Catch of a Lifetime

by Judi Fennell

  "Evacuate? Are you crazy? She's still there!"

  "There's nothing you can do. You have to come with us! That was Ceto and you have no idea what she's capable of!" The captain motioned toward the surface. "Come on!"

  "But Angel—"

  "The princess is fully aware of what's happening down there. There's nothing more you can do for her."

  Another rumble sounded, and the water began churning.

  "Human, you don't have much time. You've heard the stories about the Triangle?" Logan nodded. "Well, now you're seeing it in action. We need to go now if we hope to outswim it. Hold onto my dorsal and I'll get you out of here."

  Logan stared at the palace, then at the dolphin. The calm captain had a wild look in her eye… and Michael was still in the water.

  He had no other choice.

  He reached out for the captain's fin. "Let's go."

  The dolphin kicked them toward the surface, angling back toward the coast as another rumble sped through the sea, this time bringing the water with it and circling around on itself.

  The beginnings of a giant whirlpool.

  They cleared the surface then, and another dolphin swam up next to the captain. "Hang on to me, too!" he called and they took off with Logan between them.

  Logan couldn't look back. He'd failed her. She'd given up so much for him and Michael and he hadn't been able to save her.

  What was he going to tell Michael?

  How would his son deal with this?

  How would he?

  Chapter 42

  A week later

  "WHEN IS SHE COMING BACK?" IT WAS THE SAME QUESTION Michael asked him every night.

  Logan set the beers down on the hall table out side Michael's bedroom door. His son shouldn't see him drinking.

  He shouldn't be drinking.

  But it made thoughts of her so much easier to take.

  No. Not easier. Less difficult. Bearable.

  Almost.

  "I don't know when, Michael." That was the same answer Logan gave him every night. "Do you want to talk about it?"

  Michael slouched further under his covers, the stuffed raccoon falling on his head from atop the pillow. "I dunno."

  Which meant yes in kid-speak.

  Logan pushed the door open and walked over to Michael's bed, nudging his son's legs over so he could sit. "I'm sure she's fine, Michael."

  "Do you think Ceto put her in a cage like Joey?"

  "Joey was in a cage?"

  Michael had told him about the friend he'd met there, this Joey, but this was the first he'd heard about any cage. It made him shudder to think of what he and Michael had narrowly escaped.

  Only… Angel hadn't.

  "Yup. It was a big room with a bed and everything, but with handcuffs on the bed and bars on his door. He kept asking me to get him out, so I don't think he liked being in there."

  Logan didn't know which revelation to react to first. A bed with handcuffs was not an image he wanted Michael to have in his head. Logan hoped Michael would forget about it after a while, but Logan wouldn't. Ceto was one sick son-of-a-bitch. No, scratch that. Make that one sick bitch.

  And he'd left Angel down there.

  "Angel said being in a cage would be yucky, so I hope Ceto didn't do that to her."

  Logan did, too. But, God, this was just tearing him up. He'd left her in the depths with that sea monster. In a whirlpool that had sucked everything around it straight down.

  She couldn't have survived that… could she?

  And if she had, was she a prisoner?

  "And A.C. was in a cage, too."

  As far as Logan was concerned, the damned shark that started this nightmare could rot in that cage for all he cared. Hell, that was too good for the fish, but Michael had cared about the shark. Had sung the hammerhead's praises about finding Angel until Logan couldn't bear to hear anymore.

  They'd had several chats about not accepting rides with strangers—or sharks. Logan had considered tak ing Michael to see someone professional about the or deal, but who'd believe him? Worse, they might find something wrong with his parenting skills and he'd end up losing his son. No, so far, Michael seemed to have adjusted well—other than pining for Angel.

  "I know you miss her, Michael."

  "She promised she'd stay with me," Michael said half under his breath.

  "I know. But sometimes, even when we want to, we can't keep our promises. She might not be able to come back." Logan didn't want to contemplate why she wouldn't be able to.

  "Like Rainbow?"

  Another woman he didn't want to think about. His re lationships needed a serious overhaul. A flighty woman with zero parenting skills and a mermaid. His life was as much a circus now as it'd been growing up.

  He would probably do best by his son to remain sin gle. After all, he hadn't exactly had the best role models and would probably do a better job alone than Goran and Nadia had done together. As long as he stayed away from mermaids…

  He squeezed Michael's leg through the covers. "Rainbow will come back someday."

  Probably when Michael turned eighteen and was an adult who'd be able to support her, but Logan realized he was going to have to hunt her down before that. She couldn't abandon their son.

  Michael reached for Rocky and tucked him against his chest so tightly that if the animal were real, he'd suf focate. "Nuh-uh. Rainbow said she couldn't come back. That's why she gave me the hat. For frembrance. 'Cause she had to meet someone."

  "Meet someone? Who?"

  "I dunno, and she didn't want to talk about it. Mr.

  Ray said it was about a big sea and Rainbow didn't really want to go. Then he laughed, but it wasn't a funny laugh. When Angel comes back, can she live in Rainbow's sea? That's why I wanted a mermaid for my birthday, so Rainbow would have a friend."

  Logan's blood ran cold. "She had to meet someone about a big sea?"

  "That's what Mr. Ray said."

  The big… C?

  Oh, God. He'd misjudged her. Christine hadn't abandoned Michael out of selfishness, but selflessness. She'd spared their son the agony and worry of watching her go through cancer—and dying from it, by the sound of it.

  She'd given Michael to him because she wasn't going to be around.

  Logan blinked back the wetness that sprang to his eyes and inhaled a deep, shaky breath.

  Hell. He'd misjudged her. And Angel, too. Badly.

  Logan cleared his throat and leaned over to kiss Michael's forehead, putting the baseball cap back in place afterward. "I think Angel would love to live in Rainbow's sea, son."

  If she'd somehow survived Ceto's.

  He had to find out. He had to give Michael something to believe in. Both women couldn't be lost to his son. Or to him.

  "Night, Logan."

  Logan. "Dad" had lasted until Angel hadn't shown up that next day.

  "Good night, Michael. I love you."

  Michael murmured something. He always did.

  Never clear and never loud, but Logan chose to think of it as a "Me, too." The pretense helped him sleep at night.

  So did the beers he picked up when he walked out of Michael's room. He headed down the hallway, through his bedroom without a glance at the bed he hadn't been able to sleep in, then onto his deck.

  Again.

  It was a damn familiar and painful routine.

  He sat on the decking and stretched one leg out in front of him, the other bent so he could rest his beer arm on it, dangling the bottle against his thigh, swirling the contents around after each swig.

  Six nights now. Six nights on his deck, staring out at the silvery water.

  Alone.

  Between Christine's—no, Rainbow's, he owed her that—illness and Angel's disappearance, well, Logan wasn't quite sure where to begin his penance.

  He'd have to see if he could track down Christine's family, though the effort would be futile at best. She'd been a free spirit and hadn't claimed any ties to anyone or anything—something they had in
com mon since he hadn't liked claiming his. It was why he hadn't blinked when he'd read her note about Michael—it fit her perfectly.

  As for finding her now… She and Michael had lived so many places, according to Michael, that he didn't have a clue where to begin. And with that baseball cap for "frembrance," she obviously didn't want him to. Michael—and he—would have to remember her as they'd known her, not as she was at the end.

  Life was funny that way. You were born, you lived, and you died, with only the memories held by those you left behind living on.

  Water murmured against the pylons below as he raised his beer in the moonlight, toasting Christine and thanking her for finding him. For giving him his son. Promising her that Michael wouldn't forget her. Michael needed those memories just as…

  Well… just as Logan needed his.

  He rested his arm on his knee again, the bottle brush ing his calf. He hadn't thought about his parents in a long time. Made a point of not thinking about them, ac tually, but that wasn't fair to anyone, himself included. Who was he but the sum of his experiences? No matter how much he'd like to claim otherwise, he wouldn't be who he was today if not for where he'd been.

  Logan took a long swallow of the beer, remembering his family and how he'd wanted a normal life back then. How he still wanted one, but what, really, was normal?

  Take Angel, for instance.

  A part of him wanted to take her all right; the other part remembered that she was a mermaid.

  And yet, in her world, she was perfectly normal. Things he found new and odd were commonplace to her. Yet she'd adapted to his world, had lived among hu mans, and no one had been able to tell the difference.

  But she's a mermaid, his subconscious argued.

  He knew that, yet he couldn't get her out of his mind.

  Did that mean he was out of his?

  She has a tail.

  He knew that, too, but her tail didn't stop him from remembering how she'd looked in this very same moonlight, in his bed. The way she'd made him feel, the way she'd made love to him. How she'd laughed with Michael, and how Michael had played with her. It hadn't mattered to his son what she was; he loved her for who she was.

  Logan took another swig. Who she was…

  He'd found her journal and read the entries. An in vasion of her privacy, true, but after she'd sacrificed herself for their freedom, he'd wanted to find out who she really was.

  He remembered the look she gave him before Brutus had ushered them out of Ceto's theater. She'd been determined—even knowing what would happen. And when the whirlpool had hit…

  Logan leaned his head back against his house and closed his eyes against the memory, but it wouldn't go away.

  The dolphins had kicked against the current, until, at last, they slipped from its pull, exhausted and worn out, drained both physically and emotionally, knowing that they'd failed her. They'd all failed her.

  He'd thought about calling the Coast Guard to look for her, but, really, why bother? He certainly couldn't tell them they were looking for a mermaid, and no human could have survived that whirlpool. The official reports said it'd been spawned by a 6.2 quake. According to the ex perts, the epicenter was an uninhabited area of the ocean— one that included no pink coral buildings, no sneezing sea cucumbers, and no saluting crabs. No Angel.

  But Logan knew better.

  Had she survived? Was she still with Ceto? Was she a prisoner?

  What the hell could he do about any of it?

  He stared at the moon. Bright and full, it cast its glow on the wave tops, seemingly on the exact spot where they'd gone below the surface.

  He had to go back out there. See for himself. Help her, if it wasn't too late.

  Then an elongated, graceful silhouette flew across the moon, pink wings glowing in the moonlight, and he got an idea.

  Logan jumped up and waved his arms. "Ginger!"

  The flamingo glanced over, then changed her course, fluttering to a landing on his deck.

  "Well, hello again, gorgeous. I don't think I've ever had a Human summon me by name. I hadn't thought your kind was into interspecies relations, but I'm told it can be kind of kinky." She circled her neck in that weird, back-scratching, leg-rubbing way. "So, what do you have in mind?"

  Not what she did. "Angel was out there. In Ceto's palace when the quake hit."

  The come-hither grin on the flamingo's face disap peared. "Yeah. I heard. Must have pissed the old witch off something fierce because Ceto rarely quakes the sea like that in the Triangle. It causes way too much interest and stirs up all those old myths. Ever since The Council started docking her for the cost of the cleanup, interest is the last thing she wants. Well, that kind."

  Ceto was not who he wanted to talk about. "What else have you heard? Is Angel okay? Did she survive? What do you know?"

  "Whoa. Hold on there, hotshot. What's it to you?"

  Logan's hand shot out to grab the bird by the neck,

  but he thought better of it. "Prawns for the rest of your life."

  "Now you're talking." The flamingo tossed her head backward, then brushed it along one wing, giving him a look with just one eye. "So here's the skinny. Her brother—you know, the ruler of their world? She's with him in Atlantis. Rod takes care of his own. Unlike some people I could mention." She glared at him, then flipped her beak up. "So, there you have it. The chick is safe and sound, deep in the bosom of her family."

  "But how is she? Is she injured?"

  "Weren't you the one to tell her to take a long dive off a short pier? Why do you care?"

  Because he did.

  As simple—and as complicated—as that.

  And he didn't just care.

  He loved her.

  He… loved her.

  But he sure as hell wasn't going to let Ginger be the first one to find out.

  "Ginger, how is she?"

  "She's fine." The bird fluffed her wings. "Well, for the time being anyway."

  "What does that mean?"

  Ginger cocked her head to the side, and Logan could swear she arched an eyebrow at him—except flamingoes didn't have eyebrows. Or maybe they did, hidden under their feathers. Nothing would surprise him these days.

  "Ginger."

  Now she rolled her eyes. "Fine. She's fine. For now. Once they get done with her trial, however…" She shrugged her… shoulders?

  "Trial? What's she on trial for? She saved our lives."

  Ginger swung her head around and straightened her neck to full height. "More like, what isn't she on trial for? That Mer broke so many rules, they went through six urchin spines writing the warrant. She'll be lucky to ever see the outside of a jail cell again—and she'll be lucky if that's the worst they do. A pity, but then, I guess what goes around, comes around."

  Ginger switched her weight atop her bony legs like a little kid needing a restroom, giving him another come-hither look from beneath her lashes. "Now, had she stacked her karma with good deeds like, oh, I don't know, doling out scallops, her fate might be different."

  He had no clue what the bird was talking about be yond "jail cell." They couldn't put Angel in jail. She'd sacrificed herself for Michael. That wasn't criminal; hell, she was a hero.

  "How do I get to Atlantis?"

  "And then there's—what? You want to do what?" The bird undulated her neck in a pink figure eight. "Atlantis? What? Did you suddenly fall head over fins in love with her? Oops, never mind. You don't have fins. My bad."

  "Ginger, how do I get there?"

  Ginger sighed. "You're crazy, aren't you? Do you know what happens to Humans who try to sneak into Atlantis?"

  He didn't want to know because that wouldn't change his mind. Besides, he wasn't planning to sneak in. "Ginger, where is it, and how do I get in? I want to provide testimony at the trial."

  The bird's head dropped to the deck with a thunk, then she shook it and raised it on a wobbly neck, as if the bones had collapsed. "Uh uh. I wouldn't stick my neck out for her, if I were you. You might
want to con sider picking up and moving inland. Maybe find a cave to hide out in for the next few centuries, 'cause going there? That's suicide."

  "Would you tell me for a side order of scallops to go with those prawns?" Everyone had their price.

  And that was Ginger's.