Page 79 of Sucker For You

But even with the days ticking away—ticking on toward September twenty-sixth, too—she kept counting the hours until she stepped into MORI each morning. She relished the dissolution of her fears into her work. The lab’s blades and teeth and stingers and slick floors left no room for lapsed attention or shaky hands. She had to be careful, had to be dexterous. Focused, especially when rolling up squid burritos for MORI’s sharks with Sabrina and Jiang.

“Some species replace more than thirty thousand individual teeth over their lifespans.” Jiang pushed at his glasses with a gloved wrist, studying his squid. “That’s what they told us in biology class last year. Did you know that?”

“And they have four different varieties,” she answered, nodding. She knotted floss around her vitamin-delivery packet. “Including nonfunctional teeth for basking and whale sharks.”

“Those big softies are plankton feeders,” from Sabrina.

“Yes.”

“So weird,” Jiang added with admiration. To Isabel, “Nice knots.”

She evaluated her mess of squid on the prep bench and started assembling another burrito. Her knotswerenice. “Thank you.”

These narrow, targeted conversations were satisfactory.

Later that morning, so was the arrival of a pod of Pacific white-sided dolphins in the bay. The announcement interrupted her break with the volunteers and drew MORI’s personnel out to the sea-view deck. Binoculars materialized. Likewise, sunscreen.

“Coming, Isabel?”

She hesitated. “I. . .”

“Whatever it is, don’t take too long.” Mehar cast a glance over her shoulder as she moved toward the audience alreadyoooh-ingon the deck. “There must be tuna out there today. The pod’s started a stampede!”

Then:click, went MORI’s exterior door, closing.

Isabel was alone in the lab.

Dr. Solomon had taken one of her infrequent days off; no one was watching the computer wing.

Now was her chance.

She moved so fast that her chunky, dented boots barely had an opportunity to squeak against the floor: out of the break room (which doubled as a storage space, with cleaning supplies stacked beside coffee grounds), past an industrial refrigerator, swerving around a puddle under a seawater pipe, skirting a bench topped by ancient, doorstopper microscopes—to the tech lab.

Despite its Keep Out warning sign, the door wasn’t locked. No badge scanner, no deadbolt. Yes, the weather stripping on the threshold snagged at the treads on her boots when she moved from the clean laboratory environment into an ordinary office space. That was the only resistance she met, however. The entry latch depressed under her hand. She stepped forward, and the door shuffled shut behind her.

Then she was inside the computer room.

Which was. . . just as she’d remembered it from her tour through MORI’s facilities with Brianne: windowless, fluorescent lights humming above kiosks of boxy monitors from the aughts, their keyboards hidden beneath stacks of budget papers or water-stained reports. A few fadedXKCDandDilbertcomic strips were tacked above a water cooler.

No vivisection tables. No scalpels.

But it also wasn’t deserted.

An office chair rasped across the industrial carpet at one of the kiosks; someone pushed away from their screen, yawned,stretched, shuffled out into the corridor between the computer banks—and bumped sideways into the water cooler with a wet, surprisedthump.

“Shit!” A man in aJira Tickets or It Didn’t Happenshirt bobbled a coffee mug. He blinked and squinted at Isabel where she stood near the door, as if refocusing or scaling up his vision after too much time with pixels. Should she retreat?Maybe, but then he continued, “Sorry, I didn’t know anyone else was in here. Didn’t mean to swear at you.Uh, did—did you forget your login password, or something?”

What?

“. . . no?”

“Right. Okay. Sorry, it’s just. . . hardly anyone ever comes in unless they’ve warned me ahead of time. That way, I can get the dinosaur servers up and connected with MORI’s research database. You’re actually the first person in here this week.”

“There’s a Keep Out notice on the door.”

“What?Shit.Sorry. Again. That’s still there?” He scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “I finished our system upgrade yesterday. I just posted the sign so no one would breathe on the tech until my updates were done. You look at these computers wrong, they crash. Right?”

She nodded, as if she agreed.