Chapter 18 #2
Wes couldn’t tell, not when his fiancée was mangling a mop head in its sloshing bucket and a pink-haired retiree—Sabrina?—was passing in front of his lens to squirt antiseptic soap into the water. He couldn’t hear, either.
All he could do was watch.
Wait.
Which he did.
He took a swig from his Nalgene, blew grit from his viewfinder, and stamped sand from between his toes.
He saw Isabel chop up a second load of mackerel, then smile at Mehar.
More mopping, and pushing a cart of delousing powders around the quarantine biofarm.
More chopping, side-by-side again with Jiang, who was now washing algae for a sea turtle recovering from its collision with a boat’s outboard motor.
Isabel’s mouth moved in conversation. She heaved a new bucket to the leopard shark tank.
The toes of her too-large boots stopped just past its Caution stripes.
Splash: fish chunks tumbling into eager jaws.
He kept watching, and fended off a gull.
He refocused his lens against the midday light.
He shooed the gull a second time.
He photographed a blubber-bound harbor seal sneezing itself awake from its nap on the beach.
When someone exited the lab onto the balcony for a snack-and-coffee break, he pretended patient interest in a mussel until they returned inside.
Then his watch vibrated:
Incoming Call: Isabel Wright (call recording)
He answered instantly.
Her flannel-muffled breathing whispered across the line; she must have the phone capturing audio from the front pocket of her shirt.
With grit in his teeth, sunlight burning through the sunscreen on his neck, Wes couldn’t stop grinning—not even when Isabel joined Brianne by the windows, where the facilities manager was checking power to the aqueous plant nurseries.
She’d called him twice now.
Build-me-up Buttercup, actually calling.
A good pattern. A better habit. . .
“May I hold that for you?” Isabel was offering to take a water bottle balanced in the crook of Brianne’s elbow. But she didn’t wait for an answer, before continuing, “And—did you see the news today? The Cephalopod Sentience and Welfare Act was just signed into law.”
Oh, you pretty liar.
“What?” The facilities manager fumbled her hold on two fraying cables.
“The regulations go into effect almost immediately.” Isabel dipped a finger into the nearest tank, swirling casually through its kelp starts.
“MORI, the Hopkins Marine Station, and the Monterey Bay Aquarium will probably undergo federal inspections soon. Isn’t that good?
All laboratory cephalopods will receive the same precise standard of care that Dr. Solomon follows here. ”
“Uh. . . Right.” The cables slithered to the floor.
Brianne stood from her crouch by the tanks.
Blinking in the sharp light beaming through the institute’s windows, she gripped her bottle hard.
She smiled at Isabel, but her mouth was brittle.
“Yes, the Sentience and Welfare. . . Yes—of course, obviously, that’s. . . news. News for—MORI.”
“Good news.”
“Right. So I should check on—our. . . so we’re ready. Excuse me—”
Isabel Wright was so damn smart. Goading the BioPulse operative into acting urgently, right now? Not after Brianne had verified the Act’s legal information. Not later, when they might fail to catch her at the two-spot aquarium.
Yes—and the plan fucking worked.
Ostensibly interested in technical readings from her tablet while she rocked on her heels near the lobby door, Brianne spent barely five additional minutes observing Isabel’s movement around the lab with roller buckets and squeegees, watching her exchange comments with the staff on their subjects’ care and feeding, before most of MORI’s personnel headed out for a lunch break on the deck; Isabel declined to join them, with the excuse that she’d arrived late for her shift.
Then: Wes swung his viewfinder away from the balcony crowd, and located Brianne moving back into the half-empty lab. She approached Dr. Solomon (who hadn’t vacated her station to join her colleagues with their salads and sandwiches, of course) and hitched a manicured thumb over her shoulder.
“There’s a call for you at the front desk from Dr. Jennifer Mather.”
Dr. Jennifer Mather: the world’s foremost authority on octopus intelligence and social behaviors.
“Dr. Mather?”Behind her goggles, Dr. Solomon’s endemic frown didn’t lighten. But she left her cephalopods to take the call.
Her two-spot tank would be unattended for a little while.
Only Isabel remained in the wet lab with Brianne now, apparently distracted by guts and scales as she bent low to extract effluvia from a sink.
No one was watching the octopuses.
The BioPulse operative wasted no time.
Swooping in with her Stanley cup, she unfastened the aquarium’s security clamps, scooped up one of the young two-spots—click, click, click went Wes’s camera with its telephoto lens—and turned from the tank to screw on her bottle’s lid.
He unlocked his jaw to whisper a warning into his watch.
Wes Monaghan (voice-to-text)
Now.
Okay, came a flash of Isabel’s fishy fingers.
One stride of too-clean boots took Brianne away from the aquarium, her prize in hand. Two strides and her attention was focused on forcing down the bottle’s recalcitrant cap (badly fitted plastic, or an uncooperative tentacle resisting from inside?), rather than on her exit route—
Where Isabel appeared to block her path beside the leopard shark pool.
“Stop.”
Maybe it was the command, maybe it was surprise, or maybe it was a slick patch on the floor that threw Brianne off-balance, but she complied.
She halted with a wobble of her knees and a bobble of her uncooperative Stanley cup.
“Isabel? Oh. I. . . I thought you were heading outside with. . . I didn’t realize—”
“—that I was still here?”
“Everyone’s having lunch—”
“Or that I just saw you extract a California two-spot octopus from Dr. Solomon’s tank?
” Isabel’s flannel-clad arms were crossed, her own sturdy water-stained footwear planted between the sharks’ Caution striping and a steel bench.
Her cheeks were flushed, her gray gaze steady.
“But I am. I did. I overheard your conversation on the loading dock yesterday, too. Brianne Nichols, I know what you’re doing at MORI. I know who you are.”
“What?”
The lid on her bottle twitched, shifted.
Isabel nodded at it. “You’re working as an operative for BioPulse Pharmaceuticals.
You’ve stolen at least two juvenile octopuses from Dr. Solomon’s aquarium prior to today.
Probably more. You’ve now abducted another one.
I know why: young cephalopods are difficult to catch in the wild.
Most stay near their hatching grounds, in deep water that’s inaccessible without specialized submersible equipment.
You might catch adults, of course—but given their lifespans, they wouldn’t be useful to you for long.
So you’re smuggling MORI’s juvenile two-spots to a satellite testing facility in one of Moss Landing’s defunct fishing complexes.
A convenient place. Premeditated. Octopuses are delicate.
Transporting them over even short distances without physically and mentally stressing them is difficult.
You need them to be healthy. That’s why you’re stealing cephalopods from the institute and delivering them to BioPulse’s local facility.
You’re experimenting on them there to test a new drug—No.
” She raised a gloved hand, forestalling the beginnings of a protest. “How do I know this? I know, because the first octopus that escaped from your testing site, likely through a drain—”
A drain?
What if the bait balls he’d identified dissipating near BioPulse’s buildings on the beach weren’t really bait balls at all? Instead, could the turbulence he’d seen be the corporation pumping and dumping organic waste—dead fish, executed research subjects, offal—out into the bay?
Fuckers!
But he had to focus. Isabel was still in the lab with Brianne, was still speaking.
Breathe. Watch.
Click, click.
Listen.
“—that octopus, whose escape and welfare weren’t concerning to you?
” Lightning flashed beneath her eyelashes.
Her raised fingers clenched into a fist. “You should’ve worried.
I found her in the ocean. I’ve cared for her and observed her for nearly two weeks.
I have thirteen days of data documenting exactly how BioPulse’s illegal experimental activities have affected her brain, and—”
“Nothing about BioPulse’s work has been illegal.
” Isabel’s recounting had been accurate, confident—and extensive; recovered now from her surprise, Brianne’s interruption was crisp.
No more slack-jawed stutters. She gripped her water bottle and took a step to the right.
Isabel shadowed her, edging over the leopard sharks’ Caution tape.
The operative’s lips twisted in distaste.
“Well, not until that ludicrous Welfare Act passed—”
“—and not even today.” Isabel blocked her escape route a second time against the prep bench. “Though it should be.”
“What?” again.
“The Act hasn’t been signed into law yet. I lied,” she explained. No trace of repentance. “Now, open your water bottle.”
“No law—and open my—Oh, no.” This time, Brianne regained her composure much faster.
Her short, mirthless laugh vibrated through Wes’s watch.
She tucked a loose strand of hair back into her claw clip.
“Clever. But no, I don’t think so. Besides, even if I did and you saw something inside, who’d believe you?
I ran your background check. I know who you are.
I know your connections. Do you think Dr. Chase Meyer will be happy about the accusations you’re making against BioPulse? ”
“I don’t care.”