Chapter 37
Troy
“I’M GOING TO FUCKING murder you,” Dylan said in a cold, terrifying voice.
He had every right to do that, especially now as we watched one dot turn into two—One for Kiora and one for her sealskin. Unless they took her keys, her necklace, and her earrings away, then it would be the seal skin and Kiora’s other belongings.
“She’s half selkie and half mermaid?” Falls asked.
We were in his temporary office. Mer police operated internationally, but this wasn’t one of the cities with any reasonable forces since they were so far from the ocean. Eight out of nine mer officers on this case had come from other states, and in Fall’s case from another country, to help. Nine people was nothing, not for an operation of this scale.
“Yeah,” I croaked.
Only half selkie. She would forget me, and she might never recover those memories. Eirlys wiped away tears, but a second later, a sob wrecked her. Kiora would forget her, too.
“We need two teams. From the missing person reports, there should be at least six selkies. It’s safe to assume that the skins will be kept in the same location and transported at the same time. Whatever mode of transportation they’re using, the skins won’t be far behind.
I nodded my agreement. Even without the captor twisting the magic in the skin to limit how far a selkie can go, there was a limit. From what I knew, the farthest any selkie had been able to go from her skin was forty miles, and that was incredibly uncomfortable. Any more than that and the kidnappers would be risking killing their precious cargo.
Falls pressed a hand to his ear, listening to someone reporting back to him. After a few seconds, he asked, “How many people are there?”
I looked at the map again. The sealskin stopped moving just outside the city.
“That’s where they keep the skins?” I asked.
Falls nodded. “Seems that way. So far, my men only spotted two people guarding the building. One is a bear shifter, and the other is human.
That wasn’t so bad. One or two mer police officers could handle that.
“I’d like to be on the second team. They’ll have more guards wherever they’re taking Kiora, and they’d rather kill her than let her go. You’ll need all hands on deck.”
Falls knew my history in the navy, and he had seen me in action six years ago. Hell, he had seen all three of us.
“I’m coming, too,” Dylan said, still glaring at me.
“Me too,” Eirlys said through a sob.
Falls didn’t argue, not the way he had back then. The fact that there were only nine people between both teams might’ve had something to do with it.
“Eagle, how is the mouse?” Falls asked another one of his agents through the com. A moment later, he looked at Eirlys and Dylan and shook his head.
Blackwood wasn’t moving yet.
“I’m going to fucking kill you,” Dylan said to me again.
I’d deserve it. And Kiora deserved so much better than the memory wipe she was getting right now.
All I would’ve had to do was to have her intercepted at any point. Dylan and Eirlys both wanted it. I wanted it. But Kiora, my beautiful, resilient, brave Kiora wanted to risk it all for a chance to save these supes. As it turned out, what she wanted mattered more to me.
As awful as the consequences would be for Kiora, she couldn’t allow this to continue. If she did, she’d replay each of those names again and again, then the names from all the years before who could’ve been rescued, if only we’d got the information we needed from Blackwood. She’d live the rest of her life remembering the day she could’ve saved them but didn’t.
The red dot on the map turned off the road and stopped. What was that? A farmhouse? It was only a few miles away from the location they had taken Kiora’s sealskin to.
“Beaver, I need your eyes on that house,” Falls said into the com. “Give me numbers.”
Hopefully, that was the first part of Kiora’s plan falling into place. Now, we only had to wait for Blackwood to make his move.