His mom called back to report that no, the boat was still there and his father hadn’t requested it be put in, either.
Sean cut out of work early and headed home to grab a shower before going back out to check the men’s favorite restaurants in town to see if there was any sign of them. Emery met him at their house. “We need to go up to Mom’s,” he told Sean. “My mom’s,” he clarified.
“Why? Shouldn’t we be out looking for them?”
“We don’t know anything’s wrong.”
“Bull-fucking-shit, Em. You and I both know something’s happened.”
“Not yet, we don’t.”
“They both go off the grid at the same damn time, when they were having lunch together? Tell me that’s not suspicious.”
“I’m telling you, we need to go up to Mom’s.”
“Fine.”
It was anything but fine, but Sean wasn’t in the mood to argue.
* * * *
By six that evening, Sean knew in the pit of his stomach something nefarious had happened to their fathers. He wanted to call the cops, but Emery and Louise both overruled him, and not just because technically the police wouldn’t take a missing person report on an adult that soon. Even Wyatt, who had been called, agreed calling the cops wasn’t a good idea.
Sean didn’t have to wonder very hard about what they suspected.
They were standing in the Nadels’ kitchen when Emery’s phone rang. He looked at it and frowned before he answered.
“Emery Nadel.”
Sean watched as his expression turned black. Emery pulled the phone away from his ear, hit the speaker button, and then set it on the counter.
“Can everyone hear me now? Good.”
“What do you want, Erik?” Emery asked.
Fists clenched, Sean started to say something but Emery shushed him by slicing his hand through the air.
Wyatt and Louise stood and walked over.
“By now,” Erik said, “I’m sure you’ve realized there are two missing persons from your happy little family. I’m just giving you a courtesy call to see if you’d like to get them back. In one piece, that is.”
“If you hurt them—”
“You’ll what, Emery?” Erik laughed. “Right now, it looks like I hold all the cards. And since this is an untraceable phone, I’m not too concerned about you finding me, either. So shut the fuck up and listen.”
Sean felt his stomach wanting to upend. From the background noise, it sounded like cars on a road nearby, the wind, music. He heard a bird squawk in the background, some sort of a parrot talking.
“I’ll call you with some particulars tomorrow,” Erik said. “This is just to put you on notice. For now, Joseph and the human’s father will stay alive as long as you agree to my terms. The superpod will go on as scheduled. You will tell no one about what’s going on. And you’re going to take a mate.”
“I have a mate.”
Erik laughed again, the bird in the background laughing in counterpart. “That human isn’t a mate. I’m talking a real mate. A female dolphin. Don’t worry, I have her all lined up. All you have to do is fuck her at the swim in front of everyone to prove she’s your mate, and keep fucking her over the next couple of weeks until you get her knocked up. You do that, these two men stay alive. Talk to you soon.”
The line went dead.
Sean had never experienced white-hot fury before.
Now he totally understood the expression.
Wyatt shook his head. “That boy needs to die,” he softly said. “Quick and painfully.”
“What the fuck do I tell my mom?” Sean asked, not sure what else to say. Something about the call ate at Sean, beyond Erik’s words.
Louise, who looked as enraged as Sean felt, draped an arm around his shoulders. “I’ll go talk to her,” she said. “Bring her up here. We need her safe. We’ll get a couple of men to come in and stand guard.”
“Mom, I don’t need you going out alone,” Emery protested. “What’s to say Erik won’t abduct you, too?”
Her lips flattened into a line. “If Erik thinks he’s going to take me, or your mom,” she said, “he’ll realize it’s the last mistake of his life.” She patted a discrete bulge sitting at her waistline. “I got my concealed carry permit last month.” She walked over to where her purse sat on the counter. “I’ll bring her back here safely.”
She pointed her finger at the three of them. “You start gathering the troops so you can set up a base of operations at your house after I get back. My suspicion is they’re going to be down in South County, or even in Englewood. Erik won’t move them far from where he grabbed them. He’ll need them close to water for a fast escape for himself. And he’ll want the place to be close to the superpod.”
She walked out.
The three of them stood there in silence.
“Well,” Wyatt said, “y’all heard Momma Flipper. Let’s start making calls.”
* * * *
By the time Louise Nadel returned with Helen Morita, it was almost eleven o’clock and his mother looked distraught. Louise carried an overnight bag on her shoulder, and pulled a rolling suitcase behind her. Wyatt hurried over to take them from her.
When Sean went to hug his mom, she barely reacted.
“Are you all right?”
She slowly looked up at him and started to speak, but Louise put an arm around her shoulders. “I made her take one of her Xanax about thirty minutes ago. It’s kicking in. She’ll be okay once the shock wears off.” She led her across the room to the sofa, where she got her seated. “I’m going to make you some hot tea,” Louise said. “Then we’re going to go upstairs and you’re going to go to bed.”
Helen nodded, but didn’t reply.
It ripped Sean apart. He felt beyond helpless, to get his dad and Joseph back, or to comfort his mom. The whole thing felt like some damn surreal nightmare he couldn’t wake up from.
Emery had summoned quite a few shifters. Many of them Sean recognized from the two searches they’d conducted for the men Erik had killed.
He hoped they had a far better outcome this time.
Fortunately, his mom knew nothing about all of that business. They’d all agreed to keep it a carefully guarded secret from her.
They walked into the kitchen with Louise, leaving Laura in the living room with Sean’s mom.
“She’ll be okay, Sean,” Louise said. “She got hysterical when I told her.”
“I didn’t even know she had a prescription for that,” he said, wondering now if secrets in their family ran two ways.
Louise smiled. She’d been friends with his mom even before he and Emery ever met, volunteers together at a local hospice house. “She’s had it for years. She jokes that it’s the only thing that got her through surviving your dad’s retirement in the beginning.”
Sean snorted. “That sounds about right.” Even in his retirement, Sam Morita made workaholics look lazy.
“We’ll have her stay here while we use your house for the command post,” Louise said. “It’s better that way. She’ll be safer here, too. And not exposed to…” She sighed. “The details.”
“I guess I should head home,” Sean mumbled. “I need to hit a Walmart or something and stock up on supplies if we’re going to have people there.”
“Not alone, you won’t,” Emery told him.
“I’ll take him,” Wyatt offered.
Emery hesitated before nodding. He walked over to Sean and hugged him. “She’ll be safe here,” he said. “If I thought you’d tolerate it, I’d keep you here with her.”
“Erik knows where your parents live. How do we know he won’t come here?”
“He won’t dare,” Wyatt said. “He knows we’ll set this place up like a fuckin’ armed camp.”
“He’s right,” Emery said.
“But what if Erik’s counting on you thinking that?”
Emery placed his hands on Sean’s shoulders. “This place is an armed camp,” he quietly said. “
She’s going to have about eight armed shifters here with her at all times.”
“She’s not going to like this.”
Louise was preparing the tea. “It’s for her own good. Don’t worry. I’ll talk with her. She’s just upset.”
He couldn’t understand how Louise was taking this so well. “How can you be so calm?”
She smiled, but it held no humor. In fact, it looked like the expression of a determined woman who was about to rain death and destruction upon her foe. “Because I know my husband, Sean. And I also know that he will personally see to it Erik is ripped limb from limb.”
On that note, Sean hurried out of the kitchen, afraid his stomach would upend no matter how much he wanted in on that dismembering action. He walked over to his mom and knelt in front of her, taking her hands in his.
“It’s going to be all right, Mom,” he gently said.
Her eyes looked a little too wide. Under normal circumstances, she would be trying to keep herself busy, throwing herself into some sort of helpful activity, like cooking for everyone.
This was anything but a normal circumstance.
“It is?” she softly asked.
His heart ached more than he ever thought possible. “Yeah. It’s going to be fine.” He gently squeezed her hands. “You just have to trust us to take care of this, and take care of you. Got it?”
She slowly blinked a couple of times before nodding.
“I love you, Mom.”
“Love you, too, Sean.”
He kissed her cheek and stood to go, aware of Wyatt waiting for him in the foyer, but then she spoke again. “Sean?”
He turned. “Yeah, Mom?”
“When you get your father back, tell him he’s permanently retiring so we can get that RV.”
He wanted to cry. Instead, he forced a smile. “Will do.”
He managed to hold it together until he was in Wyatt’s car, speeding toward I-75 to head south.
“She’ll be okay,” Wyatt quietly said. “She’s just in shock.”
“I’m not so sure. I didn’t even know she took them in the first place. She looks like she’s close to a mental breakdown.”
“This ain’t Momma Flipper’s first rodeo, buddy.” He nodded. “Your momma, she’ll be fine. Mad, mebbe, at your dad for getting caught, but she’ll be okay once he’s home. Mebbe it’s for the best, this happening.”
Sean stared at him in the darkened car, not sure he’d heard him correctly at first. “Say what?”
“I mean it. Something like this, it pulls a couple together. Makes a person reconsider their priorities.” He glanced over at Sean. “Mebbe force her to accept everything once and for all.”
“At the risk of our fathers’ lives?”
Wyatt shrugged. “Didn’t say it right or fair.” In a few minutes, he spoke again. “Em tell you?”
He didn’t need any kind of shifter psychic powers to know what Wyatt meant. “About Key West? Yeah.”
Wyatt slowly nodded. Sean wasn’t sure if it was in time to the song playing on the radio, or to some silent beat in Wyatt’s brain. “We aw’right?” he finally asked.
“Why wouldn’t we be?”
The alligator shrugged. “Just checkin’.”
“I told Em I wish he’d told me that story sooner.” He stared at Wyatt. “If it hadn’t been for you, I might never have met Em.”
The shifter grinned, white teeth flashing in the lights from the dash. Sean didn’t know if the reddish glow in his eyes was also from the dash lights, or from the taillights of other vehicles, or because he was an alligator shifter. “Glad you feel that way. I like you. You’re real good for Em. He’s happy in a way I ain’t ever remembered seein’ him.” His smile faded. “Well, ’cept for this, of course.”
“What, exactly, is it you do if you’re a graduate from Ringling?”
Wyatt chuckled, the same huffing sound Sean remembered hearing him make in his pool that time. His Cajun accent disappeared. “I’m a graphic artist. I run a firm here in Sarasota, do a lot of work locally and nationally.”
Sean blinked. “What the fuck?”
He grinned again, dropping smoothly back into his Cajun accent. “If I come home talkin’ like that, me or any of my siblings, Momma’d whip us raw. And let me tell you somethin’, that’s damn hard to do to a gator shifter.” His smile faded with his accent. “Unfortunately, I learned the hard way early on that plenty of people think you’re just a dumb hick if you talk like that anywhere but in Louisiana.” He arched an eyebrow at Sean and slipped back into his patois. “But the girls, dey sure do love it.”
* * * *
This was the longest Sean had ever spent alone with Wyatt. He was pleasantly surprised to find he had a lot in common with the man. By the time they reached the Walmart in Venice, open twenty-four hours, Sean found himself thoroughly in like with Wyatt.
As they got out and headed toward the entrance, Sean said, “I wish I had a sister.”
“Why?”
“So I could set her up with you. At least I wouldn’t have to worry about her safety.”
He laughed, clapping Sean on the back. “I ’preciate that, Sean. I truly do. That means a lot to me.”
Sean stocked up on soft drinks, snacks, coffee, boxes of pre-pressed hamburgers, buns, hot dogs, and paper goods. As they wheeled two overflowing carts out to Wyatt’s car he let out a snort. “Did you see they had frozen gator nuggets in the seafood section?”
He hadn’t, and hoped he wasn’t about to step into an etiquette minefield. “No?”
Another snort. “They priced way too high. Damn. Robbers.”
“I’ve never had alligator nuggets before.” That technically wasn’t a lie, because he didn’t know what those particular nuggets were made from, although he had tasted fried gator tail before.
“I don’t care what anyone say,” Wyatt declared as he unlocked the trunk. “Tastes more like pork than chicken.”
Sean let out a shudder. “Isn’t that cannibalism?” he asked before he could stop himself.
Wyatt let out a braying laugh. “No, son. Shifters is still humans.”
“Oh.”
Wyatt unlocked the trunk so they could start loading the groceries. “You sure do have a lot to learn about shifters, don’t you?”
“Apparently more than I thought.”
Chapter Thirteen
Wyatt helped Sean unload the car and put everything away. When Wyatt brought in an overnight bag, Sean realized the shifter was there to stay.
“You can have the guest room,” he told him.
“Thanks.” He took his bag in there, reappearing a few minutes later. “Although, you mind if I take over the pool later?”
“Not at all. Now that I know you.”
“You all right, Sean.”
“Sorry we’re pulling you away from your life again.”
He shrugged. “Just a couple days sooner than I planned is all. No big deal.” His expression hardened, actually comforting Sean now that he knew what happened in Key West. “Nobody gonna keep me from helping, that’s for damn sure. The Nadels are good as family to me. You part of their family, that puts you with them in my heart.”
Sean knew sleep was out of the question. He changed into a comfy pair of shorts and stretched out on the sofa to watch a terrible shark attack movie on SyFy and wait for Emery’s return.
Then he realized what horrible symbolism that was and found a Duck Dynasty rerun.
Somewhere around 2:00 a.m., Sean was startled awake by the sound of the key in the front door. By the time he sat up, Emery had opened the door and walked in, several other shifters with him.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hey.” Sean rubbed at his eyes. “Any news?”
“No. Just more help. You should go to bed.”
“So should you.”
He smiled. “I will, but not right now.” He pulled Sean in for a hug and kiss. “I promise, if anything happens, I’ll wake you up.”
“Okay.”
Sean didn’t think he’d be able to sleep, but when he rolled over in bed and looked at the clock, he found it was a little after 6:00 a.m.
Out in the kitchen, Emery stood quietly talking with Wyatt while the coffeepot burbled.
“Did you sleep at all?” Sean asked Emery.
“A little. You were deep asleep.”
“Apparently. Anything?”
“Just plannin’,” Wyatt said. “Calls we got to make today.”
“What kind of calls?”
Emery rubbed at the back of his neck. “You sure you want this info before coffee?”
Sean held up a staying hand. “I’m not sure I want that information after coffee, either. Just tell me where I need to be and when and what I need to do.”
Emery kissed him. “Deal.”
By noon, there were over twenty shifters at their house, and Joseph’s car had been located in the parking lot of a restaurant in Englewood. Attempts to track the phones through the online family locator service provided by the cell companies was useless, because apparently both phones had been turned off.
Sean had called in to work and arranged to not be there. It was only a day earlier than he’d planned to take off anyway, and he knew he wouldn’t get a damn thing done in the interim.
As they waited on pins and needles for Erik’s next call, Sean played the call from the night before over in his mind. Something still nagged at him, beyond the obvious.
He just wished he could figure out what the fuck it was.
“What did the sharks say about this?” Sean asked Emery.
“They don’t know. I’ve forbidden anyone from telling them.”
“What? Why?”
“Because they’ll sense a weakness. It changes the entire power structure. They might reconsider their agreement.”
“I thought you said they were people of their word?”
“They are, but the situation has changed, and not by anything of their doing. Remember, Floyd Edick is a lawyer. Do you honestly think he won’t loophole his way out of fulfilling his obligation if he thinks he can get away with it?”
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