Page 19 of Ensnaring the Siren

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.

Chapter

Seven

“It came out of nowhere.”

On the helicopter floor, the captain of the Savvy Rose huddled under emergency thermal blankets with his wet and shivering crew. One by one, Reid had plucked them from frigid water, where they’d bobbed among their fishing vessel’s wreckage, and now his team was racing the borderline hypothermic men back to shore.

“It pinged on radar, but all we saw was darkness.” Lips blue, the captain’s teeth chattered as he spoke. “Just getting closer and closer. It wasn’t until she was right on top of us that we finally saw her. No radios, no lights, and the transponder was off. Ran us right over.”

Illegal, every bit of it. No lives lost this time, thank God, but the boat was gone, and the livelihood of these small, independent fishermen sunk right along with it.

“Anything you can tell me about the ship? Any identifying information?”

“About two-hundred feet long. Was hard to see in the dark, and it happened wicked fast, but it looked like the name on the hull was The Seriphus.” Several of the other men nodded in agreement.

Surprise stole his next breath.

Nautic’s factory ship and crew were getting their hands dirty.

The Coast Guard had several incident reports on file naming other boats in Nautic’s fleet suspected of either sabotaging, or outright destroying, other fishermen’s equipment. But the factory ship wreaking havoc itself—that was a first.

“Those greedy sonsofbitches have been going after us,” one of the crew members said, volume rising.

But why? To push out smaller, local competition like these guys and monopolize the region’s fishing industry? It was just the sort of shady shit Reid was coming to suspect wasn’t mere conspiracy.

“How much more are they going to get away with before somebody does something about it? Is it when one of us is killed?” He didn’t namedrop the Coast Guard, or “the government” at large, but it was clear as day that was what he meant.

“We’re building a case.” It wasn’t much of an assurance, but it was all he could say. A handful of incidents weren’t nearly enough to go to court. They needed dozens more, and a crushing amount of evidence, when filing a lawsuit against a corporation. It was time consuming and tedious, and a whole lot more shit had to go wrong to ultimately stop it.

Infuriating as hell and of no comfort to those affected by Nautic’s shady activities.

The captain snorted. “Building a case, my ass. Tell Big Brother I want my tax money back so I can buy myself a new boat.”

If only.

Back on shore, emergency responders awaited dockside to take the fishing crew to the hospital. Once they were squared away, Reid and his team returned to Haven Cove Airport for debriefing, some log entry, and sleep. As far as missions go, this one went well—a textbook SAR case where everyone made it home. But really anything that wasn’t losing an entire crew to people-eating mermaids, categorically speaking, was a shining success.

At daybreak, Reid saw Hatcher coming out of the head, tucking a flip phone into his pants pocket.

“What’s with the dinosaur tech?” Reid teased, going to the sink to brush his teeth.

Hatcher took the sink beside him, washing his hands. “Dropped my smartphone in a puddle.”

“Shit luck, fumble fingers.”

“Shut up.”

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