Page 40 of Ensnaring the Siren

He firmly believed that now.

“Yeah, but what about her friends?”

A reasonable concern, but if Nireed could fend off her kin during a feeding frenzy when he was a stranger, she could do the same now when he was not. It was a lot of faith to put in a person he barely knew, but Reid prided himself on having strong instincts, and right now his were telling him he could trust her.

“She might not be down there,” Hatcher warned.

“They’re just protecting their own. And I’m going to prove it.”

“Man, I sure hope you’re right.”

The helicopter hovered over the purse seiner, its spotlight illuminating the boat as Reid was lowered onto it. It was too quiet, too still. Even amid power failure, there should’ve been more activity on deck—the crew attempting maintenance, shooting distress flares into the sky, anything. But there was none of that. Only cables and ropes knocking against metal in the helicopter’s downdraft.

When Reid’s feet hit the deck, he unclipped, head on a swivel as he made his way to the pilothouse. Loud as the Jayhawk was, he didn’t need to call out and announce his presence, the boat crew should be able to hear it, but he did so anyway.

No one called back.

A veritable ghost ship.

As he reached for the pilothouse door, his foot skidded on something slick, and his heart lurched in that uncertain moment between thinking his ass might hit the deck and catching himself. Boat decks were supposed to be covered in anti-slip tape. He shouldn’t have…

Blood, it was blood.

And a lot of it too. But not just that, the deck beneath his feet was littered with bullet holes. Unless the crew had lost their minds and started shooting each other, this blood belonged to a mermaid, not a fisherman.

Dread laced around his spine in a wicked vise grip.

Nireed.

Flashes of memory consumed him. Her wicked smile and biting tongue. The feeling of her body crammed next to his, hiding in Nautic’s warehouse. Her stunning aim. The way she danced.

The fiery determination in which she demanded his help and fought for her people every single day.

Fear froze him, but the desperate need to find Nireed thawed his limbs. He whisked open the door, not missing the blood smeared on both sides. The sticky mass of it. If she was here, if she’d been shot, she’d either be fighting for her life or…

Dead.

God no, please no.

The bodies of two fishermen lay on the floor, their entrails spilling from gaping gut wounds, and he clapped a hand over his nose and mouth, trying not to hurl at the sight and sewer stench of perforated offal. Given their location, this was probably the captain and the helmsman. Each held a weapon in their hands—one a gun, the other a knife. Little good they did either of them.

Reid searched the remainder of the room in a half-blind panic.

Radio static, then Perez’s voice filled his ears. “Kruetz, talk to us.”

“Two deceased fishermen in the pilothouse,” he answered, brain and body on autopilot. “Going to check the rest of the boat.”

“Negative.” This was Hatcher. “Get back on deck. We gotta get you out of there.”

“There might be survivors.”

“A fat load of good that’ll do anybody if you’re dead!”

Reid ignored his crewmate and finished checking the pilothouse. No mermaids. But that didn’t ease the fear-fueled adrenaline pumping through his veins. When he didn’t find any more bodies in the pilothouse, he continued his search outside.

There was another dead fisherman, this one tucked behind a deck box, which he’d missed during his initial pass. He turned away quickly, feeling queasy. Most of the guy’s head was missing, ripped away at the jaw, and he didn’t need to see that in any close detail. The gun still clenched in the corpse’s hand had him thinking the man ducked behind here for cover while shooting at the mermaid storming the pilothouse.

“Found a third on deck,” he said into the radio, sounding calmer than he felt.

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