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“Rachel was working at the botanical gardens several years ago when the army appeared out of the sky to clean up some kindof toxic spill,” Burgess said. “Then they buried the story and, presumably, the waste along with it.”
Sam Ito said, “They deliberately covered it up then, according to Ms. Sherrill, and our sources indicate something similar is going on now.”
“And lo and behold, we’re being called home,” Burgess said. “They say at the paper it’s because of the eruption. But we all know better, don’t we, Dr. MacGregor?”
“I could have stayed inside,” Mac said. “You guys don’t need me. You already have all the answers.”
“We figured you called Rivers as soon as you got Imani’s message,” Ito said. “After that we figured the general called the president of the United States himself. Who then called the managing editor of theNew YorkfreakingTimesand told him that his two reporters in Hilo were about to put people’s lives in danger with baseless allegations about the army.”
“Except,” Rachel Sherrill said, “you’re the ones putting lives in danger, aren’t you, Dr. MacGregor?”
“I’m trying to save them,” Mac said. “Which, frankly, I can’t do out here.”
“Stop me if you’ve heard this one,” Ito said. “But the people have a right to know.”
“Not everything, they don’t,” Mac said. “Get over yourself, kid.”
“I’m not a kid,” Ito said heatedly.
“You are to me,” Mac said.
“You don’t get to decide what people do and don’t have a right to know,” Rachel Sherrill said. “Especially with stakes like these.”
Mac said, “Please don’t lecture me on what the stakes are here, Ms. Sherrill.”
Rachel was breathing hard, her face red, fists clenched. She reminded Mac a little of Jenny when she thought that she was right about something and that he was dead wrong.
“This isn’t over,” she said. “Even though these two are leaving, I’m not going anywhere until I get some answers.”
“Then I guess there’s no point in my telling you to have a nice flight,” Mac said.
They all stood there in silence. Mac was comfortable with it. He knew they had a lot more they wanted to say to him and a lot more they wanted to ask. But the three of them finally turned, went to their car in the visitors’ lot, and drove away.
As Mac walked toward the building, he felt his phone buzzing in his pocket. He stepped to the side of the front door, leaned against the wall, and answered it: “This is MacGregor.”
The reporters and Rachel Sherrill were too far away to hear the mournful wail that came out of Dr. John MacGregor then, the sound of a wounded animal; they didn’t hear him scream“No”again and again, scream it until it was as if all the air had left his body.
He slid down the wall, phone still in his hand, and felt as if the world had ended already.
His and everybody else’s.
Rebecca finally headed outside to look for him. There was still work to be done tonight, or there would be as soon as Jenny and Rick called in their final report from the Galápagos and transmitted the pictures Rick had taken, which they’d probably do when they were back in the air on Brett’s fancy plane.
She and Mac had heard from them an hour or so ago, right before they’d landed on Isabela Island. Before Mac went out to meet the reporters and Sherrill, he’d said that if Jenny and Rick hadn’t called by the time he got back to the office, he was calling them.
Rebecca stepped outside and saw Mac, sitting on the ground outside the door. He was motionless except for the heaving of his chest, his eyes fixed blankly on some point in the distance.
His phone was in his hand.
His eyes were red, and as hard as this was for Rebecca to believe, it looked like John MacGregor had been crying.
She started breathing hard, her chest constricting. She walked over and crouched down next to him.
“Mac, what’s wrong?”
It was as if there were a delay between when she spoke and when her words reached him.
Finally, he looked up at her.
