Ashley had been resting her chin on her knees, but she raised it to peer at me. “Your mom gave up on the Greek names after the first two?”
“She saw the way the kids teased me, so better sense won out over her artistic whimsy,” I clarified.
“Ah.”
We both fell silent for a time, listening to the low hum of nighttime insects and the sound of the waves on the shore. Apart from the noise, without our voices, it was intensely quiet. I always forgot how empty these uninhabited spaces were, away from the cities and cars. You had no idea how much everyday noise life held until you were here, where none of that existed. It was primal.
“What about you?” I asked. The words came out of nowhere and surprised me as much as they did her.
“Me?” Her eyes widened, and her head tilted slightly, and I realized I liked how it looked. They were green from what I could see in the dim moonlight—I hadn’t had the time earlier to stop and take notice—and the gesture made her look inquisitive and elfin.
“Yeah. You know more about me now, so I should know more about you.”
“Oh.” She swallowed, and I wondered what thoughts I’d startled her from. “Well, it’s nothing too exciting. No Mediterranean cruise or Greek god names. My mom’s family owns a fishing company and a fish restaurant right on the water in Oakland—my great-grandfather started it. My uncles have the fishing part of the business, and my mom runs the restaurant. I have two older brothers, one who works in Silicon Valley, and the other helps run the restaurant.”
“So, you grew up around the water and boats?” The swimming and familiarity with the ocean and ships made more sense.
“Oh, yeah. I might as well have been born on one. My dad was a marine biologist, too, so I get it from both sides. The ocean is in my blood.”
Ashley said the sentence with a touch of pride, but I’d also caught something else there—a slight tinge of sadness. And I thought I’d caught the word that gave me a clue as to why.
“Was?” I asked.
“Yeah. He died on a research trip when I was in high school.”
She rested her chin back on her knees, her gaze far away, clearly reliving something about which I knew nothing. It was strange that, between all the wars in which my father had been involved, and the number of military actions my brothers and I had been a part of, we’d come home. But Ashley’s father, a marine biologist, hadn’t.
And now, Ashley might not.
“Is that why you became a marine biologist?”
Her green eyes slid back to me as though I had pulled her bodily from her memories, then she sat up again. “Yes, mostly, anyway. When I got old enough, my dad let me go with him on some of his research trips, and I fell in love with it.”
“What exactly do you do, as far as marine biology?” I would be the first to admit the only thing I knew about the subject was what I’d learned in my high school science class.
“I research migration patterns—the what, the how, the whys—and what happens when they get interrupted, which is how I got pulled onto this team. I work at Berkley, but the Ocean Institute also employs me on a case-by-case basis.”
“That’s the government-run agency, right?”
Ashley nodded. “Our government runs it, but it works closely with similar institutes around the world, so it’s pretty international.”
“So, that’s how you got to be in the wrong place at the wrong time?” I asked.
Another nod and a deep breath as her gaze met the ground. “We all were.”
“I’m sorry about your team.” I hadn’t said it earlier. I probably wouldn’t have said it at all, but since we were sharing, it seemed like the right thing to say.
Ashley stared at the ground for a moment more, then looked back up at me, a strained smile on her face that didn’t reach her eyes. “I’m sorry about yours, too.”
Silence fell between us again, and I let my head fall back to look up at the stars. The rational, Navy-trained part of me, the one my father had raised, said we should go back to sleep. That we shouldn’t have been up at all, certainly not to have mind-blowing sex when we didn’t even know who or what was out there or how we would survive. We should get up at first light, before it grew too hot, and search the island.
But the rest of me didn’t care.
“You mentioned the wildlife in the area was acting strangely?”
“Yes.” Ashley passed a hand across her forehead. “That’s why they called me in—I research migration patterns, and the others did something similar. Dr. Erdogan worked with multiple companies on offshore drilling and ocean-bound power and Internet lines to ensure they didn’t affect the wildlife. The reports we’d been getting showed that everything was off—migration patterns, fishing patterns, you name it. The local economy had started to suffer because of it.”
“How long were you there?” I asked. “Did you find anything?”