“Yeah. How much he knows, I’m not sure. But it’s a lot more than just the monkey.”
“If that’s true,” Borger said, “then he’s gonna be going back up there.”
“Exactly. And if he pokes around long enough, he may just stumble across something he’s not supposed to find.”
Without a word, Clay stepped forward and sat down in the chair next to Borger. “That means we need to get there before he does.” He stopped to think. “And we’re going to need help.”
“I was thinking the same thing.”
“How would you like to make a stopover during your flight back?”
From under the giant rosewood, Caesare couldn’t help but smile. “Are you kidding? I love Puerto Rico.”
Next to Clay, Borger raised an eyebrow and spoke loud enough for Caesare to hear. “You do understand we actually need DeeAnn on our side.”
“Piece of cake.”
Clay wasn’t so sure it would be that easy. “All right then. Borger and I will see what else we can find out on this end. When are you leaving?”
“I’m not sure,” Caesare replied. He wiped a bead of sweat from his forehead. With the phone still to his ear, he turned back to face the glimmering skyscrapers of São Paulo in the distance. “I need something first. I need to know where Miguel Blanco’s family is.”
From his chair, Borger stared at Clay’s phone with a puzzled look. “You want to know where Blanco’s family lives?”
“No,” he replied dryly. “I need to know where they are right now.”
3
The bright Puerto Rican sun shimmered over the top of the salt water tank, creating a curtain of glistening sunlight waving gently through the water.
On the other side of the thick glass stood Alison Shaw, watching as the two dolphins, Dirk and Sally, occupied the far end of the tank. A group of children stood packed together there. Both dolphins floated close, playfully bumping their noses against the glass at the spots where the children were pressing their hands. They screamed with excitement when Dirk impulsively turned sideways, placing one of his flippers against the glass.
Alison was happy. Really happy. She looked down and gently rubbed the bandage wrapped around her wrist. They had returned from their harrowing trip through the Caribbean, all in one piece, with only scrapes and bruises. Chris Ramirez and Lee Kenwood had taken the worst of it, but they were home and healing quickly.
Dirk and Sally had returned with them, even though they were free to come and go as they pleased. Dirk was especially eager to return to the lab in Puerto Rico, which surprised Alison. She was sure it had something to do with how much he was fed. Without having to spend any effort hunting for fish, she suspected her lab was becoming something akin to a vacation for Dirk.
Best of all, Alison was in love. She had found the man of her dreams. John Clay was the most amazing man she’d ever met, even if the men she previously dated had set that bar fairly low. But John was nothing short of a phenomenon. Handsome, strong, smart, and a man who could really communicate. He was every woman’s dream.
“It’s almost feeding time,” came Chris’s voice from behind her. “Which means it’s time for us to start arguing about lunch.”
Alison turned and eyed the mug in his hand. “Isn’t it getting a little late for coffee?”
Chris smiled. Most of the bruising along the left side of his face was gone. “It’s never too late for coffee.” His obsession had now become an ongoing joke between them. It stuck from the early days of their working together, sometimes spending all night at work. Like her, Chris’s specialty was marine biology and he’d joined her team early in its formation.
Chris emptied the rest of the cup and set it down on his cluttered desk. “I’ll see if the IT boys want to go. Are you in?”
“No, you guys go ahead.”
Alison watched him cross the room and climb the wide stairs up to the second floor. When he disappeared around the corner, she turned back to the tank. The children were waving now, saying their goodbyes and being pulled gently away from the glass by their teachers. Another class visit was scheduled for that afternoon.
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. There was only one thing that kept her from full contentment. And Alison was trying to remain in denial about it for as long as she could.
She glanced at the far end of the room where their massive, and now infamous, IMIS computer system covered the entire wall. Short for “Inter Mammal Interpretive System,” the original version was what allowed for the incredible breakthrough back in their Miami research center. Since relocating to Puerto Rico, and closer to Dirk and Sally’s natural habitat, the IMIS system had been radically improved. What that improvement led to next was a leap forward that not even they were prepared for. It not only expanded IMIS’s translation capabilities beyond dolphins to primates, but it had done so in a way that surprised even their computer experts, Lee and Juan. And on top of it all, during a near crisis, IMIS had successfully translated pieces of language in a way that none of them had ever anticipated, or even programmed for.
She stared at the massive wall of servers, humming quietly with its hundreds of green lights blinking away. The system was silently crunching data and looking for more relationships between already established language patterns.
Alison looked away as she spotted a familiar face entering from the long hallway which connected the lab to their outdoor habitat. DeeAnn Draper smiled and looked curiously around the silent room.
“Must be lunch time.”
Alison grinned. “How’d you guess?”
“I love predictable men.” DeeAnn smiled and watched the last of the children wave goodbye to the dolphins at the other end of the tank.
Alison’s face took on a worried expression. She frowned and lowered her voice. “Are you still sure?”
“Yes,” DeeAnn nodded. “I talked to Penny again this morning. They’re getting things ready at the Foundation.”
Alison sighed. She understood why DeeAnn was leaving. The last month had been devastating for her, both emotionally and physically. She had embarked on a trip that began as a cause to help find a friend, only to end up nearly perishing herself. If it weren’t for Steve Caesare single-handedly saving her, she wouldn’t have been standing in front of Alison now.
A serious brush with death had a habit of changing people. Alison understood that. And DeeAnn was one of them. She was alive and grateful, but she was done with adventure. She wanted nothing now but to live a simple life and to keep a single person safe. At least to her it was a person. And now, thanks to the IMIS system, she was absolutely sure about that.
“So…”
DeeAnn answered the question before she could finish. “We leave a week from Friday.”
Alison pressed her lips together and nodded. She reached out and hugged DeeAnn. Over the last several months, the woman had become her mentor. An amazing woman in so many ways, who also had changed the world as much as Alison and her team ever had. The world just didn’t know it yet.
“When are you going to tell the guys?”
DeeAnn cleared her throat. “Today or tomorrow.” She managed another smile and glanced over Alison’s shoulder to see Dirk and Sally approaching. They glided smoothly up to the glass, watching the two women.
Hello D Ann.
She blinked a tear away and turned her smile to them. “Hi, Sally. Hi, Dirk.”
Dirk stared at her, quizzically. D Ann sad.
“A little.” DeeAnn still couldn’t quite get used to the way IMIS pronounced her name during a translation. According to Lee, the computers seemed to have trouble resolving a double “e” following the letter “d.” He didn’t understand it either, but the resulting pronunciation sounded more like “D-an” with a stutter. It wasn’t a big deal, but it always reminded her that a machine was ultimately behind the translations.