The Storm (NUMA Files 10)

“What is that?” Paul asked, staring at the monitor.

“They look like dust mites,” Gamay said.

“I’m not sure what they are,” Dr. Ibrahim said. “Let me try increasing the magnification.”

The bulky electron microscope whirred and took another scan. As the second picture emerged on the screen, their surprise only deepened.

Dr. Ibrahim turned to Paul and Gamay. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

WITH PAUL and GAMAY at the university and Joe watching over Leilani, Kurt went through the personal effects of the missing crewmen. It felt wrong somehow, like picking over the bones of the dead, but it had to be done if just on the chance there was some clue hidden in them.

After an hour of working that thankless task, he was ready for it to be over. He found nothing to help him but at least one item that might be helpful to Leilani: a printed photo of the crew, her brother front and center, filled with joy, as if the world were his oyster.

He put the crew’s effects away and stepped out into the hall with the photo in hand. One door down he found the suite he’d booked for Joe and Leilani. It was divided into two adjoining rooms, but to reach the second room one had to make it past the first.

He knocked, heard nothing, and knocked again.

Finally the handle turned. Leilani’s face appeared, framed by the door, and it hit him just how strikingly beautiful she really was.

“Where’s your bodyguard?”

She opened the door wider. Joe was sound asleep on his bed, snoring softly, still in his clothes and even his shoes.

“Top-notch security,” she said. “Nothing gets past him.”

Kurt tried not to laugh. It had been a thirty-hour day for Joe. Even if his animal magnetism didn’t have an off switch, apparently the rest of Joe did.

Kurt slipped inside. Leilani closed the door gently and padded silently across the carpet in bare feet, black yoga pants, and a green T-shirt.

Kurt followed her to the adjoining room, which had the shades drawn and the lights dimmed.

“I was meditating,” she said. “I feel so out of touch with any kind of balance right now. One minute I’m angry, one minute I want to cry. You were right, I’m unstable.”

Funny thing, she seemed okay to him. “I don’t know, you seem to be hanging in there.”

“I have something to put my mind to now,” she said. “Finding out what happened. I have you to thank for that, however grudgingly you agreed. Any leads?”

“Not yet,” he said. “So far, all we’ve found are inconsistencies.”

“What kind of inconsistencies?”

“Kimo and the others were looking for temperature anomalies,” he said. “They found them, but not the way they expected. Ocean temperatures are rising all over the world, but they discovered reduced temperatures in a tropical zone. That’s the first odd data point.”

“What else?”

“Strangely enough, reduced ocean temperatures are normally a welcome thing. Cooler temps lead to higher oxygen content in the water and more abundant life. That’s why warm, shallow seas like the Caribbean are relatively barren while the dark, cold sections of the North Atlantic are where the fishing fleets congregate.”

She nodded. And Kurt realized he was going over basic data and conclusions that she would be easily able to make for herself, but they knew so little it seemed best to leave nothing out.

She seemed baffled. “But Kimo told me they were finding lower levels of dissolved oxygen, less krill, less plankton and less fish in the water even as the temperature dropped.”

“Exactly,” Kurt said. “It’s backward. Unless something was absorbing the heat and using up the oxygen as well.”

“What could do that?” she asked. “Toxic waste? Some type of anaerobic compound?”

Ever since he double-checked the numbers, Kurt had been racking his brain for a possible cause. Volcanic activity, red tides, algae blooms—all types of things could result in dead zones and deoxygenated waters, but none of them explained the temperature drop. Upwelling of deep cold water might, but that usually brought abundant nutrients and higher levels of oxygen to the surface, causing an explosion of sea life in the local vicinity.

It was a problem, perhaps even a problem Kimo and the others had been killed for discovering. But it didn’t tell them anything directly.