cove below. The trail had been worn when they’d found it, hinting at use over generations. A mercy for her poor feet, but trickily narrow, just wide enough for a slight woman.
Or a small boy.
Her mind immediately went to one in particular. Grant McMurtrie must have come here a hundred times in his young life, hard as it was to imagine the imposing man as a child. What adventurous little soul wouldn’t find his way to the dangers of open cliff-face, gale-force wind gusts and wildlife galore? Envy as green as his eyes bubbled through her.
He might have had the seals before her, but she had them now. They’d been hers for the past two years and, if she played her cards right, they’d go on being hers for the next year. Longer, if the Conservation Council ruled in her favour. They were already extremely interested in her research.
Two-dozen dark heads lifted as she negotiated her way down the crease. These seals were used to the arrival of humans on their beach now. They were not trusting—definitely not—but accustomed. Only a couple of heads remained raised at the unusual sight of just a solitary human; the rest flopped back onto the rocks to continue their lazy sunning. Kate smiled at the typical scene. A gang of rotund pups mucked around by the water’s edge, vocalising and chasing each other and play-fighting, as though they needed to use up all their energy now before they grew up and became biologically sluggish like their mothers, scattered lazing around the rocks.
Or their older brothers, hanging out in bachelor groups further up the coast. Or their fathers, who did their own thing most of the year but came together with the females for breeding season.
Families. They came in all shapes and sizes, and if those pups got lucky they’d have theirs for a lot longer than she’d had hers. Kate frowned. She’d had a long time to grow accustomed to being on her own but it had never really grown any easier.
One of the pups squealed and drew her maudlin focus back to them.
It was amazing they tolerated human presence at all, given Kate and her team caught them up once a month and piled them into wool sacks for weighing. But the young seals seemed to view it as a regular part of their lives, a game to be had. More than one pup dashed straight back into the wool sack after release, keen to be back with its mates. Looking into the sack was one of the rare true pleasures of her job, as four pairs of enormous, melted-chocolate eyes in brown furry faces peered back out at her.
It got all her maternal instincts bubbling, yearning, until she shushed them. When your colleagues barely noticed you were female, and when colleagues were the only men you met, kids weren’t an immediate issue on the horizon, no matter what her biology was hinting.
Plus they were just one more thing to love and lose. And what was the point?
‘Hey, Dorset,’ Kate murmured to one of the seals she could recognise by sight as she settled herself on a suitably flat rock. The large female was one of five wearing the monitoring equipment this month. The time-depth recorder captured her position above sea-level every five seconds when she was dry and every two seconds when she was wet, twenty-four-seven. They rotated the expensive recorders monthly across the whole adult colony, to get a good spread of data from as many animals as possible, in order to determine information for their study: where the seals fed, for how long and how deep they went.
What they were eating was a different matter. There was no convenient machine for that, hence the vomit and poop-sifting.
Dorset gave an ungracious snort and turned her attention back out to sea, sparing the briefest of glances for Danny Boy, her pup. Seal mothers were shockingly fast to abandon their pups when threatened; that made it much easier to catch up the young for weighing, but it bothered Kate on a fundamental level that these babies were often left undefended.
She knew from experience how that felt.
She’d made a pledge to herself back when she was young that she’d never let herself get in that position again—exposed, vulnerable to the capricious decisions of others. Without control. Without any say.
It must have occurred to the seal species in the ancient past that the loss of the baby meant the loss of only one, but the loss of a fertile mother meant the loss of an entire genetic line. Pups were expendable. And entirely, tragically vulnerable.
Danny Boy looked straight at her and then dashed off, barking in grumpy high-pitched tones. Sad affection bubbled through her. As far as the fishing communities along the west coast were concerned, seals and man were hunting the same fishstocks. And, when that industry was worth millions of dollars a year, anything or anyone threatening supply would not be tolerated. Her research was showing that, whether by good design or dumb luck, seals were hunting totally different fish from humans. If only she could prove that to the people of Castleridge. To the government. To the world.
‘Don’t suppose you guys would consider going vegetarian?’ she quietly asked the wary mass of seals.
Close by, one mother trumpeted her displeasure at that idea, and Kate scrabbled away from the ensuing stench; beyond disgusting.
Her chuckle was half-gag. ‘Go on. Get it out of your system now. I need you guys to be charming the next time I come down.’
With McMurtrie junior in tow. It was the obvious next step. If he was going to throw legalese at her, then she’d fight back with the only thing she had—history. If Grant McMurtrie had cared for these seals as a kid, maybe she could use that and try to change his mind about her access. She wasn’t above begging, or conniving.
Whatever it took to snatch back a bit of control.
Not only did she have three funding grants riding on this, but her professional reputation as well. She didn’t want years of work to be wasted because somebody had a chip on their shoulder about conservation programs. She had her university, the Fisheries Department and the Castleridge Town Shire to remind her of that. They were expecting results in return for their contribution and it was her job to get them, come hell or high water.
Or hot, surly city lawyers. ‘So, what was the good news?’ Grant drained the last of his coffee and stared meaningfully at Castleridge’s mayor.
Alan Sefton chuckled. ‘Twelve weeks is pretty short for probate settlement, as you know. You should be thanking me.’
Three months before he could legally boot Kate Dickson and her team off his land.
‘Thank you for agreeing to be Dad’s executor,’ he allowed.
The older man smiled sadly. ‘I was aware that he wouldn’t … That you and he …’ Grant lifted one hand and Alan gratefully picked up the cue to move on. ‘Did you know he’d left you the farm?’
‘I had no idea.’
‘You were still his son. His only heir. Time couldn’t change that, nor distance.’
‘It wouldn’t have surprised me if he’d left the farm to those greenies just to spite me.’
Alan frowned. ‘Spite is not a trait I connected with Leo. Belligerence, absolutely. Selective hearing, sometimes. But he was not a man who wasted time on petty grudges.’
Grant let that sink in. ‘Perhaps he mellowed in the twenty years we were apart.’
‘Or perhaps you did.’
Silence fell. With no other customers
