Chapter 32
Thirty-Two
Nick stood some feet outside the meeting room, his head high and shoulders pulled back. Angie’s shoulders inadvertently tightened at the sight of him.
“Angela.” Nick’s voice was icy.
She swore under her breath and approached him.
“You’re buddy-buddy with the mer now?” He flung his accusatory words at her, his posture rigid and tight.
“What are you talking about?” She inhaled so deep that her lungs rammed into her ribcage.
“People saw you talking with a merman.” He jabbed a finger toward her face, and she stepped sideways with one hand up, avoiding it.
No point in denying it now.
“I had to find a way to appeal to the mer since nobody will listen to me.” She stumbled over her words, but Nick looked too riled up to notice.
“First of all, nobody authorized you to do that. Your dad specifically asked you to stay away from them. I sent people to follow you periodically because I had this feeling you were up to something shady.” He folded his arms tight across his chest, making his defined pectoral muscles stick out.
Angie thought her stomach had fallen into her intestines, and her hands and feet grew cold even as they stood in the sun’s beams. Words escaped her.
Nick maintained his glare, shaking his head in disapproval.
“That’s what I thought. Someone saw you pacing up and down the beach last month, like you were looking for something.
He couldn’t figure out why you were so close to the beach when we were given explicit instructions to stay far from it, so he came to me.
You’re lucky he didn’t go to your dad first.”
She knew what he was talking about. The day where she was looking for Kaden and found his kombu kelp directions stuck in an empty bottle.
“Like I said.” Her head weighed heavy, and her words came out in short, quiet stutters. “I wanted to see if I could get them to listen to me.”
“Okay, I get it, you had good intentions. But you’re real–” She didn’t understand his next word, but it was laced with a French accent, and he continued on, “at following directions, you know that? I still don’t know what you’re up to or what’s going on in that brain of yours, but if you don’t want me going to Zixin and telling him my suspicions, you’ll do what I say, alright?
Unless you want Daddy keeping a closer eye on you.
Maybe even forced leave.” His hazel eyes burned with rage, his eyebrows in a tight V over his eyes.
“I have to give it to you though, if it weren’t for your sneaking around, we might never have found where the fish were.
” The smile spread across his face was a mocking one.
Somewhere in his rant, he threw another foreign word at her. Leave it to this asshat to throw what she assumed to be French swear words at her, knowing full well she didn’t understand. She wouldn’t be surprised if he ran to Bàba the moment he suspected something else.
“Did you tell them to destroy the cameras?”
His question jolted her, and she raised an eyebrow. She didn’t even know the cameras had been tampered with. “No!”
Nick snorted, the dubious expression on his face telling Angie he didn’t quite believe her, but he didn’t press further.
It made sense now, the reason he waited for her outside the meeting room was because he was upset that the cameras were damaged and wanted to know how or who was responsible. He wanted to pin the blame on her.
Angie shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other. Tiān, she wanted this conversation to be over. “What do you want me to do now?”
“You can start by staying away from the mer. Don’t let me catch you again,” he said, curt.
Angie glared at his retreating back.
Go to the Hells, Nick, and don’t come back.
She took a calming breath before following him into the room where the meeting was held. Nick stood whistling, head high and shoulders pulled back. Bàba threw him a fleeting glance from the other end of the room, and then returned to being nose-deep in a large stack of papers.
Angie fingered her watch, twirling it round and round to keep her mind busy for what may come. Her insides quivered.
“Before I start,” Nick said after clearing his throat, the sound ringing through the building’s high ceilings.
“Thank you all for your efforts during these trying times. You come to work and put yourself in danger each day, yet you do not hesitate to contribute. Many of you are even seeking new ideas on how we can end this disaster and get things back to normal again.”
Angie recoiled as workers’ cheers and whoops erupted around her. She wrapped her arms around herself, a way to shield herself from what he was going to say next.
“We caught another merman, but I decided to keep it alive.” Nick paced back and forth, and Angie’s hands grew clammy, her breaths catching in her chest.
Please let it not be Kaden. Or Cyrus, or Adrielle. Or the mer-king or queen.
A few confused murmurs rose from the crowd. “Our resident marine biologist, Cam, and his crew noticed a strange blue-tinged vapor coming from the mer’s mouth. I was the only one here this early, so I asked him to stay and investigate more. We’ve never seen anything like it.”
Resident marine biologist? Why was this the first time she was hearing about them?
A chorus of hushed voices rippled across the workers beside her.
Angie’s skin crawled. She had to get out, see who the mer was.
She recalled what Kaden had said about the mer releasing their gift to humans.
It happened either with their breath or when they were stressed.
If she were a betting woman, the blue vapor came from the latter reason.
The other option was upsetting, that the mer had inadvertently released his magic, effectively giving the humans a tremendous advantage, if they found out what it could do.
What Nick said next stopped her from stepping toward the door.
“We’ve sent the specimen to see what the glow is and if it’s something we may use to our advantage.
We need to maintain our efforts.” He pounded one fist into his open palm with a smack.
“If I must remind you what we’re fighting for.
Seafood prices have shot up and restaurants are shutting down in droves because of the scarcity.
The other day, I had to choose between milk or eggs at the grocery store.
If it were up to those beasts, we would starve and die out.
We’re losing thousands of dollars a day, which means, nobody will have a job anymore if this continues. Do we want that?”
A resounding “No!” came from the workers.
Nick continued, his neck flushed and a frenzied look dominated in his eyes.
“Our underwater cameras have been destroyed, but we won’t let that stop us.
” A pause while he swept his gaze over his rapt audience of workers.
“Mark my words. We will be hunting down each and every last one of those scaly bastards.”
Angie’s stomach roiled.
“Those who I spoke with earlier, meet me outside. Zixin, do you have anything you want to add?”
Bàba put his papers down and shook his head. “We will meet again next week. If you’re diving later, please follow Nick. The rest of you are dismissed.”
Diving? Who was diving now, and why hadn’t she heard of it? Her heartbeat raced. Why was nobody telling her anything?
“Bàba.” She followed on his heels as they dispersed. “Who’s Cam?”
“Oh, we brought him on board to assist us in studying the mer and find a weakness. He came all the way from Anchorage.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? I could ask him for advice for school. Help him study the mer.” A profound sense of rejection overtook her, and she sent Bàba a long, pained look.
She wasn’t sure Bàba picked up on it. “I need you to focus on your duties here.” His features turned to stone, and Angie shrunk back. “If there’s nothing else, I need you to get back to work.” He walked away before she asked her other questions.
She crept around the back of the meeting room’s building and followed a path to where the dive boats were anchored. There was nobody in her vicinity, and she picked up her pace. Had she missed them?
Stefan and Ken arrived, pushing a cart of oxygen and Heliox tanks down the smooth concrete path, and she flagged them down, waving her arms. Stefan stopped and urged Ken to keep going.
“Angie?” He raised one hand and shielded his eyes from the sun. “Are you diving? They’re suiting up over there.”
“Where are they going? Sorry, I didn’t mean to stop you. Let’s keep walking.”
Stefan nodded, and they walked side by side. “Nick rallied a group of divers to go out and hunt mer. They bought a whole bunch of camo wetsuits with stealth tech from us recently.”
Angie’s heart sank as they approached the divers. They wore reef camo wetsuits to help them blend into vegetation on the seabed. They were armed with spearguns and serrated daggers and talked amongst themselves, their words indiscernible and blending together, a fuzzy cacophony.
Stefan announced he’d arrived with extra tanks, and six divers rushed over to retrieve one and thank him. “Look at them. Spent a couple thousand bucks, but it’ll keep our shop in business a while longer.”
Stefan and Ken had owned the shop for twenty years, and to think of them having to give it up was heart wrenching. Her stomach squelched, imagining what Stefan must be feeling. “What’s happening at the shop?”
“People aren’t diving anymore, and we were on the verge of having to go bankrupt.
I mean, this will help pay our bills for the next month or two, but I don’t know what will happen after.
” Stefan sounded downhearted, and Angie’s heart went out to him.
“I mean, who can blame people? We even offered to outsource our services, but we can only afford to do so much travel. And only for those few people who aren’t too scared to get into the water. ”
“I’m sorry to hear that the business is suffering.” She stepped closer so they were shoulder-to-shoulder. “Do you know where they’re going?”
“We’ll find a way, even if we have to close up shop for a while.
” Stefan shrugged. “I heard they were going to go out a nautical mile or two in different directions.” His attention turned to Ken, approaching from the side.
“Anyway, I’ll leave these here for the divers.
I have to let Nick know they’re on their way onto the boats, sign the tanks out, and make sure they get back to us at the end of the day. It’s good to see you, Angie.”
Ken joined him and put his arm around his husband, and the two walked away after saying their goodbyes to her.
Three boats pulled out, each stationed with divers armed with spearguns, aiming down at the water.
Her legs shaking, she peered over the seascape, toward the direction where she saw Kaden the day before. She had to warn him. The mer wouldn’t be expecting humans in camouflage. Angie waited, eyes scanning the surface, sweeping from one end of her field of vision to the other, desperation rising.
Minutes passed, and nothing. Not a glint of a mer tail, or a head poking out of the water.
Tāmāde. Where was he?
She knew when they had last parted ways, it wasn’t on favorable terms. Still, she held onto a strand of hope. That he realized she was honest about the cameras, remembered the usual time she was off work, and would be waiting so they could clear this misunderstanding.
What if he was the merman who was captured and was now left to rot in a facility while they poked and prodded at him? Maybe he was caught after their meeting yesterday?
She tightened her jaw and rushed back to the divers. There was one dive boat left, the captain waving at her. “Hey! Are you the last diver? Because if you are, you should have been here fifteen minutes ago. The others already left!”
“Y-yes. Give me a minute to suit up!”
Angie booked it back to her storage room to get her gear.
There was one black-and-bronze camo suit left, and she donned her outfit as quickly as her hands would work.
Stefan and Ken’s tank carts were still there with two tanks of Heliox left, and she grabbed one, hauling it over to the boat.
Then she settled in with her fins in hand and out of breath.
She put the diving mask on her forehead and gave him a thumbs up. The captain pulled away from the dock.
Angie stared out toward the calm seas, unable to stop fidgeting with the things closest to her: the pressure gauge and the air valve on her BCD. In her mind, she willed the captain to hurry. She didn’t want to be too late.