Scotty Butkus was sitting at the head of the main table smoking a cigarette, two bottles of Mickey’s Big Mouth at his elbow. Scotty, like Anna, was a permanent law enforcement ranger, her counterpart in Rock Harbor. Butkus fancied himself an old cowboy who’d been a ranger when it was still a good job. To hear him talk, he’d helped clean up Dodge City. But he wasn’t more than fifty-nine or sixty at most, still a GS-7 making the same salary as Anna.

A few of the younger people thought he was a semiromantic has-been. Anna suspected he was a never-was, drinking and talking to rectify a personal history that was a disappointment. He’d been busted down from somewhere and was starting over: new park, new job, new young wife. The new wife wasn’t in evidence.

Next to Butkus was Jim Tattinger, the park’s Submerged Cultural Resources Specialist. Anna knew very little about him except that, according to the crew of the 3rd Sister, he spent all his time playing with computers and never dove any of the wrecks himself. Tattinger looked like a textbook nerd, right down to his skinny neck, thick glasses, and thinning red hair. Anna moved down the table so she wouldn’t have to sit opposite him. When he talked or smiled his thin lips stretched too far, turning a moist pink ruffle of nether lip out into the light of day. She didn’t want to know him that well.

Between Pizza Dave, the four-hundred-and-fifty-pound maintenance man, and Anna’s boss, Ralph Pilcher, the District Ranger for Rock Harbor, she found an empty chair. Lucas Vega wasn’t there. One of the perks of being Chief Ranger was being spared some of the employee get-togethers.

Holly and Hawk Bradshaw were conspicuous by their absence.

The pooped-party feel did not surprise Anna. Living in such isolated places, NPS managers felt a responsibility to instill a sense of “family” into their employees and, accordingly, planned endless potlucks, Chrismooses, chocolate pig-outs, and receptions. Usually these attempts at building an esprit de corps failed. People came because there was nothing else to do and left as early as good manners-or good politics-allowed.