Page 16 of Catch of a Lifetime
“Hang on,” Jerry said, heaved himself to his feet, and trotted off to the quad bike. He came back with a couple of bungee cords. “Thought we could wrap these around his tail once we’ve bagged him, and they’ll help keep the duvet cover up.”
Dave reached up, snatched the bungee cords off him, and threw them into the sea.
“Or not,” Jerry said. He looked at me and lifted his brows.
I scrambled up and went after the bungee cords. I didn’t get far. Dave grabbed my ankle and I hit the sand.
“Goddammit!” I yelled. “Dave! We need those! I know you don’t like rope and shit but…weneedthem.”
Jerry had hustled back to the quad bike, returned, and now stood just beyond Dave’s reach. He wordlessly held up a couple more cords.
“Give them here,” I said, gesturing.
He glanced between me and Dave. “You sure?”
“Yes. Thank you.” Jerry dropped them in my palm. Dave immediately went to snatch them off me. We had a brief tussle, which he won, but instead of sending them after the first load, he paused with his hands wrapped around my clenched fists and held on for a moment.
Long enough that he definitely felt the fine trembling I couldn’t seem to stop.
He squeezed and released me, flopping back to his elbows with an irritable grunt. He shuffled his tail about, and lay still.
I quickly secured the cover with the cords. It wasn’t a net. It wasn’t a million miles away from one, either. If I wasn’t so tired and cold and worried about him, I’d have been humbled by his trust.
Jerry hopped onto the bike and motored up the beach a few feet while I arranged the hammock long and flat beside Dave. I lay down alongside it and slowly shuffled on, demonstrating what I wanted him to do. I rolled off and gestured at him.
He looked from me to the hammock and from the hammock to Jerry astride the quad bike, then he lifted his gaze in the direction of my house. He sighed.
“Yes?” I said.
Reluctantly, he nodded.
Dragging Dave the length of the beach was the easy part.
Comparatively speaking.
Jerry drove and I jogged alongside the hammock-as-a-stretcher rig, making sure Dave didn’t get bounced off. His dark eyes flickered from my face to the sea and back. He made a few sad noises. I wasn’t sure if it was from pain or from being taken away from the water.
Probably both.
Some of the largest gashes opened up and started leaking. I wanted to yell at Jerry to be more careful, but I already knew that he was only going as fast as he had to. If he went anyslower, Dave’s weight would be impossible to shift, and he didn’t want to stop, especially on the dry, looser sand at the top of the beach and in the dunes. If the wheels started spinning, we’d dig ourselves into a hole and we’d be well and truly stuffed.
Once we left the sand, Dave’s eyes fluttered closed. His jaw was clenched tight and his fair skin was even paler than usual. I’d rather hoped that he would pass out again and be spared the discomfort of being hauled along the road. He didn’t. He didn’t complain, or make any more sad noises, but he was very much not having a good time.
The road was a narrow, single-track lane. The only people who used it were me, Jerry, the postie, and any DPD delivery guys. Fine, every now and then, maybe I got a pizza delivery from the pub. The odds were great that we’d be able to make it to the house without being seen.
Still, Jerry cautiously accelerated once we hit the old, crumbling asphalt, and I lengthened my stride into an easy lope to keep up. Jerry did his best to avoid the potholes, Dave didn’t get rolled off even once, and at a steady clip, we made it to the house twenty tense minutes later.
That’s when we discovered the flaw in our plan.
5
The number one goal was to get him stashed away where no one would stumble across him, either in his human form or his merman form. If they (somehow) overlooked the gills and thought he was a man, they’d try to take him to hospital, and that wouldn’t end well. If they came across him as a merman, god only knows what they’d try to do.
It definitely wouldn’t end well.
We’d achieved the goal, and had him safe.
The problem was, while we’d managed to drag him up here, we still had to get him inside the house. I couldn’t exactly leave him on the front lawn.
