As far as other people and their issues, all had been relatively quiet in the underground network he’d dedicated the last several decades of his life to. That was a good thing. Quiet meant no one he knew and thought of as a brother was in danger. And that the bad guys weren’t doing anything that put innocents at risk.
Bad guys.
The term bad guys used to be very cut and dry to him. It wasn’t anymore.
Hell, he could be seen as a bad guy, depending on who was telling the story. He made his living off shady dealings and backdoor jobs, but no innocents were ever hurt in the process, so he didn’t lose sleep over it. What he did while skating the morally right and wrong served a greater purpose. And gave him the funds he needed to live a very comfortable life if he wanted.
But that wasn’t really who he was. Material things mattered little to him. So long as he had a surfboard and open water, he’d sleep on the beach if need be. Fancy wasn’t something anyone who knew him would label him as.
Beach bum was more fitting.
Fine by him.
He simply squirreled away his earnings for the day he might want to settle down and plant roots. As highly unlikely as that scenario was, he’d been alive a hundred years. He knew a thing or two about planning for the future. His rainy-day funds would sustain him and any family he might have for a very long time.
The odds of him ever having a family of his own were slim to none. He wasn’t human, and not many women would be fine with that truth, should he ever actually tell one. He couldn’t reproduce—unless he believed the rumors about the genetically engineered soldiers from the Immortal Ops Program finding mates who were natural-born supernaturals. Which he did not. And to top it all off, he was a wanted man.
“You’re deep in thought again,” said Wheeler. “What’s got you contemplating so hard I can see it happening?”
“Nothing,” returned Cody before giving in and telling his friend what was on his mind. “Just thinking about how I save my money for a family I might one day have. Seems asinine when I say it out loud, considering what I am.”
“What we are,” corrected Wheeler, glancing over at the woman he’d been making out with, who was deep in conversation with another surfer. She was paying them little mind. “I’ll admit to thinking about it myself once or twice. Not that I’m wanting to settle down anytime soon or anything. Don’t much care to know my options were taken from me though, if that makes sense. Rather the choice of not having a family be just that—a choice. Unlike it is for us.”
That summed it up perfectly. Their choices had been stripped from them by a group of scientists and doctors.
“Ever wish you could go back and stop yourself from saying yes to it all?” asked Cody, thankful that even if one of the others were listening in, they’d have no idea what the men were talking about.
Wheeler glanced down. “Don’t much see the point of kicking my own ass over something that can’t ever change.”
“So, you’re saying if you had it to do again, you would?”
Wheeler glanced away a moment. “No. It wasn’t worth it.”
“Part of me is thankful for the immortality, but the cost was steep,” confessed Cody. “You lost more than most of us in it all.”
Wheeler gave a slight shrug, attempting to appear as if it didn’t bother him that he’d been left with the need for blood and a serious sensitivity to sunlight. “I’m used to it now.”
“Really? I’m not sure I’m ever going to fully be able to wrap my mind around it all and what we went through. Not for lack of trying though,” said Cody.
“Maybe you’ll find an answer in those books and poems you’re always reading,” stated Wheeler with a grin. “Want to bore me with more poems that are older than we are? And, Cody, we are fucking old as dirt.”
Cody laughed. “We’re up there. I’ll give you that much. Of the two of us, I’m aging better.”
Wheeler flipped him off. “Neither of us has aged a day since it all happened. Nice try.”
“That just means I was better-looking going into it all,” added Cody, grinning wider.
Wheeler bent backwards and went for the cooler with beer in it. He flipped the lid, grabbed himself another and glanced at Cody. He lifted a brow. “Want another?”
Cody polished off his and set the glass bottle next to him in the sand to clean it up before they packed up for the night. “Sure.”
Wheeler handed him a beer and then sat up, twisting the cap from his before taking a sizable drink. Neither man spoke as they sat there nursing their new beers. Cody could only guess that Wheeler was mulling over the events of their past as well. There was little room for uncertainty that Wheeler was as troubled by it all still as Cody was, regardless what the man said on the matter.
Cody stared at the water as he fought an inner battle with his shark. It was agitated and was behaving oddly. It wanted to be out there swimming, not sitting on the beach. He’d spent about a week in fully shifted form not long back. Normally, his shark side would be content for at least a few more weeks.
But no.
It did its version of clawing at him from within.
It took him a bit to realize the music had stopped. He found Wheeler staring at him, a worried look on his face. “We gonna have a problem?”
Cody pressed a smile to his face. “I’m fine. I swear.”
“Sure you are,” said Wheeler, handing the guitar off to another of the men. Since it was his prized possession, no one was normally permitted to touch it in any way, shape, or form. He treated it with kid gloves, which was funny since he had plenty of money to buy more. He just really liked that one. The fact he was handing it off to someone else spoke volumes.
The others around them were engrossed in song and conversation, and Wheeler’s woman excused herself to go get something else to drink. Once she was out of earshot, Wheeler nodded to him.
“What’s going on?” demanded Wheeler. “Am I going to have to knock your ass out to prevent an issue?”
“I don’t know,” confessed Cody, touching his abs. “My beast is freaking out about something. As much as I want to say you won’t have to render me unconscious to protect everyone else, I can’t make any promises. Might come to that.”
Wheeler sat up more. Concern touched his brow as it wrinkled. “How much freak-out are we talking about here on a scale of one to Jaws?”
Cody grunted.
Wheeler grinned. “What? Honest question.”
With a rub of his upper chest, Cody swallowed hard. “Whatever would be past the top end.”
Wheeler jerked. “Shit. I’m not sure I can mesmerize everyone on this beach tonight so how about you not change into a shark right here in the sand? Okay? Besides, I’m strong, but not lift-a-fucking-two-plus-ton-shark-off-the-beach-and-into-the-water kind of strong. Not many of us are.”
Cody pushed to his feet, knowing his friend was right. The safest thing for him to do was to get in the water and swim off whatever it was that was eating at him.
Wheeler stood as well and made a move to walk toward the water.
Cody snorted. “You’re not seriously thinking of coming with me, are you? I scare the crap out of you while I’m in shifted form. Not to mention you’re not a fan of being out on the water for any length of time.”
Wheeler held up a hand. “No. You don’t scare me. Sharks do. Your shark I trust. It’s an ocean full of the rest of them that I don’t.”
Cody stiffened as he thought about the gnawing in his gut. “Wheeler.”
“Yeah?”
“Right now, the last thing I’d trust is my shark,” confessed Cody. “Don’t get near it right now, okay?”
“Shit,” added Wheeler. “That bad?”
Cody nodded. “I think I need to maybe swim it off. Get the excess energy out of me or something. I don’t know.”
“I’ll come with you. I’ll charter a boat or something to be close, in case you need help,” said Wheeler.
While the offer wa
s kind, it wouldn’t work, and both men knew that.
“Wheeler, you do realize the sun will come up at some point and you’ll be out in the ocean, with nowhere to take cover?” asked Cody. “Not sure I’d trust a boat to be my safe haven if I was you.”
Wheeler curled his lip. “Well, when you put it that way, I think I’ll just stay right here and keep the hotties company while you do whatever it is you do out there.”
Cody laughed. “Thanks. Don’t wait around for me. I’m guessing this will be a long trip out.”
“Understood,” said Wheeler, his attention going in the direction of the woman he’d been making out with. “I think I can keep myself busy until I fly out.”
“Oh, I’m sure you can,” said Cody with a laugh as he hurried toward the water.
His shark picked then to rear up, nearly making him shift then and there in front of everyone.
Thankfully, he managed to make it under the water before it happened.
Chapter Two
As Cody swam in full shark mode, he reflected on his loss of control on the beach hours ago and what had prompted it. He still wasn’t entirely sure what the catalyst had been, but he did know it wasn’t a great sign that he was struggling as hard as he was with his shark. Even remaining in shark form, swimming for hours, past the point of dawn and now well into the morning light, had done nothing to help take the edge off what he’d been feeling.
The beast was still restless. It was as if it were hunting for something or someone.
Not hunting, he thought.
Searching.
Yes, that was it. The shark was searching for something or someone but felt no real need to clue Cody in on more details. Instantly, he was hit with visions from his dreams. Impressions of someone needing him. Of mortal danger.
Of death.
A tugging started deep in the pit of his stomach. It was as if he’d been caught on a fishing line, but without a hook or any tangible item. The feeling of being needed washed over him, filling every inch of him as he increased the speed with which he swam. He shot forward with purpose, despite the end goal being a mystery. Deep within, he knew it had something to do with the recurring dreams. The ones of someone he cared deeply for being in mortal danger.
The shark was still on a mission. Still searching for whoever or whatever it was on the hunt for.
Before long, he was near the waters of a protected area. The spot had been given protected status some time ago to help with the marine wildlife there. But that did nothing to stop the illegal poaching that occurred all the time.
More than once he’d heard talk of fishing vessels chumming the waters there to draw in as many sharks as they could. Shark fins were a hot commodity in certain countries. Shark fin soup was something of a delicacy, said to be beneficial to the health. In reality, it was something the elite treated themselves to at the expense of an entire species.
Finning was the practice of catching sharks, cutting off their fins to sell for shark fin soups, Eastern medicines, and whatnot, and then dumping the gravely injured shark back into the ocean to die. Shark populations were suffering because of the massacres, and if finning was left unchecked, sharks would die out.
People who feared sharks would think that was a good thing—like the hot chick who had wanted to do him back on the beach. Until they realized how vital sharks were to the ecosystem. Not that the woman would have grasped that concept.
The act of finning was disgusting, and if given a chance, he’d totally allow his shark side to munch on as many of the men partaking in the act as it saw fit.
He had half a mind to take the lead from his shark side and steer away from the fishing area, near a small island, but the shark seemed adamant they continue onward. Wanting to see how it played out, Cody didn’t protest.
It was then he sensed something was off.
Danger.
Serious fucking danger.
But the inner alarm wasn’t sounding for himself—no, it was for someone else.
The very same panicked feeling that he’d felt when waking from the nightmare came back to him tenfold. The shark did its version of acting out by moving like a torpedo through the water, right at the fishing vessels that lay ahead.
For a split second, Cody thought the shark would ram one of the vessels.
The beast wasn’t fond of steel cages or certain metals used in the hulls of some boats. It disrupted its system of sense organs along its lateral line—the ampullae of Lorenzini. The shark had been known to charge more than one steel diving cage in its time. Thankfully, more and more cages were being constructed out of aluminum, which was all around better, as it didn’t rust either.
He’d come up against things that overloaded his sensors and senses in the past, but this was different.
This wasn’t confusion and sensory overload.
This was calculated yet frantic.
Help.
Someone needed his help.
It was then he picked up on the telltale sounds of splashing and the faint beating of a heart. He knew without being told the heartbeat was human. For a fraction of a second, his heartbeat fell into sync with the one he was hearing, as if the two hearts were beating as one.
The feeling passed and when it did, he heard the other heartbeat beginning to fade, to slow, and everything in him went on high alert.
No!
The shark veered off in the direction the sound of distress was coming from, and for a moment, the morning sunlight that was piercing through the water near the surface made it hard for Cody to make out what he was seeing. Then, it took his mind even longer to process it all.
It was a child.
A little girl, to be exact.
And she was sinking in the water, on her rapid descent, as blood floated around her.
She was hurt, and if what he was hearing was correct, she was dying.
Like hell!
Cody shut off, his mind a blur of panic and rage. Why was a little girl out in the middle of the ocean, sinking like a rock, with no one around to help her?
His senses told him he wasn’t the only predator in the area. That all the blood from the finning, combined with that of the child, was attracting other species of sharks. If one of them thought of harming the child, Cody would bite clean through them.
The little girl went limp in the water, her small arms floating up and above her head as she continued downward. Her long black hair swayed and danced around her face and head. As it lifted higher, he spotted a large gash at the base of her neck. Blood flowed from the open wound freely, swirling in the water, leaving a surreal pattern in its wake.
She was in a pair of white shorts and a blue top, both of which had blood on them. When he saw she was in sandals, and not barefoot or in a swimsuit, he wondered if she’d come from one of the fishing vessels.
Even if she had, he wasn’t going to let her die.
It wasn’t in him to let a child suffer, even if she had been with assholes who thought cutting the fins off his kind was a good idea. That was hardly her fault. Beyond that, there was something about this child that made him intent on saving her.
No matter the cost.
Cody reached her and tried to shift back into human form to be able to grab her with his hands, but the shark wasn’t having any part of that. It was as worried about her as he was. And clearly, it wasn’t going to chance the human part fucking this up.
He got the distinct impression it thought he’d take the situation as seriously as he took most things in life—not very much.
But that wasn’t the case. Cody was dead serious about saving the child.
Not that the shark cared about his opinions on it all.
The shark took matters into its own hands, positioning itself under the little girl and thrusting its head up. The action forced the child upward. Unfortunately, it also left his razor-sharp teeth catching the delicate skin of her right forearm in the process. Instantly the taste of her blood filled his mouth. It didn’t ignit
e hunger in the shark, as Cody feared it might. Rather, it made the shark’s burning need to see the child safe intensify to a level that made it hard for Cody to concentrate.
The shark tried to be more gentle with her as he nudged her toward the surface. Once there, it backed off to some extent, detecting what Cody did.
Other sharks were in the area, attracted by the blood and noises. To make matters worse (not that it wasn’t bad enough), the sharks he was sensing were ones with reputations for attacking humans.
Bull and tiger sharks.
A lot of people thought tiger sharks weren’t in the waters around Costa Rica anymore.
They were wrong.
They were still there, just not in the numbers they had been. And right now, all the ones that were seemed to have converged on the area.
Just fucking great.
Most were pushing fourteen feet, which was large for their kind. And while he was much bigger, there were far more of them than there were of him. Not to mention, more sharks were appearing left and right. Already he was grossly outnumbered. But that did nothing to dissuade him.
He heard the faint sounds of someone yelling frantically from the island not far from where they were. If memory served, there was a rocky cliff face nearby. Had the child tumbled over it and into the chumming and finning area?
Cody struggled with his shark, wanting to return to human form to get the child to safety—to land. The shark’s senses were in overdrive and it was as panicked as he was. Maybe more. Which was saying something because his shark side didn’t get nervous or freak out.
Ever.
But something had unnerved it more than once.
Not something, thought Cody.
Someone.
The little girl.
He and the shark worked together to keep the little girl’s head above water, the sound of her heartbeat waning more and more. The very thought of her expiring then and there sent Cody into a state of abject terror that he couldn’t even begin to explain. There was simply no way in hell he was letting her die.
Wrecked Intel (Immortal Outcasts®): An Immortal Ops® World Novel Page 3