"Fitch-SarahAtTheTidePool" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fitch Marina)

face floated across from her on a tide of actinic flashes.

He smiled. "So you see," he said, "not only would it be an act of loyalty, but
one of revenge."

The hermit crab scrabbles across the floor of the tide pool, pausing to shove
aside a pebble in its path, then darts over the uneven stone to a pocket of sand
just beyond Sarah's sight. She leans further over the pool. The hermit crab
trots into the fissure only to back out quickly, followed by the claw-waving
decorator crab. Sarah smiles.

Richard liked hermit crabs. He refused to let her keep a tank of nudibranchs at
home, but he encouraged her to keep hermit crabs. He liked to watch them change
shells. He brought home shells for her hermit crabs the way some spouses brought
home flowers for the piano. Perhaps if she could remember when he stopped
bringing home cowries and conches, she could figure out when and why the
marriage went sour.

But maybe not.

Sarah reaches for the hermit crab, careful to touch only the shell, not the
tender body. The crab tucks itself deeper inside its fortress. Sarah lifts it
from the water. Frantic, it shakes a claw at her.

SARAH LOOKED up from the microscope and stared at the cupboards and equipment
around her, a habit she'd fallen into since Jason Whitcomb's visit five days
ago. She could call the police, but no one would believe her. And even if they
did, MediChem would cover it up, Richard would die in some "accident," and she
would lose the lab.

She placed her hand against the cool wall of the tank. The lab was her world.
And now that world had been invaded by Jason Whitcomb -- and Richard's voice.

Whenever she relaxed, her mind replayed the night Richard left. Maybe I just
need a fling, maybe I'll be back, he'd said. But right now, I need someone with
a real life, someone alive.

My work is too important right now, she'd said. I need to develop that skin so
my mother and people like her can live.

Sarah, you work seven days a week, twelve, fifteen hours a day. You don't care
about people -- you don't see your mother anymore, or anyone else. You don't
even see me, and I live with you.

I see you when I get home from the lab.

For a whole half hour before you drop into bed. You're hiding in that lab,
closing yourself off.

I'm getting results.t What are you getting?