Waveborn

18

The sharp-bladed knife flashed through her mind again. Stupid question. Obviously Jen was in danger, it just wasn't obvious why or how much. Until Cass figured it out, she didn't want Jen to be by herself at the research center, out in the middle of nowhere. "Yes," she said. "Give me a few minutes."

She had to tell Jason what had happened. He needed to know that his mystery girl had ordered Cass to stay away from him.

That should be an interesting conversation. Hey, Jason, nice to see you, lovely time last night-and by the way, I met that girl we talked about and she threatened me with a knife and stole Jen's necklace. The one my mother gave her. Oh, I think she's my sister, which is kind of a problem because she said she's a "sea person" and I'm not sure what that makes me.

She dug out her cell, only to realize that she didn't have Jason's number. If she'd been thinking, she would have gotten it the night before, but she hadn't and she wasn't supposed to see him again until late that afternoon when, he'd informed her, she would practice riding her bike before they headed to rehearsal.

The band flyer, she remembered. It had listed his number.

Moments later, she'd yanked her hair back into a snarled ponytail and shoved her feet into sandals. "I need to grab something from the marina," she told a startled-looking Jen. "I'll meet you at the whaler."

She ran all the way to the mercantile, where the neon green flyer was conspicuously absent from the bulletin board. Crap. She rattled the mercantile door: locked. "Damn, damn, damn," she whispered. Jason should be all right until afternoon, right? Creepy chick hadn't yet bothered him during the day. Cass gave the door one last shake before running to meet Jen.

Jen stood at the rear of the Andiamo, staring at the immense salmon. "Cass? Do have any idea why there's a fish on the foredeck?"

"My guess? An orca brought it to us," Cass said, which was the absolute truth-and Jen would never, in a million years, believe it.

#

The Piper Research Center perched fifty-odd feet above a small bay, a perfect spot for people who studied orcas because you could see miles and miles of open ocean from the observation deck. It was beautiful from the outside, stonework surrounding immense windows that looked out over Haro Strait and a redwood balcony that protruded from the cliff on which it was built. Inside, it was a disaster of buckets, boating supplies, and waders in the entry and storeroom; paperwork, computer disks, scribbled-on notepads covered desks and tables. Every surface not covered by paperwork held books and journals and an unbound copy of someone's Ph.D. thesis. At first Cass figured it was just because Peter had left in a hurry, but this wasn't a surface-level mess. This was the mess of someone who filed by the pile method.

Maybe Peter was the kind of person who needed to have things visible if he wanted to remember them.

On the far side of the room, Jen booted up an ancient-looking computer. "I've been sorting through the data chips, figuring out which ones are already in the system and which still need to be uploaded."

"Should I tackle the papers?" Cass asked.

She could hear Jen's relieved sigh all the way across the room. "Please. I don't even know where to start."

"That is the tricky part."

Cass frowned at the overflowing desk. Anything on a boat would be better than paperwork. She bet Peter would agree, which was probably why his boat was spotless while the office looked like it had been hit by a typhoon. She had her work cut out for her, if she was going to get this place into any kind of shape, which was probably just as well. Work would crowd out worries about her mother, her sister, and what her sister wanted with Jen and Jason.