Read kiDNApped (A Tara Shores Thriller) for Free Online

Tropic Sequence . The fact that seawater held millions of bacterial cells per liter had not escaped Archer, and he wanted to know what was in those genes—what was the average genetic diversity—the number of different genes—in different parts of the ocean?
    Kristen Archer frowned as she looked at the pull-out color map with the R/V Tropic Sequence ’s completed itinerary represented as a solid red line, and its intended path as a dotted red line. Her father’s boat had set out from Los Angeles three months ago with a crew of six, including Dr. Archer himself. It was a skeletal crew for a ninety foot yacht on such a long voyage, but the vessel had “automatic everything,” as Archer put it, and his crew were highly skilled and experienced sailors as well as world-class scientists.
    The solid line ran from L.A. straight down to Tahiti. From there it meandered around the French Polynesian islands until it made its way west to the Cook Islands, where there was weeks’ worth of further wandering, and then over to Tonga and Fiji where they stayed for several more weeks. Then the ship had continued north to the Solomon group and the Marshalls. From there it had found its way east to the Line Islands, including a stay on legendary Palymra Atoll, and then to waters surrounding Johnston Atoll, before coming in to port at Honolulu, Hawaii.
    There on the island of O’ahu, it was well-documented that Archer had resupplied and made minor repairs before continuing his journey four days later. His intentions were to work his way up the archipelago to the waters of lush Kauai, then to the ‘Forbidden Isle’ of privately owned Ni’ihau, and from there to follow along the atolls, shoals and seamounts that made up the pristine, uninhabited Northwestern Hawaiian Islands, the farthest of which—Kure Atoll—was 1,100 miles from the urban center of Honolulu. After that he was to have headed across the Pacific again to Thailand, the Philippines and Indonesia before eventually ending up in Sydney, Australia for another major re-supply stop.
    Kristen traced her unpainted, unmanicured fingernail along the dotted line as it snaked its way through the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. She watched as it passed over the island of Midway, where the famous World War II battle was fought. If the Tropic Sequence had still been on course, that was where it should be right now, Kristen thought.
    The trouble was that it wasn’t. The Coast Guard attention had so far revealed only the magnificent desolation of the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands—a rugged seascape of barely submerged undersea mountains and gorgeous tropical lagoons, entirely uninhabited by humans except for a small government research station on Midway Island which had reported nothing out of the ordinary.
    So what had gone wrong? Kristen had racked her brain for weeks over this simple question, to no avail. Her eyes traced back along the map’s dotted line to Honolulu—the last place the Tropic Sequence had been heard from.
    During the voyage, Archer had kept a blog that he updated via shipboard satellite transmission every day or two. This allowed the public and the company’s investors, who now reeled from the precipitous decline in Alacra shares on the news of Archer’s disappearance, to follow the expedition’s progress.
    Three months ago, when the yacht should have been three days out of Honolulu somewhere around Kauai, those messages had ceased. The question was, Kristen wondered as she gently shifted her now sleeping brother’s head off her shoulder, how come? Mechanical problems with the boat?
    Or had something more sinister occurred far out to sea?
    When no word had come from the When Alacra was not contacted as expected, they focused on next of kin, camping out in Lance’s and Kristen’s living rooms. They tapped phones, installed special software on their computers and set up surveillance equipment. Tropic Sequence for two weeks, Kristen and Lance had not been