Waveborn

33

                  

She and Jen worked late into the night and picked up where they'd left off early the next morning. By afternoon, they had built three new mooring buoys and three new monitor casings, complete with heavy-duty locks. After that, they motored around the island to check on the remaining monitors. A total of five were missing.

While they were out, clouds grayed the sky and covered the sun; by the time they circled back around to Rodger's Harbor, several hours later, it had started to drizzle and visibility had dropped to thirty feet. Jen dropped Cass off at the dock.

"Are you going back to the Piper Center?" Cass asked. She thought uneasily of Selena watching the research station and wished Jen would, for once, take a night off.

"Might as well. I'm too keyed up to do anything else." Jen jumped to the dock, where she surprised Cass with a quick hug. "Thanks for sticking around yesterday and today. The idea that someone would purposefully sabotage my work-it's getting to me. I can't stop wondering who would do such a thing. And why."

Cass nodded. It was getting to her, too. She might know the "who," but she didn't get the "why." Even if Selena wanted to keep people from spying on the Serrans, why attack Jen's equipment now?

On the Andiamo, her new bicycle looked forlorn, canted on one side in all its candy-apple red glory, limp streamers beaded with drops of rain. She wasn't excited about riding her bike in the rain, but if she walked, she'd be nearly an hour late for rehearsal. An hour late to see Jason.

She pictured his lopsided grin, the way his hair flopped over one eye. She'd seen him Monday, only three days before. Three days since he sat behind her on the kayak, because he wanted her to see his cove in the moonlight. Three days since....

She grabbed the bike's handlebars and lifted it over the rail, because she missed him. A lot. And the bike was the fastest way to fix that.

She headed south in fits and starts, dodging puddles. It was a fight to keep her front wheel from turning every time she hit a bump or water-filled pothole. Rain had turned the gravel into soup. Within the first ten minutes, her shorts were soaked and her fingers numb with cold; she wished she'd taken the time to change into jeans.

She imagined Jason's expression when she pulled into his drive all soaked and muddy and felt a huge, silly grin spread across her face. He'd think she was crazy. He'd think she was wonderful.

Halfway there, a fallen branch appeared out of the mist, blocking the road. She jerked the handlebars and slammed on her brakes; the bike pivoted over its front wheel.

One moment, she was flying over the handlebars. The next, her shoulder hit and she was skidding through mud and weeds and gravel toward the drop off at the edge of the road.

She screamed-and slid to a stop. Both legs jutted over the ledge. In one hand, she held a clump of weeds pulled out by the roots, and in the other, a fistful of mud in the other. Sixty feet below, waves foamed and hissed against the rocks. A bike wheel whirred round and round behind her.

Another foot, just one more, and she would have gone over the edge.

She gulped air. "Shit." She dropped the mud and weeds, wiped her hands on her shorts, and winced. She must have scraped her palms raw.

When she tried to move away from the road's edge, her arms and legs felt like they belonged to a rag doll. She was shaking, pain starting to push through the adrenaline rush. Palms, forearms, shoulder, side-everything hurt.

"Never do anything by halves, do you?" she said aloud. She tried again to push to sitting. One arm, then the other, bending wrists and elbows, testing ankles and knees. Nothing broken.