Chapter 14

Chapter

Fourteen

The evidence they had against Nautic was gone. Destroyed. Reid leapt off Gale's Promise , dove into the rising waves, and grabbed the evidence bag. He'd moved so fast it hadn't the time, nor the weight, to sink very deep. But water had gotten inside and damaged the contents, despite his quadruple checks on the seal before putting it into the basket lift.

CGIS was going to try recovering the digital files, but it was more a formality than any real hope of success.

After a few hours of shitty sleep at the station, Reid stumbled his way to the head, tired, cranky, his guts a tangled mass of knots and stress. Someone was talking within, the voice too muffled to make out words, just harsh, clipped tones beyond the door. Reid went in, the hinges creaking, and beelined for the sink. Morning quarters was in fifteen minutes, and he could stand to look a little less like death warmed over in front of command.

"Gotta go." A second later, Hatcher pushed out of one of the stalls, shoving his relic of a flip phone into his pocket.

Reid splashed water on his face. "Who were you talking to?"

"My mom."

"While you were taking a shit?" Reid wrenched the faucet shut and straightened, roughly swiping water from his face.

"Man, mind your own business. Can't even talk on the damn phone around here without someone butting in." Hatcher grumbled the last bit as he tried brushing past, but Reid stood in the way, a wall of muscle and zero fucks.

"Don't get pissy with me, fumble fingers."

"Now who's getting pissy?"

Dropping the evidence bag wasn't some minor fuck up. Not only did Hatcher's clumsiness derail an active CGIS investigation, but there were lives at stake, both human and merfolk. This setback put them all at risk. "What happened last night?

"The wind picked up. I lost my grip. You know the rest." Once more Hatcher tried to skirt around him, but Reid blocked the door, the two of them teetering on a very, very fine line. One that bordered on shoving.

"The basket was right there. What were you doing, juggling the evidence bag?"

"No! God, it was an accident. Stress, maybe. I'm sorry. Is that what you want to hear?"

"I'm not looking for an apology. I need to know if I can count on you. After last night, I'm not so sure."

Hatcher reeled back, offended, pissed. "What exactly are you accusing me of?"

"Being sloppy."

"You know what? Fuck you." Hatcher jabbed a finger toward Reid's chest, though never quite touching. What little restraint remained between them would snap if he did. "Ever since that mermaid chic got into your head, you've been insufferable. Yeah, I dropped the evidence bag, but if you want to point fingers, maybe consider that I'm not the one who let eight fishermen die."

The fight emotionally gut-punched out of him, Reid stood aside. Hatcher left without another word.

That night, the failure with The Merry Mariner's crew cut deep. It wasn't Reid's fault, he knew that, but next to the loss of evidence, the loss of lives didn't compare. Maybe sleep deprivation, stress, and fear had muddled his mind. Maybe he was being too hard on Hatcher, and if he took a moment to breathe, he'd realize last night wasn't the guy's fault either.

Some things really were just beyond their control.

After a long morning debriefing, in which Hatcher thoroughly ignored him, they were dismissed. A half hour drive later, Reid was finally home. He shoved off his work boots and was about to fall into bed when he heard a weak voice call out his name.

And just like that, he snapped to attention, sleep forgotten. Nireed.

She sounded hurt. Scared.

The question "how bad?" looped on repeat as he crossed the length of his houseboat. He was out his back door in seconds, heart in his throat.

Nireed was draped across the diving platform off the stern, bleeding from a gash in her side. While she'd managed to pull herself out of the water, her complexion was ghostly pale, a little too gray, even for her. She swam injured all this way in a night. But why would she do that? What was so important that she'd risk her life to get here?

Was she in trouble? The pod…gone? He hadn't seen more than the two in the freezer hold, but that didn't mean the rest survived the journey home.

Shoving all his questions aside, he crouched down to assess Nireed for other injuries—broken bones, internal bleeding—before attempting to move her. Her pretty orange and silver tailfin was ripped, a piece possibly even missing, but otherwise, the gash along her side seemed to be the worst of it.

Gently, he scooped her into his arms. "Hang on, Starfish. I got you."

Carefully navigating the narrow doorway, he carried her inside and laid her on his bed, propping her tail and lower back with rolled-up army surplus blankets, something he didn't mind getting blood on while keeping her lower half elevated. "This will help me stop the bleeding," he explained when she stared at him with wide, watering eyes.

After washing and drying his hands, he whisked his EMS kit out of a cupboard and beelined it for a pair of latex gloves, quickly donning them. His stash of clean cloths came out next, and he folded one into a thick wad.

"Don't hate me." Tears rolled down her cheeks, and when she lifted a hand to pry away a strand of salt-stiff hair from her cheek, he saw there was dried blood caked to her claws. Not only had Nireed been on Gale's Promise last night, it seemed she'd also taken part in the carnage. "They stole my friend's baby. We had to get her back."

Good God. He hadn't seen a baby mermaid among the corpses, but maybe in all the chaos, he'd missed her. "Is the baby…" He swallowed and began again. "Is she all right?" He almost couldn't bear to ask.

"We saved her. Many of us were wounded, but we got her back."

Relief was a cool glass of water. "And your friend?"

"Her hands got cut up clawing her baby free, and a bullet grazed her shoulder, but mostly just shaken."

He didn't have any kids of his own, but he couldn't imagine a worse nightmare.

"I saw the bodies in the freezer hold," he said, leaning over her to press the wad to her wound. She winced but kept still. "I'm sorry about your…" Who had they been to her? Friends? Family? Neighbors?

"Podmates," she finished, face crumpling. "Leaving them like that." She clapped a hand over her mouth, but the choked sob still came. A gush of warmth seeped through the cloth beneath his hands. He reached for another and applied more pressure.

"Stay still for me, Starfish. I need to stop this bleeding."

She inhaled wetly.

"That's it. Deep breaths. In and out."

Her chest rose and fell in time to his instructions, calming bit by bit. Although tears still streamed down her cheeks, she was no longer convulsing and jarring her wound. "We wanted to take them back into the deep with us," she sniffled. "Bring them home, give them the funerary rites they deserve, but with so many of us injured, and all the blood and sharks…"

"Shh," he soothed, pausing to smooth back the hair from her forehead with the heel of his hand, the only part not yet stained with blood. "You don't have to explain. The living take priority. I would've done the same."

"You would have?"

"Yeah." He met her gaze, maintaining pressure on the wound. "What's got you so worried about what I think?"

"We killed those fishermen, ripped them all to pieces, and I helped. I know that looks bad."

"Do you regret it?"

Her luminescent eyes flashed. "No." Though her voice cracked, she didn't look away. It wasn't pride he saw there, shame neither, just the truth.

Maybe he was turning into a psycho, but he was glad she had no regrets. Anything nearing that seemed like a betrayal of her true nature, of the creature she was. Nireed was ruthless, but she was fair, too, and maybe the murderous, baby-stealing fishermen deserved what they got. "Which one was yours?"

"My what? My kill?" When he nodded, her expression darkened. "Are you sure you want to know that?"

It made for morbid bedside conversation, but yeah, he wanted to know which baby-stealing fucker met his doom at the end of Nireed's claws. When he said as much, she replied, "The one behind the deck box."

So the one who made a mother rescue her baby under gunfire. While Reid had been collecting evidence and taking pictures, he had found more bullet holes over by the net. It didn't take a forensic scientist to put two and two together. "Damn. You ripped his head right off. I almost puked. He the one who hurt you?"

"Yes."

"Guess there's a lesson to be learned here, huh? Don't fuck with merfolk." What he didn't say was he was damn glad that ass wipe hadn't killed her. Just a little to the left and she would've suffered the slow, agonizing death of a gut wound.

Nireed quieted, sinking back into his pillows, an arm draped above her head. Her chest was bare, but he continued working with detached, clinical precision. Attraction didn't factor in when his body was running on the kind of adrenaline that cared more about keeping her alive.

Once he got the bleeding to stop, he rinsed and cleaned the wound until Nireed said it no longer stung. Then, he applied antibiotic ointment to help prevent infection and gave her a non-NSAID for the pain while he got the sutures ready, threading a curved needle.

She eyed it warily. "That's not a fishing hook, is it?"

It did sort of look like one. "It's a surgical needle. We use it for sewing wounds." He demonstrated on top of his skin without puncturing it. "What does the pod use?"

Surprise flickered across her face. "Whale bone. Part of the rib, so it does curve a little. Just not that much."

"Nice. What's with the surprise though?"

"Didn't think you'd be interested in our methods."

"Why wouldn't I be?

She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. "I don't know," she said after a time. "I guess with the fishermen hunting us, I sometimes forget not all Surface Dwellers think we're animals."

"I get that, but with any luck, it will all be over soon. Gathered a lot of evidence last night." Hope illuminated her features, so bright not even the threaded needle he held up dimmed it. "Ready to get started?"

"Ready."

"Take deep breaths. I'm pretty quick, but it's a long injury, so just tell me if you need a break."

She nodded, taking slow, deep breaths.

"All right. Here we go."

He could feel her eyes on him, watching him while he worked. She felt her flinch from time to time but was all around handling the stitching process exceptionally well. The irritable way she twitched her tail was the only other sign she was in pain.

Before joining the Coast Guard, he'd done river rescue in Michigan, which was where he'd gotten his first round of EMS training, but it also came with the territory of being an Aviation Survival Technician, so his skills had remained sharp.

Halfway through, her breathing came out in heavy, rasping pants.

"Need a break?"

She shook her head, inhaling deeply.

"That's it," he said, admiring her strength. "Keep breathing."

A few more stitches. "I always knew you were tough, but damn, I'm impressed. Best patient I've ever had."

In, out, in, out. "You're so good at sitting still."

Her breath stuttered, then resumed, deeper than before.

"There you go. Deep breaths."

In, out, in, out.

"Good girl."

She clutched his forearm, her grip surprisingly gentle, but firm. "Reid?"

"Yeah, Starfish?" He stilled, thinking she needed a break, but when he looked up, he saw her cheeks were flaming red.

"I'm going to need you to stop doing that."

That wasn't pain talking. She sounded too embarrassed. "Doing what? Stitching?"

"No, not that." Her voice was strained, pleading.

Confused, he drew back to assess the situation.

Oh.

Some of her silver scales at the base of her pelvis had retreated to reveal a pink, glistening slit beneath. Swallowing thickly, he met her eyes once more. He had wondered. And now he knew. "Praise kink, huh?" he joked nervously, reaching for a sheet to pull over her waist for privacy.

Her nostrils flared.

"I guess we're even now."

"Even?"

"First night we met." He sprung his finger in demonstration. It hadn't been arousal that did it, but she'd seen what he'd been packing, and that counted.

A slow smile broke out across her lips. "I remember."

She relaxed after that, and Reid finished stitching her side in comfortable silence.

He moved on to her tailfin, which she told him had been mauled by a shark attracted to her blood. The flowy membrane was thicker than it looked, and piscine in texture, but took to the sutures well enough. And Nireed said she didn't have much feeling there, so sewing it was a cakewalk by comparison.

Once she was cleaned up and bandaged, he peeled his gloves off and stood. The cabin of his boat looked every bit like the makeshift emergency room it became, so he set to straighten the place up, clearing away bloodied blankets and biohazardous trash.

When it came time to change his sheets, she stiffly scooted off the bed and into a nearby chair. He moved quickly to get the bed remade.

"You're really brave," he said, tucking in the corners of the new set. Then, threading his arms under hers, helped her back in. "You know that, right?"

She watched him intently but didn't reply.

He sat next to her, taking her hand, and marveled at the smooth webbing between each finger, the texture so much like her fins. "For the record, I don't hate you. Not even close. When I saw the bullet holes on deck, I was afraid something had happened to you." He swallowed, clasping her hand between both of his. "I thought they'd killed you, Starfish."

She cupped his cheek, turning him to her. Her amber eyes were a warm place to get lost in, glowing soft as lantern light, and her smile was sweet, and a little unsure. "You were afraid for me?"

"Terrified."

He stared at her mouth, drawn to it. He knew what lurked behind those sensuous lips. He'd heard the screams, seen the blood that had coated her lips. And yet. He wanted to devour that mouth. Throw caution to the wind and capture and plunder it until the world fell away and he forgot all sense and reason. Until he forgot his name and why he shouldn't fall for this in the first place.

Wasn't that how all the tales went? Sailors lured in by beauty, lonely and wanting, only to find death at the other end of a pretty smile.

"Reid?" Her gaze flicked down, just a moment, before meeting his eyes once more, searching.

She almost died saving a friend and her baby. And she almost died again getting here, all while thinking that he hated her, when he felt anything but.

Nireed was a monster. There was no denying that. She'd ripped off a man's head with her bare hands and sometimes consumed human flesh. But she was also the bravest, most selfless person he knew.

Perez and Hatcher were right, damn them.

He wanted her. So damn bad.

But kissing her right now was out of the question. She was hurt, and she didn't need him complicating things when she'd just survived some harrowing shit. "We should get some sleep." He slapped his hands to his thighs, abruptly standing, before desire got the better of him. "You can have my bed. I'll take the couch."

Her smile fell. Was that disappointment he saw?

"I don't know," she said, rubbing her upper arms. "I think I should go."

A surge of protectiveness rose inside him. "Not with that injury." It came out harsher, more demanding than he meant it to, and she rightly glared at him.

Dammit. He'd regressed to the communicative range of a caveman.

"I'm sorry." He knelt in front of her, his hands framing but not quite touching her tail. "Please stay. Don't go back out there. Not yet."

Her expression softened.

"It's a long way," he continued. "You're exhausted, and you've been through a lot. Please rest here."

Nireed stared at the horizon through a nearby window. He couldn't know what she was thinking, but if he had to guess, several things weighed heavily there. Mental calculations about energy reserves and the long miles ahead. Worry for her friends and podmates. Grief for those who never made it home. A whole community counting on her. The burden of responsibility. Rage.

She lay on his bed, arms folding across her middle. Not quite fitting, her tail hung over the edge, fins draping across the floor. "Okay," she said quietly. "I'll stay."