Page 20 of Ensnaring the Siren

After morning quarters, they were released from duty for the next few days, the unit’s second aircrew coming in to take the next shift.

And Reid was more than ready for the break.

In a short period of time, he had to come to terms with critical mission failure and a mermaid situation that was far from cut and dry. Everything would’ve been so much easier to get straight in his head if their motives had been purely vicious. But as much as he was a simple man who liked simple answers, he hated convenient ones more.

Sliding a full-face black helmet over his head, he mounted his motorcycle, the engine roaring to life beneath him. Its steady rumbling drowned out all other sounds, right along with the turmoil fogging his mind. In minutes, he was shooting down the coastal highway, dense pine forests on either side, occasionally opening to reveal glimpses of the ocean and mountains beyond.

He drove to a shaded, empty picnic grove, someplace quiet by the water, but that still had cell service, and dialed his therapist. He’d scheduled the call while on duty. It wasn’t for everyone, but Reid just couldn’t imagine doing the work he did without one.

He’d found the little seaside grove shortly after moving to Haven Cove. Any time he had a tough case, he’d come here, hash things out for about forty-five minutes, and either go for a hike or swim afterward to further process and decompress, then return home with a six-pack of beer.

Maybe that made him frighteningly well-adjusted, but he just didn’t fuck around when it came to his headspace. His only uncle was an alcoholic, so he never felt comfortable beelining it to booze to make himself feel better.

The line connected, a low, easy voice answering on the other side. “Hello, Reid. How are you?”

Alan, his therapist, was retired Air Force, which made talking to him so much simpler. All the rote military things he didn’t have to explain—the culture, the expectations, the rigorous demands, and command structure—allowed them to get to the meat of his troubles sooner.

“I’ve been better.”

“Want to tell me what happened?”

Exhaustion fell over him in a way it hadn’t even when they got Savvy Rose’s distress call, after hours of research and computer work. Between debriefing command, the reports, and filling in gaps for his team, he was sick of explaining everything again and again. If only he could just offload the memories, dump them in a big file folder, and hand them over to be picked apart and assessed while he lay on this picnic table bench and took a nap. But that wasn’t how this shit worked and retelling it for the umpteenth time was all a part of the process.

“We had two cases.” He sighed heavily, feeling his body sag. “The second was textbook, everybody made it home. But the first…”

Alan waited patiently, allowing him to get it out at his own pace.

“We lost them. Every single one.”

“Didn’t get there in time?”

“No. We did.” Now for the spectacularly weird icing on the cake. “But we had company.” Reid explained that he’d been in the water with flesh-eating mermaids, had been there when they devoured the crew, right beneath him.

When he finished, Alan drew in a deep breath. “That must’ve been hard watching them go under like that.”

“I felt helpless. All that training, all those hours spent doing PT, and what good did any of it do?”

“Seeing people die is one of the hardest things a service member can experience. But your training wasn’t for nothing. It kept you alive.”

“Wasn’t training that did that. She let me live.”

“Okay, well, let’s think about it this way. Elite training makes you damn good at what you do, but it doesn’t make you a superhero. Did you feel like you did everything you could under these unique circumstances?”

“No.” Reid rubbed the back of his neck. He hated sounding difficult, but it was the truth. “I feel like I should’ve been able to do more.”

“Run me through standard procedure and what you would’ve done differently.”

And that was why he liked this guy. Every time they ran through this exercise, Reid either realized there was nothing he could’ve changed, or if there was, he came out of it knowing what to fix and how to manage the boatload of guilt and self-loathing for fucking it up the first time. It was a painful process, but it worked.

No pain, no gain.

And this time wasn’t any different.

“What you do under normal circumstances is hard. Facing a supernatural force? No use comparing apples to oranges. You’re not a superhero, Reid. Don’t try to be one.”

“There’s more.” Piece by thorny piece, he unspooled complex truth after complex truth, a bigger picture so massive, he could barely wrap his head around it.

“That’s a lot to unpack, and we’ll work through it, but my most immediate concern—do you feel like your life is in danger? You said you’ve seen the mermaid twice since the incident.”

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