Chapter 3

Chapter

Three

Hours of combing dark water and they never found the other three fishermen, alive or dead.

Pulling cruelly at the short, dark auburn curls on top of his head, Reid stared at his computer screen and the case report he'd been trying and failing to fill out for the last hour. It should've been easy. Just write down the facts.

No bodies recovered. All eight fishermen were presumed dead, and their boat lost at sea.

But he'd only typed three words.

Engaged a mermaid.

His cursor blinked back at him tauntingly.

What was he supposed to say about that? That while she'd annihilated the fishermen, she'd not only allowed him to leave unscathed, but had literally clipped him back into the hoist and sent him on his merry way?

Then there was her claim, if it could be believed, that the deceased fishermen were hunting and killing her kind. And for what—food, trophies, or some black market thing? What was he supposed to do about that?

This wasn't exactly a fisheries problem, although the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration probably had something to say about it. The mermaids evidently had language and sapience, and that technically made them people. Just not entirely human.

According to the scientific articles he'd read, interspecies breeding made them biologically part human, but what did you call the part that wasn't? Pelagic? Extraterrestrial? With how much ocean remained unexplored—more than eighty percent was the last number he'd read—the ocean and its creatures might as well be as alien as space. So, what in the deep-sea hell had mermaids looked like before getting with humans? Did those creatures even still exist? The scientist who'd discovered the species seemed to think they probably did, although one had never been sighted.

He shuddered. God help them if one ever was.

Whatever degree of "humanness" the Gulf of Maine mermaids had, people were people, which brought him to one needling question: was this an international incident? Did a legal, political framework even exist yet for how to handle something like this? To his knowledge, merfolk were a recognized community but not a nation.

Oversimplify this report and the mermaids might be painted as hostile. Go into too much detail and supposition and the mermaids might not only be painted as hostile but also as a threat to national security.

This was leagues above his pay grade.

"Case report giving you trouble?" Perez plopped down in the chair next to him, crossing a black-booted foot over her knee, and lacing her hands over her stomach, skin a bronzy brown. She'd swapped over from an olive drab flight suit to utility blues, her dark brown hair pulled back into a tight, low bun. Two years ago, NPR had done a feature on her as one of the Coast Guard's few Latina pilots.

"I'm probably overthinking it." He pushed back from the desk with a huff, folding his arms behind his head.

"It's not every day you meet a mermaid."

"Yeah, well, I'm getting a real bad feeling this is going to be a repeat thing."

Perez cocked her head. "Why's that?"

"Because why stop at one boat?" He hesitated to say more. Would admitting to talking to the creature make him sound crazy?

"Spit it out. I can see your wheels turning."

"She told me the fishermen were hunting her kind."

The pilot let out a long, low whistle. "You actually talked to her?"

"A little."

The Merry Mariner , the boat that went down, was one of fifteen registered purse seine boats in the corporate fishing company Nautic Select Seafood's fleet, all of which supplied its factory ship in the Gulf of Maine. "Purse seine" was the type of net these boats used—a giant, miles long and hundreds of feet deep contraption that scooped everything in that radius out of the water, drawing up like a purse string. A bycatch nightmare.

If the mermaids were ticked off about competing over food sources, they wouldn't stop at just one of Nautic's boats, and the company would kick up a fuss, lobbying the federal government for swift and decisive action.

But…

If The Merry Mariner 's fishermen were targeting mermaids, that stood to reason the rest of the fleet was as well. And that kind of concerted, coordinated effort wouldn't happen without Nautic Select Seafood's blessing.

If, if, if.

When Reid voiced these possibilities, Perez's expression grew solemn. "You've thought a lot about this."

"Don't know why. I should just write the report and be done with it. This shit's for command to figure out anyway."

"Not wrong there, but I think you ought to share these thoughts with Lieutenant Commander Griffin. Either way it shakes out, CGIS might get involved, and the more they know, the better."

If he could put these pieces together, surely his superior officer and the Coast Guard Investigative Service didn't need him to reach similar conclusions.

But as if reading his mind, she continued, "You're the first person in the whole service to make contact with a real, live mermaid, and I doubt any of those guys come close to being the secret duck-scrubbing, science nerd you are."

He snorted.

"Duck scrubber" wasthe playful nickname they gave to the Coast Guard's Marine Science Technicians on account of cleaning up oil spills, and the wildlife caught in the middle, and once Reid's Plan B if he couldn't cut it as an Aviation Survival Technician. But Perez had a point. He was naturally curious about these things, and maybe the way he saw things wasn't the default.

"So…" The pilot's voice dropped into a conspiratorial tone. Curiosity twinkled in her dark brown eyes as she leaned forward, forearms draped across her knees. "What was she like? Did she say anything else?"

Reid ran a hand over his jaw. The flesh was tender, but despite the mermaid's powerful, claw-tipped grip, fifteen minutes spent searching in a mirror hadn't revealed any bruises or nicks.

Every time he shut his eyes, he saw her.

Amber eyes, so alien and otherworldly, stared at him from the dark of night, inky black waves bobbing between them. And with a single smile he was rendered immobile, unable to look away from rows of wicked, sharp teeth, so white they gleamed, as blood dripped from her cruel lips. This devastating amalgamation of beautiful woman and creature of the deep had come to wreak destruction. And he'd been at her mercy.

But she'd let him go. Protected him from her murderous kin.

Why?

"She was goddamn terrifying," he said finally. "Just told me to get back into my sky boat."

"Sky boat?" Perez laughed. "Oh, I love that. Pure gold. Anything else?"

The rest of that encounter was need-to-know, and Perez did not need to know about his panic boner.

"Was she pretty, at least? They're supposed to be really pretty."

"Tell that to the fishermen she ate."

"Didn't eat you though, which makes me think they might've provoked her."

"So you believe her."

Perez shrugged. "They were coming into her turf—or should I say surf? Anyways, if I had a quarter for every time a man's taken something that doesn't belong to him, and blamed a woman for his actions, I'd be eating well too."

There was no disputing that, but people were dying, and if his gut was correct, there'd be more.

When he didn't respond, she asked, "Well, what do you think? You were there."

Scrubbing his hands through his hair, he groaned. "I don't know what to think. Just that it's our job to save people." Not root for their demise, even if they'd brought it upon themselves. "Whether or not I believe her doesn't matter."

"It does matter." Something about her clipped tone made him think he'd just stuck his foot in his mouth. Or missed an important point. "Get the facts down. That's step one."

Perez left without a parting glance.

Sighing, Reid began to type. What was he missing?