Dane swam thoughtfully farther out to a vantage point where he could see the island's concrete towers.
Darkness was starting to fall. For the most part, the island was unlit at night, with few windows looking out on the sea—but there were a few lights visible, including one in the tower where Dane knew the Colonel's office and the penthouse apartments were. These were used for his guests, when he had any.
Was that a movement at one of the windows? Dane swam closer.
He saw it again. This time, he shifted briefly human. His orca's vision was acute underwater, but not as good at a distance as his human vision, and it couldn't see colors at all.
The water was brutally cold, but he saw what he had wanted to see. All he could glimpse was brown hair and the color of her sweater, but he was almost positive the person at the window was Mira.
She was there!
Dane shifted and dived while he thought. When he surfaced again, a plan had occurred to him.
He wondered if it was possible to free-climb the wall.
It wouldn't be easy, especially naked. But he was skilled at infiltration, and he was in good shape.
Someone might see him, but they would have to be in a boat or helicopter. The Colonel was, in general, a lot more worried about people escaping than people breaking in. The only ways to get to the island were by sea or air, and any approaching boats or flying vehicles could be seen and heard from a long way off. No one would be alert for someone climbing the cliff face because it was spectacularly unlikely.
We'll just see about that, Colonel.
Now all he had to do was climb a sheer concrete wall while tired and chilled, without falling off.
MIRA
Mira was bored,afraid, and worried out of her mind about Dane, but at least she wasn't starving. She had been fed regularly with plain but edible meals, similar to the kind of food that she'd eaten on military bases during her service tours. There were reconstituted eggs, stew and meat that had clearly come from a can, and bread with margarine.
As her evening guard reclaimed her tray, he abruptly stopped and gave his head a hard shake. Mira, who had been keeping her distance, gave him a surprised and wary look. She wondered if he was ill, and if so, whether this might be her opportunity for escape.
"Are you okay?" she asked.
"You don't hear that? No," he amended immediately, giving her a narrow-eyed look. "You're human, right?"
"Yes," she said, not pretending that she didn't know what he was talking about. She had already figured out that many of these people, perhaps all of them, were not.
"So you can't hear it, even in here. Let's just say anybody outside with sharper hearing than mine is going to be in a world of hurt."
Shaking his head again, he left and locked the door.
Mira wondered what that was all about.
She had been spending a lot of time at the window, as there was little else to do except think about escape plans, and now she returned to it. Dusk was settling over the ocean; the wavetops had turned from gold to pink and now were vanishing into the darkness. Several times she'd seen what she thought were dolphins or whales far out on the water, and she couldn't resist a clutch of hope in her chest, as implausible as she knew it was. All her guesses about orcas and Dane were only a dizzied muddle of speculation. It seemed to her that there was no chance he could possibly find her here, even if he managed to guess where she had gone—and if he came by boat, there was no way to approach without being seen.
But if he swam here as a killer whale ...
It's impossible. Stop getting your hopes up for a magical rescue.
Then, with the last fading light in the darkening sky, Mira looked down and saw another impossible thing.
Someone was climbing the tower.
The climber was spread-eagled across the concrete surface like a flying squirrel flattened onto a branch, and he was already halfway up. Mira stared in shock. The person was male, she could tell that much even from above, and as far as she could tell, he was naked. Although it was difficult to be sure. All she could really make out was the top of a dark head and a blur of tanned skin vanishing quickly into the gloom.
Dane?!she thought.
With increasing concern, she watched his slow, crawling ascent until the darkness hid him from her. Somehow he was using his fingers and toes to find tiny handholds on the sheer-seeming concrete wall. Once she saw him try to wedge his fingers against something that crumbled off. He almost lost his balance for a moment, and her heart turned to ice before he managed to get a more secure hold and recover.
It was almost a relief when she could no longer make him out except as occasional dimly glimpsed movements in the dark, except now she was even more afraid because he couldn't see anything either. On the other hand, it made his chance of discovery a lot less, and she guessed he was doing it mostly by feel anyway.
