Free Love Bites: A Sugar City Novella (Entangled Bliss) by Ophelia London

and efficiency. Like a well-oiled machine, everyone knew what to do without being asked, and before she knew it, Jeff and two members of the crew were stepping off the back of the ship and onto a speedboat.
    “Where are they going?” she asked Pax, who sat at the bolted-down chair and table in front of his laptop.
    “To pick up Old Faithful number nine,” he replied.
    She scanned her list, already knowing she wouldn’t find it. “And that is…?”
    He eyed her skeptically for a moment, then sighed. “I guess it’s okay to tell you since you’re here. The Old Faithful program is detachable trackers. They store data but are too small to transmit tangible intel to the satellites like the large ones everyone uses. If we get close enough when the animal surfaces, we can detach ours remotely.”
    “And it shoots into the sky,” she said, gazing toward the water. “Old Faithful, like the geyser at Yellowstone Park. Cool.”
    “Cool?” Pax chuckled. “It’s more than cool, it’s ingenious. Cruz’s brain child.”
    “Huh,” she said as she flipped to the front of her list, still not seeing anything called Old Faithful. “Could it be called something else? I don’t see that name.”
    “You won’t find it on any inventory list from UM,” Pax said. “Jeff funded it out of his own pocket.”
    She lowered her tablet. “Why?”
    “For one thing, other groups have tried using similar prototypes and they’ve all failed, pretty publically. Jeff was able to partner with a group of engineers in Japan who came up with something radical. He didn’t want to get in the news if it didn’t work, didn’t need cameras from Animal Planet documenting everything.”
    “I see,” Sharona said, and couldn’t help feeling impressed. “So now they’ve gone out to fish this tracker out of the water, so to speak?”
    “We counted eight of our Old Faithful-tagged animals in this area. If we’re lucky, we’ll get all eight trackers today. The intel retrieved will be beyond innovative. This is a scientific first in the field of shark research…if it works the way Jeff hopes.”
    Sharona nodded, then stepped to the side, watching the smaller boat speed a good twenty meters away. She could see Jeff, his blue shirt and dark hair, now partially covered with a sun visor that was somehow extremely sexy on him. Their boat slowed, made a sharp turn, then Jeff lowered a net attached to a long metal stick over the side.
    Complete silence fell over the crew of the Mad Hatter , as everyone simultaneously held their breath, waiting. A few seconds later, Jeff straightened and held something high over his head. It was neon pink.
    Everyone broke into cheers. Even Manny blew the horn. High fives were given all around, and then the crew raced to the rear of the boat awaiting the return of their leader.
    Jeff was grinning wider that she’d ever seen him. He looked exhilarated and ocean-sprayed and just plain gorgeous. Sharona had the flash of an image of him coming out of a shower. What she would do for him to smile at her that way.
    “Can you read the data right now? Here?” she asked Pax, keeping an eye on the pink tracker.
    “That’s the major downfall. These transmitters don’t have a USB connection attached organically; that makes them too intrusive while attached to the animal. We’ll have to wait until we’re back at the lab.”
    “Hmm,” she said, tapping that into her tablet.
    “Every time the dorsal fin breaks surface with our tracker attached, it sends a ping to us. In the last year, our sharks have been traced all the way to South Africa and Hawaii. This species has never been tracked so specifically before. Our findings have been astounding.”
    “How are they attached?” she asked. “Jeff said something about a…a hole-punch.”
    “Those are for the long-term transmitters. They need to be able to endure up to five years in the water. Cruz refuses to use those now, not with our system. The Old Faithfuls are