Page 5 of Ensnaring the Siren
“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.”