by Dan Ames
Janey looked like she was going to say something but stopped. She turned away, then changed her mind and turned back.
“Be careful,” she said.
Pauling said she would, folded the map up and put it in the pocket of her sweatpants and set out on a run once she got back out on the main road.
The road was called Perimeter Drive and naturally it ran along the contour of the island. The entrance to the footpath was less than a mile from the Nest.
It was strange to be working out without music but Pauling wanted to be able to hear anything that was going on. Especially if she heard rifle fire that sounded like it might be a hair too close.
Once she was warmed up she set out at a slow jog, enjoying the feel of the moisture in the air, the soft sea breeze that always seemed to be blowing.
She found the turnoff and went down the path, a trail of hard-packed dirt and small stones.
It skirted the edge of the cliff and she had to remind herself that if she went over the side, no one would find her for a long time.
She lengthened her stride, glad to be running again. When she’d worked at the Bureau she’d run every day and had come to crave the exercise, her antidote for stress.
Pauling ran easily, eating up the miles, lost in the stark beauty of the scenery. She had once run on the beach in Malibu and not only was this breathtaking in its unique way, she had this all to herself.
There was nothing marking the area where Paige’s body had been found but Pauling recognized it right away from the photographs in the documents Nathan had given her. She slowed to a walk and went to the water’s edge.
The air seemed to turn colder all around her and this close to the water she felt its immense power. The waves crashed into the surf with thunderous regularity she could feel in her knees. Pauling put her hand down and the water was ice cold.
No way Paige would swim in this stuff.
It was not the calmer water of a hotel swimming pool, either. It was a churning type of sea with thick waves, sea lions and kelp out in the distance. It didn’t even seem right to call it a beach. This was the real deal. The Pacific Ocean in all its unspoiled beauty and ferocity.
Nathan was right.
Paige would never have gone willingly into this water.
“Watch yourself,” a voice said behind her.
Startled, Pauling turned.
A man, also in running gear and slightly out of breath with a fine sheen of sweat on his forehead stopped a few feet from her.
He was strikingly handsome and his perfect teeth gleamed in the gray air.
“There’s a hell of an undertow just a few feet out,” he said. “If it grabs ahold of you, you don’t have a chance.”
He stepped closer and a slight chill ran through Pauling’s body.
He had the most beautiful pair of blue eyes she had ever seen.
Chapter Twenty-Five
“I’m Michael Tallon,” he said. He stuck out a hand and Pauling shook it. It was warm and strong but not wet. She had a feeling her hand was sweaty. On his other wrist was an impressive watch, with a thick face and steel bracelet.
“Pauling,” she said. “Thanks for the warning.”
“It’s deceptive,” Tallon responded. “The undertow. Guys are always surprised when we get them in the water and it starts pulling at them.”
“What do they do?”
“We teach them to swim diagonally, as opposed to directly against the undertow. You have a better chance of swimming out of the current that way. We’ve had some strong swimmers take it on. And they lost every time.”
For a moment, they both stood and looked out at the water.
“It’s a Ball,” he said.
Pauling looked at him.
He lifted his wrist. “My watch. You were looking at it. A Ball Engineer Hydrocarbon NEDU. NEDU stands for Navy Experimental Dive Unit.”
“So you’re Navy?” she asked.
“Sort of,” he responded.
“And there was the girl who drowned here, right? This is where they found her body?”
Tallon stiffened at the question, and for a moment the nice guy was gone. His expression had hardened and his mouth had formed a thin line.
“Yeah,” he said. “And they didn’t find her. I did.”
“You found her?” Pauling asked, wondering if the name Michael Tallon had rang any bells with her. Had it been in the police report?
“I run here practically every morning,” he explained. “It was not good.”
Pauling was about to ask him if he had known Paige, but he cut her off with a quick question of his own.
“So you’re with the bird folks?” he asked. There was a small smile on his face.
“You look like you already know the answer to that. What, the guys at the Salty Crab?”
He nodded, a bit sheepish.
She shook her head. “Don’t you guys have anything else to do than talk about every new woman who shows up at the bar? What, have you got a web cam there?”
He laughed, and Pauling was struck again by his good looks.
“Hey, I know we just met, but are you hungry? I was going to the cafeteria to get some lunch.”
A bit abrupt, but Pauling had to admit, she was hungry. And, more than a little intrigued.
“Sure.”
They agreed that Tallon would pick her up at the Nest, so Pauling went back and changed out of her running gear and jumped in the shower. Afterward, she toweled off, threw on a pair of jeans and a fleece pullover and went back outside to find Michael Tallon waiting for her in a military jeep.
She climbed inside, just as Dr. Sirrine appeared in the doorway. He looked at her with an odd expression on his face. Pauling waved, and Dr. Sirrine waved back as Tallon pulled away from the Nest onto Perimeter Drive.
“Have you eaten at the cafeteria yet?” Tallon asked.
“No.”
“Well, the good news is, it’s the best food on the island,” he said.
“And the bad news is that it’s the only food on the island?” she guessed.
He laughed. “Yeah, you’ve heard that one, huh? Well, technically, the other food on the island is the bar menu at the Crab. Which is actually better than the cafeteria, but the Crab’s not open yet.”
“The Crab’s not open?” Pauling asked. “That puts a pretty big hole in the entertainment options for the guys, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Tallon admitted. “If there is a silver lining though, it’s that the cafeteria actually has a salad bar that’s at least serviceable. Everything else there, well, I would tread with caution.”
They followed the road down to a slight valley and Pauling saw a cluster of military buildings, one of them actually made with brick as opposed to the island’s ubiquitous aluminum siding. The brick building also had real windows that looked out across the road to the ocean.
Tallon pulled the jeep into a parking space in front of the brick building and shut off the car.
“This is it,” he said.
Pauling followed him inside and saw the long bank of counters serving an open space filled with tables and chairs. Across from them was a bank of food stations, complete with sneeze guards and another station that looked like it dispensed soft drinks.
It smelled like a mixture of meat and cabbage.
“Just for fun, go take a look at the food at the buffet,” Tallon said.
She swung by and saw only three of the ten or so metal trays had food in them. And each one was a mysterious meat swimming in a slightly different colored gravy.
Pauling quickly joined Tallon at the salad bar. He had a plate and tray ready for her.
“I’m a big fan of mysteries,” she said, accepting the tray from him. “But in book form. Not when it comes to food.”
“I’m surprised you didn’t run out the door,” he said.
He laughed and she was struck again by those blue eyes. She wondered again if they were the eyes Paige had written about in her journal. Paulin
g cautioned herself not to push it. Let things happen naturally and the answers would come.
The salad bar would have been considered average back on the mainland, but out here it looked fantastic to Pauling. She took a mixture of lettuce, some chickpeas, shredded parmesan, olives and sunflower seeds. Finally, she added a light drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar.
Tallon picked out a smaller table next to a window. The view was dynamite, Pauling noticed. She would never get tired of the expanse of ocean just above the horizon.
“So tell me about finding Paige,” Pauling said. If he was surprised that she knew Paige’s name, he covered it well.
Tallon shook his head. “Pretty bad. I mean, I’ve seen a lot of things, considering what I do. But, it wasn’t good.”
“Is that because you knew her?” she asked. It was meant to throw him off guard and it worked. Even though it was a guess, Pauling’s instincts told her she was right.
Tallon looked at her, his face difficult to read.
“No,” he finally said. “I didn’t recognize her. It’s just there’s a difference between seeing a soldier who’s been killed. They chose to be in the fight, whether they’re the good guy or the bad guy. But a civilian is always very difficult. A very different experience.”
She listened as he explained how he contacted the commander of the island, and showed the investigating authorities where the body was.
Pauling noticed that he hadn’t confirmed or denied that he had known Paige. She decided to let it go, for the moment.
“So was it a shark attack?” she asked.
“Sure looked like it,” he said. Which wasn’t really answering the question.
“Did you think she was swimming?” Pauling asked, and then pointed out at the ocean. “Out there? Water’s awfully cold. The dangerous undertow. Sharks.”
He shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know.”
Pauling munched on some of her salad and then put down her fork and took a drink of water.
“So how did you know Paige?” she finally asked.
“I didn’t really,” he said. “Just saw her a few times at the Crab, maybe bought her a drink. I don’t remember.”
If he was lying, Pauling couldn’t tell. Plus, she had no way of knowing for sure that Paige’s journal was referencing Michael Tallon. It stood to reason there was more than one man on the island with blue eyes and maybe even then it wasn’t someone on San Clemente. What if Paige had been remembering someone from her past? From before San Clemente Island?
“I already know the answer, but do you know if Jack Reacher is around?”
Tallon’s face took on a puzzled expression.
“Reacher? Why would he be here?”
“You know him?” Pauling was surprised. She’d expected another negative reply.
“Not really, but I know of him. He’s Army, though. An MP, right?”
“He was,” she said. “He’s out now.”
“Then he definitely wouldn’t be here. But I can tell you that if he was here, I would definitely know it.”
He squinted at her.
“Why are you looking for Reacher?”
She looked out the window.
“I’m not,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Something was different.
Pauling noticed it the minute she stepped through the door. It wasn’t that it looked different to her, it was a scent she didn’t recognize.
It was the smell that tipped her off and it was an odd observation considering she’d only been here a couple of days and was still getting used to her surroundings.
But it wasn’t the kind of vague change that could have resulted from someone mopping the hallway floor and the smell coming into the room under the door.
It was more a sense of something having been disturbed and their presence lingering.
What had they been looking for?
The journal.
Paige’s journal. Pauling crossed the room and grabbed it from the night table, anxious to see if there was anything about it that would tell her if it had been read. It didn’t look any different. Nor did it feel unusual and she saw no signs that pages had been removed. Of course, there was no way for her to determine if it'd been read or photographed or scanned for that matter.
She hadn't really been here that long, but the act of someone breaking into her room felt like an invasion of privacy. Pauling had the shitty sense of being victimized. Even though the room felt as if it belonged to somebody else, the whole thing unsettled her.
Considering that when Nathan first hired her for this case she had thought the idea of foul play was all in his imagination. Pauling had genuinely believed that her investigation would produce confirmation of an accident.
Nothing more.
But seeing the water and feeling how cold it actually was on her bare skin, seeing the energy of the waves, how wild and how desolate it was had all shocked her.
The idea of Paige going out for a swim seemed ludicrous to her.
And now this. Someone, she was nearly positive, had gone through her belongings, searching for something.
How curious could someone be to actually break into the room of a new employee of the Bird Conservatory?
Sure, there were extremely nosy people everywhere on this earth. However the unwelcome invasion also made sense if the person looking through her stuff was the same one who had something to do with Paige’s death.
The image of Dr. Sirrine standing at the door watching her drive off with Michael Tallon suddenly flashed across Pauling’s mind. It would have been the perfect opportunity for him, or someone else, to run back to her room and find a way in. Maybe they had an extra key.
For the first time Pauling wished she had been able to bring her gun. But the rules had been clear: no firearms brought onto San Clemente Island.
How ironic on an island surrounded by armed men she was defenseless other than her intellect and an ability to fight. She closed and locked the door, changed into a t-shirt and sweatpants and laid on the bed. She thought about lunch with Michael Tallon. It'd been pleasant and almost refreshing to talk with somebody other than the people from the Nest.
Or was it just that he was a very good-looking man and she was lonely?
Pauling would have to be very careful from here on out. And she decided that the break-in made it the perfect time for her to take the investigation to the next level.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
In her previous life Pauling was all about the dossier. Hunting, compiling information, targeting, creating psychological makeups; it was all about what she had done for a living.
And she was good at it.
Nathan, being Nathan, had supplied her with an extensive collection of background information. She had pored over those files but they provided mostly surface information. Pauling needed more. She needed the kind of information that wasn’t available on public databases.
Pauling opened up her laptop and connected to the Wi-Fi, then joined the network called BirdsnestOne.
Even though the laptop was encrypted, Pauling was fairly certain that somewhere someone was watching what she was about to type. She only hoped that they weren't watching too carefully.
So she wrote a chatty email to Blake completely unlike her regular tone of voice and told a rambling story about how much fun she was having and listed off the people she met in a witty way.
But, in the process, she was sure to include both the first and last name.
For instance, she talked about the interesting Dr. Abner Sirrine. She told him about a funny story going to the Salty Crab with Gabe Rawlins, Janey Morris and Ted Fargo. Her lunch with Michael Tallon was included along with a description of meeting Bill Wilkins, Commander of San Clemente.
And then at the end of her note to Blake she talked about the one drawback to the island was a sense of sensory deprivation and a lack of information.
Blake already knew what she was doing here. He knew what her
mission was. But she wanted to leave no room for misunderstanding. She needed to find more about the people she’d met and Blake was a shortcut.
She fired off the email and then closed her browser. She spent the next hour creating specific files for each person on the list. Pauling wrote down everything she knew about each person, described her interactions with each person thus far, and then left room for information from Blake. She intended to continue to investigate and each new piece of information would be added to the appropriate dossier.
It was how she liked to work and would make things easier when she was trying to formulate theories on what may or may not have happened.
Finally, she closed her laptop.
It would take some time for Blake to read her email and do his investigations.
In the meantime, she would continue to dig. And, in the process, hopefully find out who had broken into her room.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Pauling walked into the kitchen, opened the fridge and saw a bottle of white wine with a cork in it. She filled a glass three quarters full and walked to the picture window in the living area.
Outside, she saw Janey sitting on the picnic bench looking out at the ocean. Pauling saw an opportunity because if Paige had talked to anyone out here it would've been a woman. And if Paige had been friends with Janey, Janey would be the perfect resource to get more information.
Pauling opened the door, stepped outside and felt the cool ocean breeze, tasted the salt in the air. It had rained earlier in the day and now the grass was wet and the sky had a tinge of orange from the early day shower.
“Mind if I join you?" Pauling asked.
Janey turned and looked at her. She had an odd expression on her face as if she'd been thinking about something that had deeply upset her.
"No, no problem," Janey said.
Pauling took her glass and sat on the picnic table next to Janey. She didn't say anything, just joined her and looked out toward the water.
"I just saw a great white shark make a snack out of a sea lion," Janey said, her tone very matter-of-fact.
