The next afternoon, Jackie stepped out of the hospital and into the press conference that Michael had insisted they hold. The Center’s board of directors was determined to leverage the increased number of animal rescues into payoff media attention for the Center.
Michael was brusque, and without trying succeeded in pushing most of her buttons. But she needed him, they all did. He knew how to charm funds out of people and how to develop the relationships that guaranteed the future of the Center. On days like this, she wished they’d hired an Executive Director—someone else to put on the public face—but like so many things, that too would have to wait.
“Nice outfit,” Michael said. “Yellow’s such a becoming color.”
She brushed her hands down her slickers. Normally she changed out of them, but there’d been an emergency surgery and she hadn’t had time.
“My favorite,” she said. “Right up there with puce.”
Michael brushed a speck of lint off of his perfectly tailored suit. “I meant to tell you—the board approved Bertelli as a board member last night. He runs a shipping line. He’s got deep pockets and deeper connections.”
“Sounds like an extra from the Godfather,” Jackie said. “Does he have any idea what we do?”
“I had breakfast with him,” Michael said as they walked over to the makeshift press podium. “He likes seals.”
One of the reporters zeroed in on her. “Dr. Brandon, what’s the prognosis on Othello?”
“And what would make an animal do such a nutty thing?” the reporter beside him asked.
Othello had made the morning news. The big sea lion had crawled up out of the bay and across the freeway. When the highway patrol showed up, he’d crawled onto the hood of their cruiser. It’d taken two rescue crews to subdue him and bring him in.
“We think a diatom bloom along the coast is causing the strandings in Monterey. The diatom becomes concentrated in the seals’ bodies as they feed on infected anchovies and sardines and causes lesions in the hippocampal region of their brains.” She watched the reporter’s eyes glaze over. “You’d act nutty too if it happened to you.”
She shouldn’t have added that last bit, but her tolerance for the press was low; science didn’t mesh well with twenty-second sound bites.
She took a breath and calmed herself, then fielded questions from the reporters about the hospital. Emergency rescues and surgeries made for better press than scientific facts and the intricacies of ecosystems.
As she turned to leave, a perky blonde shoved a microphone at her.
“Heard you had Tavonesi out here,” the reporter said, tossing her mane of hair and locking gazes with Jackie. “What’s he like?”
Jackie took a step back and stared blankly.
“Alex Tavonesi,” Michael whispered in her ear. “You know, of Trovare Vineyards.”
She hadn’t known. Being a vineyard scion explained Alex’s privileged manner, his style of dress and maybe the reason he’d been up at the river. But it didn’t explain him showing up at the Center.
“I mentioned that he helped you with that whale,” Michael added.
The reporter had the triumphant look of one waiting for a public-pleasing bit of gossip. Jackie swallowed down a lump of distaste and cleared her throat.
“What we have out here,” she said, holding a steady gaze into the camera, “are sick and emaciated sea lions from Monterey Bay. We’ve sent tissue samples to UC Davis and are investigating with the Academy of Sciences.”
She didn’t mention the harbor seal deaths in the North Bay or the radon they’d found in the water. Those announcements would have to wait until she had more evidence.
“What about the harbor seals you’ve admitted from the North Bay?” The reporter gave a knowing smile to Michael, flicked her hair again and shoved the microphone closer. “Mr. Albright told me you’d discovered some radioactive substance in the water samples from up there.”
Jackie glared at Michael and pressed her lips into a firm line. No matter how she coached him, he never seemed to get that research took time and that facts were important. He also didn’t seem to get that leaching chemicals was bad enough, but radioactivity shot them into a whole new game. If the second round of samples tested positive for radon, they’d need a very carefully planned press strategy, not wild headlines that alarmed people before they had the facts. But now it’d be all over the nightly news.
The reporter waited, holding her microphone in one hand and with the other smoothing her dress that clung like skin. The elegant garment was a stark contrast to Jackie’s yellow slickers and hoodie.
Jackie leaned over to Michael. “I think I’ll leave this one to you,” she whispered. “You’re well-matched.” She patted him on the arm. “And no more discussion of the North Bay situation, not yet.”
Disregarding Michael’s groan, she slipped away and walked toward her truck, ignoring the cameramen shooting B-roll in the pens.
Reporters.
Some of them meant well, but most were looking for blood. Well, they’d get plenty of that. She’d arranged for Gage to take them on a tour of the labs and hospital, with a last stop in necropsy. That usually sobered them up.
In her mind’s eye she saw the perky blonde teetering in her stilettos across the pitted floor of the necropsy lab, but the image didn’t make her smile.
She considered driving home but when she reached the top of the hill, she decided to head down to the beach.
The only cars in the lot were those of a few hearty surfers enjoying the waves still rolling in after yesterday’s storm. She leaned against her truck and watched one catch a near-shore break. He crouched, adeptly pumping his board and turning a tight 180 degrees. He skimmed the face of the wave and then slid skillfully down the backside and paddled out to wait for the next one.
Cory would’ve approved. Her brother was a world champion surfer, but even he took the waves at Rodeo seriously. Northern California surfing was for the skilled or the foolish, and the foolish did not last long. She liked a longer break, preferred to have the odds in her favor if the waves had the force of three thousand miles of open water rolling in behind.
She toed off her shoes and walked to the secluded cove at the far end of the beach. Inhaling deeply, she pulled the crisp scent of the salty breeze into her lungs.
Here she could breathe.
Here she could think.
She laughed at herself. Recover was more like it. Facing the press always drained her. She was a private person, maybe too private, and the work at the Center required lots of interface with the public. The limelight was useful for showcasing the mission and raising funds, but standing in it wasn’t one of her strengths. It exhausted her, and afterwards she always needed downtime. Gage thrived on the limelight; he never took it too seriously. She’d rather be peering into a microscope, performing a surgery or left to the quiet solitude of her research.
She knelt to examine a sea star clinging to a ball of kelp that had washed in with the tide. The star would die on the beach, blanched by the hot afternoon sun. She scooped it up, rolled up her trouser legs and waded into the surf.
The water that surged around her calves wasn’t nearly as cold as it usually was at this time of year. Not as cold as it should be. Not cold enough. Normally this stretch of California coast boasted one of the finest cold-water upwellings on the planet. Cold water meant nutrients and lots of them. Cold water meant deep-water fish and plankton and life.
But nothing was normal this year. Already they’d had more than a dozen animals admitted from the woefully inadequate satellite center up the coast in Albion Bay. Add to that the unusually high number of sick harbor seals coming in from the North Bay and the animals still coming in from Monterey—the Center would be swamped. Was already. All they needed was radioactive seals. That’d top off the season just great.
She pulled the long tail of the kelp along the beach and looked out over the surging waves, scanning her memory for contracto
rs she knew who might help build emergency pens and plumb them in for free. For the first time in her life, she dreaded the work ahead.
She buried her nose in the kelp before tossing it and the sea star back into the waves. The receding tide would carry them both out to the offshore rocks. The sea star would find its own new home.
Home.
She scanned the cove.
This was home.
The sea was home.
Which roof spanned the space over her head at night really didn’t matter.
She and Cory had grown up on the Cornish coast of England with the sea as their backyard. It was there that Cory had cut his teeth surfing, had honed his skill and become a champion.
She’d followed a different fascination.
Their father had been a fisheries biologist, one of England’s most admired scientists. The kind of scientist that mattered. His passion was bivalves, not much money there, but he was convinced they were sentinels of the health of the planet, convinced that studying the life cycle of the shelled creatures would lead to better ocean practices.
He’d introduced her to the world of the sea, a world that had captured her imagination and fed her spirit. She’d spent her childhood pattering about beaches with him, listening to his stories, soaking up every detail he’d shared about the secrets of ocean life. Sometimes she’d get to go out on the research boats. Those were stellar days. He would patiently answer her questions, sometimes stopping and saying, with a twinkle she’d loved, “Now that, Jackie, that’s a mystery.”
Those mysteries had absorbed her, drawn her on and lured her into the life of a scientist. She could still see his smile, even though he’d been gone over a decade. No, not just gone. He’d drowned when his small research boat capsized in a freak storm, died doing what he loved. At quiet times like these, Jackie missed him as if he'd just died.
A sneaker wave almost caught her off guard. The water might not be as cold as it should be, but it was still bracing. With a leap, she skittered back up the beach. As she did, the beacon from the lighthouse caught her eye.
And immediately she was reminded of the night rescue of the whale.
And of Alex Tavonesi.
Like a soft glove slipping across her skin, the memory of Alex’s touch rippled through her.
It’d been over a week, but the feelings he’d evoked hadn’t faded.
She could still feel the touch of his hands on her body. When he’d pulled her over the cliff, he’d held her, just long enough to set her down gently. In that brief moment, she’d felt safe.
But as he’d held her, he’d also set in motion a wave of long-submerged feelings that made her feel vulnerable in the worst way.
How could a few moments in a stranger’s arms open a gap that yawned so wide and called to her with such an insistent voice? And how could being touched by him open a wound she’d fled England to forget?
It’d been three years already. How many more would it take before she’d trust again—if she could trust again?
She shook off the memory and eyed the high cliff bordering the cove.
It’d be an easy climb, lots of toe- and finger-holds. Climbing always helped her conquer her fears, helped her focus—with a wall of rock eight inches from her face and a good drop below, there was no other choice. Every move was deliberate and controlled. Every move was in her own hands.
She walked toward the cliff face.
The comfort of being in control was another reason she liked facts better than instincts. Facts could be logged, analyzed and examined; they followed the rules of logic. Instincts could rise up, unbidden, and had unfathomable rules of their own.
She squinted in the light, the little muscles of her neck contracting as she tried to neatly fit Alex and the feelings he’d roused into some sort of logical pattern. Gage was right: Alex had been strong enough to hold her, to haul her to safety, and he hadn’t known the risk. A normal person couldn’t have done it—he was remarkably strong for a rich boy. He probably didn’t navigate by the rules of logic, at least not any rules she knew.
A rock fell from above her and landed near her feet. She studied the cliff: the rains had soaked into the clay, softening the surface. It wouldn’t be a safe climb. Besides, her arm still hurt worse than she’d let on.
She stared at the patterns in the rock.
She’d have to find another way to sort herself out.