by Judi Fennell
Drake had chosen this place because it wasn’t overly populated with Humans, but, just like everything else with this mission, it wasn’t working out as he’d planned.
Uttering a quick “Damn,” Drake dove beneath the waves, dragging the bird by the foot through the ripples until they were under the pier.
Gods, he was sick of this. Bad enough he had to risk an approach to the shore in daytime, but to hear exactly what he’d told those incompetents he didn’t want to hear was a huge pain in his tail.
Rod was with her. Had met her. Son of a Mer, that shouldn’t have happened. JR was supposed to have arranged for her to be missing when Rod got there.
“What happened?” He shook the bird’s foot, demanding an answer.
The thing looked at him with eyes like a flounder.
Oh, Hades, he was drowning him. That wouldn’t do. He needed answers. Then perhaps he’d send a message to the albatross he’d hired to take care of his problem. JR was a little too sure of himself.
Drake released his grip on the bird’s leg and followed as it rose to the surface, tucking his tail as close to vertical as possible. He didn’t need some nosy Human to wonder what he was doing beneath the pier and come investigate. Luckily, the sun glinting through the crystal-clear water onto his scales made his tail almost invisible to the Human eye.
“What happened?”
The bird gulped in air, back-paddling so fast he was in danger of creating his own whirlpool and dragging himself under again.
Drake splashed water over the petrel’s beak to calm him down. “Talk.”
The bird, eyes wide, beak open and panting, ruffled his feathers while scanning the area under the pier. “The Heir arrived at the Hybrid’s dwelling yesterday—”
“Yesterday! This happened yesterday? Why am I only finding out about it now?”
The bird’s eyes narrowed and his chest puffed as he stilled his ruffling feathers, drifting in the small rise and fall of the waves’ back draft when they hit the pier’s pylons. “Sir, you hired the best air-messaging firm in the skies. Our orders were to report what we learned from your contact. The first communiqué was delivered only hours ago. No other firm could have relayed the information so many miles so quickly. ”
Drake swatted a young parrotfish that zoomed around the pylon, too inquisitive for his own good. Gods damn it. What was JR up to? Why hadn’t he sent word immediately? What in Hades was going on inland?
He hated being this far away. Hated that it was all happening so far from the coastline—hated that it was happening at all.
He’d been this close to staging that “accidental” quake for Rod’s trench survey. He’d swum around like a mad-Mer to hide the Human explosive devices he’d accumulated over the last selino since Reel had left, stooping to becoming a salvager for hire so he could pay a rogue mako to guard them.
It should have been so easy. The Heir and one tiny avalanche in a narrow trench.
But some plankton, wanting to be a big shot, told The Council about the bomb. Then they’d found her, and Rod had been summoned to Council Chambers. That had been the end of the survey, and Drake had had to come up with Plan B.
And now, Plan B looked to be in the throes of falling apart around him.
“JR said to tell you he has it under control and not to worry.”
Not to worry? Easy for JR to say. The albatross didn’t have a care in the world. Some wondered if anything got to him anymore, if he lived for anything other than the next job.
Drake didn’t care. All he cared about was making sure JR didn’t fuck up this job.
He wanted it over with. This was his one shot. If Rod returned with that Hybrid, Drake’s chances of taking over the throne were gone.
He had to find some way to keep The Heir and The Hybrid from returning.
Chapter 14
The flock of birds was almost upon them.
“Retreat!” Livingston ordered.
“Haaaaaaaaaang oooooooon!” Val slammed on the brakes.
Again.
She downshifted.
Again.
She wrenched the wheel.
Again.
And prayed—again—that the car wouldn’t roll.
The car didn’t, but Livingston unfortunately did—across the backseat, into the door, then onto the floor, landing with an “oomph,” while Rod smashed against his door and the force of the turn threw her practically horizontal across his lap.
Any other time…
Rod pushed her upright, bracing himself against her seat and the dash, the car teetering on two tires, gears screaming, and she compensated by hauling the steering wheel back the other way.
Livingston took another tumble to the opposite side of the backseat, a nasty thump accompanying the moment when the car straightened out.
“They’re coming,” Rod said, looking out the rear window.
“So is another car,” Val said, looking out the front one. She changed gears, and the car jumped forward.
Livingston landed with a splat and shook his head. “I knew I should have retired after that typhoon recovery mission,” he muttered, settling back on the seat.
“You might want to buckle up, Livingston,” she said, trying to get the car to maximum speed—in her own lane. That other car was approaching fast.
“With what?” Livingston griped. “If I put that lap thing across me, I’m going to end up looking like roadkill. No thank you. You just drive straight and I’m good.”
“Better to look like roadkill than be it.” Truer words were never spoken. Val took a deep breath and focused on preventing the roadkill as the other car drew closer. “How’s our pack of bloodhounds, Rod?”
“Peregrine in the lead, godsdammit! We’re not going to outrun him. Not in this.”
“Hey, I just outmaneuvered a tractor trailer. I’ll give that peregrine my best shot. I was a cab driver at one point.” One job among many. “Trust me, I can outmaneuver a lot of things, and they can only keep that speed for so long.”
A peregrine. Now she was dealing with peregrines—the odd, ironic part being that she’d accepted Rod’s word at face value. Not one “you’re kidding!” in sight.
“Here he comes.” Livingston popped back onto his webbed feet, tap-dancing across the seat. “Son of a Sandpiper, there are two of them! Get ready for more fancy driving. I’m going to wedge myself under your seat and keep an eye out the back. You take the front, Rod.”
“I’m on it.” Rod leaned forward, resting his forearm on the dash. His shirt stretched tight across the vee of his back, slipping out of his waistband and distracting Val for way longer than she had, as the oncoming car blared its horn and whizzed past them.
The road. Right.
“One’s approaching from the north at forty-five knots, the other from the northeast, thirty knots.”
“Knots? What are knots?” Val leaned over the steering wheel, not seeing what Rod did in the cloudy sky. “Where are they?”
“Valerie, knots are a nautical term. Slightly slower than your miles per hour,” Livingston piped up from somewhere under Rod’s glorious gluteus—something she didn’t need to think about right then. “Do you see anything, Rod?”
“Portside, coming low. They’re packing.” Rod’s voice was low, almost a growl as his gaze slid across her.
Val glanced out the window then wished she hadn’t. Packing. As in, carrying what looked to be something feathery and limp in their talons. This was not going to be pretty.
“Get ready to slam on the brakes.” Rod sat back.
“Brakes?” At this speed, the car would spin out, and having already done its lifelong quotient of Indy driving today, that probably wasn’t a good idea. She’d been a cabby, not a stunt driver.
Rod braced his hands on the dashboard. “You wedged in, Livingston?”
&nbs
p; “As well as possible. How much longer?”
Rod leaned over as far as the belt would allow, which, in her small car, was pretty darn close. “Twenty seconds.”
“Okay, Valerie.” It felt weird to be taking directions from a voice beneath Rod’s tush. Not that there was anything odd about this situation to begin with.
“… to let them fly past.”
“What?” She shook her head. Mind off his butt, Val.
“Fish, woman, weren’t you listening?”
“Livingston—” Rod’s interjection was harsh.
“Right. My apologies. What we need you to do, Valerie, is slow down at the last possible second. Apply as much pressure to the brakes as you can without spinning us so the peregrines miscalculate. Their missiles tend to be other avians, which are more dangerous than JR’s small fish. Got it?”
“Yeah.” She exhaled. She so did not want to be doing this. But then, she wasn’t exactly into cleaning roadkill—airkill?—off her roof either.
“Ten.” Rod braced his palms against the dash.
Val scanned the road ahead. No more cars, thank God.
“Nine… eight…”
Val swiped her palm against her side, wrapping the fingers of her left hand around the steering wheel.
“Seven… six…”
She then dried her right hand on the other side of her shirt and curled her hand over the stick shift.
“Five… four…”
She inhaled.
“Three…two…”
“Now!” Livingston screeched.
Wanting to close her eyes, amazed she was going to do this yet again, and still hating that screech, Val took her foot off the gas, stepped on the clutch, swung the car out of gear, and slammed on the brakes.
Two slate-blue projectiles shot inches above the hood of the car, whatever it was they were carrying missing them by a hair’s breadth.
“Go go go go go!” Livingston roared.
A seagull could roar? Val shook it off, reversed everything she’d just done and forced the protesting engine back to work.
But peregrines could turn on a dime and they weren’t known as some of the best hunters for no reason.
“Guys, we can’t keep doing this,” she panted, a bead of perspiration trickling its way down her temple.
“They misfired. They’ll have to reload. That’ll give us some time.”
“What if we just pull over and talk to them? Maybe offer them more than whoever-it-is is paying them?”
Rod looked at her as if she’d suggested a transgender operation, and even Livingston poked his yellow beak out from under the seat.
“What?” she asked the two testosterone-spouting males.
“We do not negotiate with terrorists.” Rod said it so low that, by rights, she shouldn’t have been able to hear it, but the timbre of his voice vibrated the words through her very bones.
That was silly. They were just birds. Okay, birds with dead things in their talons, but still… “Terrorists? Let’s be real here, guys.” Guy and bird… Whatever.
The bird popped out from under the seat. “Look, chicky—”
“Valerie.” Rod gripped her arm. “I don’t think you comprehend the seriousness of the situation. They are—”
“You’re right.” She yanked her arm away then had to straighten out the car because being manhandled did not gel with high-speed driving. “I don’t comprehend it, because you won’t explain it. I don’t see how falcons can be terrorists. I don’t see how any of this is even possible. Yesterday I’m minding my own business, worried about seagulls, and now I’ve got albatrosses and peregrines and God-knows-what-else dropping dead stuff on me! And you’re acting like I’m supposed to think this is normal!”
“Enough chitchat, people!” Livingston was back to peering out the rear window. “We can discuss it later. Right now, I’ve got avians on the wing, starboard, coming in low. Two missiles each. I repeat, two missiles each.”
“I heard you the first time,” Val muttered under her breath. She took a deep one, re-gripped the steering wheel, and pushed the gas pedal down.
“No. Slow down.” Rod’s hand on her thigh was not sending “slow down” messages to her nerve endings by any stretch of the imagination.
“What?” She looked over at him, amazed to see him so composed. She felt—and had since Livingston had woken her up—as if she was one frazzle short of bedlam. The skin-to-skin contact was only making matters worse. Or better, depending on her take of the situation.
And she honestly couldn’t say what that was at the moment.
“Stay at a slower speed. They expect us to stop again. They’re overcompensating for it.” Rod pointed to the black dots against the gray skies to the south. “See how they’ve changed their angle so they’re behind us?”
Oh, yeah. “So we’re not going to stop?”
“Hades, no!” Livingston almost sounded like he was enjoying this. “Their success in hunting is knowing prescribed reactions. Avians fly a certain way, at a certain speed, react in a certain way to attack. The peregrines can’t compensate for Human independent thought. That’s why we actually have a prayer of escaping.”
“These two, maybe, but what about—”
“You’re going to want to veer southeast, Valerie, so you won’t be where they expect. Get ready.” Rod squeezed her thigh. If he kept touching her like that, she was going to be ready all right, but she didn’t think that was what he had in mind.
And even if he did have it in mind, there was this little matter of bird droppings—in the very essence of the term—to consider.
“Here they come,” Livingston said in his best scary-movie-announcer voice. “Get ready to punch it…”
Rod’s grip tightened.
“A little more…”
Val’s breath caught in her throat, adrenaline spiking through her. It had nothing to do with Rod’s large, muscular, masculine hand three inches from the top of her thigh.
“Get ready… almost… almost… and… NOW!”
Rod’s hand pushed down on her leg, shoving the pedal back to the floor. Val remembered to turn the wheel to the right, enough to aim for the cornfields; she wasn’t planning to go through them. Of course, should the unthinkable occur…
The peregrines tried to swerve at the last minute, screeches of despair and anger racing over the sound of squealing tires.
The abrupt silence didn’t sound good. For the peregrines, that is.
Val hit the brakes and swung the car between the correct line markings on the road, trying to bring her heart rate back to normal. Which would be so much easier to do if the man next to her would kindly remove his hand from her thigh.
She thought about asking him; she really did. But thinking and doing were worlds apart.
Her gaze met his while Livingston resumed his favorite position, hanging off the back of the seat, his gaze on the road behind them.
“Well, ick,” said the seagull. “That’s not pretty.”
Chapter 15
They’d done it!
Maybelle looked at the tire-shredding metal she and Adele had hefted to the dumpster behind the gun shop. The tacks were a little lighter than what they’d replaced them with, but cowbirds weren’t known for having a predilection toward any objects. Hades, they pawned their own eggs off on other avians; it wasn’t as if they cared what they put where.
“Do you think they’ll notice?” Adele shifted from foot to foot.
Poor dear had worried herself sick about getting caught. She almost hadn’t been able to keep up with Maybelle when they’d flown the first bag here.
“Honestly, Adele, do you think any cowbirds who fell for that ‘hey, boys’ routine are smart enough to notice a difference? As long as there are shiny objects in their bags, they won’t notice a thing.”
; “I guess not.”
“Not that it matters anyway. They’re off, headed north like we told them.” Maybelle snorted. “Silly things thought the closest ocean was north. This is why it pays to pay attention in school like I’d always told Kenneth, my first hatchling.”
“And now he’s the director for the Fly South Program. Yes, Maybelle, I know.”
“You don’t have to get chirpy about it, Adele.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to. I guess I’m just tired. Let’s go home.”
Poor Adele. What tuckered her out only rejuvenated Maybelle.
Which was why Maybelle wanted to act on something the cowbird had said. Apparently, they’d tried to get into Valerie’s store, but the hole they’d found was too small.
Sparrows were smaller than cowbirds. Doves, too. Maybelle had never been more thrilled with that fact.
“Hey, Adele. Let’s do one more thing.”
“Maybelle, please. It’s been a long day.”
“One more, Adele. This will be easy, and I guarantee you’ll love it.”
Adele fluttered her head, casting her top feathers in a style so last season. She wasn’t the fashion plate Maybelle knew herself to be, but she was a dear.
And an accomplice.
“What is it, Maybelle?”
“Remember those gourmet seeds Therese used to put in that feeder in front of the store?”
“Of course I do. We were the most popular chicks around with them right outside our window.”
“Exactly. So how would you like to get some?”
“Is it dangerous?”
“Of course not, Adele.” Maybelle crossed her lower two wing feathers. “They’re seeds. How much trouble can we get in?”
Tricia let herself in the back door of the shop, surprised that Val hadn’t opened the place already. Oh, well, maybe she was taking care of something else.
Like Rod.
Tricia grinned as she lifted a box of Life’s a Beach! T-shirts out from behind the door. She hoped Val had hooked up with Rod. The guy was hot—and seemed pretty nice, too. Delivering an inheritance didn’t hurt, either.
