Chapter 53
Unusual activity spotted in quadrant delta-4. Going to investigate.
—Call-in by Rina Monaghan, DarkRiver leopards
BO HAD TO force himself from Kaia to answer the comm. He did so audio-only. “Has George been spotted?”
“Long way away,” was the answer from a familiar male voice. “We have a jet waiting for you on shore.” A slight pause. “I’m going to pretend I didn’t have to buzz Kaia’s room to get you.”
Bo told Armand they’d be there soon, then hung up.
Returning to the bed, he brushed tangled strands of hair off Kaia’s face. “We’re going to have to finish this another time,” he said, though his whole body ached.
Eyes stark, she tugged him down onto her. “We’ll be quick.”
Bowen didn’t argue. He sank into her, she wrapped herself around him, and they shut out the deadly countdown for a fraction of time.
GEORGE had surfaced over four thousand miles from Lantia. It was an almost unimaginable distance for him to have traveled so quickly. He must’ve surfaced at some point to take a high-speed jet to cross over from the North Atlantic to the Pacific, though no one had spotted him. But even if he was extraordinarily fast and relentless in the ocean, on land, he became a man. And the land was Bo’s hunting ground.
“San Francisco?” He couldn’t believe it. “Why would he emerge anywhere near allies you might contact to capture him?”
“Because they are allies,” Armand said, his hair tumbled by the sea breezes today but his black T-shirt perfectly fitted to his body. “The leopards won’t react violently if they spot him—they might give him a pointed warning that he’s meant to alert them before entering their territory, but they won’t harm him.”
Bo nodded, frowning. “Could also be that if he does have a buyer for what he’s stolen, he doesn’t quite trust that buyer.”
“Yeah, cats would step in to help him if he asked for it, or if he appeared in distress.” Armand folded his arms. “I know you want to bring him in but we can ask the cats to do it.”
Bo went to agree; none of this was about ego. “I’ll take whatever help I—”
“No.” Kaia stepped forward. “George gets frightened easily and he’s already emotionally unstable. He could destroy everything if he’s scared or startled.” Kaia had scared him once, quite by accident, and the resulting carnage had taken the two of them an intense hour to clean up.
Kaia had never said a word about his lack of control, getting rid of the evidence by throwing it in the kitchen recyclers, and she thought maybe that was why he’d become a touch more comfortable with her—enough to ask for a burger every so often. “All he’d have to do was shift form,” she explained to Bowen and Armand. “His tentacles are capable of massive amounts of crush pressure.” He’d almost wiped her out with one when he shifted so suddenly that time.
“The DarkRiver leopards are deadly, Kaia.” Bowen put his hands on his hips, his eyes wholly focused on her in that way he had of doing. “They can take him.”
“But will they try to take him alive if he’s hurting their people?” Kaia knew the answer and so did Bowen and Armand. “He’s one of ours. We have to give him a chance.” George was wounded in some terrible way and Kaia understood wounds, understood that the deepest ones never stopped hurting.
The ruthless and bloodthirsty leader of the Human Alliance gave her a lopsided smile. “I bet you’re going to rescue stray cats and dogs and ferrets and fill our house with them.”
“Don’t forget the mice,” she said, playing the game, imagining the impossible dream.
He tugged lightly on her hair in punishment before turning to Armand—who wasn’t doing a very good job of hiding a smirk. “How about asking DarkRiver to keep an eye on George as he moves through their territory? No approach, nothing to tip him off.” The leopards were stealthy hunters while George was a scientist out of his depth.
“The commander will have to make the contact—strict protocols.” Armand stepped out to find their aunt, who happened to be Lantia’s commander even when Malachai and Miane were in residence. Each member of the clan had different duties, different responsibilities.
“Are all your male cousins in BlackSea’s security forces?”
Kaia shook her head. “Eddie is an explorer. His job is to update our maps of the ocean floor, find interesting new things for our scientists to study, mark any spots that might provide valuable salvage.” She smiled. “He found a centuries-old sunken ship full of gold bullion once. Miane’s always said he can take a percentage of what he finds because of how risky his job can be, but he usually never does—that time, though, he brought each one of us a coin.”
Bowen’s eyes gleamed as men’s always did when they found out what Edison did for a living. “He ever find any other treasure?”
“New deep-sea life forms, including a bioluminescent shrimp.” Laughing at his face, both parts of her happy to simply be in his presence, she said, “Two of the triplets are in security with Armand, but Taji’s an architect.”
“He moves like he has training in how to fight.”
“He started off in the same job as Teizo and Tevesi—I think it’s the first time the triplets have diverged on something that really matters.”
Bowen’s eyes held hers, a sudden intensity in them. “You want children, Siren?”
Stomach clenching, Kaia dared admit one truth. “Yes. Lots of them.”
“Cats are on it.” Armand walked back into the room on those words, froze. “New rule. No meaningful looks across the room while I’m in the vicinity. Have some respect for those of us who are hopelessly single.”
Grinning at his aggrieved tone, Kaia went over to press a kiss to his modelesque jaw. “Single, yes. Hopelessly? I don’t think so.” Armand’s face would fit perfectly under the dictionary definition of “player.” Kaia might’ve worried about Tansy’s heart if her friend hadn’t already been well aware of Armand’s love-’em-and-leave-’em ways.
Regardless, Kaia had still raised the subject with her friend. She adored both Armand and Tansy too much to see either hurt.
Tansy’s answer had been simple. “Sometimes, a woman has to walk on the wild side.”
Bowen stirred, his lips curved, as Armand pretended to strangle her with one arm around her neck. “Cats agree to the commander’s request?”
Armand gave a short nod. “They’d already spotted him by the time we called and were planning to ask him what the hell he was doing in their territory without notice, but the sentinel the commander spoke to has given the order for their people to fall back.”
Running his fingers through the relentlessly straight strands of his hair after releasing Kaia, Armand carried on. “I didn’t have Bo’s contact details, so the commander gave them yours,” he said to Kaia. “DarkRiver will keep an eye on George and send updates directly to your phone.” Nothing but grimness on his face as he added, “But if George threatens to hurt anyone, all bets are off. Sentinel was very clear about that.”
Bo had expected nothing less. The cats hadn’t held their territory against all comers—including the lethal SnowDancer wolves—because they were in any way weak. Bo had made one of the worst mistakes of his life in their territory and he was still fixing the damage from that mess, but he had nothing but respect for both the cats and the wolves.
“According to the cats,” Armand added, “George is fully dressed and carrying a large pack.”
“He only left the station with a small pressure-proof case.” Bo had spoken to Oleanna while waiting for the submersible, gotten the dimensions of the case George had been carrying. “Means he must’ve cached the other gear elsewhere.”
“He’s been planning this for a long time.” Kaia hugged her arms around herself. “I feel like I never knew him at all, that none of us did.”
Closing his hand over her nape, Bo ran his thumb in a gentle, soothing motion across her skin. “We’ll find the truth soon enough.”
Her pulse jumped erratically under his touch.
“Jetboat’s ready,” Armand said before Bo could ask Kaia if she was still worrying about Dr. Kahananui. “I sent someone to retrieve your gear.” His eyes flicked to Kaia. “You ready, Cookie?”
The question seemed natural enough, but the tone . . . Bo watched Kaia’s face as she answered, saw the sudden lack of color in it even as she nodded firmly. The tension beneath the surface, he realized, had nothing to do with Dr. Kahananui. This was Kaia’s secret, the shape of which his brain had just barely begun to glimpse.
THE sleek silver boat cut through the water like a knife. There was just enough light in the very early morning sky that Bowen clearly saw an orca rise up in the distance. It dived back in in a smash of droplets.
His heart thudded. “Was that one of you?”
Kaia, her eyes focused resolutely forward and her hands fisted to bone whiteness, nodded.
Closing his arms around her from behind, Bo didn’t ask probing questions, didn’t demand as was his nature. Kaia had told him she wasn’t ready to share her secret and he’d honor that wish, but that didn’t mean he had to stop looking after her.
Her spine stayed stiff, but she lifted a hand to wrap it over his wrist, and they sliced through the water together, bodies braced against the rolling waves. Armand was piloting the boat while Teizo and Tevesi had jumped in for the ride. All three kept shooting Kaia careful looks that she studiously ignored.
Land appeared on the horizon.