Dark Abyss (9 page)

She couldn’t think of anything to say even to delay him a few more moments.

When he moved away from her and turned to go, though, she found the speech she’d tried to formulate tumbling from her lips. “I’m afraid,” she whispered.

He froze, swiveling around to look at her.

“I’m afraid he’ll come back for me.”

Something flickered in his eyes. Suspicion? He frowned. “What makes you think that?”

Anna felt her face heat. “I don’t know. I’m just afraid he will.”

He studied her thoughtfully for a moment and lifted his head to look around at the neighboring houses. “I’ll talk to Simon. He can contact the Water City PD and have them keep an eye on you.”

Relief flooded her. She knew they were more likely to listen to another law officer than her. They’d probably just put her fears down as a woman trying to get attention. She’d worried herself sick trying to think of how she could ask for protection without having to tell them the entire sordid mess, worried they wouldn’t believe her even if she did. “Thank you, Caleb.”

He nodded, studied her a moment longer and turned to go again. She was tempted to stand in the doorway and watch him until he was out of sight, but she ignored the urge, closing the door and locking it. For a few moments, she leaned against it, relishing the memory of his kiss and his promise.

* * * *

“I’m not sure it was a good idea to take her back,” Caleb said the moment he entered Simon’s office.

Feeling his belly clench, Simon lifted his head from the report he’d been studying and stared at his lieutenant, trying to decide whether Caleb would buy it if he pretended he didn’t know what he was talking about. “Why?”

Caleb shook his head. “She’s afraid he’ll come back for her. I’m afraid she might be right.”

Simon frowned, trying to ignore the uneasiness twisting in his gut. “We discussed this. I thought we all agreed that it didn’t seem likely.”

Caleb glanced around and finally dropped his long frame into the chair by the door. “I know,” he admitted tiredly, “but I didn’t like it then and I like it even less now.

She’s afraid. I’d like to think it’s just nerves after all we put her through, but I think maybe she’s right.” Crossing his legs at the ankles, he frowned at his toes. “He’s been keeping tabs on her for a while—at least since college. She told us that she’d gotten the grant before she graduated and then found out he was behind it. How long did she say she’d been working on that project?”

Simon frowned. “I don’t think she did and I’m not sure it has any bearing on this.”

“It does if it’s been years. Why watch her at all if he wasn’t …
obsessed with her or at least had some kind plan for her? Why not approach her as soon as he found her if it was only a matter of a father wanting to find his only child?”

“What do you think his motive might have been?”

Caleb shook his head. “I don’t know. Do crazy people need motives to do the things they do?”

“They do,” Simon dryly. “Their motives just aren’t rational. I’m not sure Cavendish is insane, though. In fact, I’m reasonably certain the cold blooded son-of-a-bitch is completely sane in the sense that he’s well aware of his actions and the possible consequences. He’s gone to great lengths, in point of fact, to cover his tracks very thoroughly.”

“He’s not done,” Caleb said grimly. “And that means he isn’t done with Anna. I feel it in my gut. I don’t know why he picked this time and place to finally show himself, but he had a reason. What I can’t figure out is how he found out we were coming. Those floating houses can be moved, but they aren’t boats. They move slowly, too slowly for him to have gotten clean away if he’d only discovered we were coming after him when we got to Anna’s place. He left well before we got to Anna’s house.”

“I’m fairly certain he left as soon as the bomb went off,” Simon said grimly.

“She told us he’d been trying to arrange another meeting with her, though,” Caleb countered, frowning. “You think she lied to protect him?”

Simon shrugged. “I could be wrong, but I don’t think so. I’ve been going over everything we found. I don’t think the bomb was supposed to go off—not when it did. I think that was a fuck up on the part of the man that planted it. It’s possible he didn’t even manage to plant it where they’d intended to or it would’ve done more damage than it did.

“From what I can see, Cavendish had spent over a year carefully placing his agents where they could do the most harm. That was the confusing part. It didn’t make sense just to blow up the desalinization plant when he already had men in place in other critical sites—the power station, communications. When it finally occurred to me that the blast might have been an accidental detonation, that it was intended to coincide with others, then it all made sense.”

“You’ve got confirmation they were his men, then?”

“No, unfortunately. If I had proof, they’d be in jail now. We found the missing man, though. Well, his hand. Looks like the sharks got to him first. It’s hard to determine the cause of death when that’s all we have, but I think he panicked when the plans went south and tried to run and the other two, or one of them, killed him. I think Cavendish knew his plan had fallen apart when he heard about the explosion and removed himself to a safer location, probably to establish an alibi. It fits.”

“Neatly,” Caleb said, “But it’s still just a theory until and unless we get proof.”

“We’re working on it. In the meantime, I have Spencer and Roach under close watch and we’re tracking a couple of others that look suspicious.”

“What about Anna?”

“Take Joshua and head back to her place. Scan it for electronic surveillance and plant a few transmitters of our own. That way we can keep an eye on her without being underfoot.”

Caleb studied Simon assessingly. “You know damned good and well we’d never reach her in time from here if we heard anything, Simon,” he growled. “About all that kind of stakeout is going to get us is evidence … maybe.”

Simon’s face darkened. “I also know you aren’t going to do her any good dead, and you’ve got a hell of a lot more on your mind that just watching her.”

Caleb flushed. “I know what I’m doing, Simon.”

“Do you?” Simon asked tightly. “I don’t think so. If you did you wouldn’t be thinking what I know you’re thinking.”

“How do you know what the fuck I’m thinking?”

“I’ve seen the way you look at her.”

“And you assume I’m thinking the same thing you are?” Caleb growled.

“She’s a land dweller, Caleb, an air-breather, and nothing you, I, Ian, or Joshua have to say or to offer is going to change that fact. And that’s assuming she isn’t just plain repulsed at the idea of fucking mermen!”

“I didn’t get that impression when I kissed her,” Caleb drawled coolly, though he couldn’t subdue the anger glittering in his eyes. “In fact, just the opposite.”

The stylus Simon had been holding in his hand snapped. Dark color flooded his face as he looked down at it. “Gratitude isn’t desire,” he managed after a moment, “but since you brought it up, that makes my point. You were supposed to escort her home, not try to seduce her.”

Doubt surged through Caleb and anger sprang from it. “If I’d been trying to seduce her I could’ve had her then. It’s been a while since I was with a woman, granted, but it sure as fuck didn’t feel like gratitude to me.”

Simon stared at him furiously for several moments, wrestling with the impulse to dive across the desk and choke the life out of him and wipe the smug look off of his face.

When he had his anger under control, he spoke again. “She has a deep-seated revulsion of mutants even if she doesn’t want to admit it,” he said tightly. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you and
do
take this to heart, Caleb, because I mean it. You can take the sub and setup an observation post within five minutes of her place, but if I find out you’ve been ‘watching’ from her bed, you’ll be on suspension.”

Caleb stood. “I think you’ve got it backwards. I think you have a deep-seated distrust of humans in general and Anna in particular. I’m just not sure if it’s because of her father or because of that bitch, Roxanne, that cleaned you out and headed back landside. I will tell you this, though, Joshua’s in and Ian’s in. I think we have enough credits without your input.”

“You’ve forgotten one critical detail, Caleb,” Simon growled when he opened the door to leave.

He turned back to glare at him. “I don’t think so.”

“I know so. She isn’t on the market.”

He could’ve lived without that fucking reminder, Caleb thought furiously as he stalked out of the station!

Joshua met him in the atrium where they’d docked the sub upon their return from Anna’s house. “Shit! He said no?”

Caleb stared at him without comprehension for several moments. “No,” he said finally, striding to the hatch and climbing down into the sub. “He gave us a green light.

He also said he’d hand our asses to us on a platter if we camped on her doorstep.”

Joshua, who’d followed him down, stared at him in disgust as he settled into the pilot’s seat. “Well how the hell is that going to help us if we can’t get within a mile of her?”

Caleb shook his head. “We’ll be close enough to protect her if Cavendish comes after her. That’s the most important thing at this point.”

Simon had pissed him off so thoroughly he hadn’t thought to point out that it was going to be damned impossible to scan her place for bugs and plant some of their own without getting near her. Especially if she spent all her time in the house like she’d said she did or at least suggested she did. Her garden, lab, and living quarters were in the same house. There wasn’t a lot of reason for her to go out.

Ok, so they couldn’t watch her from inside the house … not that he’d had any intention of doing that to start with! He wasn’t a damned rooky! It was almost as damned insulting that Simon had suggested he didn’t have any more sense than that as his snide personal remarks!

He supposed after a while that what was really bugging him was that he had an uneasy feeling Simon might be right. He hadn’t thought too much about how scared she was that first night. He’d figured it was them that had scared her and a trip down to Atlanta for an air-breather without a tank strapped to their back was bound to be a scary proposition on top of the fright they’d already given her. The sub had scared her too, though, enough she’d bitten his head off when he tried to distract her. That didn’t actually augur well for a potential Atlantean—the fact that everything about being in the sea unnerved the hell out of her.

He’d dismissed it, figuring she wouldn’t have any reason to be afraid once she had the change, but then Simon had just had to bring up that shit about her hating mutants again. He didn’t believe she did. He hadn’t seen anything about the way she’d looked at them, spoke to them, or behaved around them to suggest such a thing. She’d said she didn’t have a problem with mutants, but was he right? Or was Simon right?

He was inclined to go with his gut. She hadn’t just let him kiss her. She’d responded, god damn it! Yeah, she’d lit him on fire, but he was damned if he believed he was the only one feeling that way.

So Simon was right about her not being on the market and he was a dumbass because he hadn’t considered that when he’d decided she would do nicely for him.

Granted, it would’ve been a different ballgame if she had been on the mart, maybe an entirely different game. Women who allowed their families to badger them or beg them into selling themselves on the bride market had a tendency to go for the highest bidder, but that wasn’t always the case, especially when a man had an opportunity to do a little wooing beforehand. That didn’t mean he, or one of them, couldn’t convince her, though, and all it would take was one. They had a deal. Ian and Joshua had already agreed they were in. He had an idea that Simon wasn’t going to hold out if she capitulated. He was just leery because that bitch Roxanne had burned him so badly.

Anna wasn’t like that, though. She wasn’t glamour, glitz, and fluff. She was a real woman—brains, beauty, a body to kill for, and sweet as candy, with just enough fire to keep a man on his toes.

Of course, Simon had been the recipient of most of that fire and it had been damned uncomfortable when he’d gotten a taste of it, but he figured, what the hell?

There was bound to be a little vinegar to go with the honey and if they’d seen her worst, and he figured they had, then he could deal with it.

It pissed him off big time that he thought he had it all figured out and that it was all but a done deal and Simon had thrown a wrench into it by pointing out that she might not be interested!

Joshua brought him out of his dark thoughts by punching him on the shoulder.

“What?” he growled.

“Are we going to do this or what?” Joshua demanded irritably.

Considering the direction of his thoughts, it wasn’t a great leap from there to where he wanted to be—in Anna’s bed—and he stared at her house speculatively through the front porthole. “We should wait until after dark,” he said finally. “He could have somebody watching her house and we’ve already shown ourselves one time today.”

“In that case, I guess I should take it down a little.”

“Yeah, just not so much that we don’t have a view of the house.”

Joshua headed to the food lockers when he’d settled the sub low in the water. “I stocked up since we were going to do a stakeout. You want something?”

“A beer would be nice.”

Joshua chuckled and tossed him a bottle of water. “Sandwich?”

“Sure … whatever. If you made them they all taste the same anyway.”

Joshua shot a bird at him and grabbed two sandwiches. “What did Simon say that pissed you off so much, anyway?”

Caleb grunted, unwrapping his sandwich to examine it. “Reminded me she wasn’t on the market,” he muttered, “among other things.”

“Shit!” Joshua said, nearly dropping his sandwich. “I hadn’t even thought about it! Damn! I guess we’re fucked … or not to be, as the case may be.”

“You’re taking it damned lightly!” Caleb snapped.

“Do I look like I’m taking it lightly?” Joshua demanded tightly. “What the hell am I supposed to say?”

Caleb shook his head.

Joshua frowned. “I guess that’s what comes of never seeing a woman that isn’t attached already or on the market. You get to thinking there’s only two kinds—taken and available.”

Caleb grunted. “She isn’t taken,” he said pointedly.

“No, but she didn’t volunteer to take any mutants on either.”

“Don’t you start that shit, too!”