Sorry; seal riding’s all done for the day.’

With a sarcastic smile, she bent down and artfully scooped a mountainous pile of silvery black gunge into her plastic bag, taking care to get every last bit. Grant’s stomach turned. She handed the bag to an assistant who labelled it for her and put it into one of three eskies over near the limestone cliff-face.

‘You’re not kidding.’

She straightened and looked at him. ‘Do I strike you as a comedian?’

No. Not at all. But he was damned if he was going to be shown up by a greenie. He glanced around the rocky beach. The way he figured it, what came back up had to be better than what had gone all the way through. ‘I’ll take vomit.’

Her smile, instant and genuine, was at least as dazzling as the sun burning down on them. It stole his breath almost as much as the odour from her sample, which reached him in the same moment. His stomach lurched again.

‘If you puke, do it away from our samples. We don’t want any contamination.’ With no further discussion, Kate turned back to her collection and left him in the dubious care of one of her team, who showed him the basics of vomit scooping.

He only gagged twice, which he was pretty proud of. And he collected three whole samples before he reluctantly gave in to his curiosity.

‘Why are we doing this?’

Kate worked hard to disguise the tiny, triumphant smile. But she wasn’t fast enough. Weirdly, it didn’t bother him. Instead, it birthed a warm kind of glow that something he’d done had finally pleased her. A rare enough sensation, when it came to her.

‘Our study relates to the foraging habits of these females so we can determine what level of threat the seals pose to commercial-fishing harvests.’

‘And collecting the foulest substance known to humankind will tell you that how, exactly?’

Kate straightened and zip-locked a particularly feral sample into containment. ‘Beaks and ear bones.’

Don’t ask. Curiosity, real and genuine, blazed. Do not ask! He stared at her, burning, determined not to speak.

‘OK, go ahead and tell me,’ he blurted and the power slipped further.

Kate’s face exploded with life, earnest passion glowing past the smears of dirt and goodness knew what else on her flawless skin. ‘We sift the faecal samples to isolate the otoliths—ear bones—of the food in their stomach. Then we pair the otoliths up, identify and count them, and it tells us how many fish each seal ate and of what species.’

There was no chance on this planet he was going to admit to the unconventional brilliance of the plan. How else could you figure out what the black goo once was? ‘You do realise it’s absolutely disgusting?’

‘Oh, completely. But sensationally effective.’ She shrugged. ‘Everything else digests.’

He scraped another sample into a fresh bag, mouth-breathing the whole time, still fighting back the stomach heaves. When he spoke, he sounded vaguely like he’d been sucking helium. ‘And the vomit?’

She moved to the next sample, closer to him, and squatted to attend to it. ‘Squid and octopus beaks get stuck in their sphincters. Make the seals regurgitate.’

Of course they do. When had his ordinary day taken such a surreal twist?

‘Wouldn’t want to miss any ear bones.’ His voice sounded tight, even to him, as he lifted a sample bag and braved a look.

She seemed genuinely pleased that he’d caught on so quickly. ‘Exactly. Let me show you something.’

If it wasn’t from a seal’s body, and if it got him away from this stench, he would follow her into the mouth of hell. He offloaded his sample to one of Kate’s assistants and followed her over to a far dry corner of the cove. She rummaged a moment and produced a laminated photograph of a small, glossy fish with googly eyes and fluorescent spots on its dark silver face. A particularly unattractive fish, but from the distant recesses of his memory he realised he knew that animal.

‘Lanternfish.’

Her brown eyes widened. ‘Right.’

‘You forget, I grew up around here.’

‘Still, not a common catch. It’s a deep-sea fish. How do you know it?’

Grant frowned. His father’s face swam in and out of his memory just as fast, but he couldn’t hold the elusive memory. ‘I have no idea. Why are they special?’

‘My research shows that ninety percent of the fish coming out of these seals is lanternfish.’

‘And?’

‘And humans don’t eat lanternfish. Too oily.’

It hit him then, why this mattered to her so much. ‘The seals are no threat to human fisheries.’

‘None. In fact they probably help it, because our fish and their fish prey on the same smaller species. So by keeping lanternfish numbers down the seals help ensure there’s more smaller-prey fish to support the fish we haul up by the netful.’

‘Thus protecting a multi-million-dollar industry.’

‘Exactly.’

Well, damn. The seals were probably essential to Castleridge’s thriving fishing industry. The same kind of feeling that he got when he found the weak link in a competitor’s contract hit him, a mini-elation. Except hot on the heels of the rush came a dismal realisation, and this one sank to the bottom of his gut. ‘Who knows about this?’ he asked carefully.

‘So far? My team. Leo knew. And now you know.’

‘Is that why my father gave you his support?’

‘It was your father that put me onto the lanternfish in the first place.’

His gut clenched and it had nothing to do with the stench. ‘Bull.’

She seemed surprised by his vehemence. ‘He never believed the seals were a problem. He’d watched their habits. He grew up with them too.’

True. How could he have forgotten that? Had Leo spent the same lazy days he had as a boy, hanging out with the forbidden seals? Had he sought sanctuary there when his father went off at him?

Her eyes gentled. ‘He was stoked when the results started coming in showing he was right.’

That was what she’d want him to believe, to improve her case. ‘You’re telling me he was happy his land was going to be accessioned?’

Her eyes dropped.

‘I thought not.’ Look at what he’d done as a result.

Brown almond eyes lifted to his. ‘He was conflicted, Grant. He wanted to do what was right. But he knew what it would do to the value of the farm.’

The almighty farm, the god to which Leo McMurtrie prayed. It had always been his beginning, middle and end. ‘And now you expect me to simply follow suit?’

Kate frowned and clutched the photograph. ‘I thought …’

‘You thought this would make a difference? Why?’

‘Because you’re a lawyer. You pursue justice. These animals are being unjustly persecuted and we hold the evidence in our hands.’