BooksBarbecue
Back The Nest
Chapters (82)
  1. Cover
  2. Copyright page
  3. Introduction by Will Errickson
  4. Acknowledgements
  5. TREMORS
  6. 1
  7. 2
  8. 3
  9. 4
  10. 5
  11. 6
  12. SUSPICIONS
  13. 1
  14. 2
  15. 3
  16. 4
  17. 5
  18. DREAD
  19. 1
  20. 2
  21. 3
  22. 4
  23. 5
  24. 6
  25. WITNESS
  26. 1
  27. 2
  28. 3
  29. ALERT
  30. 1
  31. 2
  32. 3
  33. 4
  34. 5
  35. ENCOUNTER
  36. 1
  37. 2
  38. 3
  39. 4
  40. 5
  41. 6
  42. HAVOC
  43. 1
  44. 2
  45. 3
  46. 4
  47. 5
  48. 6
  49. SEARCH
  50. 1
  51. 2
  52. 3
  53. 4
  54. 5
  55. CLASH
  56. 1
  57. 2
  58. 3
  59. 4
  60. 5
  61. 6
  62. 7
  63. COUNTERATTACK
  64. 1
  65. 2
  66. 3
  67. 4
  68. 5
  69. 6
  70. 7
  71. VICTORY
  72. 1
  73. 2
  74. 3
  75. 4
  76. 5
  77. 6
  78. 7
  79. 8
  80. 9
  81. EPILOGUE
  82. About the Author

Last night on the beach with Bonnie, he had been the one to try to put Yarkie’s problem in perspective. Big fish eat little fish eat little fish eat little fish, down to the plankton—on Yarkie, something had gone wrong with the chain. It was reckless for men to forget that Nature was always a primal shark. She might seem to be swimming placidly, half-­asleep, but you always had to be wary. She could always turn and tear you to pieces, as the brewing storm might do in these waters later this very day.

“A little rough, isn’t it?” the Harvard woman was asking.

Craig Soaras smiled broadly at her, almost an apology, wanting her to know that he and the others on Yarkie appreciated her assistance and wanted to be friendly. “Not yet,” he said. “But it looks to be a bad one by tonight.”

Her small frown held. “How long to Yarkie?”

The bowler shape was already rising out of the sea to the east. “Ten minutes, about.” Craig asked anxiously, “You feeling all right, m’am?”

She surprised him with a light laugh. “No problem.” Then she added in an open, friendly tone, “Please don’t call me ‘m’am’.”

Craig Soaras’s mustache twitched amiably. “Okay, doctor.”

“Just Wanda does it,” she told him pleasantly. “I understand we’ll all be working together for a while, Mr. Soaras.”

He responded, “Just Craig will do,” and they laughed together.

With that, the man tied the wheel and went to stand at the rail. He noticed her hands. The left one was beautiful, with soft skin and long, sensitive fingers. The right hand shocked him. It was brute red, with crooked scar tissue in a leathery pattern. The woman saw his eyes. “A lab accident,” she explained. And stopped. No need to talk of the image in her head every time she looked at her crippled hand. The mishap had been over in a flash. An experimental mouse had squirmed away and leaped into the beaker of nitric acid. Her reflex act had been so stupid, so fruitless. The animal was dead before her plunging hand hit the acid. Yet she supposed she would do the same thing again. An instinct to save life? Sometimes she thought she ought to have been a medical doctor rather than a research biologist.

The husky boat rose and fell, bumped and kicked up spray in the rising sea. Craig returned to the wheel. Dr. Lindstrom watched his easy, sure motions, his handsome eyes alert on the compass. The woman wished she could free her lab-­cramped feelings, unfurl them to fly like the gulls to which the Yarkie sailor was pointing. The birds were wheeling over a roiling circle of sea to their left.