Fly by Night

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  About the Author

  Copyright Page

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  In memory of Gordon Haber and his book Among Wolves, and to Friends of the Wisconsin Wolf, who are fighting for all things wild and free

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks go to Marline Stringer and the Stringer Literary Agency, for her patience and guidance, and to Kristin Sevick, editor at Forge Books, for her skillful direction and enthusiasm. To Nell Thalasinos and Karen McGovern, my faithful beta readers, for their honest feedback and support, and to Ron Kuka, my masterful writer friend, who never ceases to amaze me with his creativity and ideas.

  Also, to the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University for letting me descend upon their department with my endless questions about marine biology. I thank them for sharing their love and wonder of all things underwater as well as their passion for science and the research that they do. They are truly inspirational. And for inviting me to tag along for seine fishing on the ocean beaches of Long Island where I saw my first and only wild sea horse, pipefish, and puffer fish. Your passion for marine life made me consider changing careers.

  And to all of the numerous wild animal advocacy groups and the work they do in fighting to not only preserve the Endangered Species Act but to also have wolves relisted and protected so that we can leave an America that is wild and free for the many generations to come.

  Water is the most powerful element.…

  It can wear away rock and sweep all before it.

  —F. SCOVEL SHINN

  From the Start

  We should not moor a ship with one anchor, or our life with one hope

  —EPICTETUS A.D. 55–135

  Her father had taught her to love the sea. To love the thing that would become her livelihood. Ocean memories were alive even though he no longer was. She’d been eight when her father, who’d spent four years in the Navy as a boat mechanic as well as a lifeguard at Rockaway Beach, would swim way out past the guarded zones at the beach. Amelia was fixed to his shoulder like a remora fish.

  “Are we going out to the deep water?” Amelia would ask, more as a confirmation.

  “You better believe it, kiddo,” he’d say.

  Her chin grazed the water. She’d blow bubbles, changing her pitch as she did. Marveling as the sun made the green waves translucent, her chest open to the expanse of the horizon. Ted, her father, would swim out past the deep water channels to where he knew there to be a sandbar. His body was so sure in water, steaming ahead without hesitation, more ship-like than human.

  “How do you know where the sandbar is?” she’d ask between blowing bubbles. “Don’t they move around?”

  “I just know.”

  “How?”

  She felt him pause as if imagining how to explain.

  “I see it in my mind and the picture pulls me.”

  Amelia giggled at the thought of a sandbar being in someone’s mind. “The picture pulls you?”

  “Close your eyes and look,” he’d said.

  She did for an instant, feeling the freshness of the seawater in her scalp as the sun baked down, the coolness of the air as she kicked her feet.

  “Now see it?” he’d asked.

  She wanted to but didn’t. “No.”

  “Well,” he said. “Don’t worry, ’cause I do,” he said in a way that made her giggle.

  Once he’d found his footing, he’d ask, “You ready?”

  She was always ready.

  Pinching her nose between her fingers as he’d shown, he’d guide her down to touch the bottom with her toe. Once she felt it, she’d open her eyes underwater and look around at leathery seaweed, cloudy fragments of jellyfish, and zooplankton floating by and at the wavy contours of the sandy bottom. Her father’s legs stalwart and solid, fixed to the sandy bottom that was littered with bleached seashells, standing like the pilings of an ocean pier, steady and unmovable.

  When no longer able to hold her breath, she’d rocket up through the surface like a breaching whale desperate to breathe.

  “I did it, I did it!” she’d squeal, water streaming through her eyelashes, her skin shining like a harbor seal.

  “Of course you did,” he’d say. “Did you think you wouldn’t?”

  “Do it again, do it again,” she’d squeal. “Ple-e-ese?”

  “Ready again?” he asked.

  “Okee dokee,” she said.

  She felt him lift her higher this time before plunging her under.

  Only this time her foot touched something fleshy. Opening her eyes underwater, sand flushed up in a swish as something stirred. It was as if the sea floor had come alive. Rather than being frightened, Amelia watched the fleshy mass change color quicker than a human breath. It looked at her as she looked back. It changed shape and then took off like a shot with one burst of speed.

  Once Amelia began to shiver, her lips purple-blue, they’d swim back to shore with Amelia holding on to a handful of her father’s meaty shoulder as she kicked her legs, riding back with the current.

  1

  Traffic was at a standstill and she was not happy about it.

  “Great.” Amelia Drakos exhaled. Exasperated, she braced her arm against the window frame and leaned. “Like this has to happen now.”

  The fifty-four-year-old grabbed her phone off the dashboard and checked her university e-mail for the millionth time that afternoon, searching for a grant notification from the National Science Foundation.

  Instead her late father’s name lit up the top of the queue.

  “Wh-a-at?” she’d murmured and scrunched up her face.

  A sharp beep and she looked up in the rearview mirror. The truck in front had moved up an entire car length.

  “Like that’s gonna get you there any faster, moron,” she grumbled and then smiled at her own hypocracy as she’d done the same thing a few exits back.

  Her father had been dead more than thirty-four years.

  She pulled up to close the gap and then stopped.

  Her green eyes, which she’d always considered freakishly large given the size of her face—like a greenfish, a creepy-looking deep-sea creature—widened and then shut for an instant. At five feet tall people often mistook Amelia for a teenager until she spoke. Yet as small as she was, it was not the type of tiny that inspired protectiveness in others.

  She clicked on his name.

  “If you are the Amelia Drakos who was born in New York … loose ends regarding…” She memorized each word and then reread it aloud just to be sure.

  Amelia glanced up at the overpass, confused. “You Suck” was scrawled across the concrete span in bright purple letters.

  Was it a new iteration of the same old Nigerian prince or unclaimed money scam that had circulated
a while back?

  Strange. She stared back at her father’s name on the screen. Certainly gave new meaning to Dead Letter File—she cringed thinking it funny though at the same time unholy and a bit unloving. Maybe mention it to Bryce Youngs, her fellow research scientist, to whom she’d confess all. No matter how horrific, pathetic, or shameful, Bryce seemed to guess before she’d say a thing. But this he never would. The same went for Jennifer Hartley, another co-investigator who completed their Troika.

  What loose ends could there be? Her mind ticked back to that time. She set the phone back down on the dash, remembering her father’s warmth; she could feel it as if he’d breathed across her cheek. Remembering how he’d always let her row one of the oars out to where their motorboat was moored in the Long Island Sound even though it took twice as long. Seagulls would be squawking like someone getting shortchanged in a paycheck as he’d throw pieces of bread to them, hollering at them in Greek to shut up.

  Wrinkling up the space between her brows, she rubbed it without realizing. Feelings gushed in like water through the breached hull of a ship.

  She reached again for the phone. It rang as she touched it. The screen lit. She fumbled it, flipping it into the air like a breathless fish that’s still alive but then caught it before falling into that unretrievable gap between the seats.

  Bryce’s name was superimposed over a photo she’d taken last summer of him giving her the finger on the bow of a research vessel in the South China Sea.

  “Jesus Christ,” she answered.

  “I am not he,” Bryce said.

  “Too bad,” she said. “I’ve got a lotta questions.”

  “You owe me.”

  There was pause.

  “Really?” she said in surprise, all traces of irony gone as she paused. “It’s there?”

  “Um-hum.”

  They’d had a bet going on which would arrive first: The NSF e-mail or letter. A lobster dinner and unlimited alcohol was riding on it.

  “You open it?” Her stomach was a flock of butterflies set on fire.

  “’Course not.” He scolded.

  But she wondered if he actually had.

  “You sure?” She drew out her voice.

  “Amelia,” he raised his voice.

  “Bryce, just open it.”

  “No. I’ll wait.”

  “For what?”

  “For you. For later when we’re all together.”

  “Don’t be such a putz.” She snorted in frustration and tapped the steering wheel with her free hand. “Just fucking open it.”

  “No.”

  “Traffic’s at a standstill—a parking lot.” She looked at her diver’s watch. “Plus it’s rush hour to boot.”

  “That’s okay.”

  Amelia rolled the window all the way down and pushed up, leaning out to spot the bottleneck. Flashing blue and red lights of police cars, fire trucks, she then waved her hand as if he could see.

  “Shit. There’s an accident.” She sat back down, watching as a police officer directed them to merge. “You’ve gotta be kidding, it’ll take forever ’til I’m even near the turnpike.”

  “I’ll wait,” he said.

  She breathed deep. There was no coercing Bryce. Even ordering a beer was complex. He’d think it through; employ multiple sets of proofs before making the correct choice of microbrew.

  “And so uhh … Jen around?” she asked, trying not to sound as if fishing for an easy mark.

  “Nice try, Am,” he snorted. “Jen’s got a thing planned.”

  “Define ‘thing.’”

  “Nothing big.”

  “Oh for crying out loud, Bryce,” she gestured as if he could see. “A cop’s setting down flares; we’re down to one lane.”

  She heard him snort with laughter.

  Amelia raked her hair with her fingers out of frustration, picturing Bryce holding the envelope like the cat that ate the canary.

  Well over six feet, burly, wearing his camouflage-patterned baseball cap with clear safety glasses resting against the bill, longish brown-blond hair peeking out from beneath the cap. Often Bryce wore shorts and flip-flops all winter long—“I don’t like to feel constricted”—and as husky as he was, underwater he was dolphin-like. One of the most skilled and agile divers she’d known.

  “Alright,” she relented, so aggravated she could kick the inside of her Jeep. “You guys suck.”

  “You love us,” he said in a way that made her laugh.

  “Right now I hate you both.”

  “Au contraire, darlin’. Twenty says you don’t.”

  “You lose,” she chuckled.

  “You’re just a buzz kill, Ammy.”

  She snorted, reeling from being trapped.

  “So they say,” she said, thinking of her father’s e-mail.

  “That’s my Little Miss Sunshine for ya.” He laughed as he said it.

  “Betcha a lobster dinner back you’ll never guess who e-mailed me,” she said.

  “Nah.” His voice was thin with disinterest. “No more bets for now. We’ll meet up later.”

  “Where?”

  He paused. “Give a call when you get back.”

  “Who’s coming?”

  “Uhh—probably just us.” He ended the call.

  Probably? I'll kill you, Hartley. She hoped for the life of her that Jen hadn’t invited Myles.

  “Better be just us,” Amelia muttered and set down her phone, absorbing the bumper sticker on the back of a delivery truck that said How’s My Driving? Call 1-800-FukU.

  “Aww—call him,” Jen had encouraged just last week, trying to get the two of them back together. “Bet ya a dozen cherrystones at the Clam Bar the guy just got scared, he’s probably embarrassed,” she’d said in her puppy dog voice.

  “Think so?” Amelia had countered. “Bet ya my house on Benefit Street he’s just a jerk.”

  “Amelia, come on—” Jen had said. “Cut him some slack.”

  But she’d cut Myles nothing but slack up until he’d walked out of her life like a person switches off a light when leaving a room.

  “I guess I’m just a hopeless romantic,” Jen had said. Amelia and Bryce had shot each other side glances, both thinking of a different word. Jen gave men credit even when they didn’t deserve it.

  Two months had passed—the same amount of time they’d dated.

  “God,” she fumed as she sat, inching up behind the delivery truck, thinking of Myles, hating that each time her phone buzzed her guts roiled—that die-hard ping of hope. Wishing she could unzip her feelings and step out of them like a wet suit. This after he’d goaded her into surrendering to his declarations of how he was “so falling for her” only to have him bolt like a frightened stray once she did. God, when would she just give up—enough humiliation for a lifetime.

  “How could I be so good at science yet suck at love,” she’d asked Bryce in the aftermath of Myles.

  “You don’t suck at love,” he’d challenged. Such words dissolved her self-indictment in seconds. His eyes had lingered as she’d felt him trying to gain an entry point to acknowledge, but she’d blocked his gaze with shade from a sweep of her eyelashes.

  “I’ll kill you, Jen.” Amelia swore an oath to the delivery truck’s bumper.

  Five years ago the last grant celebration had been classic: Jen drinking too many beers, crying and getting all snotty “I love you guys so much” and Bryce passed out cold in the back of her Jeep as she drove him home. Unable to rouse him, she’d driven back to the Revolution House, threw a blanket over him in her driveway, and let him sleep it off.

  Amelia checked her e-mail again. No NSF e-mail. The electronic image of her father’s name was emblazoned into her mind’s eye. Amelia shook her head as if ridding her ears of the echo of water.

  “This is too weird.”

  * * *

  She stopped dead in front of her mailbox slot at the marine biology department.

  The box was empty.

  “Damn it, Youngs.
” She slapped her thigh.

  The department still smelled like old card catalogues despite the perpetual hum of scientific instruments.

  She texted Bryce in all caps. “WHERE IS IT?”

  “Taken hostage,” he typed back. “Don’t trust you.”

  “Damn right you don’t.” She jerked away. Her stomach was a clench of nerves, like a squid gathering the ganglion capacity to burst off with lightning speed down into the darkest midnight zone of the ocean.

  “Fuck you,” she texted back.

  “Ahh, Amelia, my sweet … always promises, promises,” he wrote. “But never dates, times, specifics…”

  She could have laughed and cried at the same time, toeing the fine line of hysteria as she felt a bit of both seeping in. Her dark ponytail, beginning to tarnish with gray, swished over her shoulder like a horsetail as she rushed off to the lab, hoping to find them holed up at the deep saltwater tanks by the back door with the letter.

  The narrow maple floorboards popped and squeaked as she clopped along in her quick-footed way. Everyone teased her about the bouncy adolescent walk and the excitement with which she’d show the new lab assistants how to perform even the most mundane lab work.

  Bursting through the laboratory door to the familiar briny scent of salt water, she tiptoed back to the tanks, thinking she’d sneak up to snatch the envelope.

  “Boo,” she said around the tank but no one was there. Her messenger bag dangled from her forearm.

  A few researchers and lab techs sat working.

  “Your people left,” one of them announced as she hurried toward her desk.

  “Say where they were going?”

  A few others looked up from their work but didn’t answer.

  “You hear yet?” the algae researcher turned to ask, a pipette in his hand. “Russell and Pam heard yesterday.”

  She shot him a look but then softened. He meant no harm; she was tense. She often misinterpreted when tense.

  “No, not yet.” She made her voice gentle.

  Her fingers were still cold and clammy as she slipped off her jean jacket and bag, tossing them onto the stainless-steel specimen table beside her chair.