by Starla Night
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. If 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.
&nbs
p; 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.
“Ever since the Sons of Hercules contacted me, I have been working double shifts on a marketing campaign to expose them for the terrorists they are. Starr has been tracing their communications back to recruiters. Once we’ve recovered Jonah and unmasked the head of the organization, we unleash my campaign.”
Bella’s announcement shifted the whole tone of the room.
Hazel clenched her fists in a fighting pose. Dannika arranged her flowing scarf and folded her hands in the picture of a determined, wise woman.
Balim rested his hands on his spread knees, a warrior at rest.
Starr detailed their plans to trick the Sons of Hercules and evade their traps, starting with Hazel pretending to take up meditation every day after lunch for Starr to check in secretly on this conference phone.
Their small but mighty crew would spread hope. They would stand against the men who tried to hurt them. And once Bella rescued Jonah, they would smash the organization from the head down.
Hazel got the call that their emergency airplane to Atlantis was ready, and so they ended the meeting.
Balim led Bella to his car service. He was on her side once more, and she needed his strength. In the elevator, their shoulders brushed.
Bella’s skin heated to fire.
He glanced at her and bumped her shoulder again.
The knowledge she’d been trying to hold back ever since she’d seen him in the parking lot burst in. They’d had sex. She knew his smell, his taste, and the shape of his cock thrusting between her legs. And she wanted to smell, taste, and feel him again. Even in the elevator.
A small smile stretched his lips. He turned and pressed her into the wall. “You are aware of me now.”
Her mouth went dry. She licked her lips, enjoying how his gaze heated and followed the movement. “Yes.”
“Good.”
He dipped his head. His mouth met hers, hungry, and their tongues tangled. Both desperate, both needing each other to complete the broken pieces in themselves.
Her nipples tightened to a painful hardness, and she gasped as they rubbed against his firm pectorals beneath the suit. She’d always been a sucker for a good-looking man, and he was both her barbaric dream and her civilized reality.
The door dinged, and she pulled away. His gaze flared on her with intensity as he released her, keeping a hand on her back.
They exited the elevator.
She didn’t know how she would get through the next days without losing her soul to Balim. She needed to concentrate on finding her son. Not losing herself to the world of the mer.
Not when she might still be backed into a corner and forced to betray them.
Chapter Nineteen
Balim rested beside Bella on the long, grating flight across the sunny Atlantic.
They rode in a converted airplane carrying six passengers: the captain, Balim and Bella, Pelan and his bride, and an employee from the human construction company. Bella had lost to exhaustion. She’d told Balim the entire Sons of Hercules plot, from the moment she’d received Herc’s first phone call to the ransom demand for her son.
He could think of nothing to say that would comfort her, but just sharing her agony seemed to be enough. A short time after, she’d closed her eyes and rested her head on the window despite the bouncing, grinding plane traversing fluffy clouds and sharp sun reflections.
What to do about impossible demands? Balim did not know. As his soul mate slumbered, he checked on his other patients.
Pelan half collapsed against his bride.
In these few short hours, his bruises had blackened to necrotic and threatened skin loss. Balim kept an eye on one foot. The toes were an unnatural green.
In human form, Pelan’s breathing labored, and the growl of snot filled the back of his throat, interrupting every breath with a choking snort.
His bride had her eyes open for the longest time since Balim had met her. She looked bleak. Probably wondering what had been the point of finding her soul mate since all she’d done after the first few happy hours had been hunch over his semiconscious body and pray he’d survive.
She caught Balim’s eye and held it. No longer frightened as she had been at the ER, she stared at him as though this experience had scraped the imperfections away and she was a pure instrument now. She hadn’t been timid or hesitant with him since the parking lot.
He was the first to look away.
The converted oil platform appeared on the horizon.
When Queen Aya had arisen from Atlantis after defeating the All-Council armies and rescuing the city, she had arranged for a human company to rebuild the surface city of ancient Atlantis.
Based on the few carvings Balim had reviewed, the ancient city had once spanned the breadth of a large human island; carved stone could still be imagined into tall columns, frescoes, domes, and more in the styles of human cities such as ancient Athens, Carthage, and those of the Etruscans. Hundreds of pressurized coils had once lifted and lowered the city. King Kadir had planted his Life Tree seed and forme
d rebel Atlantis in its shadow.
Few human companies built on the ocean, much less over blue water equidistant between Florida and Senegal, but oil companies had experience with anchoring massive platforms using thrusters, partial submersion, and other mechanics.
Because the oil platform was so isolated, the Sons of Hercules had not yet penetrated. But they would.
The plane bumped across the massive swells of the mid-ocean on its large float pontoons.
Everyone roused. Bella stretched and yawned, smiling at Balim in welcome and making his heart contract, before the events of the past hours cascaded in on her and she shrank into her seat, hugging her elbows.
He stroked her back, knowing he wasn’t enough to ease the ache.
Balim had felt so betrayed when Bella demanded to go to Atlantis. How could she throw her child away for an adult’s desire? The question made him shake. He hadn’t been able to bear to look at Bella. He’d wanted to run away.
Then he had realized she still prioritized her son. The fears had dissipated
He had never saved his father. If he saved her Jonah, would he finally atone?
The plane motored on top of the water like a bug. The platform lowered a hook and winched the floating plane onto the landing pad for refueling. It was Pelan’s luck that calm ocean conditions had held for a few hours today.
The rear cargo door creaked open.
Balim clambered out of his seat and lifted Pelan. He and Pelan’s bride held the warrior up as they lugged him to the ramp.
He’d lost too much weight since his first injury. They did not have much time.
Lotar met them at the bottom, and Balim gave Pelan over to his care. The tall, strong, gray-eyed warrior spoke to Balim alone as they crossed the long platform. “You missed Queen Lucy and the twins. They visited with her family and descended yesterday.”
“How many All-Council warriors harass and destroy equipment today?”
“Fewer.” Fresh cuts scraped his cheekbones, suggesting he had swept the area of All-Council warriors with his trident. “We will escort you to the midpoint. I have called down to announce your arrival.”
