Page 44 of Ensnaring the Siren

“Being sloppy.”

“You know what? Fuck you.” Hatcher jabbed a finger toward Reid’s chest, though never quite touching. What little restraint remained between them would snap if he did. “Ever since that mermaid chic got into your head, you’ve been insufferable. Yeah, I dropped the evidence bag, but if you want to point fingers, maybe consider that I’m not the one who let eight fishermen die.”

The fight emotionally gut-punched out of him, Reid stood aside. Hatcher left without another word.

That night, the failure with The Merry Mariner’s crew cut deep. It wasn’t Reid’s fault, he knew that, but next to the loss of evidence, the loss of lives didn’t compare. Maybe sleep deprivation, stress, and fear had muddled his mind. Maybe he was being too hard on Hatcher, and if he took a moment to breathe, he’d realize last night wasn’t the guy’s fault either.

Some things really were just beyond their control.

After a long morning debriefing, in which Hatcher thoroughly ignored him, they were dismissed. A half hour drive later, Reid was finally home. He shoved off his work boots and was about to fall into bed when he heard a weak voice call out his name.

And just like that, he snapped to attention, sleep forgotten. Nireed.

She sounded hurt. Scared.

The question “how bad?” looped on repeat as he crossed the length of his houseboat. He was out his back door in seconds, heart in his throat.

Nireed was draped across the diving platform off the stern, bleeding from a gash in her side. While she’d managed to pull herself out of the water, her complexion was ghostly pale, a little too gray, even for her. She swam injured all this way in a night. But why would she do that? What was so important that she’d risk her life to get here?

Was she in trouble? The pod…gone? He hadn’t seen more than the two in the freezer hold, but that didn’t mean the rest survived the journey home.

Shoving all his questions aside, he crouched down to assess Nireed for other injuries—broken bones, internal bleeding—before attempting to move her. Her pretty orange and silver tailfin was ripped, a piece possibly even missing, but otherwise, the gash along her side seemed to be the worst of it.

Gently, he scooped her into his arms. “Hang on, Starfish. I got you.”

Carefully navigating the narrow doorway, he carried her inside and laid her on his bed, propping her tail and lower back with rolled-up army surplus blankets, something he didn’t mind getting blood on while keeping her lower half elevated. “This will help me stop the bleeding,” he explained when she stared at him with wide, watering eyes.

After washing and drying his hands, he whisked his EMS kit out of a cupboard and beelined it for a pair of latex gloves, quickly donning them. His stash of clean cloths came out next, and he folded one into a thick wad.

“Don’t hate me.” Tears rolled down her cheeks, and when she lifted a hand to pry away a strand of salt-stiff hair from her cheek, he saw there was dried blood caked to her claws. Not only had Nireed been on Gale’s Promise last night, it seemed she’d also taken part in the carnage. “They stole my friend’s baby. We had to get her back.”

Good God. He hadn’t seen a baby mermaid among the corpses, but maybe in all the chaos, he’d missed her. “Is the baby…” He swallowed and began again. “Is she all right?” He almost couldn’t bear to ask.

“We saved her. Many of us were wounded, but we got her back.”

Relief was a cool glass of water. “And your friend?”

“Her hands got cut up clawing her baby free, and a bullet grazed her shoulder, but mostly just shaken.”

He didn’t have any kids of his own, but he couldn’t imagine a worse nightmare.

“I saw the bodies in the freezer hold,” he said, leaning over her to press the wad to her wound. She winced but kept still. “I’m sorry about your…” Who had they been to her? Friends? Family? Neighbors?

“Podmates,” she finished, face crumpling. “Leaving them like that.” She clapped a hand over her mouth, but the choked sob still came. A gush of warmth seeped through the cloth beneath his hands. He reached for another and applied more pressure.

“Stay still for me, Starfish. I need to stop this bleeding.”

She inhaled wetly.

“That’s it. Deep breaths. In and out.”

Her chest rose and fell in time to his instructions, calming bit by bit. Although tears still streamed down her cheeks, she was no longer convulsing and jarring her wound. “We wanted to take them back into the deep with us,” she sniffled. “Bring them home, give them the funerary rites they deserve, but with so many of us injured, and all the blood and sharks…”

“Shh,” he soothed, pausing to smooth back the hair from her forehead with the heel of his hand, the only part not yet stained with blood. “You don’t have to explain. The living take priority. I would’ve done the same.”

“You would have?”

“Yeah.” He met her gaze, maintaining pressure on the wound. “What’s got you so worried about what I think?”

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