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“Did they text you to tell you that?”
I roll my eyes. “No, Jamie did.”
“Jamie?”
“From the catamaran cruise. You remember, right?” I stand up and look back down at my phone. “He’s sending me the location, too. There will be a bunch of volunteers there… we can join them!”
There’s a groan from Phillip’s direction.
“Don’t you want to?” I ask, grinning. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing, you know.”
He puts down his bottle. “God, you’re crazy.”
“Yes, but you like a bit of vacation crazy, don’t you? Oh, come with me. It’s going to be amazing.”
He looks at me with something like amused resignation in his eyes. “Fine,” he says. “But I’m holding you personally accountable for the outcome.”
I’m already slinging my bag over my shoulder. “Come on. You can tell me your good riddance on the way.”
The front desk calls a taxi for us. Apparently, it’s not normal for the Winter Resort guests to order one at 10 p.m. to drive to the east coast, because she looks at us as if we’ve lost our minds.
Phillip seems to agree with her.
But he doesn’t say a thing as we get into the car, or when he hires the cab driver to stick around when we get there.
We arrive at the coordinates Jamie had sent, but the place looks dark and deserted. I can hear waves, though, so the beach must be close by.
“We’re probably about to get robbed,” Phillip says calmly by my side, and I can’t tell if he’s joking or not. Ithinkso, but his sarcasm is tough.
“Oh, of course we’re not!” I say. The rum of the last couple of hours has settled into a pleasurable buzz in the back of my head, like a song you can’t help but tap your foot along to. “Jamie and I spoke about this organization during the sunset cruise.”
There’s a surprise in his tone. “You did?”
I nudge Phillip’s shoulder with mine. “Yep. You were on your phone, I believe. Now let’s find this group…”
We walk around the dense shrubbery, and the ground turns from packed dirt to fine sand. The moonlight casts a silvery shadow over the landscape, and through the thickets, I hear waves breaking against the beach.
And then, voices.
“Over here!” someone calls. “It’s starting!”
Excitement burns in my stomach. “We’re definitely in the right place.”
“It’s damn dark,” Phillip mutters. “Does no one have flashlights?”
“Oh, you can’t use flashlights. It would disorient the hatchlings.” I reach for his hand. It’s warm and dry around mine. “Come on, let’s find the others.”
We find Jamie by a dune, standing with the other volunteers next to a foldable table laden with hot beverages. Phillip and I are welcomed like we’re not just two random tourists, offered coffee, and instructed on the different nests on the beach.
“There are many on this beach,” Jamie tells us, pointing to a few flags. The orange color is just barely visible in the moonlight. “They’ve been percolating since this evening.”
“Percolating?” I ask.
He grins. “Yeah, the sand is shifting. Means they’re digging from below. They’ll be out in a few hours, most likely.”
Phillip has a cup of coffee in his hand, his eyes steady on Jamie. “Is a hands-off approach best?”
“Yeah, we can’t do the digging for them. They need to imprint on the sand. That’s how they know which beach they should come back to in a decade to lay their own eggs.”
