“Bruddah, good to see you. We headed in for da shark meeting,” Woody said in a thicker pidgin than he used around her.
The meeting was held in a large, open-air pavilion set back from the ocean, next to a large canopied tree. As soon as they hit the shade, the temperature dropped ten degrees. Minnow had dressed up for the occasion in a white linen button-up tied at the waist and ripped jeans. For the first time in days, she’d given her hair a proper wash, finishing up with a freshwater rinse out of a water jug Woody had brought down and left in the shower. Brackish was fine most of the time, but it left a lightly salted film.
A table had been set up out front, covered in a white tablecloth and full of drinks and platters of cheese and crackers and nuts. People stood around talking with drinks in hand, as though this were some kind of reception. She spotted Mayor Lum talking to the head of Search & Rescue, and Sawyer stood looking out at the water with Luke Greenwood and Nalu. Luke was pointing. Minnow followed their line of sight and saw a large fishing boat floating just off the point.
“Paparazzi. Guaranteed,” Woody said.
“Theoretically, they could come ashore, couldn’t they?”
“Yep. The beach is public in Hawai?i, all the way to the high water line.”
A few minutes later, at five o’clock, Sawyer invited everyone to sit at the big round table in the pavilion. As they took their seats, Minnow realized she was the only woman there. Not new but still unnerving, as though sharks were somehow the responsibility of men.
Nalu sat down next to her, sliding a piece of paper in front of her. “Info on those two attacks—I mean incidents—you asked me to find out about.”
“Can you summarize for me before we start?” she said, noticing Woody had gone for drinks andpupus—what they called hors d’oeuvres here in Hawai?i.
“No concrete evidence of anything. Only thing that might tie them to this shark is they were both on this same stretch of coastline. Theday before the diver Kimo Kahapea disappeared two years ago, a large white shark was reported by a fisherman out by the buoy. Said it was as big as his boat. And four years ago boogie boarder Glen Torres was out during a freak swell at a place called Ghost Reef, known for big tigers. So there is no way to tie either of these to our present shark.”
The Sister. If only Minnow could catch a glimpse of her, maybe even be able to identify exactly which shark it was.
“Good.”
Someone pulled the chair out next to her, and she looked up, expecting Woody, but it was Luke. “Mind if I sit here?”
“Oh, I was saving it for—”
“He’s over there. And seeing that this is the last seat...”
Her eyes buzzed the table and saw he was right.
“Of course.”
Immediately, as soon as he sat, her right side began to heat up, same as that first morning in the bar.
“Nice jeans,” he said under his breath.
Minnow shook her head, not even bothering to respond.
“I’m serious. People might mistake you for Angela Crawford in that outfit. It’s not very science nerdish.”
“Who ever said I was a nerd?” she said, turning to face him, then wishing she hadn’t.
Sun pooled in his eyes, and the half smile he wore on his face said he was toying with her and enjoying it. She couldn’t look away.
“You have a PhD in marine biology. It means you’re a nerd.”
“Say I did happen to be a nerd. What’s wrong with being passionately enthusiastic and knowledgeable about something?”
“So you have the definition memorized.”
She laughed. “How did you know?”
He got that faraway look again. “Someone once accused me of being a nerd, so I looked it up.”
“A fishing nerd?”
“Nah, not quite.”
