He’d walked around Stacey’s chair and was holding out his hand.
“We didn’t properly meet last night,” he said. Stacey tried to get up, a look of sheer frustration on her face. But Wyatt planted his hand on her shoulder to keep her in place while waiting for her to offer her hand. She looked unsure of herself, as if she felt at a disadvantage, or maybe it was just my imagination because she suddenly reached out her hand and gripped his hard.
“A belated welcome to the Spaniel Island Research Station, Dr. Sinclair.” I was struck by how much Stacey had notched down the temperature of her voice. It was too strong and too hard and the emphasis on the last name was just plain weird, unless she was nervous for some reason. His good looks must make many a woman do stupid things.
“Call me Wyatt, please. And I trust you are over the flu?” he said and included us all in his invitation, as if we all wanted to call him Wyatt and had all had the flu. Stacey rallied her manners and introduced us all, but instead of sitting down to join us he remained standing by Stacey’s right arm.
“I got your note. We need to talk,” he said matter-of-factly. She looked at him then with such a vacant look that I thought she couldn’t possibly have heard him.
But I was wrong. She looked up at him and smiled a cold, thin smile. “About what? The vaccine?”
He looked discomfited, as if she had said something rude. It appeared the tables had turned and she had the upper hand now, although it was not at all clear why.
“As you must understand, Wyatt, I want to keep things as quiet as possible for the sake of the station. Are you absolutely sure there has been a theft?” She stared at him unblinking and he stared back. “Darcy intimated that you have a reputation for being absentminded. Perhaps you have just misplaced the vaccine? It was just one vial after all.”
He stared at her without moving, the two of them like two rams in rut facing off against each other. Stacey won. He backed off, but before he left he said, “Sometimes things aren’t as you see them.”
“And sometimes they are,” she replied.
chapter six
Stacey pushed back her chair and rose slowly to her feet, her plate still full of food.
“I’ll send Darcy to show you the equipment,” she said to me, and then she was gone.
“Is she always so abrupt?” I asked as I looked over at Sam and Melanie.
“She’s got a heart of gold,” said Sam “She just doesn’t know how to show it.”
“She means well,” said Melanie.
“Some people find it uncomfortable to be around a weight-challenged person,” said Sam, “and she feels that, that she is being judged by her weight and not her mind. It’s given her a bit of a chip on her shoulder.”
I looked at Melanie, whose face was neutral, and at Martha, whose face was screaming sympathy from every overweight pore.
We had just finished our breakfast when Darcy appeared at our table, his iPod dangling out of one pocket and his iPhone in his hand.
“Latest news — hot off my iPhone,” he said. “I’ve been making the rounds warning everyone. There’s a hurricane coming and we are right in its path. If it holds to course we will have to evacuate within forty-eight to sixty hours. If it veers north we’ll be okay, but the mainland will get the worst of it.”
Martha and I glanced at each other in alarm and she said, “But we just got here.”
“Maybe you should have checked the weather forecast,” he said, but when I looked at him he was smiling.
“Are they evacuating the mainland?” I asked.
“Not yet, no.”
“Surely we’re not that much different?” I really did not want to get back in that boat so soon, especially if the seas were swelling.
“It’s a barrier island. It got that name for a reason. It can take quite a punch from any hurricane that hits it.”
“But we have several rows of pretty impressive dunes between us and the sea,” said Martha, who was fiddling with her orange juice, swirling it round and round just like the sea in a storm. I dragged my eyes away from it and back onto Darcy.
“Thing is, Spaniel Island is barely above sea level and a bad hurricane or a direct hit could flood it badly. Those dunes can’t hold back the power of a really ugly sea. The barrier islands are always being evacuated, just in case. So please prepare a bag and be ready at short notice.” Darcy paused to catch his breath.
Martha’s eyes had widened to the size of saucers and the fact that she made no comment was a comment in itself.
“No worries,” said Darcy. Martha looked dubious. “It’ll probably miss us entirely. Meanwhile — business as usual. I have to go and help Trevor board up some windows but I’ll take you to your equipment now if you want.” Martha and I collected our dishes, said goodbye to Sam and Melanie, and deposited our trays in the kitchen. Darcy led us out a side door, which led onto the wraparound verandah. We were on the dune side of the building, among the trees, and it was quite dark. The sun had trouble penetrating the canopy. Martha excused herself, saying she had something to do, and I followed Darcy across a wooden bridge to a larger two-storey building. I was amazed that I had not noticed it from the clearing, until I realized it was hidden from view by the turning of the dunes, as the two main buildings followed the curving dune line. It was the exact opposite to the other building, made as it was from cinder blocks three stories tall. It looked like exactly what it was: a research station, with a nod to aesthetics in the vinyl siding that covered most of the cinder blocks. When we entered the new building we entered the universal world of a biology station, from the faint whiff of animal feces to the sickly scent of formaldehyde.
Darcy led me down a pale yellow corridor, lined with prints of cheetah and lions, gazelles and eagles. On each side of the corridor were doors that opened into lab space. Darcy disappeared through the last door on the left and I followed him into a room that was at once familiar and strange. Familiar because it contained the apparatus and equipment of biologists everywhere, from the live traps and mist nets to the radio transmitters and antennas to the binoculars, telescopes, raingear, and hip waders. Strange, because I’d never been here before, despite the familiarity. Darcy pulled out a parabola and handed it to me. It looked like a giant soup bowl and it helped to concentrate and amplify sound and funnel it into a recorder.
“How long have you been Stacey’s assistant?” I asked, and at once realized that it sounded rather abrupt. But he didn’t seem to mind.
“’Bout two years. I was her student and she offered me the job. I thought it would be a lark.”
“And has it?”
He grinned at me. “You bet. Beats a sit-down job any day.” I laughed. I couldn’t imagine him sitting down for long.
“Do you think we’ll have to evacuate?” I asked.
“That will be Stacey’s decision, but it’s not looking good. Just one more worry on her back.”
“Obviously I don’t know her,” I said, “but she seems kind of stretched out.”
“Yeah, well she’s had some kind of stomach flu or something and has been under the weather for the last five days, so she hasn’t been about much.”
He swivelled his head to look at me, a little dimple in his left cheek twitching.
“Is that why she hadn’t met Wyatt?” I asked.
Something