The following winter his aunt whose name escaped him died in childbirth. His father had wept.
Death unmans us all, Doyle thought.
Riley stepped over to him. “You’ve been here before.”
“Yes.”
“With your family?”
“Yes. Did you make the deal?”
She studied him a moment longer, then nodded. “Done. We can load the equipment.”
They didn’t speak again, or only of practicalities as along with Donahue they carted tanks, wet suits, equipment.
Riley addressed her conversation to Donahue, some talk, Doyle realized, of the dives a mutual acquaintance had taken a few years earlier.
When Donahue asked about the motorcycle, Riley just s
miled and told him someone would pick it up later. And they’d be back to refill the tanks when needed.
Since she’d made the deal, she took the wheelhouse, eased the boat away from the dock with a wave to Donahue, already heading back to his brightwork.
“Making some small talk also causes fewer ripples,” she pointed out.
“You were doing enough for both of us. It’s a good boat.”
“The friend we small talked about is a marine biologist, and he’s partnered with a marine anthropologist. So Donahue came highly recommended. The anthro’s also a lycan. The daughter of a friend of my mother’s.”
“Small world.”
“Situationally.”
It was a good boat, and she knew how to handle it. She headed north, kept within sight of the coast until she spotted a cove.
“A good spot,” she called out, “for dropping four people out of the air.”
She navigated in, using the shelter of the cliff face for cover, then pulled out her phone.
“Latitude and longitude for Sawyer. I’ve got an app for that. You’d better come up here so somebody doesn’t splat on top of you.”
He moved up with her while she found the coordinates.
She still smelled of the forest, he noted, if the forest grew out of the sea.
“Hey, Sawyer, we’re about halfway between here and there.” She read off the coordinates. “Same type of RIB we’ve been using. Yeah, you got that. We’re in the wheelhouse, nosed into a cove, bow toward the cliff, so you’ve got the rest of the boat. Don’t miss,” she added, then pocketed the phone.
“They’ll be a minute. You know, given my bloodline and line of work, I’ve always been open to, we’ll say, the unusual. But up until recently I wouldn’t have seen myself hanging out waiting for four pals to pop out of thin air.”
“A small and fluid world.”
“Fluid works.”
Water lapped and rocked against the boat, and Doyle—who could go weeks happily speaking to no one—found himself restless with the silence.
“Do lycans tend to go into science?”
“I wouldn’t say so. I know teachers, artists, business types, chefs, lazy asses, politicians—”