Castro
Castro picked up his phone and waited for the call to connect. “It’s me. The scare tactics didn’t work. He’s still seeing her.”
“Scare tactics? Scare tactics! Is that what you call it?”
“It was collateral damage.”
“You do realize your mistake took an innocent man?”
“That was unfortunate. I had to defend myself.”
“I thought you were some kind of professional?”
Castro chewed the inside of his lip and took a deep breath. “I do what I have to.”
The man on the other end of the phone grunted in frustration. “Fine, what’s done is done. But it’s time we up the stakes.”
“I need a little time.”
“Why?”
“There can’t be another body so soon.”
“That’s not a viable excuse. Get it done.”
“Then I need a boat, a big one that can go deep.” If he was going to kill two more people he needed to be sure no bodies were found for a long time after he was out of town. He had a job to do down in Miami when this one was over. If he had a boat, he could drop the bodies out in the Atlantic a hundred miles away from here. Either that or he needed to find an alternative.
“I will get you a boat. Just tell me when and where and I’ll have it ready. I just need you to eliminate the problems before they get too big.”
“It’s your nickel.”
“Good, get it done. We can’t take another chance. Go with the plan for tonight, the one we talked about. I’ve made some other arrangements to cover things.”
“It’s risky.”
“Just do it, don’t alter the plan now.”
“And if he does?”
“We’ll deal with that bridge when we need to cross it.”
Castro ended the call. He hated the idea of someone else pushing him into a move he didn’t approve of. But they were insistent and offered to double his pay. For that, he would take a few more risks.
* * *
Ariel
Ariel woke up earlier than usual and leveraged herself so the sun fell on her face. Arms stretched above her head, she enjoyed the warmth with a purposeful yawn.
For half the night, she tossed and turned. Her mind churned with questions. What Jake had said about Father watching her seemed impossible. At first. But the more she thought about it, the more she started to wonder.
How could he be watching her? There was no way he could. She never told him where she was going, she never told anyone. He certainly didn’t swim like she did. No one could. She’d spent her life in the water, and although she couldn’t keep up with the dolphins and belugas, she could hold pace with them for a bit at their cruising speeds.
With a sigh, she slid into the water and caught a deep breath before swimming down to the bottom of her pool. By pure instinct, she went toward the tunnel to the intercoastal river waters that would lead her out to the sea.
In less than twenty seconds, she was popping up into the garden area where no prying eyes would ever see her. Lush vegetation grew tall on all sides and thick trees hanged over her head, only allowing daggers of sunlight to dance on the lagoon.
She swam over to the greenhouse and plucked a fresh orange from the tree. While peeling and eating her orange, her usual day planning started to unfold. On most days, she’d go for a long swim, then search for some shells to add to her collection, then come back and read. She loved to read, it was her favorite thing to do. The people in her books had such fantastical adventures. Letting them take her away to their world was so much fun it made her forget for a while who she was…what she was.
Never before in her life had she wished so hard to be someone else. She just wanted to be human. She wanted to be a girl like Ashley, who could walk around and hold hands with Jake.
Sitting on the rocks, she reached down and punched her tail. “Stupid fin, I hate you!” She picked up a broken seashell and started scoring the skin of her tail until it left a mark.
The skin didn’t have any feeling, she’d always hated that part. Father would get mad when she would cut her tail on something because he would have to perform a fix. He said because she couldn’t feel anything infection could set in and get very bad.
Right now, she didn’t care. She used the seashell to score the thick skin, digging at it deeper and deeper. Part of her wanted to just keep going until it did hurt, like the time she got hit by the boat when she was twelve. She’d accidentally surfaced in front of a boat, it hit her, and cut her tail all the way to the blood. Father had to perform surgery. It wasn’t the first time she’d hurt herself, nor the last, but it was the worst.
She headed out of the waterway until she got to the clearing of the ocean. Diving into the waves, she swam as hard and fast as possible for several minutes and finally surfaced way out past the breakers. Swimming north, she kept going until she reached one of the most populated beaches in the area, Carolina Beach.
Just sitting there, bobbing in the water, looking back at the shore, she never wanted to just swim over and slide up onto the sand more than she did right now. A couple times, she’d let people glimpse her, just to see what they would do. Usually she’d pick a little girl, and then watch her run to her family and tell them what she’d seen. Maybe that was mean in a way, because the families never believed. They used to just smile and pat the girls on the head or marvel at their imaginations with wide-mouthed smiles. A couple times, she’d gotten too close to the lifeguard towers and caused them to become worried when she popped up and went back under. But she usually stayed far enough out and the fin would always just leave them thinking they’d probably seen a dolphin.
She didn’t see any families hanging around this side of the beach. Tourist season was going to end soon and people were already heading back up to the cold north. Ariel had never seen snow but she wanted to badly. One of her favorite books was Call of the Wild by Jack London. It was a wonderful adventure.
After a few more moments in the waves, she decided to head back home. It was going to get busy out here soon and she wasn’t allowed to be in the waters when it was busy.
The swim went by quickly. She didn’t see any of her dolphin friends, which told her maybe the weather was going to get bad later. There were some darker clouds rolling into the area.
She popped up in her pool and saw Father standing at the edge.
“I was expecting you sooner,” he said.
She blinked away the water from her eyes. “Sorry, I was just enjoying the view.”
He squatted down. “Ariel, it’s time.”
“Time for what?”
The look on his face said it all. “It’s time.”
She didn’t want to believe it. She didn’t want to accept it. In a few months, she would give birth and die.