Blood in the Water

by Cleo Peitsche

  Far, far too small for eight-year-old Brady. And Brady couldn’t have gone over the top, not without ripping himself to pieces.

  Brady’s escape defied all reason. Had an unknown third party discovered him? Taken him and closed the gate up afterward? If so, why?

  Koenraad continued visually inspecting the barrier, trying to make sense of the illogical.

  It was a waste of time.

  Just as he was about to turn away, he noticed something in one bottom corner. Swimming closer, he inspected it. Here, the fencing was slightly bowed.

  He shifted human and pressed his fingers against the deformity. The barrier held. But he continued to work it, to worry it, and then, with a twist, he was able to pull the bottom up.

  Stunned, he stared at it. He wasn’t sure what it meant. He was far stronger than Brady, and pulling it up hadn’t been easy.

  He dropped the fence, but it didn’t snap back into position.

  So what did that mean? Had someone pulled it up, let Brady out, then fixed it again?

  That didn’t make sense. Even the resulting hole was still half Brady’s size, and the bottom edge was jagged. Scraping against it wouldn’t have caused any lasting damage, but Koenraad would have smelled blood in the hours after Brady’s escape. He would have known that Brady had injured himself.

  Koenraad shoved the fencing back until it looked the way it originally had.

  The fence felt significant.

  But Brady still couldn’t have gotten out that way. It was physically impossible.

  So what the hell did it mean?

  More troubled than ever, he swam underwater to the far side of the inlet and resumed his investigation, his hands disturbing the sandy bottom while he probed for some sort of tool that Brady could have used to get out.

  He found nothing. And even if he had… Brady didn’t have hands, and a shark’s mouth wasn’t capable of fine-tuned dexterity.

  Disheartened, Koenraad forced himself to retreat from the inlet. It was getting late, and he’d left Monroe alone longer than he’d planned to. Time to get back.

  He decided to take a different route, one less direct but that passed through a wide stretch of water mostly unaffected by the sick.

  It took him near Eden Underground. The pristine reef would be good, easy hunting grounds for a young shark. It was also popular with the snorkel and scuba tours, though tourists had been scarce after a few humans drowned because of the sick. The dangerous beaches had been marked and the airports had been reopened. Soon the island would be crowded again.

  Suddenly, he caught Brady’s scent. It was so subtle that for a moment Koenraad wondered if desperation was making him hallucinate.

  There it was again, the thread stronger.

  He turned, chasing the scent, not caring when it led him near the sick.

  He wasn’t going anywhere without his son.

  Chapter 3

  Koenraad cursed himself as he rechecked the area yet again. Brady’s scent was faint, almost imperceptible, and it kept turning back on itself.

  It had to be the sick, screwing up Brady’s orientation.

  And Koenraad lost the trail.

  The idea of his son out here, in this area that was frequented by tourists, was strong motivation. But he had nothing to go on.

  The trail was gone.

  Koenraad slowed and considered what to do. He needed to get back to Monroe. Even if he left immediately, he still had forty minutes of sprinting before he’d arrive at The Good Life.

  Koenraad ran into the sick.

  Swimming into a physical wall would have been less painful, and he whipped to the side and swam parallel to the noxious water while he tried to shake off the impact.

  Maybe it was his imagination, but it seemed that the more time he spent near the diseased sections of the ocean, the less they affected him. His first exposure had been intolerable, but now he could still function, just in a diminished capacity.

  Perhaps the potency was weakening. He couldn’t know, and he wasn’t going to test the theory—less potent or less effective on him—by plunging into the thick of it.

  But the more the wall took him out of the most direct route to Monroe, the more he wanted to grit his teeth and try to swim through it.

  The wall grew thinner, an opportunity. He was on the verge of dashing through it there when he smelled a very faint scent almost at the same time that he felt it.

  Shark in the water.

  Not Brady.

  An adult.

  Not just any adult. Darius. Victoria’s scheming uncle. Victoria was vindictive, but her inability to control her anger made her weak.

  Darius had no such weakness. He was also smarter and stronger, and he had the power of the Council behind him.

  And at the moment, he wasn’t too happy with Koenraad. Not after the embarrassment of the trial the week before. Darius had backed Victoria, but Koenraad had walked free.

  The problem was that Koenraad’s hands weren’t clean. Victoria’s claims that he’d murdered a human had been proven wrong—Monroe was quite clearly alive—but Koenraad had broken a few rules.

  Serious rules.

  If that wasn’t a reason to change direction…

  But Koenraad wouldn’t be put off his course.

  Moments later, the older shark was in sight. Working under the assumption that Darius had smelled and felt him, Koenraad slowed.

  If it were up to Darius, he’d be the only Council member. But even Darius’s power and connections couldn’t reorder the shifter hierarchy. Sharks might agree to a set of rules and laws for the greater good, but they would never bow to a monarchy.

  Koenraad bet that minor inconvenience bothered Darius to no end.

  Darius was very close now.

  He waited for Darius to acknowledge him, but the shifter seemed unaware of Koenraad’s presence. Koenraad slowly swam a bit closer.

  Still nothing. Darius… didn’t see him?

  Koenraad was lower in the water than Darius, and it occurred to him that he could attack the other shark. After all, he didn’t smell or sense any other shifters; there would be no witnesses.

  How many problems would be solved if Darius disappeared?

  A whole lot of them.

  Without Darius’s sway, Victoria would surely leave Tureygua and likely never return. She’d accumulated enemies. Even though his moment of weakness had resulted in Brady, Koenraad had never liked Victoria. He’d tolerated her, and when she had relocated to Brazil, Koenraad had been much happier.

  But it wasn’t until she’d threatened Monroe that he’d learned what true loathing felt like.

  He circled under Darius. Even though he was a good forty feet away, Darius should have perceived him.

  What was the shark doing out here, anyway? And where was his enormous yacht, filled with armed bodyguards?

  The mere act of circling awoke Koenraad’s hunter instincts. It would be so easy to hurtle through the water, jaws wide. He could rip out Darius’s throat.

  No Darius, no Victoria.

  Monroe would be safe.

  Brady, too, because as long as Victoria was in the area, there was always the chance she’d find out about Brady, either that Koenraad had located and been hiding their son, or that he was somewhere in the area.

  Or that Brady had attacked a human, an offense punishable by death, no exceptions. There wasn’t a shred of proof at this point, but Victoria knew something had happened at Koenraad’s beachside mansion. She’d seen the copious amounts of blood, and she’d assumed that Koenraad had a dark secret, that he was killing and eating humans.

  If he knew Victoria, she was surely trying to work through all the things she’d seen, trying to make sense of it.

  If she ever figured out that Brady had something to do with it, Koenraad would never be free of her.

  One bite.

  He could drag Darius’s broken body into the sick. No one would find him there.

  One mighty rush. Three seconds, and al
l his problems would be solved.

  Flicking his crescent-shaped tail, Koenraad tightened his circle. He could feel murder in his teeth, a tingling, aching sensation.

  As a shark, killing was his nature.

  He moved into position.

  Chapter 4

  Monroe reluctantly turned the last page in her book. The star-crossed couple had gotten their happily ever after, and good for them, but now she had nothing left to do.

  She eased her stiff legs out of the chair and carried the book into the bedroom she shared with Koenraad. Just crossing the threshold was enough to make her heart pound. So many amazing things had happened here…

  Hopefully Koenraad would get back soon.

  Kneeling, she slid the book into her suitcase, then checked that she hadn’t overlooked a paperback. But no, she’d read them all.

  There were televisions on the yacht, but most of the channels were in Dutch. The ones that weren’t featured newscasters screaming at each other.

  Monroe had enough drama in her real life.

  She could get online, but the service wasn’t great, and anyway she didn’t know the password to Koenraad’s computer. He’d offered to tell her, but she’d declined because… well, because at the time she couldn’t think of a single reason she’d want to be surfing the web.

  That was five days earlier.

  Now it seemed that every day Koenraad was gone, he stayed out a bit longer than the day before. She hated it. When Koenraad was by her side, nothing about the ocean scared her.

  But when he was away, it was as terrifying as ever. Every creak, every small movement, and she became convinced the yacht was going to plunge straight to the bottom of the ocean. The dark sky overhead didn’t help matters. Suppose the storm hit and blew the yacht off course? Instead of drowning, she’d starve to death. To her, the autopilot thingie was like magic. Koenraad had explained that it worked with GPS and by measuring the wind and water speeds, but suppose the satellite went down or something?

  Desperately in need of a distraction, she picked up Koenraad’s MP3 player and put it on random, then slid it into the speaker dock.

  Alternative rock. She pumped up the volume, and then, in a fit of industriousness, pulled out the sponges under the kitchen sink and began wiping down the kitchen—the galley—which Koenraad kept pretty clean.

  When that was done, she rinsed the sponges.

  If she hadn’t been looking out the window, she wouldn’t have seen the enormous yacht approaching. It was easily twice the size of The Good Life. A smallish cruise ship? She watched it a moment and tried to track it by the movement of its lights.

  It seemed to be on a slow collision course with Koenraad’s yacht. But that was unlikely. The Good Life was well lit. She was hardly invisible.

  But the boat didn’t seem about to change course.

  Nervously, she left the galley and climbed the stairs to the upper helm. She could watch the boat’s progress from here. Her fingers gripped the steering wheel. Koenraad had let her steer the boat once—had insisted on it, actually—but that was the extent of her experience. But how many times had she sat close by and watched him manipulate the controls?

  She knew what to do.

  She glanced to her right, and a hellish thought made her palms slick with sweat.

  What if it was Victoria?

  “Koenraad,” she whispered, as if saying his name could summon him.

  Back home, in New York, she was confident and capable. Whatever came up, she could handle it. But here in the Caribbean, in Koenraad’s world, she was a helpless infant. The expression “fish out of water” had never felt so apt.

  If she survived this, she was going to make Koenraad show her how to work the controls. It was her fault for being so prickly whenever he wanted to teach her yet another procedure.

  And the boat was still bearing down on her. No doubt about it now.

  She toggled the levers, pushed the button, just like Koenraad always did, but the engine didn’t hum to life.

  The autopilot.

  She needed to turn that off. But she didn’t know how to. The screen said Hold-Point. Whatever that meant. There were six identically shaped buttons across the top of the box, and they were all different colors. She tapped her fingers along the sides. No master on/off switch. However, there was a cable that looped from the box under the steering wheel. That was probably the power.

  Maybe don’t start pulling out cords. She pushed the leftmost button instead, held it down. There was a beep, then all the lights on The Good Life went out.

  She glanced over at the approaching yacht.

  Adrenaline coursing through her veins, she pushed the button and felt the boat begin to respond. She toggled the levers, pushed another button. The lights came back on. Next, she dropped her hand to the joystick and the yacht surged underneath her. The sudden acceleration made her stagger back.

  The other yacht—was it changing direction?

  It was, and it wasn’t moving any slower.

  Forgetting about the steering wheel, Monroe threw her hands up in front of her face and braced for impact.

  Chapter 5

  With a flick of his crescent-shaped tail, Koenraad’s circle tightened. Darius was perfectly outlined above him.

  But still, Koenraad didn’t charge.

  A feeling of unease was taking hold of him.

  But why?

  The reason sprang vividly to the front of his mind: Monroe.

  It didn’t make sense. She was his mate, and she was in danger from Victoria. That was the main reason they were in hiding.

  But what would Monroe’s reaction be if he murdered another shifter? Darius might be making their life hell in his own special way, but he’d never threatened them. That was all Victoria’s doing. And Koenraad didn’t have proof that Darius had hired Bamboo Menendez. For all he knew, that could have been Victoria as well.

  Killing Darius to be rid of Victoria was efficient, but Monroe might not see it that way.

  Of course, he could just not tell her. That was always an option.

  And if she were just his girlfriend, maybe he could go that route. But she was his mate, and he’d sworn not to keep secrets from her. At least, not huge secrets like murder.

  Could he convince her that it was an absolute necessity? He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t think so.

  Sweet, gentle Monroe, who was unable to keep her grip on a rubber knife. She hated violence of any kind.

  If he did this, she would be horrified.

  Worse, she’d be afraid of him. All the trust he’d worked so hard to build would be destroyed in one snap of his jaws.

  Dammit.

  He swam out straight, then rose through the water, approaching Darius at a tangent. The shark still didn’t see him.

  It wasn’t too late to change his mind again…

  And then he sensed another shark approaching, and now it was too late. The realization was a relief.

  Koenraad slowed. Seconds later, he learned that it was Victoria. So close, he thought. Because if she had been alone, he’d have ended this, and Monroe would have had to deal with it.

  But Victoria wasn’t alone.

  Like Darius, she seemed oblivious to Koenraad’s presence.

  Now Koenraad was convinced he had some sort of relative immunity to the sick thanks to countless hours spent in the ocean, searching for Brady.

  What the hell were they doing out here, anyway?

  Angry, he swam right at the two shifters. Victoria noticed him first, and she reacted by darting away. Koenraad’s amusement at her fear was tinged with irritation; he couldn’t stand the sight or smell of her.

  Then Darius saw him, and while Koenraad could feel the older shifter’s surprise in the way his tensed muscles vibrated through the water, Darius didn’t flee.

  Instead, he turned to face Koenraad. A powerful shifter meeting a subordinate in the middle of the ocean. All hail King Darius, Koenraad thought.

  Victoria returned, b
ut Koenraad ignored her. Let her attack him. Given the amount of fury that sat restlessly in his bones at the moment, he welcomed a fight.

  Darius swam toward the surface, and Koenraad followed. Some distance away, Victoria was doing the same.

  Darius headed west at a moderate but steady pace. He wanted Koenraad to continue following, and Koenraad did.

  Little by little, the murderous urges relaxed their grip, allowing a worrisome theory to dawn on Koenraad.

  Suppose the two shifters were out here because one of them had stumbled across Brady’s scent? Koenraad was confident that if he couldn’t smell his son, the other shifters couldn’t, either. Not as impaired as they so obviously were.

  However, that didn’t mean they hadn’t tracked Brady to the general area.

  He was probably being paranoid, but the stakes were too high to shrug it off.

  Ten minutes later, Koenraad sensed Darius’s large yacht. It wasn’t like Darius to swim so far from the boat, from safety.

  Something was definitely going on, but Koenraad couldn’t even begin to guess what it might be.

  Darius shifted first, and Victoria right after. It was her way of establishing dominance to Koenraad, a way of showing that she wasn’t afraid of him even if she was in human form. It would have been offensive if she hadn’t panicked earlier.

  As it was, he found her posturing laughable.

  Good thing for her, Koenraad didn’t give a shit about power dynamics. It was the prerogative of a large shifter; others could play all the games they wanted, but it didn’t change the fact that he was physically stronger than just about everyone he came across. It was one of the reasons Victoria was so hell-bent on getting him to impregnate her again.

  Finally, Koenraad shifted human and climbed the long ladder that ran up the side of Darius’s yacht. When he reached the top, Darius handed him a large towel and walked away.

  To Koenraad’s surprise, Victoria was already covered up. Victoria knew she had a great body, and she would have walked around town naked if it were allowed.