Page 92 of Sucker For You

Did you steal my respirator? Because you just took my breath away.

He waited, snapping photos of an otter snacking on a green crab. Then:

Isabel Wright

You’re messaging me with jokes from your dive watch?

Wes

Yeah.

Isabel

Oh.

Isabel

MORI has a sheet of “fun” ocean facts up in the break room. It says: What has eight arms and tells the time?

Isabel, sending him jokes?

Wes

What?

Isabel

A clocktopus.

He snorted a stinging spray of seawater. “Jesus Christ.”

Grabbing his mouthpiece through a salty chuckle, he left the otter for the tourists and swam back down into the kelp.Click: a thin, balletic cormorant fishing for rock cod.Click: two Dungeness crabs locked in a territorial battle, unaware of the slow approach of a dogfish.Click: only a squiggle of ink remained to indicate the presence of a California two-spotoctopus after it vanished into its den in the substrate, a surfperch clutched in one arm.

Thalassa had been polka-dotted with pale patches again today, hadn’t she? Had she eaten her shrimp?

He couldn’t remember, had been distracted by Isabel. . .

But a flash of silver demanded his full focus a few minutes later as he stroked through heliotropic fronds and stipes, cataloging species.

Because:another shore bait ball?

He kicked hard, streaking toward the movement, his camera raised.

Click,click,click.

Clouds of sand and beach grit billowed across his Nikon. Pursuing the turbulence, he raced pelicans and a young sea lion through the bay’s shallow currents. Ten feet of water. Seven.Five, barely a dozen yards offshore, visibility blurring until he had no choice but to surface or risk smacking face-first into the outlying tidal rocks. He swiped at his mask, blowing detritus through his snorkel tube, slapping away a gull. His lens was greasy. So was his skin. The waves were murky and the air stank.

Disgusting.

Standing in the waist-deep surf, his camera useless and the bait ball—or whatever it was—gone (no live fish now, just scales and oil, smithereens of waste), he frowned at the Private Property signs that closed off a row of defunct fishery buildings up the beach. Was this the same spot where he’d seen a bait ball last time? He raised his watch, planning to check his coordinates.

Before he could:

Incoming Call:Isabel Wright

Despite the grease slicking his lips, Wes’s frown relaxed and he risked another grin. He glanced north along the shoreline toward MORI’s shadow lengthening over the sand—toward Isabel, whose chore rotation might have taken her near the laboratory windows overlooking the bay, who might even see him if he semaphored for her attention. He kicked aside stringy clumps of seaweed to shuffle out of the water. Another joke at the ready (What did the hammerhead’s boss say when he did a good job? You nailed it!), he answered his vibrating watch.

“Buttercup, what did the hammer—”