Chapter 34
THIRTY-FOUR
X
anthe splashed cool water on her face and dabbed her skin dry with a paper towel before straightening to confront her reflection in the mirror. Her nose and cheeks were blotchy, and her eyes were puffy and red. Everyone would know she’d been crying.
She pushed out a sigh, running her fingers through her short hair. Today had been the chocolate sprinkles on top of the shit sundae that had been her life the past week.
Watching her beloved stepfather take his last shallow breaths before losing his battle to pancreatic cancer had been excruciating. She was having a hard time getting it out of her head.
Knowing he was no longer suffering was the only comfort. Accepting that he was gone forever, would never be there to hug her or listen or offer advice or encouragement ever again, was still too painful to contemplate.
Then today, finding out that they were going to lose this research facility in a matter of months was a kick in the face.
And knowing that rich asshole developer was living the high life, treating this incredibly rare and beautiful place like his own personal playground to make more money, just made her sick.
“Okay, universe. Help me out,” she whispered.
She wasn’t religious—though she came pretty close to something like that when it came to science. But she had a strong spiritual side. She refused to believe she’d been so awful in a prior life to deserve constant pain and disappointment.
Something better had to come from all of this misery. It had to.
Allistair, another postdoc working with their team looked up from his computer when she returned to her workstation. “Whoa, you okay, girl?”
“Fine,” she answered, pulling up her latest spreadsheet of data. “Just been a shit week.”
He made a sympathetic sound. “That development deal is bullshit.”
“It is.” She’d already reached out to a law professor she knew at UW and was waiting to find out what could be done to block this. In the meantime, she had a job to do.
She kept working, could feel Allistair watching her as she accessed her most recent data sets. “What?”
“Are you sure you wanna be here right now? It’s okay to take some time off. You deserve time to grieve your loss.”
“I need to keep working.” Right now, it was the only thing keeping her sane.
“Just saying. No one will think any less of you if you take some time off, and if they did, I’d beat their ass. But just know you’ve got our support, whatever you decide.” He leaned over and squeezed her shoulder. “We’re all here for you, girl.”
She smiled a little. Their team was small but close knit, and they all worked well together, focused on the larger mission to protect and preserve the incredibly rich and fragile ecosystem here in the Pacific Northwest that too few people seemed to give a flying fuck about.
Least of all entitled multi-millionaire or billionaire real estate developers, whatever he was. “Thanks.”
“Anytime.” He put his headphones on and went back to listening to humpback songs.
His current research was comparing songs from animals in their region to when they were in their summer feeding grounds around here and up to Alaska, and then again to their songs in the Hawaiian Islands during breeding season in the winter and early spring.
The humpbacks had made an incredible recovery.
But Xanthe’s beloved resident orcas had not been as fortunate.
Right now they were struggling to survive, their numbers dwindling to dangerously low levels.
If something didn’t drastically change soon to protect them and their food source, they would be on the brink of extinction.
“Not that fucking real estate developers give a shit,” she muttered to herself, angrily stabbing the return key to bring up another spreadsheet.
“What’s that?” Allistair pulled off his headphones, looking at her.
“Nothing. Ignore me.”
“Kay. Cool.” He went back to his humpback songs.
She was working on computing some histograms in Excel when she heard a vehicle pull up to the station. Glanced over her shoulder at the sound of footsteps coming up the wooden stairs out back. Shock sluiced through her when the new sheriff walked in—along with the asshole developer.
She shot out of her chair, looking between the two of them. Bristling for a fight. Had that bastard filed a complaint against her? She hadn’t laid a hand on him—but she’d thought about it. “What’s going on?”
“Dr. Lazos, I’m Sheriff Torres. This is Blaine—”
“We’ve met,” she said, shooting the developer a cold look. Blaine. Like the city on the border with BC? His dress shirt and pants had dirt streaked all over them. The evil part of her hoped the stains wouldn’t come out. “What can I do for you?”
“Do you have any security cameras on site? Specifically, any that capture the parking area and the access road,” the sheriff said.
Surprise eroded some of the anger. “Yes, we do. Can I ask what this is regarding?”
“An ongoing investigation. I don’t have a warrant, but the crime involved could put this facility and potentially your staff in danger.”
More danger than eventually being torn down by the guy standing next to you?
She held the snark back and spoke to Allistair, who was hanging on every word with clear interest. “Dr. Canton, can you please access the security feeds and find the camera in question?”
“Sure.” He whipped around and began typing commands on his keyboard. Various security feeds popped up on his screen. “This one has the best angle of what you just mentioned,” he said to the other men, angling his body so they could see.
Sheriff Torres leaned in closer. Blaine stayed behind him. Why was he here with the sheriff? Had someone been trespassing or vandalizing the property he and his buddies now owned?
“That’s perfect,” the sheriff said. “How long do you save footage for?”
“I’m not actually sure,” Allistair said. “Thirty days, I think.”
“Is there any time or day of the week when this place is regularly unoccupied?”
“Uhh, normally at night, unless someone is working on a tight deadline.”
“What about the weekends?”
“Depends,” Xanthe answered. “It’s pretty common for at least one of us to be here on Saturdays. Sometimes Sundays as well.” Her gaze shot to Blaine. “Contrary to what some in the private sector think, scientists do put in overtime.”
The sheriff nodded and spoke to Allistair. “Can you get us footage from the end of July? Say...” He looked to Blaine.
“July twenty-seventh,” Blaine said, looking at his phone. “It was a Thursday, so check the feed after everyone would have gone home that night.”
“Got it.” Allistair typed away, scrolled through a list of dates and clicked on the correct one. “Just let me fast forward.”
Xanthe rolled her chair closer to him, sat off to his left while he sped through the video. “That’s me,” she said, watching as she climbed into her vehicle.
“You were the last to leave?”
“Yes.”
Allistair paused the feed and looked at the men. “Want me to play it at normal speed, or...”
“Speed it up, and stop if anyone comes back on camera once Dr. Lazos leaves,” the sheriff said.
“Sure.” Allistair played it forward at top speed, stopping when headlights appeared at the bend in the access road leading to the parking area.
They all watched as a large, dark pickup stopped at the far right of the screen and shut its lights off. It was dark.
“Can you enhance the lighting at all?” the sheriff asked.
“I can do better than that. All our cameras have infrared to track our eagles and nocturnal animals.”
Four human figures emerged from the truck, their faces glowing in the infrared feed. The rest of them were totally black, including their hands. They had to be wearing gloves. “What are they doing?” she asked.
“About to hide something,” the sheriff murmured, standing right behind Allistair, his gaze intent on the monitor.
The men went around the back of the truck, took something out of it and carried it into the woods. “What is it?” She looked at the sheriff, then Blaine, who looked grim. “Trappers?” Outrage flashed through her.
“No,” the sheriff said.
When nothing more happened, Allistair sped up the video. Just under an hour later the men emerged, got back into the truck and reversed out of view.
“I’m gonna need all of that,” the sheriff said. “But right now I need you to check the feed from last night.”
“Sure.” Allistair quickly accessed the video. Sure enough, a vehicle appeared after dark. Four men wearing gloves got out, went into the woods and returned forty minutes later carrying something large that they put into the back of the truck before leaving.
“I’m gonna need all of that too.” The sheriff folded his arms. “How long have you been here on the island?”
“Six years,” Xanthe added. “Allistair just joined us this spring.” He nodded in confirmation.
“Have you ever heard anything about a militia operating on the island?” Torres asked her.
She blinked. “Yes, I’ve heard that, but I don’t know anything about it personally. You should talk to Earl. If anyone would know about that, it’s him.”
“I’ll do that, thanks. Dr. Canton, send that video to the station’s email as soon as you can. Thanks for your help. If I have any more questions for either of you, I’ll be in touch.”
She opened her mouth to ask what the hell was going on and what those men had been moving around, then thought better of it.
He wasn’t going to tell her anything about an ongoing investigation.
“Of course. Happy to help.” Her gaze moved to Blaine.
He was watching her silently, but the intensity rolling off him was almost like a low-level electrical field against her skin.
“Take care of yourself, Dr. Lazos.” His deep, smooth voice sent an unwelcome curl of heat through her insides.
Then she remembered her blotchy skin and puffy eyes. Dammit. “I will.” And I hope you take a long walk off a short pier.
Both men left. Xanthe released a breath, more intrigued by the situation than she wanted to admit. “So, that was the developer who just pulled the ground out from under us.”
“Seriously?” Allistair shot a look at the closed door, then back to her. “What the hell’s going on?”
“I don’t know. But whatever it is, I’m guessing it’s not good news.”