Invasive (14 page)

Back at the table, a small coffee press—an AeroPress, he says. Next to it, a small electric kettle and a hand-grinder. Einar presses down on the plunger, extracting coffee into a small cup—“Espresso,” he says. Hannah takes it to her chin and steam rises to her lips. “You saw the mosquitoes, then.”

“I did.”

“I hope your government lets me use them one day.”

“I thought you had a partnership with them.”

He fills his own demitasse and sips the black brew. “Sadly, not on this. Panic and fear drive today's discourse, I'm afraid. Releasing a modified mosquito has people afraid that we're going to give them all cancer or turn them into the blood-sucking equivalent of Spider-Man, I suppose. Science is trumped by ignorance when the ignorant are given a vote. We have the program in other parts of the world: South America, Madagascar, the Philippines. One
day, perhaps we will convince your country it is safe. Maybe when dengue fever finally becomes a true epidemic in Florida, Louisiana, even here in Hawaii.”

“Often that's when we wake up—just as we're on the cusp of disaster.”

He offers up his demitasse. “To the cusp of disaster, then.”

“Indeed.” She clinks cups.

T
he memory of bedding Einar (or his bedding her) lingers through the first hour of sleep: his hands were slow and confident; his mouth eager, with his lips forming a sticky trail along her breast and down her side and between her legs; her pushing on top of him and the movement of them together, that and the half drunkenness making her feel swimmy, dizzy, giddy. But as deeper sleep draws her down, darker dreams take their place. Dreams of gagging, hacking—Hannah coughing so hard she sees stars, spitting up a phlegm-slick knot of squirming ants over her tongue and down her chin to the ground. Twin streams of them crawling out her nostrils. Bending forward, arms covered in biting mosquitoes, blood running off in watery rivulets. The ground covered with mealworms, wet and writhing over a field of their dead.

A distant echo of her father's voice. A gunshot. An animal scream.

And then she's awake.

“You,” comes a voice. Venla. Hannah glances at the clock: just past midnight. Where's Einar gone at this hour?

Venla stands by a wardrobe made of red koa wood, hanging up shirts with an almost laser-guided precision.

Hannah's in a yurt. Einar's luxury yurt—two words that are so absurd together she can barely think them. Round walls framed in a crisscross diamond pattern of wooden slats, covered over with white leather.

Hannah sits up in the bed—a bed that so perfectly straddles the line between comfortable and supportive that she's not sure she has
ever met its equal—and Venla pauses in her task and walks over. The woman leans over the footboard, hands gripping the posts like each is a throat she'd like to choke.

“You fucked him,” Venla says.

“That's not your business,” Hannah answers. She eases the sheets to the side instead of pulling them tighter. Immediately she feels self-conscious. She decided to sleep with him because, or so she tells herself now, she hoped it would get her in his circle of trust. The closer she is, the more he might tell her. And that means the closer she gets to solving a murder and understanding this case. Last night, though, no such logic was present—all she could think was how long it had been, and how through the drunkenness (or because of it) she wanted him without mercy, without reservation, without caring about consequence.

“All things Einar are my business. You got drunk. He took advantage. It happens. You are not the first.”

“I wasn't drunk. He didn't take advantage.”

But now she's cursing herself. Because what Venla is saying is what everyone will say. She's here to do a job. Unburdened by bias. Even the
appearance
of having slept with Einar undermines her effort. The fact that she really
did
is just icing on that judgmental cake.

Venla stares down at her like Hannah is a piece of fast-food trash thrown from a speeding car. “Whatever helps you sleep at night, Ms. Stander. But please to be advised: Einar is my business. If you dim his light or damage his shine in any way, I will see it. And I will act.”

“He's thinking of firing you.”

Those words slip out of her mouth unguarded, and she immediately curses herself for letting them go. It's petty, catty nonsense. It isn't her style. And yet, the woman's scrutiny has left her feeling vulnerable. Cornered, like an animal. And cornered animals bite. Apparently with venomous passive-aggression.

The blow lands hard. Venla seems staggered by it. Her hands uncoil from the bedposts and she stands up straight. Looking off at nothing. Her lips move as if to speak, but the words are silent.

“Good luck with your investigation” is all she says. Venla snatches up a small bag from the corner of the room, and then leaves Hannah alone. In a luxury yurt that's not her own.

It's still night when Hannah heads back to Arca Labs, taking a few hasty minutes in Einar's bathroom to freshen up. Her messy tangle of hair will only reinforce the inaccurate narrative of her and Einar hooking up. She can't have that.

As she scrambles to make a hasty exit and head back to the labs, she begins to realize that she just complicated this investigation. Because she was drinking. And because—what? She thought she could make a power play? Use sex as a weapon? Or just because she wanted it and
at the time
figured,
I'm an adult woman in control of my sexual destiny; I can do as I damn well please.

Did she seduce him? Or did he seduce her? Was it a seduction at all?

Damn it.

Hannah stalks the trail heading back toward Arca, ducking under palm fronds and pushing through dangling curtains of flowering vines.

Back at the pod, she grabs several more hours of witless, restless slumber. She floats in and out of sleep, recounting her mistakes—not just sleeping with Einar but every foolish thing she's said or done in her life and her career.

She draws herself out of bed in the morning (though she'd far rather hide under the covers and avoid the scrutiny that daylight will afford). In the rec room, she grabs a cup of coffee from a percolator. Will is nowhere to be found. Neither can she see Venla or Einar. Others are already in there, and she feels their gazes burning holes through her. Kit makes small talk, and Barry tries to crack jokes with Ajay (who stares back, implacable as the flat face of a tall cliff). Suddenly Ray is up behind her, and he says, sotto voce: “You bang him?”

“Jesus, Ray.”

“You wouldn't be the first. The man is basically a pussy magnet. Handsome, but not too handsome. Rich enough to buy his own moon base. I'd fuck him if I could.”

She wheels on him. Some of the coffee splashes up over the rim. She lies when she says: “I didn't. We drank. I fell asleep. End of story. Okay?”

“You're saying he showed you his Special Projects but not his ‘special projects,' huh?” He waggles his eyebrows and smirks.

“You know,” she says in a voice loud enough to be heard by all, “you told me people wouldn't like me here, but I think what you mean is, people don't like
you
here. Do they like you anywhere, Espinosa? I bet you don't have many fans.”

“Ouch. Wasp has a sting.”

She pushes past him.

He calls after her: “Got my eye on you, Agent Stander.” Then, to the others: “The fuck are you looking at?”

She goes into the dorms, and Ray trails after. Without looking at him, she asks, “Where's Einar?”

“Hell if I know. I'm a liaison, not his schedule monkey.”

“Where's Will?”

“I don't know that, either. I don't run this lab. Talk to David—”

As if conjured by his name, David appears out of the room in which Hannah was staying. Why was he in there? Looking for her? Looking to see if she wasn't there? Looking through her things, meager as they are? Paranoia seeps into her. She's off her game. Unbalanced and feeling it.

“Agent Stander, I was looking for you,” Hamasaki says. “The storm that's coming is expected to make it here a little sooner—the weather system is spinning off the coast of Japan faster than we figured. Means the boat will be here this afternoon instead of tomorrow morning. Should be around four
P.M.
”

Suspicion besieges her further. Is this even true?
They're trying to get rid of me.
She says as much: “You're kicking me out?”

“No, no, that's not it—but the boat won't make it back for a few
days after that, and we've got people going off-island. This is your window.”

Her heart suddenly feels like it's in a vise. Anxiety. Panic. She knows it. She mitigates it. The fear dogs at her just the same:
I'm not doing enough, I haven't solved this, we're no closer now than we were before . . .
“Where's Will?”

“Special Projects, maybe?” David says. Then, before she can ask more questions, “It's been really good having you. See you at lunch, Agent Stander.”

Hannah starts packing. She doesn't have much to pack, but it gives her something to do while she fumes at herself, at the storm, at Einar, at everyone and everything.

Real quick, she flips the top of her laptop open to check her e-mail, types in her password (
compsognathus
), sees a message pop up from Hollis.

Call me. 911.

Laptop down, back to the door—

Kit almost runs headlong into her.

“Hey,” Kit says. “You okay?”

“Fine,” Hannah says, and she hears her own voice and it is most definitely not fine.

“Hey, don't listen to anybody around here. It's all bullshit, just office gossip. We're a bunch of weirdos trapped on an island with each other. Look, I'll be honest with you, I fucked Will a couple times when we first started, and that was a big dramatic how-do-you-do—not between him and me, because we're goddamn adults, but with everybody else. Gossip like that chums the waters and brings the sharks out in everybody—”

“I have to make a call. Where's the satphone?”

“Oh, uh, check with David. His office, probably.”

“Thanks.”

No wristband anymore. Can't get back into the labs proper. She has to wait till someone shows—and of course it's Kit. Kit, to her credit, plays it cool. All she asks as she opens the door for Hannah is “You seen Kano, by the way?”

Hannah says no.

“I need his help—there's a fluorescent out in the main lab.”

They head into the lab wing. Hannah says, “If I see him, I'll tell him. Let me ask you something real quick.”

“Shoot.”

“You're the head of the mosquito project.”

Kit smiles. “I am. And now you want to know why it's down in Will's kingdom. Or why I didn't tell you that.”

“Well. Yeah.”

“I didn't tell you because it's not my secret to tell. And as to why it's down there?” She lowers her voice. “I don't know. After Einar's last review, he yanked the project out from under my feet and stuck it with Will. No idea why. Will didn't know, either. Einar called it a ‘necessary professional rearrangement.'”

“Do you have any theories as to why?”

“Maybe he doesn't think I'm good enough. Maybe he's a sexist asshole, of which there are many inside the vaunted halls of research.” Kit shrugs. “It sucks, but what can I do? I still do backup research for it, and I'm the one scouting out which countries we can try to hit up next for the mosquito release. But that's not my jam. I'm a scientist. I want to make science, not phone calls.”

Hannah parts ways with Kit, collects the phone, and heads outside. She paces the walkway as she makes the call to Hollis.

“Finally,” he says. “Hold on, I'm looping in Ms. . . . sorry,
Dr.
Choi.” Moments pass. A few clicks. Then: “Ez. You there?”

“You bet,” comes Ez's voice. “Hannah on the line?”

“I'm here,” Hannah says.

“We found a print,” Hollis says.

“
I
found a print,” Ez says.

“Yes, Dr. Choi found a print.”

“Were you able to run it and find a match?” Hannah says.