by Starla Night
She’d dropped him off yesterday with a long, tearful kiss. The short trip with her had changed his life. His soul. And, he’d thought, hers.
But in the parking lot, her soul had darkened, knifing him in the chest, and she’d cupped his cheek as she’d lied about seeing him sometime soon.
She would never see him again.
If he were a nobler warrior, she would submerge and mate with him…
He rubbed his pained chest. It was a good pain. Unlike the joint ache from sitting for too many hours in human form and sleeping for too few. He focused on logic. She was devoted to her child. He honored her devotion.
He’d never been devoted to anyone but ghosts. Ghosts, pride, and perhaps now her.
As soon as Pelan regained his health and Balim completed the mer hospital, he would chase her. She did not need to honor him above Jonah.
He would never demand that he be her priority.
Mitch leaned in Balim’s doorway, muffled a cough into a paper tissue, and cleared his throat. His eyes were red; the morning sunlight illuminated his first cup of coffee. “The problem is the tank. Don’t you think it’s off?”
“Off how?” Balim followed Mitch out to the main room.
The aquarium water was cloudy and strange.
He clambered up the steps. Scum bubbled on the surface. The whole tank smelled foul.
“Yes.” He requested Mitch to double-check his measurements. “It is ‘off.’ How long has it been like this?”
“I don’t know.” Mitch sneezed, blew into his tissue, and checked his logs. “I just got in.”
“Where is Pelan’s bride?”
“I don’t know.”
“We have to drain the water.”
Pelan’s healing would stop again.
Was the tank flawed? Balim’s design simulated the undersea environment by the Life Tree. He was the first healer to design a surface crèche, and he had missed something.
He looked in on Pelan as Mitch hooked up the drains.
White foam coated Pelan’s gills.
Large, dark bruises covered his entire body, and in the center of each bruise was a small dark spot. They splotched across his chest in a singular blue chain…
He jolted. Can it be? As if speaking aloud of his sin to Bella had summoned the cursed, incurable disease—
No. He forced himself to examine Pelan. This was not the incurable Blue Ring. It was a simple case of Crab-Cut Disease.
His stomach rolled with the memory of his fears.
Pelan floated in fresh water. Fresh, sterilized water steeped in Sea Opals. How could any disease penetrate?
That mystery would wait.
“Stop the drain.” Balim hurried to his office. “Call Hazel to arrange an emergency evacuation to Atlantis.”
Mitch put the phone to his ear and waited. “What’s going on?”
“Pelan has contracted a rare disease you call a ‘vibrio.’”
“Vibrio.” Mitch’s cheeks hollowed. “You mean flesh-eating bacteria?”
“Bella has told me human medicine is inadequate to fight this disease. After we evacuate, drain the water and bleach all surfaces.”
“What about the bride?” Mitch asked.
“She must evacuate also.”
“Evacuate where?” Pelan’s bride wandered barefoot and damp into the main room.
“Why did you abandon your warrior?” Balim demanded. “You hold his life in your hands, and yet you continue to risk damaging him.”
She held up her hands, irritation crossed with guilt. “I was just gone for ten minutes. Okay? I had this irresistible urge to sneeze, and I didn’t want to wake him up so, yeah, I climbed out.”
“Sneeze?” Mitch asked and then sneezed.
“Yeah, like that. But you can check the cameras or whatever. It was ten minutes.”
His bride looked fine.
How had a saltwater disease entered the sterile, fresh water tank and afflicted only Pelan?
“Check your security cameras,” she insisted. “And point them somewhere other than me. It’s so gross and creepy.”
“We do not have security cameras,” Balim said.
“Yes, you do.”
“He’s right,” Mitch affirmed, wiping his nose with the cloth. “What security cameras are you talking about?”
“The ones you guys had installed over the weekend and pointing straight in on naked me.” She pointed.
He and Mitch wandered over and stared up at the small boxy device directed at the tank.
“Roxanne did not speak of security cameras,” Balim said.
“I don’t think they’re a bad idea, but yeah, she said nothing about them.” Mitch sneezed again. “I’ll ask the night security.”
“Wait. You had an urge to sneeze?” Balim gave a bottle of elixir to Pelan’s bride. “This should heal your illness.”
“Oh, I feel fine now.”
“You have been exposed to Pelan’s illness. Crab-Cut Disease. Drink the elixir to avoid losing your arms and legs.”
She paled, swiped the elixir, and glugged it.
“Sneezing equals exposure?” Mitch looked at his bare hands. Dread filled his features. “What about me?”
“The disease enters through the blood. It does not affect healthy warriors, which is why Pelan’s bride is healthy while he suffers.”
Mitch sneezed again.
Balim stopped and faced him. “Perhaps you should visit a human hospital.”
Mitch waved him away. “It started after work last night. A little tickle in my throat. It’s allergies.”
“Drink the elixir,” Balim ordered.
Mitch moved toward the storage tanks.
“No! The ones inside my office. They should be secure.”
Balim consulted the security officers they’d hired. The day security officer’s nose and eyes were red and she too sniffled into a tissue. “Yes, Rick let in a crew to install the cameras you ordered.”
“I ordered no cameras.”
“Someone did. They had the paperwork.”
“Did you recognize them?”
“Well, I wasn’t here. I’ll leave a note for Rick. Oh, and there’s a woman here to see you.”
“Me?”
The security officer pointed.
Bella stood in the atrium in the small, spare, water-damaged lobby.
Balim’s heart stopped with shock and then thudded painfully. Curvy, beautiful, and tragic.
He strode to her with purpose.
Her soul light brightened, relieved, and then she darkened. “Balim, I—”
“Bella.” He grabbed her around the shoulders and forced her outside, into the bright air and sunshine. “We must go.”
“What’s wrong?” Then, she seemed to sink into him. “You know?”
“There’s been an outbreak.” He stopped in the parking lot, held his phone to his ear, and began his own call to the MerMatch car service. “A freshwater version of Crab-Cut Disease.”
“Outbreak?” She paled. “Oh, no. It’s worse than I imagined.”
He ordered the car and closed the phone. “You imagined this?”
“I’m sorry, Balim.” She faced him, reckless and yet determined, and the dark hollows beneath her eyes said she’d been up all night. “Someone broke into your hospital. I didn’t realize they would poison the tank.”
A terrorist had broken in and sickened the aquarium with Crab-Cut Disease? With Bella’s help?
“I’ll explain, but you need to evacuate everyone. And then,” she swallowed and lifted her chin with bold defiance, “you need to take me to Atlantis.”
Chapter Eighteen
“I made a mistake,” Bella confessed in the conference room of MerMatch a short time later.
The staff glared.
She stood, poised as if she were doing a client proposal. An aromatherapy diffuser on the table dispersed a soothing rose-lavender scent. Peppy music played on Hazel’s phone.
“And I’m here to make it right. I
f you’ll let me.”
The difference between this and the regular client proposals was that her soul mate was sitting with his arms crossed, watching her with new cynicism.
Of all the people she hadn’t meant to hurt or disappoint, he was the one who mattered.
Bella pushed on. “Weeks ago, you invited me to a date with Balim. That same night, the Sons of Hercules tried to threaten me to get me to steal the Life Tree blossom. You have a security problem.”
Hazel ended the song and stared at her. “We’re doing fine without double agents.”
“Do you mind putting on another upbeat song?”
“Seriously?”
“Anything from your playlist is fine.”
Hazel started more music.
Bella went to the doorway, checked the locks and the new window stickers she’d placed, and drew the blinds. Then she opened her cardboard box, set up a conference phone in the middle of the table, and dialed her memorized number. The conference phone rang.
“This is my half sister, Starr,” she said as the phone clicked. “She’s a security consultant. As I said, a few hours after you called to schedule a first date, I received a phone call from the Sons of Hercules. Starr came with me virtually on my date to figure out why.”
Her half sister’s soft, stuffed-up voice sounded like she was in the room. “You have bugs everywhere.”
“Everywhere?” Dannika, whose arms had crossed over her chest, looked up from her disappointed trance. “Bugs?”
“Everywhere,” Starr confirmed. “Bella walked all over the office. They’re under your seats, in your drawers, everywhere.”
The meeting attendants shifted in their seats.
“But not in this conference room?” Dannika questioned.
“Oh, they’re in here too.”
“Have bugs everywhere,” Hazel repeated. “Right now?”
“Yep. Right now. That’s why I had Bella stick a jammer under your aromatherapy diffuser on her first date. Hopefully, it’s going now.”
The humans looked at the diffuser.
Balim studied Bella with disappointment. It needled her.
“I’ve also had Bella put stickers on the windows that disrupt anyone trying to listen from outside,” Starr continued, “but you’ll want to avoid sensitive topics on the roof, and—”
“Wait.” Hazel held up her hand at the conference room phone, forgetting it didn’t have a camera attached. “Stickers? For listening outside? We’re on the fifth floor. No window washer’s outside with a glass.”
“Of course not,” Starr said patiently, “although the window washers you let in this week weren’t from the company and they removed the stickers, so that’s why just now, before we started this conference, I had to have Bella replace them.”
Hazel’s mouth opened in shock.
“They protect against someone sitting on the next rooftop over and directing a beam against the windows. The displacement of air from speaking vibrates the glass. The sticker muffles it.”
Her mouth closed. “Seriously?”
“It’s what I would do if I was hell-bent on listening in on somebody and I couldn’t get reliable intel.”
Hazel frowned.
Bella put her hands on her hips. “The Sons of Hercules have invested serious resources into spying on you.”
“It’s just a website of violent, antisocial college students who can’t get girlfriends and blame someone else for their problems.” Hazel recited what the news reported. “They have a chat forum and a catchy slogan.”
“And organization,” she pushed, realizing how hypocritical she sounded. “You’ve been poisoned, shot, and bombed. You need to take this more seriously. Trust me. Making the wrong assumption will get people killed.”
The receptionist looked bleak. She rubbed her face. “I work at a dating agency. Not the CIA. And now my life is in danger?”
“Not your life,” Starr reassured her from the conference phone. “The mermen’s lives. You’d be collateral, not the target.”
Her lips twisted. “Not comforting.”
Dannika lifted a finger. “Why didn’t you tell us right away?”
“I wanted to know how far the Sons of Hercules had invaded.” Bella tried to push through the relief of confessing and the fear of Balim’s continued disgruntlement. “If I’d told you before Starr swept the office for bugs, they would know that you know. Her slightest probe showed your computer network is wide open.”
“Wide open,” Starr agreed. “Like an open jar of peanut butter at a nut-lovers’ convention. I was supposed to send my report once I secured your vulnerabilities.”
“Supposed to?” Hazel repeated.
“Yes—” Bella started.
“Yeah,” Starr interrupted, “things got moved up when they kidnapped Jonah.”
Bella shut her teeth with a click.
The others stared at her with shock and horror.
Hazel slapped her open palms on the table. “Why haven’t you called the police?”
“I did,” Bella said, “but—”
“And about everything Starr found?”
“No, that part I haven’t—”
“Call!”
They drowned her out, sharing worries, tips, and demanding she act less composed giving this security presentation while her child was missing.
“Why are you just sitting around?” Hazel picked up her phone to call the police.
“Wait, wait. Just calm down, everybody,” Starr said. “We can’t tip the kidnappers off to my efforts to find him. Bella kept you in the dark in case of bugs in your homes or the bad guys had gotten to family or friends. You never know when a single wrong word will reach compromised ears. Right now, we have the advantage. Bella has to make sure I keep it. So she didn’t tell the police anything about my work, and I can’t have you telling them about it either. Not until we have Jonah.”
“And we’ve nailed the person directing the Sons of Hercules,” Bella affirmed. “Who is not a college student. I believe he’s a sociopathic mastermind.”
Across the room, Balim straightened.
She needed his forgiveness right now.
And that made her choke. She had to swallow and refocus on the purpose of the meeting.
“No, you need to call the police,” Hazel insisted, gripping her phone. “That’s what they’re there for. Solving crimes and catching criminals.”
“Don’t use that,” Bella reminded her. “Starr hasn’t checked it for spyware. It could be recording your phone calls.”
She blanched and lowered her phone so the music played into the silence.
“I traced the ambulance transport route to the docks,” Starr said, “so we think the leader was telling the truth and Jonah is on a boat. Plus that would make it the easiest for the Sons of Hercules to monitor Bella when she’s in Atlantis.”
Hazel whipped to Balim. “You can’t take her to Atlantis. She’s confessed to being a spy.”
“A double agent,” he corrected, steepling his fingers in front of his mouth.
“That’s the same thing. Double the same thing!”
“I must evacuate Pelan. Bella must rescue her child.”
And the plane was due in an hour. They would meet Pelan and his bride at the airstrip.
“I want to go with you,” Dannika said.
Balim dropped his hands. “No.”
“Pelan is my successful match, Balim. I need to reassure his future wife—”
“She is going also.”
Dannika’s brows rose to the ceiling. “But we haven’t finished anything. We didn’t have the wedding. She needs to contact her job. Her emergency leave ends next week. Her family—”
“She is a target. Her safest refuge is in Atlantis.”
“But—”
“Someone broke into the makeshift hospital while Balim was gone,” Bella interrupted.
“While you took him, you mean,” Hazel sniped. “Yeah, the fake security-camera guys. What are we going
to do about them?”
“Starr’s working on that,” Bella said. “The night security prevented the crew from dumping anything in the tank. But something got in. We think it was the other visitor you had that evening.”
“Other visitor?”
“The visitor security didn’t mention because she assumed you already knew.” Bella focused on Balim. “The new merman.”
“A new warrior has not surfaced.” Balim looked to Dannika for confirmation.
“No,” she agreed. “The boat with new warriors is due in another week. We just have our existing clients at the moment.”
“But a new one showed up. Starr was patched into your external security video. She watched the fake merman walk in.” Bella focused on Dannika. “He drove in a Tesla. Starr’s tracing the license plate. He painted on blackberry-vine facial tattoos with iridescent purple body paint.”
Dannika covered her mouth, thinking hard.
“You know every warrior who’s risen, and we think you could judge anyone who claims to be new. That’s why you have to stay until Starr figures out a way to security-card the mermen and yet doesn’t make the mer more vulnerable.”
Dannika sucked in a deep breath and let it out. “I will stay and help until we have security.”
“Great.” Bella straightened. “Then Starr will move forward.”
“I’ll be working the New York angle,” she agreed. “Bella will uncover double agents on the ocean platform. They have to contact her outside the mer city.”
“Why don’t the Sons of Hercules have double agents in the mer city?” Hazel asked.
Dannika tapped her lips with her index finger. “They would have to be mermen.”
“Right, it’s on the bottom of the sea.” Hazel sighed and squeezed her phone. “It’s just so unfair. The police catch the sniper, but he’s an unbalanced creep looking for an excuse to hurt people. They catch the Rotenone restaurant poisoner, same thing. Nobody stops the organization that’s inciting these crazies and spreading hate.”
“Nobody? That’s not true. There are people trying to stop the Sons of Hercules.” Bella rested her palms on the table. “The people stopping them are us.”
Her pronouncement echoed through the little conference room. Hazel and Dannika straightened. Balim’s lips quirked into a slight smile.