11.

Dubai Land
Dubai, United Arab Emirates

David Taylor lies in bed, staring at the digital clock. 4:46 a.m.

Despite the million-dollar view and the five-star room service, the king-size bed and more down pillows than he could ever use, he has had a restless night. Though exhausted from the long flight, it had taken him several hours to fall asleep, his mind refusing to cease its endless conversations. He had nodded off around ten, but was back up an hour later, struggling to breathe, the air far drier than he was used to. He had downed several bottles of water and returned to bed, only to awaken an hour later to use the bathroom. And so it had gone for the rest of the night and well into morning.

4:47 a.m.

“This is crazy! I can’t sleep. My body’s still on California time.” He kicks off the covers, leaps out of bed, and ruffles through his suitcase for his workout clothes. A quick search of the snack basket yields a protein bar. He wolfs it down, chases it with an orange juice, then pockets his room key and leaves the suite, heading for the elevators.

He takes the lift down to Level Three, the entire floor dedicated to a health and fitness club. The exercise room is empty, just the way he likes it. He inspects the weight training equipment, formulates a routine in his head, then warms up with fifteen minutes on the stationary bike before setting to work.

David is lying at a thirty-degree angle on a decline bench, finishing his third set of dumbbell presses when Kaylie suddenly steps into his view, the girl looking down on him.

“Morning, glory. Need a spot?”

“No . . . I’m good.” He continues pressing the weight, beads of sweat pouring down his face, his exhausted arms shaking as he looks up past Kaylie’s spandex pants, her bare midriff, and six-pack abs. She smiles, peering down at him between her twin peaks, held back by a matching spandex top. Finally he drops the weights onto the rubber exercise floor and pulls himself up into a sitting position.

She tosses him a clean towel from a stack. “How’d you sleep?”

“Not so good. My room needs a humidifier or something.”

“I couldn’t sleep either. You should have come over.”

“Really?”

“Sure. We could have watched movies together. I brought a bunch of DVDs from home.”

“DVDs . . . right.” He watches her stretch her hamstrings. “You look like you work out a lot.”

“I’m training for a triathlon; I did four last year. My best time was three hours seven minutes. My goal is to break two fifty.”

“That’s pretty good. I don’t think I could even finish.”

“Sure you could. You look like you’re in shape.” She selects a treadmill from a row of three and starts running. “You get better as you go . . . figure out how to pace yourself. Dumbest thing I ever did . . . was not lubing up. Leg cramps are nothing compared to chafing . . . my nipples were raw.”

“Yeah. That’s gotta suck.”

“So . . . what are you training for?”

“Me? Football. I played in high school. Wide receiver. Made all-state twice. Used to be a sprinter too. Hundred and two hundred meters. Florida coach asked me to come out. Figured I’d give it a shot.”

“That’s great.”

He watches her run another moment before heading off to work his lats, keeping an eye on her reflection in the mirror. Football . . . good comeback . . . idiot! Practice starts in three weeks and you don’t even own a playbook, let alone a prayer. When’s the last time you even ran a wind sprint?

He works his biceps, finishes with three sets of concentration curls, then debates working his legs. Nah . . . save ‘em for tomorrow. He looks over at Kaylie, who is still running strong. He contemplates doing a mile on the treadmill, but he’s never liked running on machines, preferring the outdoors.

“I’m going outside for a run. Catch you later.”

“I’ve got twenty more minutes . . . then I’m in the pool. Come and find me . . . we’ll do breakfast together.”

“Okay, great.” He towels off and waves, nearly walking into the wall as he leaves the fitness room.

The sun is just coming up as he exits the lobby and heads outside, the desert morning air far cooler than he expected. Sprints or a two-mile run? . . . Screw the sprints. I’m not really trying out for football. He stretches his quads and hams then starts jogging at an easy pace, following a pedestrian trail that leads in the direction of the aquarium.

He jogs through a small park is passing several construction sites. The night shift is just getting off work, yielding to day workers in hard hats drinking coffee. Dubai’s population numbers just over a million, yet more than eighty percent of the people are expatriates, most hailing from Asia. Almost all of the workers he sees fits the demographic.

The trail connects to Avenue D, a pedestrian roadway lined with recently transplanted Canary date palms and the concrete block and wood frames of what will eventually be retail kiosks. The roadway intersects with a circular drive—future home to restaurants, eateries, and an open bazaar. Beyond the drive is an enormous man-made lake that harbors the twelve towering shark fins.

At the center of the lake is the aquarium.

Six futuristic acrylic glass and steel walkways arch gracefully over the lake, connecting the circular drive to the aquarium. The aquatic complex itself resembles something out of Oz’s Emerald City—a tinted green glass pyramid structure surrounded by interlocking triangular trusses that jut out from every possible angle.

David is drenched in sweat, his knees sore from running on concrete, and his blood sugar is low, but having come this far he decides to take a quick look around before returning to the hotel. He sprints up the walkway then slows to admire the architectural details of the aquarium as he jogs down the other side to a third-story pavilion.

There are three public entrances, none of which is open. He is about to begin the journey back when he sees the tractor trailer.

It is moving slowly up an access road on the street level, located forty feet beneath the pavilion. A double-wide eighteen wheeler, it is hauling an enormous railcar (sixty feet long, thirty feet wide, and fifteen feet high) chained to its flatbed. The load is being escorted by a detail of park officials in golf carts, technicians in white lab coats, and a handful of heavily armed military police riding shotgun.

As David watches, something causes the MPs to suddenly jump down off the truck and aim their weapons at the container. The vehicle stops, the technicians immediately scaling the flatbed. Water spills out from a series of air spaces located along the roof. The container is being rocked from within! Then David hears it—a dull, heavy thudding sound—something pounding on metal from within.

They’re transporting a live specimen . . . something big!

A short, dishwater-blonde woman in her mid-fifties rushes over, followed by a tall man—six foot six—in his early thirties. Probably her assistant. The assistant scales the outside of the container then lowers a hose into the air vent, siphoning out a water sample. The woman quickly tests the sample as the pounding increases.

She converses briefly with her lanky assistant before moving to the front end of the railcar where she opens the valve on one of a series of seven-foot-tall, yellow aluminum tanks, waits thirty seconds, before shutting it off again.

After a few moments the pounding ceases.

The woman speaks over a walkie-talkie, and the truck restarts, moving beneath the aquarium complex and out of David’s view.

He hurdles the pavilion’s guardrail and slides down a steep grassy slope to the facility’s receiving area. Remaining concealed, he peeks around the corner of a concrete pillar.

The woman is yelling orders to the technicians in lab coats, who are frantically unchaining the railcar from the flatbed. Overhead, a crane designed to lift heavy cargo containers moves into position along tracks embedded in the loading dock’s ceiling. Workers secure the crane’s lifting arms into position around the railcar, which is then slowly offloaded from the flatbed and lowered into position on rails built into the concrete foundation.

Aluminum doors are raised, allowing a small railcar engine to exit the complex. As it backs into position, the engine’s coupler mates with the railcar container’s boot-lift connector. Moments later, the sixty-foot load is towed into the aquarium’s infrastructure and out of sight.

By the time David returns to the hotel, the morning sun has moved off the horizon, bringing with it a taste of the desert heat to come. He entertains thoughts of showering, but instead heads for the pool.

Kaylie, the lone swimmer, is doing laps. A few maintenance people linger on the pool deck, setting up chairs and stealing glances at her physique. David peels off his sneakers and jumps into the water, wearing his sweaty socks, shirt, and shorts.

The cool water revitalizes him. He rinses out his mouth then takes off his shirt and socks, ringing them out before tossing them on the closest chair. Okay . . . laundry’s done.

“Hey!” Kaylie swims over, removing her goggles. She’s wearing a red one-piece Speedo. “I’ve been waiting for you to get back. I didn’t want to get out of the pool with all these workers staring at me; they give me the creeps. How was your run?”

“Good.”

“Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere special.”

“Liar. You went to the aquarium, didn’t you? So? How’s it look?”

“Great. Beautiful . . . at least from the outside. Not like there’s much to see.”

She stares at him, reading his expression. “Why are you acting so weird then? Did you see something?”

“Like what?”

“You tell me.”

He looks around, making sure they’re alone. “They were moving a huge crate into the aquarium, and something was inside. I could hear it banging around.”

“Wow. What do you think it was?”

“I don’t know. A whale maybe? Whatever it was, it was big. Spooked the hell out of the guards.”

“Cool. Maybe we’ll get a peek of it later.”

“Maybe. But don’t say anything, Kaylie. Let’s keep it between us.”

“Okay.” She moves closer. Touches his chest and a pale, six-inch scar that contrasts with his tan skin, running from his left pectoralis to his deltoid. “That’s sexy. How’d you get that?”

“High school. Mary Alaina Edwards. She broke my heart then ripped it right out of my chest like a Mayan priest making a sacrificial offering to the gods.”

“An interesting visual.”

“It’s all true. She warned me not to fall in love with her, but I couldn’t help it.”

Kaylie leans in and kisses him gently on the lips. “I’m a free spirit, David. I don’t want to be tied down.”

“Tied down? Me either. I’ve never been into that whole S and M thing.”

“Shut up.” She slides her arm around his neck and kisses him again, this time with passion—

—neither one of them realizing that, six stories up, someone is watching.