Chapter 40
Forty
Angie
She was home. If only she were there under happier circumstances.
When Angie stepped off her family friend’s jet, cloudy skies and a glacial breeze swiped her cheeks, numbing them, and she wrapped Lulu inside her jacket with her furry head sticking out.
Her cat was calm, her body heat warming Angie’s chest.
Late February brought freezing weather and her weather app registered twelve degrees with the sun out.
As a child, winter was her favorite season with the light snow falling from starless skies above.
The soft coating of powdery snow in their backyard allowed her to make snow angels, or some crude depiction of a mermaid after wiggling her torso and legs and flapping her arms around over her head, surrounded by ice caps, snow-capped mountains, and powder-dusted forests.
Winter downtown, where there were more buildings and homes that were closer to one another, was different than in her remote village.
The pilot had dropped her off behind Mia’s house in downtown Creston after telling her that Governor Taylor ordered evacuations from any building within five miles of the coast. Ten people had died in the mer attack, six military.
Which meant she couldn’t go home. This was the second time she had to evacuate in the span of one day.
A sad smile tugged at Angie’s lips as she took in the earthen scent of fresh snow and fading jet fuel in the leaden winter air, and she walked to Mia’s doorstep.
The next day, Angie sat in Creston General Hospital’s quaint, busy lobby with Mia at her side. Her two kids flanked them, Rosie holding Jack’s tiny hand. Fluorescent lights bore down on them from above.
“I’m bored.” Rosie spoke up, pouting and fidgeting. “We’ve been here forever.” She swayed back and forth on her heels, falling into Angie. She put her hands on her niece’s small shoulders and pushed her back upright onto her feet.
“We’ve been here for ten minutes, silly.” Mia exchanged a glance with Angie. “Don’t you want to see your gōnggōng? He’ll be out soon.”
“Yeah.” Rosie dug her heels into the tile.
Angie scrolled through her phone while they waited. A text came in to her, Reesa, and Leo’s group chat:
Reesa: Is everyone okay? That was terrifying.
Leo and Dr. Williams replied they were okay. Angie struggled with what to tell them, her fingers gliding back and forth over her phone screen.
I’m okay. My apartment is flooded. I’m back in Alaska. I’ll focus on finding who’s responsible for the Mer-Queen’s murder and keep you all in the loop.
Beside her, Rosie was sitting on the floor, and Mia, clutching Jack’s hand, had walked to the other side of the lobby toward the vending machines. Another ping on her phone.
Dr. Williams: Take the time you need but wanted to let you all know.
SMOSA has discovered humans can get breath from mer, which helps them breathe underwater.
The info is spreading to other research facilities, and MDRT recently got hold of it.
I don’t know what I can do to stop the news from spreading.
Be careful, everyone. Stay away from the sea.
Texts came in rapid succession after that.
Reesa: Wait what? How? That’s insane!
Leo: What does this mean for us?? Does that mean MDRT can fight back against the mer now?
Dr. Williams: I don’t have the answer to that yet. I’ll talk to my colleagues.
The rest of her recent texts were from her school with a brief note that classes were suspended for the time being.
Angie scoffed. Of course, classes were suspended. Most of the school had been obliterated by the tsunami, and the last she heard, tens of students, faculty, and professors were missing, injured, or dead.
Mia and Jack walked back to her and she released Jack’s hand to join his siblings before moving to stand beside Angie again. “He’s on the way out.”
“Bàba’s allowed out of the hospital so soon?” Angie crossed her arms over her chest, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “He can’t even put weight on his left leg.”
Mia shrugged one shoulder. “Doctor said he was stable enough to be discharged. And you know how he is. He hates the hospital.”
Angie chuckled. He was always stubborn about seeing a doctor, but this—being in the same hospital where Māma had passed, couldn’t have been easy on him.
Mia flipped through Bàba’s discharge papers. “It’s going to be a full house. But I’ll admit, it’ll be nice to have everyone under one roof.”
“It’ll be like old times.” Angie gave Mia, Rosie, and Jack a small smile.
Mia laughed. “Just in a smaller house.”
Dinner was a hearty combination of sourdough bread coupled with jam from fresh picked berries, garlic cucumber salad and mapo tofu with a bowl of rice, and Angie ate until she couldn’t stomach another spoonful of rice.
After cleaning up, Angie stood on the balcony, leaning on her forearms on the banister and wrapping her thick robe tighter around herself, opening and closing her fingers to keep the blood flowing.
The sun was an orange ball of fire on the horizon and the chill winds picked up.
Mia had put Rosie and Jack to bed several minutes ago, and Bàba hobbled to his first-floor guest room after his painkillers kicked in.
Tāmāde, she had come so far with advocating for the mer. And now she was back to square one. Saeryn, Cassia and Varin attacked two coastlines, and now it was all going to go to shit.
To make things worse, her aquarium was also decimated by the tsunami, as per a text from Grayson, telling her she no longer had a job there.
When Angie was there last, three days ago, the mermaid was still there. It was a morbid thought, but it was her hope that the mermaid, along with the rest of the sea life, found their way back to the sea when the tsunami hit.
What more could she do to make the mer not appear like villains?
And now, with large swaths of researchers and military knowing they could get breath from the mer, she expected them to ramp up their efforts to hunt down and strike them. The thought was a chilling one.
Angie called Governor Vester’s office first, and then Governor Taylor’s.
Were they still planning to help her and the mer after the joint attacks?
Somehow, she doubted it, but she had to ask.
She left a message with the constituent services for both governors before sliding her phone into her sweater pocket.
Her thoughts trailed to Kaden somewhere undersea. She visualized the creases around his gem-like eyes forming when he teased her or made a joke. The way he smiled, so luminous, lit her world.
The balcony door slid open and Ken stepped out, wrapping his arms around himself. “What are you doing out here when everyone’s inside? Too many people for you?” he asked with a smile, rubbing his five o’clock shadow.
“Hah, no. I was calling the governors and thinking about Kaden.”
“I hear you. Hopefully you’ll get to see him again sooner rather than later,” Ken replied. “But hey, if you want to come inside, have a glass of wine with us, I have something you might want to see.”
Angie followed him inside. “How’s it been staying with Jasmine and Alden?” She referred to their daughter and son-in-law, who Stefan and Ken stayed with after evacuating their own home by the shore.
“We get to spend time with the grandkids every day, so that’s a bonus. Other than that, it’s fine. Not a whole lot of room for us, but we make do on the twin-sized bed,” Ken said with a chuckle.
Angie sat on the couch next to Ken, and across from Mia and Stefan, who were deep in their own conversation, laughing between sips of wine and bites of cheese and sausage.
“Here, I took a photo of the people who signed out of our dive shop the evening the Mer-Queen was killed. Sorry it took me so long to find it. Must have misplaced that notebook, but I found it yesterday and something told me to take pictures of the pages.”
Angie poured herself a half-glass of Chardonnay and took Ken’s phone, looking over the names in the photo.
She didn’t recognize any of the four divers on the list, but she jotted down their names anyway. Angie was so engrossed in the photo she didn’t notice Ken peering over her shoulder.
“Strange,” he murmured, and she jolted her shoulders.
“What is?” she asked, turning fully around.
“There are only four names. I could have sworn there were five of them.”
“Stefan told me awhile back that a group of unauthorized divers had gone out. You think these are the same people?” Angie asked.
“Now that I look at it, it might be.” Ken scratched his stubbled chin. “Stefan confronted them when they came back out, and...” His eyes widened, and he muttered something in Tagalog. “It was them. Two of them stayed behind to talk to my husband and they apologized for not signing out.”
“You think they went diving to scout the area out before going for Serapha?” Angie folded her arms across her chest.
“It would make sense.” Ken sighed.
“Thanks.” She returned to the list in front of her, deep in thought, as Ken joined Mia and Stefan’s conversation.
Invisible insects skittered under her skin. Who was the fifth person? They had to be the key to finding the perpetrator of Serapha’s death.