Born Ready

He felt like a damned fool. Your father’s murderer is turning the Key West mangrove channels into a devil’s playground and he’s using gullible young women to do it.

Except Jackie hadn’t seemed the least bit gullible. She struck him as focused and very capable. A woman who knew exactly what she was doing. His stomach soured. The eggs smelled gelatinous.

“We need to seriously look into this,” he told Carl.

“I was hoping you’d say that, but I don’t have a budget for supposition. I have no proof beyond this small-time dealer who’s looking for a plea bargain. It could all be bullshit.”

“But you feel it’s got a ring of truth to it?”

“Considering DeCristo’s connections? Yeah, I think it’s not only plausible, but possible.”

“Let me do some digging.”

“But you’re on vacation.”

“You know there’s no such thing as a Coastie on vacation.”

“Your sister is getting married. You’ve got tuxedo fittings and rehearsal dinners—”

“Next week. That’s all next week.”

Carl shook his head. “I told you because you have pull in Washington and I thought that maybe you could get us a bigger budget for interdiction.”

“In order to do that I’ve got to have something stronger to go on than a rumor. I’ll put my ear to the ground,” he said. “You just leave this to me.”

3

I will ensure that my superiors rest easy with the knowledge that I am on the helm, no matter what the conditions.

—Surfman’s Creed

WATER.

It stirred Jackie Birchard’s soul in a way nothing else did. She’d been born in March, a Pisces. Sign of the fish. Not that she believed in anything as unscientific as astrology. Her father would never have stood for it if she had exhibited a budding interest in horoscopes.

She sat cross-legged on the dumpy old sofa that came with the apartment she rented, her notebook computer nestled in her lap while she monitored the readout from her equipment submersed in the estuary. The conditions were perfect. She was determined to prove that her hunch was right.

Up until a year ago, Starksia starcki, aka the Key blenny, could be found in only one location in the world. Just South of Big Pine Key. But then suddenly, the Key blenny had started disappearing from that area.

Dr. Jack Birchard had been of the mind the Key blenny was on the road to complete extinction and he attributed it to a number of cumulative environmental factors in that region. Even though he cared deeply about the ecology, her father was also the most unsentimental man on the face of the earth. Stoically, he moved on to other more salvageable creatures, leaving the Key blenny to its fate.

This was when the crack in their relationship—that had been there from the day she was born—expanded into an unbridgeable fissure. She couldn’t forgive him for writing off the Key blenny.

Particularly, when he looked her in the eye and said, “It’s just one species of fish. We have to focus on the bigger picture. Let it go, daughter.”

And she’d made the mistake of bringing up an old emotional argument that had no place in the discussion. She raised her chin, met his challenging stare with a razor-sharp glare of her own. “Just like you did with Mother?”

He didn’t fight with her. He never fought. Just issued edicts and expected them to be obeyed. If you were rebellious enough to disagree with him, he froze you out.

His eyes turned to glaciers. “You’re never to mention her name again. Do you hear me?”

Okay, she shouldn’t have brought up her mother. Ancient history. Water under the bridge. It wasn’t as if they knew what had happened to her, although if Jackie had been truly interested, she could have called her half brother, Boone. But it had been easier to let things lie.

“You’re wrong,” she said, dropping the whole issue of her mother. It would always remain a sore spot between them. “About the Key blenny.”

“Wrong?” He arched a skeptical brow, sent her a glower that made her wish for an overcoat. He adjusted his glasses, narrowed his eyes.

“The fish isn’t extinct.”

“You have empirical data to support this assertion?”

“No, not yet—”

He dismissed her with a curt wave of his hand. “The Key blenny is a lost cause and our time is too valuable. Let’s not bawl over spilled milk.”

“They’re not dead,” she insisted. “I’ve tracked the current and the minute changes in temperature and I think they’ve simply migrated to Key West.” She’d pointed to the ocean map on the wall of his research yacht. “I believe they’re here.”

He burst out laughing. “Starksia starcki has never migrated. They are not an adaptable subspecies, which is why they’re virtually extinct.”

Jackie gritted her teeth. Her father’s arrogant belief that he knew best in matters of the sea grated on her nerves. Impossible to believe that a prestigious scientist, the oceanographer second only to Jacques Cousteau, could be so irrationally stubborn. But that was her dad. He was brilliant, yes, but his ego was the size of the sun.

“Desperate circumstances call for desperate measures and the Key blenny has risen to the challenge,” she said.

He shook his head violently. “There’s no coral in that area. Starksia starcki is a reef dweller.”

“They’ve adapted in that regard as well and they’re using the mangrove mangles for their food source.”

“Doesn’t happen.”

“I think it is happening.”

“Based on what?”

She explained her theory.

He made a face. “Pseudo science. I thought I taught you better than that. You’re allowing romanticism to sway your critical thinking.”

She’d tried to defend her position in a calm, rational manner but he kept cutting her off. That’s when Jackie knew that if she wanted to save the Key blenny, she was going to have to do it on her own. So she’d packed her things, left MIT, where her father taught, and transferred to the University of California where she was welcomed with open arms.

From a political standpoint, snagging Jack Birchard’s disenfranchised daughter as a doctoral candidate was a colorful feather in the university’s cap. They embraced her theory on the Key blenny, loaned her equipment for her independent study and even gave her a monthly stipend. She felt giddily liberated and wished she’d left her father’s direct sphere of influence a long time ago. No more kowtowing to his diktat. She was free to explore the sea on her own. A bright future awaited her.

Now, all she had to do was prove her theory.

The hardest part was going to be keeping people away from her instruments. She hadn’t fully realized that this was going to be a major issue until Scott Everly had shown up.

One minute she’d been totally isolated in the estuary, just her and nature. The next minute there had been the handsome man in the kayak. If he could appear out of nowhere, so could others.

Disgruntled, she settled the computer on the coffee table and got up to walk out onto the balcony. Sunset came quickly in the Keys and she wanted to catch it before it was gone. By dawn, she’d be back on the water. Not because she needed to go out there again so soon, but simply because she worried about Everly returning to muck with her equipment.