8
PARADISE ISLAND
ATLANTIC OCEAN
EARLY MORNING
Mariah was in a rotten mood.
It wasn’t bad enough that she was stranded on a remote tropical island in the middle of nowhere, when she should have been safe and snug in her cozy little apartment.
She was suffering acute withdrawal pangs from her pristine lab and the crucial experiments she should have been conducting. Mac’s occasional wry comments about her being obsessed with finding a cure for A.D. Thompson’s cancer were closer to the mark than he’d ever know.
Her clothes were filthy. She’d have traded her first unborn child for a steaming hot bath. She was exhausted from keeping watch for ships half the night. Tonight, like it or not, they were setting up a rotating shift so no one had to stay awake more than two hours at a time.
An
