"Damn it," Cutter clipped through the headset. "Quit playing around and describe the thing to me."
Fear tingled up her spine like an encore spider bite. Most of the bugs on the island weren't poisonous. Right?
Darcy whipped off her glove and swept up her cuff to examine the two puncture wounds more closely. "I was too busy shaking the thing off to do a scientific classification, but I guess it was about the size of a fifty-cent piece. Hairy. Kind of colorful, green and brown. A red stripe maybe."
Cutter's sigh drifted over the headset. "Okay, no sweat, that sounds like an Orb-Web spider."
"Which is good?"
"Yeah. Mean-looking fella with long fangs for a big-time bite, but harmless otherwise," he clipped through the prognosis. "Just to be on the safe side, though, let's scratch the touch-and-gos and do a full stop so I can take a look at that bite."
Relief soothed the sting to her nerves as well as her skin.
"Sure, whatever you think's best, Doc." Darcy kept her voice steady, sinking back in her seat while Crusty and Bronco called in the adjusted landing schedule to the flight tower.
Darcy willed away the residual hum of nerves. The spider was dead, and she wasn't a kid in a prison cell being taunted by her captors. Bugs and snakes may have immobilized her into silence then, but she wasn't thirteen anymore.
She forced herself to drag her boot over the dead spider again. No, she wasn't a child anymore. But she'd sure as hell been acting like some adolescent around Max Keagan. Time to take responsibility for her actions and clear the air.
Darcy staunchly shushed the little voice telling her she was only making excuses of another kind to see him because she was rattled and needed a distraction.
She stared out the windscreen, watching Max guide the boat along the shoreline. Talking to him would be the wise and mature thing to do. She might be drop-dead tired, but she had a feeling sleep wouldn't be peaceful tonight anyhow.
Once Cutter gave her the medical all-clear, she definitely saw a swim and an apology in her future.
Chapter 5
So much for the day's swim. Max steered the boat away from the dolphin pen, toward the secluded cove where he docked his boat. A school of fish streaked alongside in a rainbow stream of color. He'd already penned the restless dolphins early at the University of Guam facilities due to the incoming storm. Fruitless searches frustrated the animals as much as their trainer.
He reminded himself that eliminating locales could be considered progress. He'd accepted early on the search could take weeks. Yet somewhere between the briefing room in San Diego and the airstrip in Guam the wait had become unacceptable. He wanted to clear this case and clear his mind of a certain tempting lady pilot. Soon.
No matter how many times he told himself Darcy Renshaw wasn't his problem, he couldn't stop keeping tabs on her the past week. He didn't have a concrete reason for the niggling apprehension. Probably had more to do with testosterone than any threat.
Except he'd lived undercover too long to ignore the value of following his instincts. Even if Lurch hadn't reported anything suspicious, Max's instincts told him to watch out for Darcy until she got the hell off the island. Damn it, there was a traitor on the inside, all the more reason to rely on no one.
Max rounded a coral reef into the secluded cove where he moored his boat. A cove that should have been deserted. Except his own mermaid siren waited to lure him in.
Lounging on a sandbar a few yards from shore, Darcy sat with her chin on her knees, soaking up the muted sun as storm clouds billowed overhead. Miles of leg stretched from her one-piece black swimsuit. Not one of those decorative scraps of Lycra, but a suit designed more for practicality than enticement. Somehow the subtler invitation tempted him all the more.
And of course there were those dog tags nestled between her breasts.
Max cut the engine power and coasted toward the dock. He tied the boat off, all the while conscious of her eyes on his every move.
Darcy cupped a hand to her mouth. "Ten bucks says you can't name all the kids from the Brady Bunch, in order."
After a too-damned long, frustrating day, he didn't have the energy or will to resist her. Max pitched the anchor overboard. "Actors or their television character names?''
"Characters."
"Too easy." He jumped into the shallow surf and waded toward her, waves lapping his waist. "I wouldn't feel right taking the hard-earned money of a government employee."
"You're too nice."
"Hardly." He closed in on her, stepping up onto the sandbar. "I thought you were flying today."
"We landed early."
Early? Max dropped to sit beside her, instincts itching overtime like the sand coating his legs. "Nothing wrong with the mission, I hope."