Dragon Gold

Chapter 5

Five

Saturday, December 18

Bailey’s Key

Eva grabbed Taffy’s cooler and walked over to the steps of her enclosure to visit with her and Chico. At less than a year old, Chico, a one-fourth false killer whale hybrid, was almost as big as his mother, yet he continued to nurse—so Taffy needed a lot of calories to account for his nutritional needs and hers.

Taffy and Chico both greeted her with her signature whistle. Taffy then made another signature whistle, the one for Thomas, Taffy’s former Navy handler. It had been nearly nine months now since they’d seen him.

“Yeah, girl,” said Eva. “I miss him too.”

While she was feeding the dolphins, Axel came up behind her with her phone in his hand. “Ja, I thought I’d find you here. Boss, you have a call.” Oliver was with Axel, a worried look on his face.

“Take a message,” Eva said. “I’m taking a break.”

Axel shook his head. “No, you better take this. It’s Julian.”

Julian? What could he want?

She took the phone. “Hello, Julian. This is Dr. Eva Paz.”

Oliver sat down beside her on the steps, and Eva welcomed the ranger’s support.

“Well hello, dear. It’s good to speak with you. I can tell you’re busy, so I’ll be quick about my reasons for calling. Besides, I need to get underway, as I’m heading in your direction. If you haven’t heard, I’m taking back possession of Atlantis.”

Eva’s heart pounded in her chest. Julian was coming back?

“What do you want from me, Julian?”

“What do I want? The question is, what do I deserve. You, dear, should have never testified against me. You’re no expert, and Honduras’s claim that I caused the red tides that hampered tourism is preposterous. We both know that was the pandemic’s doing. And as you recall, your prior antics cost me my crustacean farm, my head scientist, a sea dragon I was going to get a pretty penny for in Asia, and my top business partner. I can forgive losing Ignacio as that was your dog’s fault, but to put it bluntly, dear, you owe me.”

She noted he hadn’t included bitcoin in his list of grievances. She’d lost sleep over whether Julian knew about the bitcoin she’d found that she’d used to build her research center. “Julian, even if I did owe you, which I don’t, I’m not exactly in a position to pay anyone anything. I’m a scientist living on grants.”

“Is that so? Perhaps, perhaps not. Do give it some thought, my dear. I’m sure you’ll come up with something. Or there will be consequences.”

He ended the call.

Eva looked to Oliver. “I knew about the fines he had to pay, of course, but he says he won back Atlantis from Honduras. Is that true?”

Julian’s open-ocean fish farm, Atlantis, had been seized by the government last year, and Julian had been embroiled in a lawsuit to get it back. Although the international court trial had been widely publicized, Eva had stopped following it after Honduras won their countersuit against him, claiming that his crustacean farm had been illegally operating in the Roatan Marine Park and that its polluting runoff had contributed to the red tide, which had serious economic impact in terms of tourism dollars lost.

Oliver nodded. “Just the ocean enclosures offshore. The government plans to use the award they got in their countersuit to build a marine refuge where the crustacean farm used to be.”

Although this served some justice to her home country, Eva wanted to scream. Instead she leaned forward and placed her head between her knees, taking deep breaths. Her gut instinct had been right from the start: she hadn’t heard the last of Julian.