Clear Water Read Free Page A

I’d very much like to know.”
    At that point the boy did maybe his first almost-conscious thing since the car had plunged into the Sacramento River—he pulled his knees to his chest and started to cry, soundlessly, like he was dreaming about something sad. Whiskey looked at him in the thin light of the moon and the dissipated sodium glow from up on the levee and sighed. What looked to be dark-blond hair was plastered to his head—either salon-streaked or naturally, it was hard to tell—but his khakis and summer-weight blazer were fashionable and expensive. The kid had a small face, piquant, and almost round, although he actually looked a little thin under his blazer. Whiskey couldn’t tell if he was awake or simply crying in his sleep, but either way—God, what a forlorn little kitten he was, wasn’t he?
    Whiskey sighed and crouched down, sliding his hands under the kid’s knees and his shoulder. Now that he was done barfing, it was time to get him somewhere he didn’t look so damned sad.
    With a heave, a grunt, and a muttered curse word, Whiskey pushed himself up, a gangly bundle of teenager in his arms, and resolved himself to hauling the kid’s scrawny ass to the houseboat. His wet, holey jeans made schwacking sounds against themselves as he walked, and his T-shirt dripped mud and silt down to keep his jeans wet, in case they had random drying thoughts during the trip.
    Fly Bait would hate this kid on sight.
     
     
    “ W HO in the holy fuck is that?”
    Fly Bait didn’t often show emotion, which was why Whiskey no longer played poker with her. The houseboat had two berths, and she took one. Yeah, they’d knocked uglies before on another research excursion, but that had been out of sheer boredom. Whiskey tended to like his bed partners—female or male—to be a little more vocal. Fly Bait tended to like her bed partners a little more female, but, well, they’d been waiting for a species of fish to procreate when, in fact, the damned things had been all but sterile. Boredom? Whiskey swore his heart rate had been faster when he’d been sleeping than it had been on that job—or during the abortive sex with Fly Bait.
    “An acolyte,” he muttered now, trying not to stagger down the stairs from the deck. Hell, he’d been half a mile away from the dock—who knew the little shit he was carrying weighed so much? The fun part had been walking on the unsteady quay on his unsteady legs—damn, he’d been half-afraid he’d pitch the poor kid off the edge and then follow him out of sheer embarrassment.
    “Yeah?” Fly Bait had straight brown hair that fell right below her ears because she hacked it off herself that length whenever it threatened to overcome the ragged edges years of doing this had given her. She also had a thin oval of a face, flat brown eyes, and a sort of hidden patience. She could rip an unwary head and/or face off if she thought someone was skiving off or being deliberately stupid, but if she knew a member of a research team was honestly trying, she was perhaps one of the best field teachers Whiskey had ever met.
    “Yup,” Whiskey muttered, staggering down the stairs to the hold, through the tiny living/dining room space that also converted into a bed, and into his berth, where he stripped the kid out of his stinking clothes down to his underwear. Then, balancing the kid against his shoulder, where he exhaled fetid breath with a soothing regularity, Whiskey threw an oversized towel over his coverlet and then another one over the kid. He hated going to the Laundromat, but he was damned if he would sleep in that reechy mess that the kid smelled like when helpless kitten here finally went back to where he was supposed to go.
    He emerged from the bedroom with a pair of boxer shorts, which was all he wore to bed and all Fly Bait cared that he wore, period , and promptly went to the head with its three-by-three shower cubicle of recycled water.
    It was better than stinking up the boat even more