"Damn, I forgot my collection bag. It's back at the head shack-I'll be right back." He jogged off into the trail.
Trent laughed when Loren was gone. 'You really made that kid's day. See how he was shaking?"
"Well, I wasn't trying to intimidate him."
"It's probably the first time he's ever had his hands on a woman."
Annabelle grinned but didn't look at him. "Your hands were doing all right last night."
The comment caused Trent to stall. "That's good to know."
"I hate to tell you this but what's-her-name saw us."
"Who? Professor Craig?"
"Um-hmm."
The lieutenant mulled it over, then shrugged. "Doesn't bother me what she saw. I couldn't care less about her. You're the one I'm interested in."
Annabelle coyly tapped his nose. "Oh, don't get all mushy on me. Last night was just one of those spontaneous things, you know.7
"Yeah, well, we need a lot more of those spontaneous things."
"We'll see," she said, still not looking at him. Now she checked the underwater housing for her camera. "And I'll bet seeing us last night made her day."
"She and the kid are a real pair."
Annabelle chuckled. "Geek Patrol."
"You really have to wonder about people who devote their lives to studying worms."
"She and Loren are peas in a pod, I'm afraid."
Trent nodded smugly. "Right, and now that you've changed the subject, I want to see you again tonight. And I want your number."
"Oh, the assertive type, I like that. But you don't need my number. It's not practical for us to continue seeing each other. I live in New York."
"They have these things called planes."
"We'll see," she said.
"One way or another, before this worm thing is over, I'll get your number."
"Shhh! He's coming back."
Loren reappeared with a net bag full of plastic specimen tubes. "Got 'em."
Now Annabelle was checking her snorkel. "I really can't wait to see one of these worms. I'll be credited with having the most recent photographs of it. Loren, how long till you think it'll take to find one?"
The young man had regained his composure after having had his hands on her preeminent body. 'Well, keep in mind that Pritchard's Key is the only known place in North America to have them. It's very rare, because of the shifting water temperature, like I was saying yesterday. It might take all day to find a scarlet bristleworm. It might even take all week. You don't just turn over the first rock you see and, bam, there it is."
Nora trudged up to them in her flippers, dripping water. She pushed up her mask and handed Annabelle a specimen tube. "Here's your scarlet bristleworm."
"You gotta be kidding me," Loren said, amazed. "How did you-"
"I turned over a rock and there it was," Nora told them, unimpressed.
Trent was laughing. "Outstanding. The rarest worm in North America and Professor Craig finds one in five minutes."
Annabelle held the clear tube toward the sun, peering at its brilliant bristly contents. "It's really disgustinglooking but it's also… incredible. The color-it's so bright, like a glowing ember."
"I just swam out to about a ten-foot depth," Nora explained, shaking off more water, "found a cool-flow, and started turning over rocks. There're lots of them out there. You'll see a narrow trench cutting down near that cool-flow. At the tip of the trench, there's a big chunk of reef about the size of a bus-that's where the nest is."
"This I gotta see!" Loren exclaimed, visibly excited. He dorkily plopped down the beach in his flippers and waded into the water.
Trent was still chuckling. "The kid acts like he just won the lottery."
"He's never seen a live one before," Nora said. "To a polychaetologist, that's like a coin collector finding a two-headed Buffalo nickel. Oh, and we'll be having spiny lobster and stone crab for dinner. I've never seen so many in one area before."
"Outstanding," Trent said again. "Professor Craigyou are one squared-away polychhhh-polywhatever. I'll let you two finish the big worm hunt while I go look for more pot plants to burn. Have fun."
Nora stopped him. "Oh, Lieutenant? I wanted to ask you something. Didn't you tell us yesterday that the army took all the surveillance cameras off the island when they closed down the missile site in the eighties?"
Trent seemed piqued by the question. "Yeah, sure. This used to be a high-security military reservation. Why do you ask?"
"I think I found a camera, last night." Nora pointed back toward the edge of the forest. it was on this side, somewhere between the campsite and the head shacks."
"I guess they could've missed one," Trent supposed.
"And it was the strangest thing-I mean, I think it was a camera of some sort; it definitely had a lens. But it was really small."
"A surveillance camera would be small," Annabelle said.
Nora restrained most of a smirk. "Small as in tiny. It was like a half inch long, sticking out of a tree, and about as thin as a pencil. Just a stub."
"Might have been an old proximity sensor or motion detector," Trent reckoned. "But it's long been discon- nected.-Were there wires coming out of it?"
"No."
"Any indicator lights?"
"Nothing like that, either."
Trent didn't seem concerned. "Show it to me later, okay? It's probably just one of those old-generation electric eyes that would trip an alarm if someone crossed it."
"I'm sure you're right," Nora said. It just gave me this really uncomfortable feeling. Like when I looked in it, someone was seeing me."
Trent smiled at her paranoia. "I guarantee you, whatever it is, it hasn't been hooked up in over twenty years."
Trent walked off toward the trail.
"Spy cameras in the woods, huh?" Annabelle leaned over to adjust her flippers. "But you were the spy last night."
"Pardon me?" Nora couldn't believe what the woman had said.
"Oh, you know what I'm talking about, Nora. But don't worry, I'm not mad." She smiled to herself. "I'm not the inhibited type, being watched never bothers me. But, honestly, I never figured you for a voyeur."
It was too early in the morning for this. "Hey, I was just going for a walk in the woods. I had no idea you'd be out there fucking."
"Don't get so upset," Annabelle chided. "Nature has a way of taking its course, especially in an environment like this." She stood back up, her posture accentuating her bikini'd bosom and table-flat stomach. "I told you, I wasn't mad."
Nora glared, a headache pecking at her. "I don't give a flying shit if you are."
"I was just going to say"-the blonde maintained a quiet, controlled tone-"that Lieutenant Trent's pretty good, and I'm not a territorial person. So you can go for it, too, if you want. I don't mind."
"You're outrageous!" Nora almost shrieked at her. "I can't wait for you to go back to New Fucking York!"
Now Annabelle tinkered again with the big encased camera.
"Professor Craig-profanity doesn't become you. And you don't have to worry about being embarrassed around Lieutenant Trent."
Nora winced so hard that creases seemed permanently etched into her face. "Why would I be embarrassed?"
"I didn't tell him that you were spying on us last night."
"I wasn't spying!" Nora flat-out yelled.
"Shh! Calm down. Loren's coming back. You don't want him to hear, do you?"
Before Nora could yell further, Loren trudged back up to them, seawater running off his body in rivulets. He seemed frustrated. "Nora, I couldn't find that coolflow you were talking about."
Nora's teeth were grinding back and forth. "I'll be out in a minute."
Annabelle lowered her dive mask over her face. "Loren and I will find it, Professor. But you did a great job finding that first worm. I'm really looking forward to that lobster dinner you mentioned. Maybe later, you can show Loren and me where they are." She absently put a hand on Loren's arm. "We'll have a cookout tonight, it'll be fun!"
Then she and Loren walked back toward the water.
Nora fumed after them.
She didn't know what kind of game the photographer was playing. She looked around, wide-eyed in rage. Have I EVER been this mad? She sat down in the sand for a few minutes, trying to rein back in some composure. They can find the fucking worms, she decided. I'm done for today. And… the NERVE of that phony bitch!