Read Online Monterey Bay by Lindsay Hatton - Free Book Online Page A

me.”
    â€œThen what does?”
    He lifted his chin, the tendons in his neck jutting forth like buttresses. So it wasn’t over, she told herself. Not yet.
    â€œI thought you were no longer interested in my affairs,” he protested, head tilted in reclamation of his earlier disdain.
    â€œI thought you had deemed me unworthy,” she replied, mirroring his stance.
    â€œNot unworthy. Just in profound need of correction.”
    â€œCorrection made.”
    â€œIn that case, fire away.”
    Her pulse skipped. This
was
a game: one they had played countless times before.
    â€œThe sellers?” she asked.
    â€œThe Agnellis. Monterey’s most powerful family.” He was enjoying this, too, but pretending he wasn’t. “They know which way the winds are blowing. Or at least they think they do.”
    â€œThe price?”
    â€œFar less than my nearest competitor offered, which ruffled some feathers, to be sure.”
    â€œLocation?”
    â€œJust down the hill, at the intersection of Cannery Row and David Avenue. A few doors down from the place where that Ed Ricketts fellow tended to your wound.”
    She put one hand on her stomach, one hand on the countertop. Ed Ricketts: a name she hadn’t known until just now, a name that brought her back to the strange, isometric desperation of the past seven days. Thinking back on it, she realized it hadn’t been calmness, not at all. It had been a million forces converging down on her all at once, slyly yet firmly freezing her in place.
    â€œA lab,” she said. “His place is actually a lab.”
    â€œI know. I’ve been there several times this week.”
    She kept her face flat, her breath even. There were scratches on the kitchen table that looked like handwriting. Stains on the linoleum that looked like train tracks.
    â€œAnd while he hasn’t exactly blessed my ambitions,” he continued, “he hasn’t cursed them either.”
    â€œWhy would he?”
    â€œBecause he’s the town’s self-proclaimed expert on everything fish related. Which is tiring in person, but useful in practice.”
    And there it was: fate.
    â€œSo I’ll accompany you to the cannery tomorrow,” she replied. “Seven A . M . Just like always.”
    He shook his head. Her chest tightened. Whenever they cooked, she wanted to tell him, he never let her use the knife, only the blunt things. The rolling pin. The wooden spoon. The pan.
    â€œI want to work,” she said.
    â€œAnd work you shall.” The light was catching his white hair and making it glow. “But not necessarily in the cannery. And not necessarily with me.”
    â€œThen where? And with whom?”
    He squared his shoulders and grinned; a stray green fleck stuck to his lower lip.
    â€œWith Ed Ricketts. In his lab.”

    That night, she didn’t sleep.
    For a while, she sat on the porch, a buzzing sensation in her belly and groin, the stink of the canneries fighting against other stinks: iodine, mulch, mildew.
    At around three in the morning, she returned to the sofa,where she watched the walls wash themselves lighter and lighter, the daylight swinging across the land and water. Part of her was amazed at how well everything had turned out, her father’s schemes coming into miraculous alignment with her own. He had explained it to her succinctly and without room for dispute: how the lab’s finances were a disaster and how she was more than qualified to set things straight. Her real purpose, however, would be not that of the accountant, but that of the spy. She would eavesdrop on conversations, memorize statistics, and then report back to Anders. Even more important, she would curry favor with Ricketts himself: an element of the plan that, according to her father, was indispensable to victory.
    So it was a simple arrangement and one that promised dual satisfactions. Ample reason to be optimistic, perhaps even joyful.