She hadn't lied, but she hadn't admitted the facts she knew would push Gem away. She had reasons for not revealing what had brought her to Rock Hill Island, good reasons for it, but after the night they'd spent together, those rationales echoed hollowly even to her. With a sigh, she left a twenty by her plate, finished the coffee, and headed for the door.

"Stay dry," the blonde called after her.

Austin drove to the airport and arrived twenty minutes early. She made arrangements with the ticket agent-singular-for the airline, who doubled as a representative for the rental agency, to keep the car another week. At 9:55 she walked out behind the terminal to the far end of the runway and waited. At 9:59 the chop chop chop of an approaching helicopter signaled the end of her journey with Gem and the beginning of the job. The bird set down, the side door slid open, and a flight jockey she didn't recognize signaled her to come aboard. Austin lowered her head and ran across the tarmac. As she climbed aboard, she carefully relegated the moments spent with Gem to the private vault of forsaken dreams that seemed to grow ever larger with each passing year.

Chapter Twelve.

Joe rinsed his coffee cup in the small sink and turned it upside down on the drain board. "I'm going out for a look-see while the weather holds."

"Good idea," Emily said. "The beaches along the causeway really took a beating, and I'm worried about the nesting areas. I ought to head out too." She turned to Gem. "I guess you probably want to get settled after the trip you had getting here."

Gem finished off a powdered-sugar doughnut, eating it more for the energy boost than the taste, and dusted off her hands on a paper napkin. "Actually, I'm pretty keyed up. I wouldn't mind getting a look around myself."

"How about we meet at the Point in half an hour or so? That will give you a chance to get your gear out to your cabin."

"What's the situation with the trails?"

"Everything was underwater last night," Emily said. "I couldn't get out to my place until this morning." She laughed. "You'll probably be okay, but I hope you've got high boots in your gear."

"I'll send up a flare if I get stuck," Gem called as she walked out into a still-rainless morning.

She drove to where the road ended in a makeshift, sandy parking lot, dragged her gear out of the car again, and set off down a winding footpath that ran through the scrub paralleling the shoreline. Off to the right, the wetlands were dotted with small ponds and connecting streams, where freshwater met sea. Her cabin was the farthest in the chain of half a dozen, about a mile's easy hike from the parking area. She had learned to pack very efficiently, with an emphasis on raingear, serviceable shirts and jeans, and plenty of warm socks. The nights would be cold and if the rain continued, which it often did under the best of circumstances, she'd be changing her footwear frequently. She also had her cameras, spotting scopes, laptop, and electronic data bands for tagging fledglings in a waterproof bag in her duffel.

As she walked along, a pleasant sweat breaking on her neck, her thoughts kept returning to Austin-was she already caught up in her work, was she thinking about Gem, had she already forgotten last night? Somehow she couldn't bring herself to believe the night had meant nothing more to Austin than a quick physical encounter. On the surface, it was exactly that, but nothing between them had been on the surface from the beginning. But maybe that was just her. Austin had broken her defenses and slipped inside. She felt her still, the memory a warm thrill brimming just beneath her skin.

A heron flew up with a startled cry, its wings spread wide, gracefully beating on the cold, clear air as it tried to distract her from its nest.

"Don't worry, I won't be disturbing anything." She followed its path for a while, reminded of the fragile balance between man and nature, nowhere more critical than right here. The sanctuary provided a layer of protection to the wildlife and plant species, but nothing could completely safeguard against predators and hapless humans. The conservationists fought a never-ending battle with the wind and sea to prevent erosion of the key areas, fencing vulnerable nesting grounds and routing tourist traffic along paths where they'd do the least damage. She and her fellow researchers did their best not to disrupt any of the life-forms they studied, but their very presence was a disturbance.

She'd always felt at home here, but the deeper she moved into the sanctuary, the more she felt her foreignness. She'd always wanted to be a bird, envied them their grace and freedom. She'd never considered what she wanted to flee from or what she might fly to. She hadn't wanted to flee from Austin, and that's what made the night so hard to forget. So she'd stop trying to forget-what was the harm in reliving such a remarkable experience, just because it was over?

Oddly more settled, she rounded a corner and saw her cabin with a sense of homecoming. The small single-story salt-box sat on a shallow rise surrounded by marsh grasses and sheltered by a few pines. With its weathered gray shingles, unadorned front porch, and split-log railing, the place was simple, efficient, and functional. Her heart lifted at the sight of it. In moments like these, she wondered how she managed to live in the high-rise condo where she spent a good part of her year, as constrained as a bird in a cage.

She did a quick tour of the cabin, found it tight and dry, and switched on the electricity, the water, and the generator. After assuring herself everything was in good working order, she headed back out to take another winding path through the dunes to the shore where Emily was just approaching from farther down the beach. They walked toward each other and halted at the high-tide line. The wind had picked up and Gem's hair blew loose from the band she'd used to hold it back. She settled the navy cap with the USCG logo, a gift from her sister, more firmly on her head. "How are things down your way?"

"Wet," Emily said, frowning down at the sand.

"Jeremy and the kids okay?"

"Mmm," Emily said absently, tracing back and forth over a twenty-square-foot patch of beach.

Gem waited patiently and checked the sky, not expecting much conversation for a while. She knew Emily, and nothing captured Emily's attention like the study of turtles. Now and then the sun would peek out, a little teasing glimpse of heat and light, before the clouds swooped in again. Still no rain.

Emily made another humming sound in her throat, knelt, and gently brushed at the sand ten feet above the high-tide line.

"What?" Gem sidled over, stopping well away from where Emily worked. After a few more moments, Emily had carefully scooped out a shallow bowl in the bottom of which lay an irregular mound of white gelatinous blobs. She grinned up at Gem.

"Green sea turtle eggs. Mature. They ought to be hatching anytime."

"I don't know how you find those nests. Is it some kind of turtle radar?"

"Instinct for kin."

Gem laughed. "I forgot you were a turtle in a previous life."

Emily rose, photographed the clutch, and pulled out a roll of yellow caution tape from the side pocket of her cargo pants. She found a few sticks and taped off the area around the nest. "I'll come back and screen it later."

They walked a mile in both directions, but Emily didn't find any other signs of nesting. While they roamed, Gem took stock of the shorebirds, all of them native to the area. That would change in a day or two when the migrant flocks began arriving. She mentally mapped out sites for her cameras and blinds.

"Come back for some tea," Emily said, interrupting Gem's mental planning.

Gem almost declined, but she was unusually restless, and the thought of rattling around in her cabin or studying flight paths on her computer decided her. "Sure, for a little while. I've got to catch up on my notes and start charting-"

"I know, I know." Emily laughed. "Me too. But let's catch up on us first. We're way behind in emails."

"Deal."

After a short walk in companionable silence, Gem relaxed at the two-person wooden table under the window in Emily's kitchen area, while Emily made tea and set out a box of crackers and a block of cheese.

As they drank and snacked, Gem asked, "So? How's Jeremy?"

"He's great," Emily said. "The kids are great. I love them like crazy, and I'm so happy to be here for the next few weeks I could burst into song."

Gem laughed. "I'll give you six hours before you're Skyping with them."

"Too late, already did that." Emily grinned. "How about you? Still seeing Kim?"

Gem started, the question seeming to recall some former life. She hadn't thought about Kim since-well, since she'd met Austin at the airport. God, what was she going to do about Kim?

Emily cocked her head. "I guess that's not a simple yes-or-no answer."

Gem rubbed her face. "Sorry. My mind's a little slow."

"That's okay. If you don't want to talk about it-"

"No, well...no, not really, but mostly...I don't know." Gem laughed ruefully. "God, I'm a mess. Yes, I'm still seeing her, but it's not really going anywhere."

"Do you want it to?"

"I never really thought about it."

"Maybe that's an answer."

"Yes, maybe you're right." What had she been doing with Kim, and what was she going to do now? She hadn't broken any promises by sleeping with Austin, and she wasn't entirely certain Kim would even care, but she did. Not because she was guilty, but because she realized she'd been cheating both of them in different ways. She didn't love Kim, and though Kim never complained, she deserved someone who cherished her. And she deserved-well, she wasn't really certain. She wasn't even certain what she wanted any longer.

"I can hear the wheels turning," Emily said.

"Just soul-searching," Gem said.

"Sounds serious."

"I don't know. It might be." Secretly, she knew everything had already changed.

Rig 86, or Red Devil as the 60,000 square-foot semisubmersible rig had been dubbed by its crew, rose from the indigo waters on four bright red pillars like a giant's Erector set. The helipad was a small green hexagon extending over the water from one corner, ringed in white with a big white circle in the middle enclosing a capital H, as if the chopper pilot wouldn't know where to set down. Every other square foot of the surface was piled several stories high with containers, cranes, engines, drill heads, pipes, hoses, and the myriad cables and winches that connected the above-sea platform to the underwater pontoons. Red lifeboats resembling children's bath toys swayed from cables along the side of the rig.

Austin thumbed her mic. "Has the crew been evacuated?"

"All but the essentials," the operations team leader responded. The OTL, Brian Reddy, was a sun-bronzed fortysomething guy with flint-gray eyes, a lean clean-shaven face, and a rangy body in a black canvas flight suit and work boots. Austin had seen a dozen like him on oil rigs everywhere: no-nonsense, hard-eyed men and occasionally women, who were responsible for the lives of dozens of platform personnel and drill crews, all sitting on millions of gallons of flammable fuel that, if ignited, could kill them in a heartbeat.

"Where's the command post?" Austin asked. The drill crew would be working the rig, trying to stop the leak, but the geologists, salvage teams, boom crews, and reps from the company would be waiting a safe distance from the rig, just in case, for the signal to start active containment protocols.

"On the lead ship," Reddy responded, pointing out the window. "Set and ready to go if we need them."

As the bird settled onto the LZ, Austin counted four ships ringing the platform. The surface of the sea was deceptively calm after the previous day's storm, five-foot waves breaking indolently against the pylons, no sign of a glimmering oil sheen on the surface.

"Tatum is here with the crew," Reddy added.

No surprise there. No way would Tatum leave the rig, unless it was actively on fire. Reddy slid the door open and gestured for Austin to go ahead. She jumped down and sprinted across the deck to where Tatum waited with a woman. Ray Tatum had the size and temperament of a bantam rooster-five feet six inches of feistiness and proud of it. Austin held out a hand. "Hey, Ray."

"Austin," he said gruffly. He gestured to the brunette, a woman about Austin's age in a black leather jacket, tapered black pants, and low-heeled ankle boots who managed to look stylish and entirely capable. "This is Dr. Claudia Spencer, our weather girl."

Austin raised an eyebrow in Dr. Spencer's direction.

Spencer just grinned and held out her hand in apparent good humor. "Good to meet you, Austin. Ray is a little peeved at me this morning because I haven't been able to predict the weather by gazing at the stars."

Reddy smothered a laugh and Tatum grunted, but Austin caught the tail end of a brief grin on Ray Tatum's grizzled face. So Tatum liked her.

Austin shook her hand. "I'm sure once you get a fix on the sun, you'll be able to do that."

"Undoubtedly."

Claudia Spencer was clearly unflappable and used to dealing with roughnecks who put about as much stock in science as they did in soothsayers. The only things Tatum paid attention to were the direction of the prevailing winds, the color of the sky, and the rock of the pontoons under his feet. He was old school, but smart enough to listen to the rest of his team when things got critical. Hopefully they weren't there yet.

"Well, now that we're all cozy, come on over to the office," Tatum said, "and I'll fill you in. We've got some coffee that you can probably use."

"Thanks," Austin said and followed the trio to a rectangular metal container that served as the rig's operations center. Tatum kicked out a chair at the head of a battered metal table and sat down with a grimy coffee cup while the others grabbed mugs. Austin waved off the coffee when Reddy offered her some. It would be bad, and until she had to, she intended to avoid it.

"I'll make this short and sweet," Tatum said, "because no news is good news, and I don't fucking have any good news."

Austin said nothing. The time for wishing was over. All she could do now was deal with the facts.

"We shut as many valves down as we could to isolate and slow the breach," Tatum said. "We've gotten all the mileage we can out of that."

Reddy said, "We're down to losing maybe 30,000 barrels of oil per day, but at that rate, if we can't slow it down more, we're going to have surface oil, no doubt about it."

"Dispersants won't work?" Austin asked.

"Can't count on it, not this close to shore," Tatum grunted.

"And not if we have the weather I expect," Claudia said. "The waves will make the emulsions unstable and hard to monitor."

"Are you sanding the well yet?" Austin inquired. One of the first things the drill crew would do was pump mud into the well to slow the flow, and if that didn't work, add metal balls to the mix, a crude but effective way of simply blocking the channel that ordinarily allowed oil to flow to the surface. If the flow could be reduced enough, the oil reaching the surface could be burned as it appeared, and kept from encroaching on land.

"We will be today," Tatum said, a muscle the size of a Ping-Pong ball bunching at the angle of his jaw. Fouling the well was a concession he obviously didn't want to make.

"What about drilling relief wells?" If they could take some pressure off the main well through secondary wells nearby, they might be able to contain the breach and preserve the oil.

"The rock boys and girls are looking for the best sites for us to do that," Tatum said, referring to the geologists, "but that's going to take time we don't have. Secondary measure if it gets bad."

Meaning if the flow increased or got away from them and the leak went on for weeks or months. Like it had in the Gulf. That was a nightmare she wasn't ready to contemplate.

Reddy spoke up. "We could skim and burn if it hits the surface. We'll get some air pollution, but that shouldn't provoke too much of a fuss."

"Both of those approaches require low wind and calm seas," Claudia said in a tone so modulated and controlled she ought to be anchoring a network news show. "And even without stargazing, I can tell you neither of those things are likely. A tropical storm is coalescing and headed north. Projections have it reaching us sometime in the next two days, and it's growing in strength every hour."

Tatum made some remark not fit for ordinary mixed company. "Well, if we were a hundred and fifty miles out, I'd be a lot less worried. But we're practically sitting on the fucking shore, and if the currents pick up and the wind starts blowing, we're gonna have oil all up and down the coast. God damn it."

"We need to start laying down the booms," Reddy said.

"Before we do that," Austin said, "we'll have to make a public announcement about the breach. There's no way we can keep that quiet." She glanced at Tatum and Reddy. "How long before we know if you can get the flow substantially reduced by pumping the well?"

"Twelve hours, maybe."

Austin glanced at Spencer. "Ahead of the storm, you think?"

"It'll be close. If you want to deploy the booms, you'll need to do it before the storm rolls in or they won't be effective."

Tatum lifted a shoulder. "We're just gonna do what we do." He speared Austin with a glance. "You and the other desk jockeys can decide what to tell people about it."

Austin didn't take offense, even though she was far from a desk jockey. She didn't blame Tatum for tossing the hot potato in her direction. That's why she was there, after all. "I'll make some calls."

Tatum and Reddy stood up. "We'll get back to work."

The two men left, and Claudia rose to dump her coffee in the sink.

"Did you actually drink that?" Austin asked.

"No, I just faked it. Makes me look like one of the boys." Claudia smiled and cradled her cup between long, slender fingers.