“No time for platitudes, I’m afraid,” Trevor said with a hurried smile. Starting the motor, he gunned the throttle and spun the small boat around the back side of the tanker and out the covered dock. Never looking back, he aimed the boat down the channel and pushed it to its top speed.

Summer tried to check Dirk’s wound under the starlight, finding a large knot on the top of his skull that was still damp with blood. His dive hood had saved him from a deeper gouge to the skin, and perhaps a worse fate as well.

“Forgot to wear my hard hat,” he mumbled, trying hard to focus his eyes on Summer.

“Your hard head is much too tough to break,” she said, laughing aloud in an emotional release.

The boat plowed through the darkness, Trevor hugging the shoreline until suddenly easing off the throttle. The darkened boat Summer had spotted earlier loomed ahead, now recognizable as Trevor’s Canadian Resources vessel. Trevor brought the outboard alongside and helped Dirk and Summer aboard, then let the security boat drift. He quickly pulled anchor and motored the research craft down the channel. When they were well out of sight of the facility, he crossed to the opposite side of the channel, then turned and crept back toward Kitimat at slow speed.

Cruising past the Terra Green facility, they witnessed several flashlight beams crisscrossing the grounds but noticed no obvious alarms. The boat slipped unseen into the Kitimat dock, and Trevor killed its motor and tied it off. On the stern deck, Dirk had begun to regain form, save for some dizziness and a pounding head. He shook Trevor’s hand after the ecologist helped him ashore.

“ Thanks for fishing me out. I would have had a long sleep underwater if not for you.”

“Entirely good luck. I was swimming along the dock when I heard the small boat come in. I was actually hiding in the water beneath the gangplank when the guard came ashore. I didn’t even realize it was you until I recognized Summer’s voice right before you went over the side. You hit the water just a few feet from me. When you didn’t move, I immediately jammed my regulator in your mouth. The hard part was keeping us both submerged until we were out of view.”

“Shame on a federal employee for trespassing on private property,” Summer said with a grin.

“It’s all your fault,” Trevor replied. “You kept talking about the importance of the water samples, so I thought we needed to know if there was a link to the facility.” He handed Summer a dive bag containing several small vials of water.

“Hope they match mine,” Summer replied, showing her own samples. “Of course, I’ll need to get our boat back to complete the analysis.”