Slither - Edward Lee [45]
His hands continued to shake when he gave her back the tube. Annabelle fitted on her diving mask, then propped it up on her forehead. 'I'm ready when you are, Loren.'
"Damn, I forgot my collection bag. It's back at the head shack-I'll be right back." He jogged off into the trail.
Trent laughed when Loren was gone. 'You really made that kid's day. See how he was shaking?"
"Well, I wasn't trying to intimidate him."
"It's probably the first time he's ever had his hands on a woman."
Annabelle grinned but didn't look at him. "Your hands were doing all right last night."
The comment caused Trent to stall. "That's good to know."
"I hate to tell you this but what's-her-name saw us."
"Who? Professor Craig?"
"Um-hmm."
The lieutenant mulled it over, then shrugged. "Doesn't bother me what she saw. I couldn't care less about her. You're the one I'm interested in."
Annabelle coyly tapped his nose. "Oh, don't get all mushy on me. Last night was just one of those spontaneous things, you know.7
"Yeah, well, we need a lot more of those spontaneous things."
"We'll see," she said, still not looking at him. Now she checked the underwater housing for her camera. "And I'll bet seeing us last night made her day."
"She and the kid are a real pair."
Annabelle chuckled. "Geek Patrol."
"You really have to wonder about people who devote their lives to studying worms."
"She and Loren are peas in a pod, I'm afraid."
Trent nodded smugly. "Right, and now that you've changed the subject, I want to see you again tonight. And I want your number."
"Oh, the assertive type, I like that. But you don't need my number. It's not practical for us to continue seeing each other. I live in New York."
"They have these things called planes."
"We'll see," she said.
"One way or another, before this worm thing is over, I'll get your number."
"Shhh! He's coming back."
Loren reappeared with a net bag full of plastic specimen tubes. "Got 'em."
Now Annabelle was checking her snorkel. "I really can't wait to see one of these worms. I'll be credited with having the most recent photographs of it. Loren, how long till you think it'll take to find one?"
The young man had regained his composure after having had his hands on her preeminent body. 'Well, keep in mind that Pritchard's Key is the only known place in North America to have them. It's very rare, because of the shifting water temperature, like I was saying yesterday. It might take all day to find a scarlet bristleworm. It might even take all week. You don't just turn over the first rock you see and, bam, there it is."
Nora trudged up to them in her flippers, dripping water. She pushed up her mask and handed Annabelle a specimen tube. "Here's your scarlet bristleworm."
"You gotta be kidding me," Loren said, amazed. "How did you-"
"I turned over a rock and there it was," Nora told them, unimpressed.
Trent was laughing. "Outstanding. The rarest worm in North America and Professor Craig finds one in five minutes."
Annabelle held the clear tube toward the sun, peering at its brilliant bristly contents. "It's really disgustinglooking but it's also ... incredible. The color-it's so bright, like a glowing ember."
"I just swam out to about a ten-foot depth," Nora explained, shaking off more water, "found a cool-flow, and started turning over rocks. There're lots of them out there. You'll see a narrow trench cutting down near that cool-flow. At the tip of the trench, there's a big chunk of reef about the size of a bus-that's where the nest is."
"This I gotta see!" Loren exclaimed, visibly excited. He dorkily plopped down the beach in his flippers and waded into the water.
Trent was still chuckling. "The kid acts like he just won the lottery."
"He's never seen a live one before," Nora said. "To a polychaetologist, that's like a coin collector finding a two-headed Buffalo nickel. Oh, and we'll be having spiny lobster and stone crab for dinner. I've never seen so many in one area before."
"Outstanding," Trent said again. "Professor Craigyou are one squared-away