Yes—a complete change. She had even started going by her mother’s maiden name, Ainsworth. The trauma she had fled had been one thing; she was strong. The constant publicity had been another. Ironic, since media was what she had done as a congressional assistant—and was mainly what she was still doing now. Of course, her boss, Grady Miller, knew who she was and what she had fled from. He was supportive and wonderful, and she trusted him completely.
And why wouldn’t she? Grady was friends with Adam Harrison, executive director of the Krewe of Hunters, her best friend’s unit at the FBI. Without Meg Murray and her unit, Lara wouldn’t have survived.
“Hey!” Rick called to her, heading from the service building with a cooler filled with fish. “You’re here bright and early.”
“I understand that this is very special. That even employees don’t get free swims all that often,” Lara told him, grinning.
She liked Rick; he was probably about fifty, weathered from years in the sun, slim and fit. He was married to Adrianna, another of the trainers. She had actually met Adrianna first, right here, just two years ago when she had been at her previous job, doing media for then-congressman Ian Walker. Due to a series of murders in Washington, DC, with which Walker had been involved—indirectly, or so he alleged—he was no longer a congressman.
Murders—and Lara’s own kidnapping and imprisonment, naked and starving, in the dank underground of an abandoned gristmill in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.
But she had survived, and now she was here, building a new life. Rick knew all about her past; he also knew that she’d survived mainly because of the ingenuity of a friend who worked for the FBI, and that she’d received extensive therapy since. To be honest, she hadn’t felt that she’d needed all the therapy; she’d come out of the experience grateful for her life, and furious with anyone who would commit atrocities and murder for personal gain. The henchman who had actually carried out the vile acts was, she was convinced, truly certifiably crazy, but that didn’t mean she was unhappy about the fact that he was going to rot in jail for the rest of his life, or that the woman whose manipulative will had set him on his murderous course would rot along with him.
“Well, Lara, you should definitely be in the water with these babies,” Rick said. “There’s nothing in the world like getting to know Cocoa and her buds. We bring in wounded soldiers, autistic kids—you name it. This interaction is good for whatever ails you.”
“Rick,” she told him firmly, “I’m absolutely fine, and I don’t want people tiptoeing around me. I’m here to do a bang-up job with Sea Life’s PR. Not that I’m not beyond excited to get to know Cocoa better.”
“Okay, we’ll start our training session on the platform,” he told her. “And then we’ll get in the water. No bull, though. I’ll kick you out in two seconds if I don’t think you’re going to be a good fit with the dolphins, okay?”
“Okay.”
From the platform, Rick began to teach her the hand signals that Cocoa knew. Lara dutifully imitated every sign Rick made, and Cocoa responded like a champ. She learned from Rick about the vitamins they gave to their dolphins to compensate because they didn’t hunt their fish from the wild, and how they were given freshwater, too, something they usually got from their fish—and still did—but this ensured that their intake was sufficient, and they loved it. The biggest issue was trust, Rick told her. No dolphin was forced to perform or work—ever, under any circumstances.
“How on earth do they learn what a hand signal means to begin with?” Lara asked. “I mean, it’s not like you can explain, ‘Hey, when I raise my hand like this, I want you to make that chattering noise while you back up on your flukes.’”
Rick grinned. “We use targets, and it’s a long process—except for sometimes when we work with the calves and they just follow their moms. Dolphins are social creatures, and they’re curious about us, too. They like interaction, and they love learning. When the trainer blows a whistle after a task, it’s to tell the dolphin that he, or she, did it properly. It’s called positive reinforcement, and I don’t know of any facility that uses anything else. When the dolphin hears the whistle, he knows to come to the trainer for a reward. It may be fish, like we’ve been using today. Sometimes it’s a toy and sometimes it’s a lot of stroking. Dolphins are mammals. They’re affectionate. Oddly enough, a lot like aquatic dogs, but even smarter. Smart as all get-out. I love working with them. I’d honestly rather be doing what I’m doing than be a millionaire working on Wall Street. I wake up happy every day, and I get to work in paradise, with my friends and these amazing creatures. You’re truly going to love it here.”