Shark Island Page 4

  The Woods Hole research team really did not want her along, but she needed this.

  If she didn’t go, Naomi felt sure her nightmares would never stop. That she would wake up in terror in the middle of the night for the rest of her life …

  Her cell vibrated and she glanced down at it, surprised to be getting an actual phone call instead of a text. Even her mother mostly texted these days. When Naomi saw the caller’s ID flash on the phone’s screen, she stared at it for a few seconds. She exhaled a noisy breath, not quite a grunt, and answered.

  “Hey. Everything okay?”

  Because if Kayla was calling her something had to be wrong. They texted occasionally, mostly awkwardly, and hadn’t spoken by phone in … she couldn’t even remember now.

  “Hi,” Kayla said. “I … wasn’t sure you’d answer.”

  “Well, here I am.”

  In other words, What the hell do you want?

  “I’m home for the summer, Nay. I was hoping … I mean, I’d like to see you.”

  Naomi went quiet. How was she supposed to reply to that? She watched the people on the beach, watched the umbrellas flapping in the wind, bending a bit too far. Watched the waves rolling onto the sand.

  “You still there?” Kayla asked.

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” Naomi said. “Not for me, anyway. I don’t see the point.”

  “Nay, listen … I have to see you. I don’t want to say this to you on the phone.”

  “I guess you’re going to have to. Whatever ‘this’ is.” Her heart began to race. Her thoughts started coalescing around fantasies she’d had six months ago, eight months ago, but she reined them in.

  Kayla sighed. “Naomi.” Just the name—her real name, no pet names, no terms of endearment. “I want to tell you I’m sorry. I handled it all so badly. So damn badly.”

  “Handled what, exactly?”

  “Everything, Nay. Everything.”

  Naomi breathed in the ocean air. Her skin flushed with heat that had nothing to do with the sun. For a moment she imagined she could feel the whir of power in her prosthetic.

  “I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say to that, Kayla. I’m glad to hear your voice, but I still don’t see the point of this. Apologies are nice—”

  “I broke up with Stef.”

  Or she broke up with you, Naomi thought, and now you’re getting nostalgic. Don’t play with me, goddammit. Yet she felt a tremor in her heart. It pissed her off.

  “Kay, I’ve gotta go,” Naomi said.

  “Wait, please. I wanted to see you face-to-face. I need to see you.”

  “I don’t need to see you.”

  A huff of air on the line. “Okay. That’s fair. It hurts, but it’s definitely fair. I just wanted you to know that I did it, finally.”

  “Did what?” Naomi asked. But she knew. It could only be one thing.

  “I came out to my parents. I blew up my life. They haven’t thrown me out or anything and they’re still going to pay for medical school, but it’s like I’m invisible to them now. I did it because when I got on the plane to come home for the summer I realized I was more ashamed of hiding who I am than they could ever make me for being who I am.”

  Naomi wanted to say something snide. How poetic. Something like that. But even after the way she’d felt abandoned, she couldn’t hurt Kayla like that.

  “I’m proud of you,” she said instead. “Really. I know it must hurt, but I hope you’re okay and that you’re proud, too. You should be.”

  Silence on the phone. The wind shifted and Naomi heard music drifting down the beach, someone’s radio playing 1970s pop songs.

  “I made a huge mistake with you, Nay. I think about the life I want five years from now instead of the old, safe life I was holding on to, and I see you there with me. Is it … is it too late to undo my mistake?”

  Naomi smiled, but it was a sad sort of smile. She was glad Kayla couldn’t see her. The wish had come true. So why didn’t she feel like celebrating?

  “I think it is,” she said. “I think you’re just afraid now and feeling alone and need a life preserver to cling to until you get something solid under your feet again. I don’t want to be your life preserver, Kayla.”

  “That’s not it. I swear it’s—”

  “I meant it when I said I was proud of you. But I’ve gotta go.”

  She ended the call before Kayla could reply. Better not to give her a chance to be persuasive. Not that Naomi would let herself be persuaded. At least she didn’t think so.

  As these thoughts crossed her mind, she spotted the fin.

  Out there in the water.

  A breeze kicked up, sand sweeping across her towel and grit stinging her eyes behind her sunglasses. She pulled them off, rubbed away the grains of sand, and looked again. The fin remained, cruising slowly, perhaps a hundred yards offshore. Fewer than a dozen people were in the water. She quickly scanned the beach and located Spence and his parents. Dad had jumped up to make sure the sudden breeze wouldn’t blow their umbrella over and Mom was fussing over a tinfoil-wrapped sandwich that Spence seemed to be refusing to eat.

  They were safe.

  Naomi rose, the prosthetic so damn fine a piece of machinery that she barely noticed it doing its job. A drunk guy at a sorority party had told her she was a fucking cyborg, like that was the coolest thing in the world. But now she glanced down at her leg and fought back revulsion at the sense of detachment that still swept over her now and again.

  She walked down toward the ocean. As she stood near the water’s edge and stared out at the fin, people watched her warily, almost as if she were the danger here.

  Then the fin vanished beneath the waves.

  But the shark wasn’t gone, she knew.

  The shark was only waiting.

  CHAPTER 7

  Wolchko never rolled up the sleeves of his shirt, no matter how high the mercury climbed. He sometimes loosened his tie, but that was as far as he would take it. That morning he wore dark-green pants, a white shirt, and a purple tie in a pattern best described as chaotic. His late wife had picked out the tie six or seven years ago. He had lost weight since Antonia died, but all he’d done was tighten his belt. Without her to pick out his clothes, he knew he would be lost.

  He pulled his car into the lot behind the Cosmic Muffin, NPR voices droning on the radio. The voices were soothing, even when he disagreed with them. They made him feel as if he were in the company of friends who did not expect him to participate in the conversation, and as far as Wolchko was concerned, those were the best sorts of friends. Not that he had a great deal of experience in the arena of friendship.

  The Muffin was his favorite coffee shop, not because they served so many specialty drinks but because when he asked for enough cream and sugar to turn coffee into a confection, they didn’t bat an eyelash. Last summer there had been one college kid who had suggested to him that it would be easier to get himself some coffee ice cream, but Sasha, the Muffin’s owner, had never allowed that kid to wait on Wolchko again and the kid hadn’t reappeared at the beginning of this summer. Apparently he had moved on to greener pastures.

  Wolchko killed the engine and climbed out, going over his order in his head. Rosalie liked her coffee with a double shot of espresso, the new receptionist liked iced mochaccino, Dr. Cheong took hers black, and Tye Ashmore always ordered straight-up iced coffee, no matter how cold it might be outside.

  Wolchko only made it about fifteen steps before he heard a car door open and glanced over to see a thirtyish guy with close-cropped hair and stylish spectacles getting out. The guy adjusted his specs and shut his own car door, but when he started walking it wasn’t toward the entrance to the Cosmic Muffin … it was toward Wolchko, whose eyes narrowed while a litany of possibilities cascaded through his mind. Cop, stalker, constable serving a summons, reporter.

  “Mr. Wolchko?” the guy said just as Wolchko settled on the last option.

  “Make an appointment.”

  “I
’ve tried.”

  “If you’ve been put off by people in my office, I’m sure it’s for good reason.”

  Spectacles put on a mask of sincerity and reason.

  “Just a few questions for the Times,” the guy said, as if he might mean The New York Times or the London Times, instead of the Cape Cod Times, which did not have quite the same ring of authority.

  Wolchko kept walking and Specs fell in beside him.

  “You’re part of the Woods Hole research team running this seal experiment—”

  “That’s not a question,” he said, unable to stop himself.

  “Your personal research has focused on acoustics,” Specs continued. “Some kind of negative reinforcement, attacking sharks and marine mammals with—”

  “We don’t attack marine life; we study behavior.”

  Wolchko regretted opening his mouth the moment the words were out.

  “You want to manipulate their natural behavior. Don’t you worry that could be detrimental to them?” the reporter prodded.

  Wolchko gritted his teeth in irritation. It wasn’t that the team had anything to hide. The media relations office had asked them to keep the details of their experiment confidential until afterward. Most of it had leaked out already. The public knew they were going to try to lure the seals away from the shores of the Cape and that they hoped to be able to entice them to make their home farther north this season. What the public did not know was how.

  “Several organizations argued against your experiment during the federal permitting process. Do you think the Feds fast-tracked the permit, gave you a rubber stamp because of the Cardiff girl?”

  Wolchko stopped twenty feet from the office door and turned to glare at him. “That’s ridiculous. Everybody’s motivated to get this done. It has nothing to do with…”

  He trailed off. The little shit is smiling behind his fancy specs.

  “Everyone’s motivated?” the reporter said. “So you do think they rushed the permitting?”

  “Never said that,” Wolchko muttered.

  The Cosmic Muffin’s door swung open, reminding him that he did not have to stand there and talk to this asshole.

  “Sir,” Wolchko said, like the word was a stab at the reporter’s heart, “if you want an interview, contact the media relations office—”

  “One last thing,” Specs continued. “What do you think of WHOI letting a college student go along under the auspices of the media instead of including an actual journalist? Do you think they’re trying to control the story? Do they have something to hide?”

  Wolchko paused, and all the tension bled out of him. He grinned and turned toward Specs. “That’s what this is about? The folks at The Globe are making Naomi Cardiff part of the story, and it burns your ass. Truth is, I can understand why, but this behavior is hardly the way to get WHOI to reconsider, or to make sure they give you access to the team when the experiment’s finished. Now, what’s your name again? I’m sure I can describe you well enough when I phone your editor, but a name will make it easier.”

  The reporter smirked. “Any thoughts on the shark attack at Race Point this morning?”

  Wolchko blinked, caught off guard. “What? There wasn’t any—”

  “Half an hour ago. Surfer lost a chunk of his arm. Nothing as bad as last summer, but still … do you think if WHOI had moved faster with this experiment that man’s injury might never have happened? Don’t you have a responsibility to the public?”

  Wolchko wanted to smash Specs’ face through the glass door of the coffee shop.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” he asked.

  Specs shrugged. “Seattle. Decided I wanted a change of scenery.”

  “You can forget any interview with anyone from the institution,” Wolchko said. “Ever. We’re done here.”

  The reporter nodded. This was not news to him. Still, he got in one last question as Wolchko let go of the door and it glided slowly closed.

  “Would you go in the water at Race Point right now, sir?” the reporter asked. “Would you swim there today?”

  Wolchko turned away as the door clicked shut, but he hoped the reporter heard his reply.

  “You first.”

  CHAPTER 8

  The jangling phone dragged Kat Cheong up from sleep, wisps of dreams muddling her thoughts so much that she had to shake her head to disperse them. She stared blearily at the phone as it rang again. The room was dark, save for the moonlight that turned the curtains pale and ghostly and the electric burn of the digits on her alarm clock. Twelve minutes past midnight and her phone was ringing, and that sort of thing never boded well.

  Kat picked the phone up from its cradle, her voice a sleepy rasp. “Hello?”

  No one spoke, but she could hear the seashell hiss of an open line. Someone was there and had not yet hung up. Anger flickered through her, and then concern. Her mother had been dead for seven years and her father lived alone. An image swam into her head of her burly, amiable gray-bearded old dad lying on the floor of his bedroom with his hand clutched to his chest. It was a nightmare she’d had before, both sleeping and awake.

  “Dad?” she ventured, hoping the call would turn out to be some late-night pervert or a political robocall instead of this thing she feared.

  Kat heard breathing, a small grunt of satisfaction, and then a click, which turned the open line into the flat nothing that told her the call had ended. A prickling sensation crept along her spine as her worry and annoyance were replaced by a flutter of fear. She shuddered as she rested the phone back on its cradle and burrowed beneath her covers. It was still early summer and the night breeze carried a chill off the ocean.

  She turned over, back toward the nightstand, but she felt the presence of the phone as if it were a hand that might reach out at any moment and tap her shoulder with a single long finger. The curtains rustled with the breeze and she closed her eyes, fighting the suspicion that the phone would ring again. Midnight phone calls were dreadful things. They spoke of drunken car wrecks and sudden death. No good news arrived by telephone after midnight. Hell, after 9:00 p.m., now that she was old enough to be called Doctor. Late-night texts were one thing, but a call on her landline? Shit, who even had a landline now, unless the cable company forced it on them as part of a package deal?

  Nobody, she thought, breathing deeply, telling her racing heart to be at peace.

  Another deep inhalation and she could feel the tight muscles in her neck and shoulders begin to relax. The jangling of the phone still echoed in her ears, but the lure of sleep was powerful. A little buzz of irritation kept her from surrendering to it completely. She would have liked to know who made that phone call. Kat didn’t have caller ID on the phone in her bedroom, but it occurred to her that she could go into the kitchen and check it there.

  Then she was gone, easing into the soft comfort of slumber.

  A loud rapping snapped her awake. Kat twisted around in the bed, tangling herself in the sheet, and stared at the windows. Her bedroom was on the first floor and there was a little deck just outside with a view of the woods and the water beyond.

  A shadow stood outside the windows, a silhouette that vanished in a blink as she froze, unable to breathe.

  What if he broke the glass in the French doors, out in her living room? It would be only seconds before he reached her.

  Someone whispered her name. Fear closed her throat. The silhouette darted back across the moonlit deck beyond those curtains. Fingers drummed and scratched along the glass and she wanted to scream.

  “We’re coming in, Kat,” the voice said, so softly that she could barely make it out.

  Something snapped inside her, and it surprised her to find that the thing she felt breaking was her fear. It burned off like droplets of water on hot tar, and anger surged through her.

  “Who’s there?” she shouted, lunging from her bed.

  Only as she reached for the heavy crystal ballerina statue on her bureau did she remember the phone, the i
dea that it could be used to summon the police. Kat hesitated, gripping the ballerina, and she reached out to whip the curtains aside.

  Her heart thundered as she stared out into the moonlit woods. Slivers of dark ocean were visible between the trees, but there was no sign of that silhouette. For half a second she wondered if she was experiencing a lucid dream, but then she heard thumping at the side of the house and a fresh wave of anger hit her. She snatched up the phone in her free hand and ran out into the hall and then into the front-to-back living room. Outside the French doors at the back there was only moonlight, but now she heard a shout from the front and some kind of scuffle and thump, as if her tormentor had fallen.

  She pressed the TALK button on the phone. Dialed 9 and 1—and then her doorbell rang. She snapped her head up to stare toward the front of the house and the doorbell rang again. Someone started to knock. She hit the 1 button a second time, held the phone to her ear as she moved soundlessly to the front living room window.

  A face appeared, eyes wide. Profanity streamed from her lips as she jerked back from the window.

  A little buzz-click came over the phone. “Nine-one-one service. What is the nature of your emergency?”

  The face called her name.

  Kat stared at it, her anger taking on a different hue.

  “I’m sorry,” she told the 911 operator. “So sorry. False alarm.”

  “Ma’am, if you—”

  Kat stabbed the phone’s off button with her thumb and tossed it onto the sofa. She marched to the front door, unlocked it, and threw it open. Tye stood on the brick front steps and she felt the words rising in her throat, ready to cuss him out as she had never cussed out anyone in her life. She knew he had been holding a grudge about her breaking off their relationship, but it had been months and now he had decided to scare the crap out of her in the middle of the night? It was the move of a King Asshole, and she had never imagined he fit into that category.

  “You…,” she began.

  Then she saw the blood on his forehead and under his nose.

  “Son of a bitch hit me,” Tye said, as if he was trying the words out to see if he himself believed them. Somehow it was that disbelief that convinced Kat.