Free Red Rock Island (Damian Green Book 1) by Alec Peche Page A

lemonade and ice tea so pour whichever one you want,” and then looking over at the dog said, “Miguel, I’m going to have to learn this new trick with the drone that Damian has been entertaining you with.”
     
    Ariana put a bowl down on the dock and poured water into it for the dog, who was clearly winded from his play. He then sat at her side ready to protect her from any other strangers.
     
    “What made you come over to my beach?” Ariana asked.
     
    “I needed some fresh air and felt the siren’s call of a mermaid.”
     
    “That sounds nicely poetic, and considering I nearly marooned myself in the bay, I’m sure  the mermaid race would be horrified of my underwater skills.”
     
    “I wasn’t sure how far a ride this was or what the qualities of the water would be so I brought the jet ski. I also have a rowboat with a tiny motor and a kayak, but was afraid it would take me more than an hour to reach your beach and of course there’s the danger of the ferries. It was less than fifteen minutes on the jet ski and I was fortunate to not only find you home but outside on your beach.”
     
    “Yes, you were lucky, but then at this time of day you can usually find me here. If I’m working from home, Miguel pesters me to play outside with him about the same time every day. What were you working on that you needed a break from?”
     
    Damian hesitated, sorting through what to tell her, “I designed a program to search for certain pieces of information in a large database and I assume the search would take several hours and the day looked promising outside, so here I am.”
     
    “I bet you did a background search on me and so you know I invest in Silicon Valley startups, many of them related to the use of data in one way or another. What kind of data search were you doing?”
     
    For some reason, Damian felt relaxed in this woman’s company. It was a weird feeling this companionship. It was an emotion he hadn’t felt in a long time, and it felt strange to feel it now. He decided he would try shocking her with the news of what he was actually doing and see if the companionship disappeared. He doubted she had any connection to the Aryan Brotherhood and so there was no risk to him if she knew the truth of what he was doing. About the only person that would be concerned with someone related to the brotherhood would be a civil rights attorney and she appeared to have neither attribute.
     
    “I’m searching through the email communications of men both in and out of prison that belonged to the Aryan Brotherhood.” He just let that sentence rest between the two of them. He was curious to see where her mind would go next. His research had told him that she was an intelligent woman and so he knew she wouldn’t ignore his statement. The question was would her reaction be one of curiosity or perhaps disgust?
     
    He soon got his answer.
     
    “That sounds like a long and complicated story and it says a few things about you. You apparently know how to write programs for data and you know how to hack into other people’s email accounts, both skills point to perhaps a near genius level of computer language. What I don’t know is what your connection is to the Aryan Brotherhood or to prisoners. Are you in some secret government homeland security thing?”
     
    He laughed at her usage of the word ‘thing’, and said “No I work for no one but myself, however, in this particular instance, I’m helping a retired detective from the south bay on some cold cases.”
     
    “Ah,” was all Ariana said.
     
    What did ‘ah’ mean coming from Ariana? Damian knew he was overthinking her every word, so perhaps it was time to go.
     
    “My computer program should be done running, so I’d better get going,” Damian said as he stood up. “Thanks for the lemonade, Ariana.” He then leaned down to give the dog one more pat on the head. Straightening up he asked, “Miguel won’t follow me out into the bay will