Page 42 of Ensnaring the Siren

“Yeah, whatever man. I’ll believe it when you get your ass back up here.”

“Hatcher! You’re not helping. Just get him that camera and let him search.”

Gently, Reid laid the mermaid on the freezer hold floor. He tried folding her arms across her middle, some quiet gesture of respect, but rigor mortis had set in, or maybe it was deep freeze. In either case, he wasn’t going to fight it.

As he clambered to his feet, he saw that one of the two severed hands in the room still gripped something. A peculiar looking gun. Its sleek, rounded design looked more like something out of a sci-fi movie than something a fisherman would carry.

Without touching it, he crouched down to get a closer look. No magazine. No slide or sight either. A trigger, but no guard. Then he followed the oddly rounded barrel down to its muzzle.

Dual sensations hit his limbs in waves. First numbing cold, then prickling heat.

“Perez.” He swallowed past the lump forming in his throat. “I found something.”

“Keep talking to me. What did you find?”

“It wasn’t bullets that killed them.”

“What do you mean?”

“I just found a cattle gun.”

All along, Nireed had been telling the truth. Not only were her people being murdered, Nautic’s fishermen were slaughtering them like animals.

Turning away from the evidence, Reid finally lost the contents of his stomach.

Chapter

Thirteen

Hundreds of photos later, Reid secured the camera and the other evidence he found onboard Gale’s Promise in a zip-top plastic bag and sent the bundle up to the helicopter in the basket lift. They’d pushed the limit of their fuel reserves collecting evidence, but there was an oncoming storm pinging on radar, and they couldn’t risk losing what he’d found, namely the ship’s log and security camera system’s memory card.

There hadn’t been time to truly read through the log, but Reid had spotted at least one damning entry a few months back.

No mermaids, no sanctuary. $10,000/lb.

It was so alarming he’d taken a photo of it.

The merfolk had exacted their vengeance in a horrifying show of blood and carnage, there was no doubt about that, but he couldn’t find it within himself to pass judgment. And maybe that made him a monster, but after seeing the mermaids in the freezer, both executed with a cattle gun, then commoditized, he couldn’t bring himself to feel ashamed.

Reid stood on deck awaiting his turn, sucking in lungfuls of fresh sea air, trying to purge the scent of death. He wanted off this graveyard of a ship stat, but taking care meant taking time, and he’d rather Hatcher move slow and sure than jeopardize the evidence. This was the first serious proof they had and could turn the tide of the investigation in the merfolk’s favor. Not only was Nautic involved in black market trade, its fishermen were committing murder.

Worry for Nireed gnawed at his gut. She could be hurt and in need of medical attention, but with no way to find her, there was nothing he could do. Beyond getting this evidence safely into the hands of his commanding officer and CGIS, he was completely and dismally useless.

A strong gust of wind rocked Reid on his feet, and he braced the starboard-side railing for balance. The temperature was dropping, the waves kicking up, too, all signs that the storm that pinged on their radar was nearly here.

“Oh shit, incoming!”

It was the panic in Hatcher’s voice that had Reid jerking away from the side, half expecting a pissed off mermaid to launch out of the water.

“What’s going on back there? What do you see?”

A blur of motion caught the corner of his eye. Something falling, then hitting the railing with a solid crack, before toppling over into the ocean. In that split second, Reid saw it.

The evidence bag.

Camera. Ship’s log. All of it.

“Reid, leave it!” Hatcher yelled. “It’s not worth it.”

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