10. Caro

"Iunderstand now why you were so upset when I called yesterday." Stacey Custer took a sip of fruit tea and helped herself to a cookie from the box she'd brought. "A deckhand on the ferry filled me in, although I had to google Luna Maara. I'm more of a jazz fan."

"I prefer rock myself."

"Her mom really got jailed for contempt?"

"Thirty days."

And maybe she'd get another thirty days if she kept raising hell. Vince said—when he managed to stop laughing—that she travelled with her own toilet seat, and when she wasn't allowed to use it in her cell, she'd kicked up such a fuss that Judge Morgan had gone to the jail personally to educate her on the error of her ways. I realised now that Luna's attitude problem was hereditary.

Although she'd been surprisingly compliant this morning. Yes, she'd missed several chunks of dirt, and she'd shrieked when Lola the loggerhead swam toward her, but she'd cleaned five pools to an acceptable standard, and when Ryder suggested she might want to make drinks for everyone, she'd actually done it instead of giving him a mouthful of abuse. Jubilee had managed to clean three pools and sweep the floor in the bunkhouse, which meant my headache had dropped from a nine to a four by the time Stacey arrived.

She was younger than I thought she'd be, only a year or two older than me, but her dark red hair and pale skin suggested she spent more time behind a desk than outdoors. She had a habit of click-click-clicking her pen as she spoke, which was getting on my already frazzled nerves, but I didn't want to whine like Luna, so I just gritted my teeth.

"And those boats out there are full of photographers?" she asked.

"That's right. The coastguard cleared them away yesterday, but they keep showing up like bad pennies. We caught half a dozen men trying to sneak in through the trees in the night as well."

When I said "we," I meant Knox and Ryder. They'd set up motion sensors that sounded an alarm every time they were triggered. At three a.m., I'd been woken by the sound of yelling and stumbled outside in time to see Knox marching a reporter away in an armlock. Somehow, a camera lens had gotten broken in the process. The trespasser—a Texan, judging by his accent—had threatened to sue, and I could just imagine Judge Morgan's glee if the case came up on his docket. He was something of a legend in San Gallicano, and he won reelection by a landslide every time.

"People like that give our profession a bad name. I assure you I'm not interested in Luna, only in your knowledge of turtles."

Franklin walked in with Tango at his heels, and Stacey rose to greet him with a handshake. Usually—in the pre-Luna days, at least—journalists dropped by to write travel guides, not because they genuinely cared about conservation. We generally got worse reviews than Jacob Morgan's ecolodge. The last reporter to inquire about turtle smuggling had ghosted us after we refused to go on record, but what did he expect? Smugglers weren't nice people, especially when their livelihoods were threatened, and Franklin feared retaliation. And me? I had even more to lose. If Aiden found me, I'd be in grave danger, so no way was I agreeing to appear on a podcast, in a YouTube video, or as part of any other kind of content. Stacey had already agreed to those terms.

"Then ask your questions," Franklin said. "We'll answer them as best we can."

"Do you mind if I record our discussion? Just to supplement my notes—I promise it won't be replayed for anyone else."

Franklin deferred to me, and I nodded. "As long as our names and the sanctuary aren't mentioned in any article, I don't mind."

"Great, I really appreciate that." Stacey tapped an app and set her phone on the table between us, then opened her laptop and a notepad. "I thought it might be helpful to give a little background on myself first. I mean, I should tell you why I'm interested in wildlife rather than Ms. Maara." She gave a nervous giggle. "When I was in sixth grade, the teacher asked us to make a poster featuring our favourite animal and share it with the class. I actually thought spiders were pretty cool, but Joey Trent had arachnophobia and I had a crush on Joey Trent, so I picked elephants instead. And what I found shocked me. I cried in my presentation when I talked about the ivory trade—which meant I got nicknamed Booboo until I finished high school—and that project inspired me to become an investigative journalist."

"I read your article on elephant poaching."

"Really? I'm hoping to do a follow-up next year. The anti-poaching unit I followed has expanded their tracking-dog program, and now they train dogs for other units too."

"What made you switch to turtles? They rarely get noticed, I guess because they spend most of their time underwater, so few people see them in the flesh."

"Truthfully, I knew next to nothing about turtles when I started—my knowledge was limited to the Cumberland sliders in the pond I used to walk past on my way to school—but a friend of a friend suggested the story. Her roommate started investigating a couple of years back—he'd always been fascinated by turtles—but then he just…disappeared."

The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. "Disappeared?"

"Yup. One day, he went to work and didn't come home, and the cops never found any trace of him."

"Sometimes people need a fresh start."

Like me, for example. I'd walked out of Aiden's beach house one morning, driven to LAX, and bounced around the world before I ended up in my current home. I'd been on Valentine Cay for nearly three years now. But I didn't have family to search for me, or many friends either. Only Aiden would be looking.

"No, not Beckham. He left his pet turtle behind, and he doted on her. She's only small, a common musk turtle, but he built her a huge home that took up half of the living room."

The prickle turned into a full-on chill.

"Beckham? Beckham Cheng?"

"You know him?"

"Not exactly. A man with that name contacted us last year about an interview, but after we explained we wouldn't go on record, we never heard from him again. I figured he just lost interest."

"Uh, no, I don't think he did. His roommate gave me all his notes and photos, and…well, I couldn't bring the actual shell in case it got confiscated at the airport, but I took a picture."

Stacey tapped a few keys on the laptop and turned it toward us. It took a moment to work out what I was seeing. A close-up of a turtle's shell, marked with three tiny notches. Our notches. Franklin had started using that pattern years ago, two nicks close together and one farther away. The notches were permanent and grew with the turtle.

"Look at the next one," Stacey said, jotting notes with her pen.

I swiped, and nearly puked when I saw the image. One of our beautiful hawksbills had been taxidermied into a macabre ornament. A desk lamp with a tasselled shade. An unbearable wave of anger and sadness washed over me, and I blinked back tears.

"Where did he get this?"

"New York. From a market in Chinatown. Is it one of yours?"

Beside me, Franklin looked about as good as I felt. We'd known for a long time that poaching went on, but to see a majestic creature reduced to this…this…abomination…

"Yes, it's one of ours. Did Beckham report this? Hawksbills are an endangered species."

Stacey shook her head. "He wanted to find out who was behind it first. The people in the market, the stores, the restaurants, they're just the little fish. They buy from middlemen, who get the turtles from a supplier. Based on what I've pieced together from his notes, he believes the biggest supplier in the US was sourcing turtles from the Caribbean, in particular from around San Gallicano. A fresh turtle can sell for a hundred and fifty bucks wholesale, but once it's dried and prettied up"—she tapped the picture—"they can fetch ten times that. There's big money in hawksbill products. In Chinese culture, the sea turtle is a symbol of fortune and longevity. Folklore refers to hawksbills as one of the four celestial guardians. Don't you think it's ironic? Their godlike status has driven demand for turtle products, and now they're heading for extinction."

Franklin had told me all about the importance of turtles in China. They were used as talismans to bring luck, and as ingredients in traditional medicine. Turtle meat was eaten widely. A visiting biologist had once told me that he was more likely to find an endangered chelonian species in a wet market in Guangzhou than in the wild. And as income levels rose in China, the trade only grew.

"Don't most of the turtles consumed by the Chinese come from the Coral Triangle? Around the Philippines and Borneo?"

"Yes, and Malaysia, Thailand, and Myanmar. They're mainly smuggled in through Vietnam. But there's a large Chinese population in the United States, and someone else is catering to that market."

Franklin pushed the laptop away. "A handful of poachers have been caught around these parts, but they're small-time guys. Locals out to make a fast buck."

"Who do they sell the turtles to?"

"That's a question I can't answer."

"I spent yesterday at the courthouse researching all the poaching cases from the past five years. Most suspects claimed they'd caught the turtles to eat themselves, and not one of them gave up the name of a trader, even when offered a lesser sentence to do so. They just took the punishment. What does that tell you?"

"Either they really did use the turtles for their own purposes or…" The implications pieced themselves together in my head. "Or they were protecting somebody."

"And why would they protect somebody?"

"To preserve their meal ticket? So they could work for them in the future? The sentences for poaching are never long enough."

Despite Judge Morgan's best efforts. He'd once confided to Vince that he'd like to throw the book at every poacher, but poachers had families, and those families voted. Plus turtle meat had once been a staple food in San Gallicano, and some folks still followed the old traditions. Three years was the max for taking a turtle or two. It was far easier to make an example out of a fool like Luna Maara. Most of the locals weren't fond of tourists.

"Or because they're more scared of the person they're working for than they are of prison."

Another chilling thought. San Gallicano looked idyllic, but as with many not-quite-paradises, there was a dark underbelly that mostly stayed hidden from view. With the sea's bounty decreasing every year due to overfishing—the industry was meant to be sustainable, but it really wasn't—unemployment grew steadily higher, and more and more residents were either holding their noses and switching to work in tourism or leaving the country altogether. Ray Perrin, who used to help his parents out at the general store, had taken a job on a cargo ship. Donations to the sanctuary were almost non-existent. People toiled for longer hours, so islanders didn't have time to volunteer anymore, although they'd help to watch the beaches during nesting season.

Nesting season… Last year, we'd worked ourselves to exhaustion and still the numbers had been down. Several times, nests had been raided before we got to them because the eggs were a popular snack too. Some folks believed they acted as an aphrodisiac.

"Are you sure it's safe to be investigating this?" I asked.

"I'm careful. At the moment, I just want to find out who might be involved so I can watch from a distance. I have the names of poachers who've been released from prison recently as a starting point, but have you heard any whispers on the grapevine? This seems like a real tight-knit community."

Franklin spoke up. "Folks are close on Valentine Cay, but there are a number of unscrupulous types on the big island. If you want names, start with them."

He twisted in his seat and nodded toward the boats in the bay. They were almost at the reef now, and I was keeping my fingers crossed they'd read the current wrong. There was a nasty spot with underwater rocks not too far from the nearest vessel.

"The photographers?"

"The men who brought them here. They'll do anything to rake in cash. Outside of nesting season, poachers mainly catch turtles out near the smaller islands, and they need boats to get there."

"So poaching is a problem all year round?"

"It's worse in the summer months. Turtles nest from February to July, with a peak around April to May. Then the babies hatch from July to November. It's easier for poachers to collect turtles from the beach, but it's also riskier because the government organises patrols during the busiest times. Locals keep an eye too."

"You collect eggs to hatch here?"

"We do."

"Have you ever had problems with them being stolen?"

"Once, a few years ago. We have a better fence now, and the reef is difficult to navigate at night. Plus I carry a gun, and Judge Morgan is the type of man who would be sympathetic to me using it."

"Destroying the sanctuary would be counterproductive, don't you think?" I asked. "Without us, the turtle population would decline even faster, and the poachers would have fewer of them to catch."

Stacey crinkled her nose. "In my experience, men trying to feed their families don't always think that far ahead."

A fair point, and the fence hadn't kept the damn photographers out, had it? Okay, so maybe having Luna here wasn't such a bad idea after all. Knox and Ryder didn't seem like the type of men who would back down when faced with poachers. For the next month at least, Franklin and I could sleep easy.

"We'll stay vigilant. Did you want to talk about the results of our population surveys? You mentioned that in your email."

"It can be hard to convince people there's a problem without cold, hard data. Having facts and figures to back up my words is important."

Franklin wasn't too good with figures, but in my past existence, numbers had been everything. I'd helped him to prepare a summary of our survey findings to give to anyone who asked, and now he talked Stacey through the harsh reality of being a turtle in a world ruled by humans. Too often, it felt as if we were fighting a losing battle.

Franklin kept speaking, but I suddenly realised Stacey's attention was elsewhere. She was looking over my shoulder, out toward the bay. I turned to follow her gaze.

"Is something wrong?"

"That blue boat looks as if it's in trouble."

I stood to get a better look, and she wasn't kidding. The boat near the reef was low in the water, its stern almost submerged while its bow rose skyward.

"Holy shit, it's sinking."

Franklin jumped up and ran for the door, and I followed more slowly because, honestly, if they'd hit the reef it was their own dumb fault. As long as they could swim, they'd make it to the shore just fine, or one of their buddies in another boat could pick them up. Fools, all of them. As I ambled along the path that ran parallel to the beach, squinting through the foliage to see if the boat was still afloat, I almost bumped into Ryder as he emerged from the trees. In the blink of an eye, he grabbed my arm to stop me from falling, then shook water from his hair and grinned.

"Productive meeting?" he asked.

"One of the boats is sinking."

"Relax, the passengers are wearing buoyancy aids."

I took in the T-shirt stuck to his chest and his dripping shorts. "Did you try to help them?"

"Nah. Knox is watching Luna, so I went for a swim."

"A swim?"

"Gotta keep my fitness levels up."

"The currents around here can be pretty strong."

"My old commanding officer said I was part marlin. What's for lunch?"

"Did the boat hit the reef?"

"Number-one rule—always check your drainage plug is securely in place before you set sail."

Ryder walked off whistling, and I stared after him. He hadn't…had he? No, any trespassers really didn't stand a chance.