Austin clicked off, then walked to the ship’s railing. He was burning with impatience. He didn’t like interrupting the sabbatical Paul and Gamay Trout were taking from the Special Assignments Team, but until he and Zavala managed to extricate themselves from the police investigation they would have to be the team’s eyes and ears.

He gazed at the sparkle of the morning sun on the water. He sometimes joked that he was afflicted with what he called the King Neptune syndrome. He had spent so much of his life on or under the ocean that he had developed a proprietary attitude toward the two-thirds of the globe covered by water.

Austin had conceived the Bathysphere 3 project as a way to instill respect for the sea in the young people who would someday become its caretakers.

The faceless entity behind the attacks had almost ruined that.

He knew his mortal limitations. Unlike Neptune, Austin couldn’t raise a storm at the touch of a trident.

A cold glint came to his eyes, and he compressed his lips in a tight, humorless smile.

But he had shown numerous times that he could raise hell. He couldn’t wait to get off the ship so he could rattle the walls of Hades.

Unknown

NUMA 8 - Medusa

CHAPTER 17

PAUL TROUT WAS NEAR THE END OF THE SEMINAR HE WAS leading on global warming when his cell phone began to vibrate. Without missing a beat, he reached into his sports jacket pocket, shut off the phone, and threw the next graph up on the projection screen, only to hear a soft ripple of laughter behind his back. He turned, curious at what could be so humorous about an ocean-salinity pie chart.

No one was looking at the chart. Every eye in the room was staring out the window at an attractive red-haired woman in a two-piece bathing suit who was on the lawn outside the building. She was doing jumping jacks and waving a cell phone in the air at the same time.

Trout’s head dipped down, as if looking over his glasses in deep thought, and he tugged at the large, colorful bow tie at his neck.

A seminar participant snickered.

“Who is that crazy woman?”

A faint smile came to Trout’s lips.

“I’m afraid that crazy woman is my wife. Please excuse me.”

A quiet gasp of disbelief followed Trout’s exit from the room, but he was used to such reactions. He was a good-looking young man with large hazel-colored eyes and light brown hair neatly parted down the middle and combed back at the temples Gatsby style. In a tailored suit that draped his six-foot-eight physique perfectly, he was impeccably dressed as usual. But while he displayed a sly sense of humor, people often found his serious demeanor at odds with that of his more vivacious wife.

Trout stepped out into the hall and glanced at his phone. A text message appeared.

CAN U TALK?