Donovans 02 - Jade Island

gunwale and into the water on the southwest side of the island, perhaps a roundabout thousand feet from the point where Archer had gone ashore. Even as Jake vanished into the rainy darkness, Kyle turned the Zodiac and headed out into the strait to watch the fun from a safe distance.
     
    When the intercom came on again, water was still dripping off Steve’s jacket, which was hung over the shower rod in his small quarters.
    “Got a light again, Steve.”
    “Where?”
    “Same sector.”
    “Same piece of it?”
    “Nope. Other side of the headland. Southwest. Unless the sensors are getting cute. They do that sometimes in the rain.”
    Which, in the Pacific Northwest, meant the equipment wasn’t really reliable.
    “It’s probably more of what was there the last time,” Steve said. “Nothing.”
    “Fifteen bucks an hour, remember?”
    “Crap. I’ll call you when I get there.”
     
    Nervously Lianne watched Kyle prepare to go into the dark water. She clutched the receiver with its odd-shaped aerial and small, lighted dial.
    “Test it,” she said.
    Kyle switched his transmitter on.
    “Okay,” she said. “You’re on the grid.”
    He switched off.
    “Twenty minutes,” she said.
    Kyle grabbed the back of Lianne’s neck and swiftly kissed her mouth. It was the one part of both of them that wasn’t covered with black neoprene. Then he rolled out of the Zodiac and into the cold water.
    Lianne drove the Zodiac farther out into the sound. Alone on the restless, mysterious water, she settled in to wait for the longest twenty minutes of her life. Night-vision goggles helped her to make out the island. Once she even thought she might have seen something move across a patch of winter-killed grass that looked pale against the darker rocks and forest.
    From her right came a sudden whoosh-gasp, as though a nearby diver had surfaced, blown out air suddenly, and sucked it back in just as fast. She turned toward the sound so quickly that she nearly lost her balance in the rocking Zodiac.
    She saw nothing except the smooth surface of the water, oddly luminous through the night goggles. She heard nothing except the slap of water against the boat. Just when she thought she had been imagining things, the sound came again, closer this time. Her heart beat wildly as she imagined a diver stalking the Zodiac.
    Silently a black shape rose out of the water, climbing higher and higher until it was a triangular fin taller than Lianne. The rapid gust and suck of air pulsed in the night.A twist of vapor, a whisper of white markings on black, and the killer whale disappeared into the sea with the same immense, mysterious power as when it had appeared.
    Awe prickled over Lianne in a shower of tiny needles. She held her breath, listening, but the whale didn’t surface again.
    Headlights swept down the island toward the shallow, rocky cove where Kyle had gone ashore. Lianne strained forward, waiting for the headlights to stop. But the vehicle kept going to the far end of the island, where Jake and Archer were taking turns setting off sensors.
    She let out her breath in a relieved sigh. Archer had guessed right. Dick Farmer hadn’t thought the bleak little cove was inviting enough to be worth putting sensors in to warn of trespassers. After all, Farmer was worried about kayakers, bird-watchers, and picnickers parading around the island, not an armed invasion.
    Twenty minutes after Lianne had dropped Kyle off, the locator lit up. She turned the Zodiac and headed at a sedate speed for the invisible piece of flotsam that was Kyle Donovan.
    She came so close to him that she nearly ran him down and had to circle back, cut the engine, and drift. The Zodiac hesitated, then rocked hard as Kyle pulled himself aboard. Salt water cascaded off him.
    “I’ll take it,” he said, reaching for the steering arm of the outboard. “Go to the bow.”
     
    In an hour the sensors recorded eleven hits, three of them while Steve was still parked on the headland. Nothing ever showed up when he ran his searchlight or flashlight over the landscape. By the time he got fed up with running back and forth, he was wet to his underwear, cold, and thoroughly disgusted.
    When he returned to the compound, he didn’t bother to go to his quarters. He went straight to the security room, where Murray sat dry and warm and watched Farmer’s idiot electronics go ftzz in the night.
    “There’s gotta be a bug in the system,” Steve said in disgust. “Water, probably.