He now had a little breathing space to figure out what in the hell had just happened and why.
Mercer heard the sound of the television and knew that Tish Talbot had made it here safely. He walked through the house, not caring about the water he was getting on the tile or the antique stairs. Tish was asleep in the bar, stretched out on the couch under a steamer rug that Mercer had bought in an auction of ocean liner memorabilia. The name SS Normandie was embroidered in gold silk on the thick dark wool.
Tish woke slowly, extending her hands over her head in a decidedly feline gesture.
“How do you feel?” Mercer asked. Making a quick decision between keeping his floor dry and his need for a drink, he gingerly stepped behind the bar.
“I’m not sure,” Tish responded, then noticed his appearance. “My God, are you okay?”
“Let’s just say, I’m not ready to do that again.” Mercer pulled two beers from the antique fridge and popped the lids.
“No, thanks,” Tish said. “I took the liberty of opening a bottle of wine.” She indicated the half-filled glass on the coffee table.
“I wasn’t offering,” Mercer replied as he tilted the first bottle to his lips. The beer vanished in seven heavy swallows. “I need a shower and a change. I’ll be back in a few minutes.” He left the empty on the bar.
Ten minutes later, Mercer returned wearing jeans and a Pittsburgh Penguins jersey. Tish had folded the blanket and was sitting at the bar. “Your home is beautiful. I made the mistake of going for cute rather than practical when I bought my condo in San Diego. My whole unit is smaller than this room.”
“One of these days I’ll finally admit that I live here and decorate some of it.”
“I did notice a definite lack of decorating skills.” Tish smiled warmly. “Oh, my God, your hand!”
Mercer looked down at the back of his right hand, where the skin had been scraped off by the rough subway tunnel. In the bathroom, he’d awkwardly wound a bandage around it, but the self-ministrations had come apart and the angry cuts had opened again. They were painful and still bled freely, but weren’t serious. He grabbed for a clean bar towel, but Tish snatched it from him.
“Let me do that,” she said, and began wiping the blood from his skin.
As soon as her hand touched his, she gasped as if she’d touched something hot. She turned Mercer’s hand over slowly, inspecting it like the scientist she was.
His hands were exactingly sculpted by labor and pain. His palms were horny callused pads and the backs were criss-crossed with the raised white ridges of old scar tissue. The nails, though neatly tended, were scored and pitted and one nail, on his pinkie, was cracked all the way to the cuticle. Despite the damage, they were beautiful hands, rugged like a new mountain chain yet with a tapered masculine elegance.
Tish released his hand and looked into his eyes searchingly.
“I work for a living,” he grinned, “and these are my tools.”
“Then I guess this scrape doesn’t bother you much?”
“Hell, yes, I just won’t admit it.”
Tish looked away and when she spoke, her voice had a serious timbre. “I want to thank you for saving my life today.” She chuckled. “Christ, does that sound like a cliché.”
Mercer smiled at her. “It’s the least I can do since your father once saved my life. How is Jack?”
“My father died about a year ago. You didn’t know?” Mercer’s face went ashen. “I tried to tell you back at the hospital, but that man came in.”
Mercer managed to croak, “How?”
“He was killed on an oil platform near Indonesia. It capsized in a freak typhoon.”
A numbness started at the base of his skull and raced through his body in seconds. He almost had to hold onto the bar for support. Without a word, Mercer ran up to his bedroom and returned a moment later holding a soggy scrap of paper, the telegram sent by Jack Talbot. He held it out to Tish, but she seemed reluctant for a moment, fearful of even touching the page. Finally, she took it and read it quickly.
Bewildered, she looked up at him. “I don’t understand.”
“Neither do I,” Mercer said slowly, “neither do I. But someone wants me involved in this, whatever ‘this’ is. And they were right about you being in danger.” He finished the beer and pulled another from the fridge. “You said at the hospital that you had no idea why you were under guard or why your father or whoever sent this telegram might think you’re in danger?”
“That’s right. Listen, I’m just a marine biologist. Who would want to kill me? And by the way, how did you know that man in my hospital room wasn’t a real doctor?”
“For one thing, he said he was a urologist, which was the same line I used to get past the FBI guards. One of them would have come to recheck my credentials. Also, no doctor making rounds would wear shoes as uncomfortable-looking as his.” Mercer shrugged. “As to why someone is trying to kill you, that is what we have to find out. It’s obvious that it has to do with the last voyage of the Ocean Seeker. Why don’t you tell me about it?”
Tish was almost at the point of tears and had to slow her breathing before she could speak. “Do you think all those people were killed because of me?” She sobbed once.
Mercer came around the bar and took her into his arms. She sagged into him gratefully. Her hair smelled like hospital soap, and was smooth and slippery against his skin. He let thirty seconds go by before straightening up. Looking deeply into her eyes, he spoke softly. “I don’t think anyone was supposed to survive that trip. Now tell me about the last voyage.”
Tish took a moment to compose herself.
“A few weeks ago, seven gray whales were found beached just west of Hana on Maui. They were all dead. A biologist from the University of Hawaii performed a necropsy.”
“A what?” Mercer interrupted.
“Necropsy — an animal autopsy,” Tish replied as if everyone should know the word. “He found that their digestive tracts were clogged with minerals. About fifty-five percent silica, with some magnesium, calcium, and iron, plus traces of gold.”
“You’re describing lava.”
“That’s what the biologist thought as well. His theory was the whales had been attracted to the huge schools of plankton that would surround a new undersea volcano for its warmth. The whales, while feeding, would also ingest the particles of lava suspended in the water. Eventually, their digestive tracts would fill with the minerals and they could no longer feed.”
“So what happened then?”
“Well, NOAA was called in to investigate. An aerial search of the waters north of Maui showed nothing. No new island, no clouds of ash or even steam. Then some sonar buoys were dropped, and within twelve hours we had found our new volcano, about two hundred miles from the Hawaiian islands.
“The Ocean Seeker was sent out late last Thursday night.” Tish stopped speaking for several seconds. “Twenty-four hours later, the ship exploded. When I was first rescued, I just assumed that it had been some sort of accident, but now I don’t know what to think.”
Mercer poured her another glass of wine and opened another beer for himself. The adrenaline rush from a few hours ago was wearing off, leaving him thirsty.
“Why are all those pins in that map?” Tish said, changing the subject and referring to the map of the world hung behind the bar. It was studded with numerous pushpins in several different colors.
Mercer felt that the distraction would let Tish calm down enough to answer the dozens of questions he still had for her. “It’s a map of places I’ve been. The different colors indicate why I was there. Green is for pleasure, like most of the Caribbean islands. Red is for work overseas for the U.S. Geological Survey, mostly meetings in Europe and Africa. And blue is for private consulting work that I’ve done for various mining companies.”