by Tracy Sharp
Logan was obsessed with sharks. My death would’ve been incidental. But with Jayden, the sharks were the method of death. A way to murder a woman in one of the most horrific ways possible. To send her into abject terror and agony before she died. And possibly, her death would be ruled accidental. Thanks to the news coverage of the growing Great White population. Blame the sharks. The public would buy it hook, line and sinker.
I gently pushed Shelly behind me, guarding her. “Well, you have me now. Let Shelly go.”
“Sure. Why don’t I just let her go?” His face was alight with sociopathic glee. “She’s seen my face, thanks to you.”
“She isn’t your type. She’s too young. That’s why you haven’t killed her yet, isn’t it? You didn’t know what to do with her.”
“I might’ve let her go if you hadn’t been so damned obsessed with finding her. You’re part bloodhound, part pit-bull, Leah. You don’t let go. It’s your fault she’s going to die.”
Shelly stood quietly beside me, lips pressed together tightly. She was a small girl, and she seemed to fall into herself, trembling with fear. Her hands were gripped together in front of her face, as if she were trying to hide behind them. Or maybe wish the monster in front of us away.
“Let her go.” There was no plea in my voice. With someone like Jayden, it would only serve to spur him on. Power and control was his ultimate turn on.
“Or what? I’m the one with the gun here, Leah. I don’t think you’re in any position to make threats.”
“Wait for it.”
He laughed out loud, completely entertained by my gumption. “You’re too cute. You never give up, do you? Now,” he stepped aside. “Get going. Down the stairs.”
I led Shelly to walk ahead of me, and kept a hand on her shoulder, leaving the other free. We began the slow walk down the stairs. My mind raced. Would Shelly know how to steer a boat? She likely would. Her father owned one. I was certain they went fishing on it.
I spoke in soft tones, my voice shaky. “Think happy thoughts, Shelly. Think of being out on your father’s boat. Do you ever get to drive it?”
“Yes. He lets me drive it a lot.” She choked out, trying her best not to cry.
“I bet you love that. You must know this area pretty well. I bet you could drive that boat all over the place by yourself.”
“I can. I have.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I took it out once when he went to town. He never knew.”
“I won’t tell him.”
“No, you won’t,” Jayden said close behind me.
I braced myself. Squeezed her shoulder quickly several times to get her attention, then leaned down and whispered, ‘Run! Take the boat. Go get help!”
She took off down the stairs like a flash and I turned and shoved Jayden hard, sending him sprawling on the stairs. The gun went off, the bullet flying somewhere above us. I hoped it wouldn’t ricochet back and hit Shelly or me.
I jumped on him, my knees hitting the metal stairs, sending sharp spikes of pain up my legs.
Jayden brought the gun down and pointed it at my forehead.
I froze.
“That was both the most courageous and stupidest thing I’ve ever seen someone do, Leah. You’ve got balls. Or a death wish.”
“I’ve got a death wish for you, sunshine.”
“Well, now. You hang on to that little fantasy. Maybe it’ll keep you warm while the sharks are tearing your body to shreds.”
The sound of Logan’s boat engine cut through the air and I smiled. “There she goes. Looks like you’re fucked.”
He smiled. “Then I’d better make this last kill worth it. I saved the best for last. Now move. Slowly. I really don’t want to shoot you. I’ve tested this theory, and the sharks seem to eat more if their prey is bleeding. Makes for better eats for them.”
I moved backward, slowly turning around and heading down the spiral staircase.
“Now, when you get to the bottom, slowly go out the door and get on the rocks, heading to the back of the lighthouse. There’s a short, makeshift dock I put out there. Just long enough for a couple of people to stand on. It’s pretty handy. Got it on the internet. Portable as hell.”
“That’s nice, Jayden. I don’t see you using it after today, though. They don’t have swimmy time at the ocean in prison. However, they do have water sports. In the shower room.”
“Funny lady. Can’t wait to hear that snide tone turn to screams and begging for your life, though.”
“In your dreams.” I began the climb onto the rocks. Seals lounged and moved around the pier and rocky area. This was their home now. But they were so used to humans passing by on boats, feeding them, that they weren’t alarmed.
Some began a slow, awkward approach, and in the blue-grey dusk, their bodies looked like little more than dark shapes. The rain had stopped, and the clouds made room for the moon, which spilled a little light. Enough for me to see my way around and through the seals.
“That’s far enough,” Jayden’s voice echoed toward me. “Move toward the water. See the light grey rectangle floating there? Step onto that.”
I looked toward the water and immediately spotted the dock he was talking about. It was about three feet across and five feet long. He’d somehow attached it to a ledge in the rocky outcropping.
A growl cut through the air, sounding strange and eerie. Sounds of splashing and seal cries, several joining in, panicked and frantic. They were terrified of something.
“Ah. Just in time. The sharks are here for dinner.” Jayden giggled. “They’re never late.”
I looked out over the waves, and spotted Logan’s white boat far away. “You know, Shelly’s going to the cops. You’d better swim for it.”
“Hilarious. Get on the dock.”
“Really? The sight of feeding me to the sharks is more important than escaping prison? You’re even sicker than I thought.”
“Why do surfers get out on the water when a bunch of sharks have been sighted close to the beach? It’s the high. It’s stronger than fear. I’m playing God out here, Leah. Nothing compares to it. I’ll have the memory of your screams to help me through prison. You’re the one I want the most. I’m not giving you up. Right now, I own you.”
Keep him talking. “What happened to you, Jayden? Why do you feel the need to toss women to the sharks? Indulge me. A last request. I’m curious.”
He seemed to consider. Then shrugged lightly. “What the hell? I hated my older sister. She was a mean bitch. Tormented me as a kid. One day I was hiding under the dock, spying on her surfing all by herself. It was early. My parents weren’t up yet. I was going to swim under water, come up from underneath her, upend the surfboard and drown her.”
He giggled at the memory. “But a shark took care of her. Bull shark, hunting close to shore. Came up and grabbed her off the surfboard while she was paddling to catch a wave. The shark dragged her out to sea. She wasn’t found for like a week. Jammed under a dock.” He sighed. “It was beautiful.”
This was the girl Chris had told me about. The one who was found wedged under the dock after the storm, chewed up by sharks. Jayden would’ve only been twelve or thirteen years old at the time. He’d been a psycho even then.
Jayden continued, “By then, the end of Hurricane Joe had come through. They figured it was accidental. Which it was. But it was amazing watching the shark grab her. The most gorgeous thing I’ve ever seen.”
He still pointed the gun at me, but by now it was almost full dark. He was barely a silhouette. It would be harder to shoot what he couldn’t see.
I ran off the dock and headed for the rocks. Shots rang out, but he missed. I kept moving.
Staying low, I maneuvered my way through the seals, making my way around the lighthouse. I came to an area thick with large, silvery black bodies, and I crouched low.
Jayden’s scream of insane fury cut through me, and I lost my balance, falling backward. He shouted my name, coming closer, and I lay back, moving as close to the sea
ls as I could, using them as camouflage. A seal moved close to me, then began sideling up on top of me. Another did the same. A large face with shiny black eyes looked me in the eyes from above, upside down. The seal sniffed at me and nudged my face with its nose.
These seals had witnessed several murders. They seemed to know what was coming for me if Jayden found me.
He was close now. I could see the top of his head above the seals. He slowly looked around. His head and body became more visible as he climbed nearer to me.
Sweat dribbled down into my eyes, but I didn’t dare move. The bodies of the seals on top of me seemed to meld onto me as they tried to keep me safe. He was only a few feet from me now. His head swiveling back and forth. “I know you’re here.”
He turned his head and looked down, and for a long moment he stared. Seemed to look right at me. Fear shook my body and I was thankful for the weight of the seals. The thought of hanging in the frigid water as sharks tore me limb from limb filled me with fear so raw and complete, it almost blocked out everything else.
He turned his head, pointed the gun at a nearby seal. “I bet you love seals, don’t you, Leah? Well, guess what? I’m going to start shooting them unless you come out.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. Shit. I did love seals. It was crazy, given the situation, but I couldn’t bear the thought of him shooting seals because I wouldn’t let him feed me to the sharks. These creatures were trying to protect me, because they knew him. They knew this sick, twisted kid. They’d seen his handy work.
“Wait,” I said.
His head turned back, looked down at me. “Well, there you are. That was clever, Leah. Bet you kicked ass at hide and seek as a kid.”
“I did okay.” I pushed at the seals, and shimmied my way backward. They reluctantly moved. Made grunting sounds that sounded like disapproval. A warning.
He aimed the gun at me. “You’re such a softy. You could’ve stayed under those seals and I probably would never have found you. Seals that will probably just get eaten by the sharks before long.”
“Shouldn’t you be locking yourself in the lighthouse, screaming that they’ll never take you alive, or something? You can bet the cops are already on their way here.”
“You’re the last one, Leah. The most important one.”
“Why am I the most important one?”
“You think you’re so much better than me. Just like the others. You barely notice me. Yet you seek headlines. You have to be the center of attention. Your name and picture has been splashed all over the news. For years. All those close calls. Well, guess what? You’re not coming out of this one alive.”
Explaining wasn’t going to change this nutcase’s mind, but it would buy me just a little more time. “I never sought the attention, Jayden. It just happened. The cases I became involved in garnered headlines. It was never my choice to be in the news. I hate the attention. It makes me very uncomfortable.”
“Why do you take those cases then? If you don’t want to be the center of attention? Have people adoring you?”
“Because, a lot of times, those cases are the ones that matter most to me. Human trafficking. Police corruption. Spree shooters. People who are being exploited and victimized. Like you. Like what your sister did to you. That wasn’t right.”
“Oh, don’t try to get into my head. You won’t like what you see. You couldn’t handle it.”
“Try me.”
“No. I think your little stalling tactics are done. Get over to the dock. Now.”
If it was over. It was over. But I was choosing how I’d go down. And death by shark was not how I would die. “You know what? You might as well shoot me, dickweed. I’m not going to let you hang me off your little floating dock of horrors. A bullet in the head is more preferable.”
“Yes. You will.” He walked toward me, gun pressed against my cheek. I backed away, stumbling over a short drop. “Because in the end, the fear of the bullet is stronger, more immediate than your fear of sharks.”
Carefully I stepped backward, one foot at a time. There was no beach here. Just rocks and water. I looked down. Climbed backward another few feet, bent down, now hanging on to the rocks. I looked down into all that water. I knew firsthand what was down there, below the surface.
It was full dark now, and I could see little under the gauzy moonlight, but as I looked backward, several triangular shapes, barely visible in the half-light, moved around the floating dock. Dorsal fins. The sharks, conditioned to eat here, were waiting.
“I already chummed, earlier. Before all the hoopla happened. Tied a bunch of large fish all around the dock. Got a bunch of hooks screwed into it. That’s how I’ll hang you. By your wrists. Nice and tight. Spilled lots of fish guts around, too. And with the seals swimming around here all the time, the sharks know this is where the goodies are.”
I stood on the rock ledge in front of the floating dock. In plain sight. Waiting for him.
“Good girl. Almost there,” he cooed.
I stepped back, onto the floating dock.
“You did it, Leah. Now was that so hard?”
I stared at him. Said nothing.
Jayden kept the gun pointed at my head as he jumped down onto the ledge, as if he’d done it countless times before. He stepped onto the floating dock. Then he stood in front of me, smiling a huge creepy clown smile, his eyes alight with lunatic joy. He held the muzzle an inch from my left eye. “Turn around.”
I paused. “You don’t have to do this.”
“Oh, but I really do. Turn around.”
Slowly, I turned. Faced the water.
“Now this part will hurt. In order for me to lower the gun so I can tie your wrists together and hang you properly off the dock, I have to hit you over the head and stun you. You know, like they do to baby seals. I practiced on lots of seals before I started killing you bitches. I hit them hard enough to stun them, then threw them to the sharks. Sharks seem to like the seal pups the best. Great Scooby snacks for them.”
“You are truly despicable.” I made up my mind that if I ended up in that water, I wasn’t going in alone. He was coming with me. With my dying breath, I’d make sure his ass was chewed off, too. I wanted with all my heart to hear his shrieks. The thought brought a smile to my face.
But for that to happen, I had to make this good. I cringed. Brought my shoulders up around my neck.
He giggled. “Just like I said. All that tough talk would vanish at the moment of truth. Death staring you in the face erases all that bad-bitch talk, doesn’t it? Now, I should only have to hit you once. Here goes,” he said, and I knew by the way his tone lifted on the last word that he’d brought his arm up.
I side-stepped, placed my feet on the edge of the dock. The mouth of a shark opened, chomped down on the plastic so close I felt the pressure of the underside of its jaw against my boot before the shark sank.
Jayden stumbled forward with the force of his downward swing. I stepped behind him, planted a boot on his ass and shoved.
He yelped, went flying into the ocean, water splashing all around him. He screamed, grabbed for the dock. His hands came up, fingers scrambling. I walked forward, stomped on them, ground my heel over them until I heard several cracks, and then stepped back. His scream was like something otherworldly.
And then his head went under, and his shrieks turned into bubbles.
After a moment, his head and shoulders bobbed up again. His screams nothing more than choking sounds, strange, throaty, barking gurgles.
When he went down again, he didn’t come back up.
A shark bumped the dock, and another, and I almost lost my balance. I started moving. Carefully, I walked off the dock, climbed back up onto the rock ledge, made my way back up to the seal colony.
Then I watched as the lights of the coast guard boats grew larger in the slick glimmers of the waves.
***
“I want to go home, Jackson.”
It was morning. We sat on the deck looking out at the surf, a
scene that was heartbreakingly beautiful, and I’d seen enough. We’d spent most of the night at the precinct, going over every detail of what had happened from the time I’d stepped onto Logan’s boat, until Jackson, McCool, and what seemed like the entire coast guard for the Bass Bay area came to my rescue.
It had been a hell of a memorable vacation. I was ready to go back to New York and sit in our converted firehouse office in Clifton Park, NY, and put my feet up on my desk. Maybe shoot spitballs across the room or make shadow puppets on the wall. Boredom would be a delight for once. I wanted to be mind-numbingly, cobwebs growing on me, clothes going out of style, bored.
“Me, too, Kicks. But I’m staying for a few days longer.” Jackson’s russet hair was afire in the morning sunlight.
I lifted my eyebrows. “Molly?”
His smile was wide. “Molly. She invited me to a wedding. She needs a date.”
I felt a smile move over my lips. It seemed so right that Molly and Jackson get together. She was perfect for him. And I really liked her.
“What about McCool?” Jackson asked me.
“While you’re ready to start dating again, I’m trying to take it slow. You know me. I need to learn to take my time.”
“You really like this guy, don’t you?” He lifted an oversized coffee mug to his lips.
“I really do, Jax.” I leaned back in my chair, closed my eyes. The smell of a distant campfire drifted in the breeze. A warm wind lifted my bangs from my forehead.
The sound of McCool’s cruiser coming up the road made me sit up and finger-brush my wild hair. I had serious bed-head and hadn’t bothered to run a brush through it, yet.
“Wow. You do like this guy. You’re primping.” Jackson stood up and walked back in the beach house. “I’ll get another mug and the pot of coffee.”
He liked McCool. He wouldn’t be going in to get an extra mug and the entire pot of coffee if he didn’t.
I stood up, knowing how tired I looked. When I looked in the mirror this morning I’d winced. The rings under my eyes made me look like one of the walking dead, and the crows feet developing at the outer corners of my eyes were etched more deeply this morning. I looked older than my thirty-one years.