Red Rock Island (Damian Green Book 1) (14 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

Damian stood on the edge of his island watching Mike’s boat approach. He saw Trevor and a woman on board along with a few packages. He often had packages delivered to Mike who would store them until he had a reason to go out to the island unless Damian made arrangements to get them sooner. He’d made his way down to the beach where they would get off the boat and where the packages would be deposited. It seemed rather rude on his part to wait on the cliff’s top rather than greet them down below.

Mike kept a lightweight ramp in his boat that he now slung from the boat to the beach. It was the easiest way to move people or packages off his boat. Introductions were made and then Haley and Trevor assisted Damian with moving packages off the boat and onto the sand. Within a few minutes, the ramp was back in the boat and Mike was waving goodbye having confirmed that he’d be return at three to take them back to the marina.

Once the boat was out of earshot, Trevor said, “Hey, Damian, Haley’s an engineer and her company’s experimenting with drone delivery. I bet she’d be good at operating your drone and depositing the packages on your doorstep.”

Damian smiled and handed her the controls, “It’s all yours.”

Haley went to work while Trevor beamed with pride at her dexterity with the drone, moving the packages in record time. Damian said, “You’re really good at that. On rare occasions, I haven’t wanted to bother Mike with picking up something from me, and so my drone can reach the marina. However since it’s over the water for much of the journey, I never feel comfortable, fearing I’m actually going to drop the package in the water, but with you at the controls I think I could relax.”

“I’ve played a lot with drones at work and I’m developing the software that will allow a company to program an address and have the drone deliver it. The software directing the drone has to be smart enough not to hit anything in its way and to find an address. We’re making progress, but we’ve had our share of drones smacking into walls,” Haley said.

“Trevor didn’t mention you are an engineer. I’ll have to show you my lab as I have lots of projects underway there.”

“Trevor told me you had wave technology here to make the island livable but intrude as little as possible on its environment. I hear there’s a little zip line we can take instead of climbing up that hill,” Haley said pointing to the cliff that Damian had descended in order to meet the boat.

“The zip line is the fastest and likely safest route to the top. That hill can be slippery and I’ll admit I’ve left some skin behind. The game starts in ten minutes, so we best get going,” Damian soon had all of them on top and they walked into his house.

Damian spent an enjoyable several hours with Trevor and Haley. He thought he would spend the whole time watching the clock wondering how soon he could escort them off the island, but he should have known better; they were great company. During halftime, he gave Haley a tour of his laboratory and had a great in-depth discussion about his wave energy technology. She perfectly recited the physics behind his theory but also understood his corrosive issues with water. She half-jokingly said that when he was ready to take on an engineer to help him, that she’d move to Berkeley and commute to his island daily to assist.

“Honey, how can we begin a life together if you want to live in Berkeley?” Trevor asked.

“You can quit your job with the public defender’s office and do the same one for Alameda County. You’ve got a reputation, you won’t have any trouble finding a job. I love the idea of using my engineering smarts to solve a problem for a Third World country.”

Damian could tell that if he had offered her a job, she would seriously consider working for him. However he knew as long as Hannah was in his life, that he would need to keep people distant from his island. Of course he could set up a company close to the marina in a building and commute there every day, but he thought that some of his creativity came from living surrounded by water.

“Hey, didn’t mean to cause discord between the two of you. Let’s go back upstairs, grab a beer and sit down for the second half of the game.”

The rest of the afternoon went off without a hitch with the Warriors winning. He was soon escorting his guests onto the boat and waving goodbye. He texted Ariana that the coast was clear, and they could visit at any time. It was early, but he wanted to give her that option. She texted back that she had a few more errands to run and that she and Hannah would be over in about an hour.

In the end, Damian decided to get a hard thirty minute run in on his treadmill since his exercise schedule had been so disrupted the last few days. That would also give him some time to think about all of the oranges he was juggling at the moment. He kept pen and pencil on the treadmill as he often thought of problems to solve and ways to solve problems that he had. He realized he hadn’t thought of Greg Watson in the past few days and found himself wondering if anyone had followed-up with Natalie on what was going on with the search warrant by the Phoenix Police Department and the knife edge match from the medical examiner. He finished the run and wrote Natalie an email about the Greg Watson case and his pleasure in meeting Haley. He had just enough time to shower and catch a few fish for the cats and then he saw Ariana’s boat approaching.

He opened his watercraft garage and extended the dock for Ariana to tie up the boat. He’d have to think about whether there was a better and more secretive way for her to park her boat at his house. For now, he welcomed the two women and the dog into his house. He’d brought the bags of Hannah’s stuff out of the locked room so she could sort through it and see if she wanted to keep anything. Hannah looked older as she’d decided her new look would be radically different from the old. Her long brown hair was replaced by short black hair tipped with the shade of deep purple. Her eyebrows perhaps had also been dyed black and shaped. She had a flower tattoo on her upper arm and a ring of ivy around her ankle. She had heavy eye makeup on and a flawless complexion. Hannah was waiting for him to say something about her transformed looks.

“Hannah, I like your radically transformed look. I think it will help keep you safe. Are those tattoos permanent or temporary?”

“Temporary why?”

“If your parents are alive and able to return to you sometime in the future, I’m just keeping a list of sins that I will have committed as your temporary guardian. Permanent tattoos would have made my list because they are much harder to change than hair color. How do you feel about your look? Is it typical in your age group?”

All of a sudden she looked like a typical teenager when she gave him a look that said, ‘you are such a dumb adult’. He felt so good getting that look.

“I had such an ugly hair color, but Mom wouldn’t allow me to change it. I really like this new look and I think I’ll fit in perfectly with kids at my new school on Monday. Ariana took me shopping to a few shops in the downtown area and I saw other kids with my look.”

“There’re a few more things she could do to change her appearance. She could get a couple of moles on her face as temporary tattoos as well as have a makeup artist show her how to make her eyes look more almond shaped. She has till the end of tomorrow to finish her modifications, because come Monday she’s going to have to have her picture taken for her school ID.”

“Actually, we should probably complete any changes to her face that we want her to have for the foreseeable future, as I need to take some pictures and age her backwards, so that there is a history to her new name. Hannah, have you decided what your new name will be?”

“I think so. My full name is Hannah Katherine Sherwood and I would like to keep the same initials. Since I love Harry Potter, my new first name is Hermione and the second could still be Katherine, right, and for the last name, how about if we chose Smith? Wouldn’t Smith somewhat hide my identity since there are so many of them?”
 

“I can see now that I’ll have to read Harry Potter again,” Damian replied. “My oldest daughter was reading it and loved the story. Okay from this moment forward, we’re going to call you Hermione. Smith is a good choice for the reasons you cited. Now the next question is how to make you related to Ariana.”

“Or yourself. I could have ended up with you as my guardian, but because there’s no school on the island, and Ariana is a good friend, she agreed to house me.”

“Hmm, you may have a point there, Hermione, as I have no family to explain you to, whereas Ariana has lots of family.”

Hannah giggled the first time that Damian called her by her name and she suspected it would take a while to get used to the new name.

“Ariana, what do you think?”

“There’s a lot to be said for that explanation. I feel I might blow it sometime when I’m introducing Hermione to my family since I would constantly have to switch from my branch to that of my husband’s and that might trip me up at some point. Describing her as your ward, but staying with me for school is much easier to explain and less likely for me to make mistakes with.”

“Okay. After my family was murdered, I lost touch with everyone that we used to hang out with. I’ll go back and build an identity based on one of those families as a model. I’ll see where they are now and just use the same story for your background. I like the term guardian as that accounts for this coming out of the clear blue sky. Sorry, Hermione, but I’ll have to kill your imaginary parents in a car crash.”

“That’s okay, it’s all make-believe.”

“What are your parents’ first names?”

The teenager frowned in thought, then nodded, she understood the reason for Damian’s question, “Jason and Amy.”

Damian didn’t want to kill imaginary parents with the same names as the kid’s real parents.

“Okay, let me get your picture, then I need your vaccination records, any surgeries that you’ve had, and your school records. Do you think you could remember any of that?”

“Actually, if you get my phone working, there’s a picture of my vaccine record and my transcript for grades 1-8. It also has my birth certificate. I had to have that information when I entered school and it seemed like they kept asking those questions, so I just kept a picture of it on my cell phone.”

“That was brilliant, of course, assuming Damian can get your phone working again, but my money’s on him being able to do that! We want to keep you in good health so before I forget, do you have any allergies - medications, food, bees?” Ariana asked.

“I’m allergic to raw tomatoes. My mouth gets real itchy, but if you cook the tomatoes like in pizza sauce or spaghetti then I’m fine and I’ve never liked ketchup but it doesn’t seem to bother me on hamburgers.”

Damian quickly researched raw tomato allergies and saw what Hermione was talking about. All three read the article and Ariana made a note to have the first pizza or spaghetti with Hermione near or inside a hospital just to be sure that this wasn’t a full blown allergy.

Damian took her picture that he would use for various identifications and said, “It’s a shame I didn’t get a picture of you before your transformation that I could use for aging you backwards.”

Ariana said, “I took a picture before her hair was cut; let me send it to you.”

“Thanks, that will make this much easier since I won’t have to spend time editing the picture back. I can do the rest of this on my own at a later time. Let’s go upstairs and eat.”

“Can you show me some of the things you’re doing in your lab?” Hermione asked.

“Sure, over there I’m working on creating electricity through the power of wave action. Over there I monitor the various systems I have on this island - solar and wind generation and security. I should tell you, Ariana, that when you washed up on my shoreline, your phone didn’t work because I have a jammer that blocked its action.”

“What do you mean washed up on your island?” Hermione asked.

Ariana went on to explain her first encounter with Damian and her subsequent purchase of the tea and a drone. Hermione had her first real smile from the description of that entire adventure.

“Wow, you swam under the bay with scuba gear all the way to Damian’s island? That’s cool. Will you teach me to scuba?”

“Do you know how to swim?” Damian asked