Chapter 6

Chapter

Six

The Coast Warrior's name was Reid.

And an incredibly strong swimmer for a human. While he'd never match the sheer speed or grace the merfolk had, Nireed could appreciate the brute strength and willpower of his movements—arms knifing through the water in quick, efficient strokes, legs kicking out behind him, the strange black fins he wore on his feet propelling him faster while also conserving energy.

For all intents and purposes, his body wasn't designed for the sea. In fact, it was locked in a constant battle not to drown, and yet, he looked so at home among the waves. Almost at home with them as she.

An odd feeling washed over her. It was true she'd meant to prove a point, but watching his legs sway back and forth, muscles clenching, then unclenching, his dual fins waving at her from above, she wanted to touch him. To bring him into the water with her so she could look into his eyes without having to squint against the sun's too bright light. Eyes a shade of brown like the land he walked. Such a color didn't exist in the ocean, among her kind.

"I don't want to be your enemy."

Hope ticked in her chest. He'd said it so softly, and his shocked expression afterward told her his words were genuine. He hadn't meant to say them and that made them more believable.

Aersila doubted her judgment, and that stung more than salt in an open wound, but this affirmed what Nireed felt in her gut—that he could be won over. They needed answers. They needed proof. And they needed Surface Dweller leadership to act.

Reid was their way in.

Nireed squeezed the water from her hair, then shrugged into the dress she kept wedged between two rocks on shore. It felt weird and itchy and constricting, but blending in was more important than comfort, so she'd hidden several such dresses, scattering them along the coast. It was good to have options, multiple entry points to the Land Above the Water.

But this one was the safest.

Nakedness concealed, she hiked up the private cove's sandy beach to the abode her friend shared with her mate and knocked on the front door. Heavy footsteps approached. A moment later, the door opened, a tall man with wavy, silver-flecked brown hair standing on the other side.

"Nireed," he said, the corners of his eyes crinkling as he smiled. "Come in. She's just upstairs."

After quickly brushing sand from the soles of her feet outside, Nireed ducked in.

"Lorelei!" Killian called up a spiraling set of stairs. "You've got a visitor." Then to Nireed, he said, "Hungry?"

Her stomach growled on cue.

"One can of Spam coming right up."

Nireed sat down at their kitchen table while Killian rooted around the pantry. The Merry Mariner's fishermen had been enough to feed the whole pod for a day. Now she was hungry enough to take on a whole haunch of thigh meat all by herself, but her friends didn't need to know that.

Lorelei bounded down the steps. "I just got off the phone with Jackie."

"What did she find?"

" The Merry Mariner , and the factory ship it supplies, is owned by a company called Nautic Select Seafoods."

Killian retreated from the pantry, cracking open a can. "Those assholes?" He slid the delicacy across the table into Nireed's awaiting hands and offered her a fork. She accepted it and promptly dug in. It wasn't her preferred manner of eating, but it was good practice for her more public outings among the Surface Dwellers.

"You've run into them?" Lorelei asked, taking a chair across from Nireed.

"No one's been able to prove it, but they pull some shady shit. They blaze in and out of the harbor, plowing over lobster pots, cutting the lines, and the owner loses all that equipment. That's $500 to $600 a pop inshore, figuring traps, buoy, line, and the catch. But offshore, when there's twenty-five traps to a trawl line, it's easily $6,000, and there's plenty of those stories." Killian slipped into the seat next to his mate, joints creaking as he sat. "A captain I know swears they bribe the fisheries official too. He's a bit of a government conspiracy theorist, so I'd take what he says with a grain of salt, but if it's true, that means they're catching things they shouldn't, or in quantities above regulation. Either way it shakes out, Nautic's pushing out what's left of the small, independent fishing companies."

Nireed narrowed her eyes. "Have they hurt you?"

"We don't fish in the same area. At least, not anymore. But they do have a foot in lobster, and another in everything else."

Killian's trawling boat, The Lovely Lorelei , fell into the "everything else" category.

Lorelei nodded along. "Jackie got a hold of the registry and says they moved their purse seiners into your old zone about a few months back."

"Yeah." He rubbed a hand behind his neck. "It's a great fishing area. Never went home without a full hold, but ever since Lila began lobbying to have mermaid territory declared a marine sanctuary, we backed out of there."

"We were willing to share," Nireed interjected, fork hovering in front of her mouth. "But appreciate your support nonetheless."

"Nautic wouldn't have those moral reservations, which leads to Jackie's theory." Lorelei met Nireed's eyes, expression grim. "She thinks they're hunting merfolk, because without you, there's no reason to have the area declared a marine sanctuary. And without a marine sanctuary, they can keep fishing where it's most lucrative."

Rage bubbled within. So her people were being killed for wasteful greed. It didn't surprise her, but she'd still hoped for another reason.

Lorelei cleared her throat, staring pointedly at her hand.

Nireed looked down and found that she'd bent the fork in half. "Sorry." She blushed, setting the ruined utensil aside.

"It's a theory." Lorelei blinked, continuing, "A very strong theory. But what we need is proof. That's the only way we can take them down."

"Enough to take down a corporation?" Killian shook his head. "That's going to be hard to get. And even with evidence, guys like those have deep pockets and the best lawyers."

Nireed rubbed her forehead. She recognized most of those words, but their meaning was lost. Still, there was something she could contribute to this conversation. "I might have someone who'll help."

Both Lorelei and Killian looked her way, but it was Lorelei who asked, "The man you were talking to the other day?"

Nireed nodded. "He's Coast Guard. If they get involved…"

Lorelei lit up. They'd spoken about this in theory before—that if anyone could ride out a lengthy Surface Dweller rules battle, it was their leadership. Or "government" as Lorelei called it. "If they've got a thumb on the pulse of this…"

Killian met Nireed's eyes. "How'd you meet him?" She couldn't tell if he sounded impressed or worried.

" The Merry Mariner ," was all she said, and his expression darkened, the meaning conveyed more than well enough.

"Has he agreed to help us?" Lorelei hedged the question. And really, Nireed couldn't blame her for being uncertain. That shoreside conversation had gotten tense at several points, especially the part when Reid had called her a murderer.

"He seems open to it," she answered truthfully. While he said he'd look into the matter, and Nireed believed he would follow through, because of his sense of honor and drive to help people, it was too soon to know for sure, and she didn't want to give Shorewalker false hope.

Or herself.

"We'll do what we can in the meantime." Lorelei took Killian's hand, threading their fingers together. When their eyes met, time seemed to slow, and something eased between them as they appeared to find strength and comfort in one another.

Nireed marveled at their open affection, all the little ways they sought each other out, always in each other's orbit. A brief look, a touch, a smile. She'd never really paid much attention to such things before, but seeing how the two pledged their lives to each other in every moment of every day, it showed that real, romantic love was possible for their kind. And this was what it could look like. Something more than just two bodies colliding together again and again until a mutual end was achieved.

A deep ache split open her chest, swallowing her thoughts. It was her duty to the pod to find a mate and bolster their numbers, she knew that, and she genuinely wanted both of those things, but there weren't many unattached merfolk left who could give her a baby. There had been someone a year ago, not long after she'd been freed from the tank, but it was a brief arrangement that hadn't resulted in children, and now he was mated to another.

So many of the dedicated mating pairs in their pod, or groups in a couple of cases, began as short, task-oriented affairs, it was true, but that wasn't the case now. Partners shuffled around, eventually finding their one true mate, or the original arrangements evolved into permanence. And yet even then, something was missing from these pairings. More of a rote process than a relationship.

Fuck. Impregnate. Carry to term. Give birth and raise. Repeat.

There was respect, yes. Kind courting gestures. Dedication and help rearing the little ones. But love? Affection? Not like this. At least, not that she'd seen in her lifetime.

And she wanted more.

"What's your acquaintance's name?"

Nireed snapped to attention. "Reid Kruetz."

Surprise rolled off Shorewalker, flooding Nireed's senses. "Kruetz?" She repeated shakily.

"What is it?" Killian leaned in, draping an arm across the top of Lorelei's chair, all worry and protection.

"Nothing, never mind. Just not a name you hear every day."

While Killian didn't press any further, Nireed could smell the lie. What secrets was Shorewalker keeping?

Reid spent his spare downtime between cases combing through Nautic's incident reports and witness statements accusing them of sabotaging their fishing competition—as well as news articles and blogs about the corporation.

He had to dig for it, but he eventually found dirt buried underneath all the latest news headlines about The Merry Mariner . The Coast Guard had released that merfolk were involved, and it was being called a massacre at sea by national media.

As Reid sifted through the files, making himself a tally of the reported incidents, a recording of a recent press conference played on his computer. The video was just getting started, a spokeswoman for Nautic Select Seafoods addressing the gathered crowd of reporters. But when she began introducing Nautic's CEO, Hugh Fairfield, Reid looked up, watching as a middle-aged, silver-haired white man entered the camera frame with practiced ease.

Fairfield wore beige slacks, a white-collared shirt, no tie, and an off-the-rack navy blazer. Its one-size-fits-most cut was the opposite of the CEO's usual polished, well-tailored styles. If Fairfield was going for a salt of the earth look to appeal to a working-class audience, mission accomplished.

"Eight hardworking fishermen were ruthlessly murdered this week." The man gripped the edges of the podium, bowing his head for dramatic effect. But Reid saw past the somber expression, had already caught the cold, calculated glint in his eyes. It could easily be mistaken for empathetic outrage, but high-powered men like this cared more about their company's bottom line than the people at the bottom of the corporate food chain. As vicious and lethal as the mermaids were, this man was a shark .

"Their families are devastated," Fairfield continued, voice rising in fervor as he lifted his eyes to the cameras. "No one wants to say that these sea people are hostile and pose a threat to national security. So, I'll say it. This was a massacre, not the equivalent of a ‘shark attack.' And to try comparing it to one is a gross misrepresentation of what happened. Animals aren't malicious, people are, and these are people we're dealing with here."

Fairfield spewed more venomous rhetoric, but after about a minute, Reid swapped to a different video, unable to listen to that man's shit a second longer.

The incident had garnered enough attention that the State Governor made a public address, "mourning the loss of Maine fishermen" and promising to "investigate the incident." Behind-the-scenes, the administration asked the Coast Guard to increase their patrols in the Gulf of Maine.

Word on the Coast Guard grapevine, stations up and down the East Coast were being flooded by calls from scared, jumpy people reporting "mermaid sightings," none of which could be verified. All incensed and on edge from the news.

Reid returned to his reading.

There was speculation by some that Nautic's CEO had a toe in protected species trafficking and other unseemly underground activities. But "rumors" were where they stopped, and nothing concrete had ever surfaced that would lead anyone to take real action.

With the amount of time Nautic had spent fishing in merfolk territory these last few months, he bet they didn't like that it was going to be declared a marine sanctuary. Were they milking the area for all that it was worth before that happened? And merfolk had become the unfortunate bycatch?

Or was there something more going on? Something intentional and sinister. It wasn't much of a stretch to assume that someone like Fairfield would take one look at a beautiful, mythical creature and see dollar signs.

Hatcher entered the room with a newspaper and thermos of coffee in hand. He paused to peer over Reid's shoulder before plopping down at a desk beside him, concern etched onto his face. "Those Nautic's files?"

"Yeah." Reid rubbed his eyes, aching from screen strain. He really wasn't a desk job kind of guy.

"You know that's CGIS's job, right?"

"Something's just not sitting right." He clicked over to a web browser. "It's bugging me."

"Is it bugging you because it's actually bugging you, or because she asked you to look into it?" No doubt who Hatcher meant . The biting way he said "she" said all.

"Can't it be both?"

Hatcher sighed. "I guess. Are you finding anything interesting?"

"Nothing concrete, but Nautic's definitely not squeaky clean."

"What corporation is?" Hatcher sipped his coffee, then leaned forward, squinting at the blog post Reid had pulled up on screen. "A rumored illegal aquarium fish market seller," Hatcher read out loud. "A mermaid would be quite the prize."

"That's what I was thinking."

Perez swept into the room. "What are we gossiping about?"

"Nautic." Both Reid and Hatcher answered simultaneously.

"That they're probably into illegal market stuff," Reid clarified. "And would see mermaids as an enticing business venture."

Perez rolled her eyes. "Well, duh."

Ignoring the jab, Reid jerked his head toward the newspaper in Hatcher's hand. "That today's paper? Can I see it?"

The dropmaster drew it closer to his person, grip tightening. "It is. Why?"

"I just want to see if they did a follow up on The Merry Mariner story."

Hatcher wheeled his desk chair back a pace. "It's probably online too."

"I'll give it back." When Hatcher didn't so much as twitch, Reid added, "What's up with you?"

"Nothing."

"Squirrelly much?" Perez reached for the paper, presumably to take it by force, but Hatcher skirted around her and handed it over, grumbling that he wanted it right back.

On the front page of the Haven Cove Daily , above the fold, was a special interest piece written by Jackie Gaten on the fishing crew who died. All eight of their pictures were laid out in a grid and cropped into headshots, either taken from family photos or social media profile pictures. Reid's eyes snagged on the first photo and the over-tan man smiling up at him with salt-and-pepper hair and a prominent scar that sliced up from the right-side corner of his upper lip to his cheek. The last man Reid had failed to save.

He checked the caption below. Flick Rockland, Captain.

The duty phone rang. Perez snatched it up. "Lieutenant Perez speaking." She paused, listening to the person speaking on the other end. "Yes, sir." More speaking. "Yes, sir. I'll get the helicopter ready." Then she hung up.

To the rest of them, she said, "We've got another case."

Hatcher noticeably perked up. "What is it?"

"I'll tell you on the way."

Reid left the newspaper behind. Reading the tribute piece would have to wait.