Chapter 7 #2
I waded in until the next wave broke against me and then knelt, feet sinking with a satisfaction that felt like a sigh.
The whale’s eye was open and too still. I eased a wet towel over her back and spoke nonsense in French because the words that mattered were all numbers and there would be time for those later.
“Calm,” I said to myself as much as her. “Breathe. Breathe.”
My body did as it was told. Air in, out, long, deliberate. Jacob’s voice tried to lace through mine, low and impossible and useful. I let it. If I was going to be haunted, it might as well buy me oxygen.
I checked the belly for abrasions, the pectoral tone, the reflex at the lower jaw. Pup response was slow but there. Respiration rate too high. A bruise flowered along the flank where surf had rolled her wrong. Nothing obvious, but with Kogia, the damage liked to hide where you couldn’t touch it.
“Camille!” Tamika’s voice rode the wind from way down the beach, breathless and bright. She jogged toward us with an umbrella and a kit slung across her chest, cheeks flushed, hair escaping its braid. “Washout is holding—Becca’s a machine. This one’s small.”
“Kogia,” I said. “We keep her upright. Blowhole clear. No torque on the spine. We let the next wave do the lifting—we don’t.”
Tamika’s eyes went soft the way they did when the hard part finally had a shape. “Copy.”
We worked. Shade up. Towels. A quick check of the mouth. The whale shifted with a low, breathy sound. I ran two fingers just behind the eye and felt a muscle jump against my touch. Good.
“Truck’s twenty out,” Tamika said, glancing at her watch. “Traffic’s already stupid.”
“Skiff will be faster. We’ll move when her rate drops two notches.” I angled my head toward the tripod. “Make him useful or make him bored.”
Tamika grinned, slid toward him with the kind of smile that bought compliance faster than a badge, and began an eager, relentless talk about necropsy forms and chain of custody. He adjusted his lens, half a step back, as if the words themselves were a perimeter.
The next wave broke. I took the lift on my thighs and let the whale rise against my hands, careful, careful, the line of her spine the only thing in my world for a heartbeat.
Water slid down my ribs, cool and bracing; sweat joined it, hot at the bend of my elbow.
I swore softly when the towel shifted and my tank clung.
The ocean didn’t care about dignity, that much was certain.
The radio on my belt hissed. “Seven-Delta to Allard.”
I thumbed it without looking away. “Go.”
“Pincense on two,” Ryker said. “Requesting your status.”
I breathed once, twice, felt the whale’s rate notch down a hair under my hands—there, you sweet stubborn thing—and keyed over. “Lieutenant Commander. Your window is not a window. We logged a narrow-band tonal ramp inside your pause at oh-eight-thirteen hours. Please advise.”
Static, then that pleasant ice. “We don’t have assets active in that sector, Doctor. Civilian research may be?—”
“Then send the permit numbers now,” I said. “You promised me private authorizations by eighteen hundred. I want what you can give me at ten-fifteen.”
A pause. “We’ll look into it.”
“You will send the numbers,” I said, and released the button before he could polish anything else.
Tamika slid back. “He’s going to send you a PDF with half the nouns missing,” she said.
“He’s going to send me something that tells me where to dig next,” I said, and looked down as the whale blew a small, desperate breath that felt like a confession.
The next twenty minutes ate themselves. A perimeter that somehow convinced three new arrivals to stand where their shadows wouldn’t touch my work.
Tamika running decibel readings from the skiff’s portable recorder and frowning at the numbers.
Me riding waves with a body that had decided to do exactly what I asked because it sensed I wouldn’t forgive it if it didn’t.
When the rate finally sagged to something I could call stable, I nodded.
“Now,” I told Tamika, and we moved like a unit—sling under on the lift, canvas whispering against skin, hands exactly where they needed to be and nowhere else.
The skiff’s bow kissed the swash. Atlas’s men appeared the way thoughts do—sudden, useful—and took the stretcher poles without being told, arms steady, eyes averted. I loved them, a little, for that.
The whale settled into the skiff with a soft, inevitable sound that did something to my throat I didn’t let out. Tamika tucked the blowhole clear and braced herself with her knees. I looped my arm around the stern cleat and hauled us in three hard pulls while the men kept the weight even.
“Go,” I told Tamika when we were afloat. “Keep her low. Easy water. Dock in ten. Use the quiet pen.”
“You’re not riding in?” Tamika asked, already palming the ignition.
“I’ll take the beach and keep the idiots occupied,” I said, jerking my chin toward the tripod. “And I want the Washout eyes on me for five minutes so Becca can get in without a parade.”
“Copy.” She squeezed my forearm, quick and sure. “Good work, Doc.”
“You, too.” I slapped the hull, and the skiff pivoted, motor whispering. The whale’s eye rolled toward me for a second, black and bottomless. “Stay with me,” I said again to no one who could promise it, and waded back to sand.
The fishermen tipped their hats like men in old movies. The tripod man pretended he’d gotten everything he needed and began the slow ritual of collapsing legs and sulking. Atlas’s men drifted to the wrack line and became sea oats.
My phone buzzed—two messages stacked.
The first from Becca: Washout’s a false alarm—juvenile healthy, mom offshore. We redirected the crowd.
I exhaled so hard my vision blurred for a second and only realized I’d been holding my breath when my ribs hurt.
The second was an email with an attachment so innocuous it might as well have been a grocery list.
Subject: Interim Authorization List.
From: [email protected]