Page 4 of Hammerhead (Kinkaid Shifters #4)

T he next day, Miguel had to work. He put in his time in the depths, maintaining the oil rig, but when his shift was done, he found himself looking forward to getting back on the boat and maybe running into the delectable Deidre again. He turned himself toward the boat, swimming steadily, thinking hard about his situation.

Salt stung Miguel’s skin as he cut through the waves, his shark form slicing through the deep. He probably should have been running. Some of his guys still talked about leaving, if they found a moment when they could break free of this easy captivity. The Kinkaids had given them just enough leash to breathe, easing their watchfulness over time. If the sharks were smart, they’d take it and disappear.

But they weren’t running. Because Sam Kinkaid had given them a deal and Miguel had accepted it on behalf of his men. They might be sharks, but they honored a deal if the other party did the same. So far, Kinkaid had treated them well.

The deal was to work tending the oil rigs. Stay in the water, stay useful. Prove they weren’t a threat. And in return? No death sentence. No permanent chains. Maybe—just maybe—a future.

It wasn’t total freedom. But it was better than death or rotting in some sort of prison setting.

Miguel surfaced, breathing in the night air, his human form snapping back into place as he gripped the ladder of the Kinkaid vessel. The deck was slick beneath his feet as he swung himself up, seawater dripping from his bare skin.

A selkie stood near the railing, watching him with assessing eyes. Tom Kinkaid. The leader of this crew.

“Efficient,” the man said. “Sharks always are.”

Miguel ignored him. He didn’t totally trust these seal shifters—oceanic, sure, but not his kind. Kinkaid had assigned them to the selkies for oversight, and the irony wasn’t lost on him. In the wild, sharks often hunted seals. On this job, they took orders from them.

The boat rocked gently, the Gulf stretching dark and endless around them. Jose surfaced next, hauling himself aboard, followed by Marco. They hadn’t run, which made Miguel secretly glad.

They were all working. Proving themselves. For now.

But Miguel couldn’t shake the feeling that this wasn’t over. That somewhere out there, Kettering waited to hassle them for their failure. That something was watching.

And then… That misty island appeared in the distance. Miguel stiffened, wiping salt from his eyes. No. Not possible.

One second, there was nothing but open water. The next, an island wavered into view. Dark cliffs. Dense jungle. Then, just as quickly, it was gone.

Miguel’s blood ran cold. Had to be magic. And magic, in his experience, never led anywhere good.

It had been too fast for any of the others to have seen it, so Miguel kept his mouth shut, but he wondered, if he’d had time to point it out, would the others have seen it? Or was it something that was appearing only to him? And, if so, why?

He was still pondering that thought a few hours later on deck, as he gazed at the stars. Or maybe he was waiting to see if the island would show itself again. He wasn’t quite sure. Better yet, he might be hoping for a repeat encounter with the lovely selkie, Deidre.

As if his thoughts conjured her, she appeared on the deck a few minutes later. He took a quick look around and realized they were alone for the moment. He waited quietly to see if she would come over to him. Oh, how he hoped she would.

It was unseemly, really. He found himself tensing with anticipation, almost holding his breath to see what she would do.

Satisfaction ran through him when she walked closer. They exchanged casual greetings as she settled in next to him at the rail, looking out at the dark water and twinkling stars. They talked of inconsequential things at first, then she seemed to gather her courage and broached the subject of where they’d left off the night before.

“The last time we talked, you said you’d made a big mistake taking your last job. What was it?” she asked, making him wonder why having the good opinion of this woman had begun to matter so much to him.

Miguel decided to just lay it on the line. No use trying to spin anything to make himself look better. He wasn’t the kind of man who tried to manipulate events to his own advantage. He knew in his heart he had to just be truthful with this woman and let the chips fall where they may.

“We took a job from a man named Kettering—”

“The old arms merchant? I thought he was dead.” She interrupted him, looking at him with wide eyes.

“It was his son, though I suppose he’s in the same business,” Miguel answered. How did she know about Kettering? There was more to this pretty little selkie than met the eye, apparently. “He was offering a whole lot of money for what we thought was a simple job.”

He paused, wondering if he should tell her the rest, then decided to open up a bit more. There was something about her that made him want to have her good opinion, and failing that, for her to know the whole story about why they’d chosen to take Kettering’s offer.

“We’d heard about those crazy bears in Washington state, and how they’re all finding mates by settling down in a town they built,” he went on. “We didn’t think we could build a town, but we thought about buying some beachfront properties next to each other and forming a little shark community. We’ve been fighting a hell of a long time, and all of us are eager to settle down and find a place to retire and live life like normal people and not have to fight all the time. We figured this one last job would allow that to happen, but it got complicated, and it all went a little too far.”

“Oh, no. What did you do?” She looked like she was bracing for bad news.

“We didn’t kill anybody,” he shot back, not liking the way she seemed to expect the worst of him. “We may be sharks, but we’re not like those great white fools. Though I will admit, Kettering had us doing some things I’m not too proud of in the harsh light of day. We couldn’t get to the targets he wanted, so he had us threaten their families. The females, especially.”

“You didn’t,” she breathed, sounding scandalized.

He’d had a lot of time to think about what he and his pod had done, and with the luxury of time and distance from the events, he had realized just how badly they’d screwed up.

“Kettering had a sniper shoot one of the women right as we were coming on board his operation, and we didn’t like that at all, but it was too late. We’d already taken his money.”

“Did she die?” Deirdre asked in a shocked whisper a moment later.

“No. She pulled through, thankfully. We heard later that, before we’d joined his crew, he’d had his foot soldiers shoot up a shopping mall. We were brought on to perform an assault from the water after his previous team had kidnapped a woman and taken her out to sea. It didn’t work. She was rescued. Which is why he sought us out because of our reputation for working under water and along coastlines.”

“But once you found out what he was all about, why didn’t you leave?” she asked.

“You don’t just leave a guy like Kettering. Once you take his money, you’re hooked until he wants to release you. Or you die. That’s the only way out with a guy like that,” Miguel replied, frowning as he shook his head. “We should have done a more thorough background check, but the job didn’t sound that sleazy or difficult when it was first presented. It was only as we got to know the targets and methods tried in the previous attempts that we started to feel uncomfortable.” Miguel chuckled wryly and shook his head. “I’m not painting us as saints. We’re still sharks. We don’t turn up our noses at a little bloodshed. But we’re hammerheads, not great whites. We try to at least have some principles.”

“So, how did you get caught?”

“Kettering sent us in on what looked like a simple beach snatch. Pre-position our gear the day before. Swim in, grab our gear, subdue the mark and swim back out with her. Easy, right?” He looked over at her and saw the wide-eyed expression that he didn’t quite like on her lovely face. “Only, it didn’t go as planned. We rose up out of the water, and the mark—a woman—was more than ready for us. She’d set us up like a pro and took us down with arrows tipped with some kind of magical poison. That’s really odd, because we hammerheads are immune to most poisons. It was the magical aspect of the substance on the arrows that we couldn’t handle. Mercifully, she gave us the antidote later, so we weren’t any worse for wear, but we were—and I guess, to some extent, still are—prisoners. They sent us to Kinkaid, and we’ve been under their eye ever since.”

“I see,” Deidre replied softly. “So do you plan to go back to soldiering after this is over?”

He was surprised by her question. “No. We all pretty much decided we were done with that kind of life. It turns out I like this kind of work, and the money is almost as good as being a mercenary, only I don’t get shot at, which is a bonus to my way of thinking.”

She chuckled, and he felt better. He’d have hated it if learning of his shadowy past had ruined her opinion of him.

“Deep sea work is specialist stuff for humans. Our kind can make a lot of money out here doing what comes naturally to us,” she said, proving to him that she was smart as well as gorgeous.

“I am beginning to see the wisdom in that path,” Miguel admitted, agreeing with her. “So are many of my pod mates. We’ve all been fighting and traveling the world too long, and the idea of settling somewhere is very appealing.”

“Where are you from?” she asked, changing the subject. “I’m assuming somewhere in South America, right? And are all your pod mates from the same place?”

“My brother and I are from Brazil, but the others are from all over. Jorge is from Columbia. Marco is from Venezuela. Ibrahim is Moroccan. Ndukwe is from Nigeria, and so on. What binds us all together is that we’re all hammerheads and were brothers-in-arms in the mercenary ranks. That’s how we all met, and we all decided to retire at the same time. We figured the only work we could get was as private soldiers-for-hire, but since Kettering was our first private contract, I think we’ve all been soured on that idea. We’ve been talking about our futures and the changes in our plans. I think most of the guys are going to try to find more work like this if the Kinkaids don’t want to keep us after our stint of good behavior is up.”

“You all come from warmer waters than where I’m from,” she observed.

“The breeding grounds tend to be in warmer latitudes where food is plentiful most of the year. Our families settled where their beasts could be content while raising young, and their human sides could have a home on land, near the water. It just worked out that way. But as adults, we swim wherever the mood, and the tides, take us,” he told her.

A plan was beginning to form in Deidre’s mind. An impossible plan. One that might keep this mysterious man close to her for longer than just this little fact-finding mission she was on.

Why in the world did she find him so compelling? He was a shark, for Goddess’s sake! Sharks were known as the bad boys of the sea. Then again, she’d always had a thing for bad boys.

Leave it to her to find a super sexy shark shifter out here in the middle of the Gulf, far from her home waters. What was this madness overtaking her senses? Was it merely a taste for the forbidden, or something deeper? Her inner seal was jumping up and down, demanding to be heard, but her human side was wary.

Miguel had just admitted to making some really bad decisions and doing things that weren’t quite…right. Kidnapping people—even if he thought they were just regular human soldiers, which was terrible to begin with—and targeting the women who were important to them when they couldn’t get to the men… Well. That just was plain awful. No way around it.

Though, he had said a few things that she might believe about the sharks coming to the job late and not quite realizing what had gone on before they’d gotten there. Unless he was just trying to make him and his men sound more innocent, to try to fool her. He was a shark, after all. But he’d confessed to having made mistakes. And she didn’t have any experience with hammerhead sharks. Were they really that much different from the other shark species who had well-earned their sinister reputations?

She wondered if she could ask her Kinkaid cousins about it, then nixed the idea. They would know why she was asking, and it didn’t feel right to put her interest on display like that. She didn’t understand why she was so attracted to Miguel in the first place, and she didn’t know some of her cousins all that well, despite the relationship. The last thing she wanted was to be teased about it or, worse, chastised for her interest in a shark, of all things.

No, this was too special and new…and totally unprecedented. She wanted to keep it to herself for a bit longer. She wouldn’t talk to her cousins about Miguel. At least, not in any obvious way, if she could help it. But she would take any opportunities she found to talk to him, and maybe she’d swim with him. You could tell a lot about a shifter by observing their beast form. That’s what her mother always said, anyway, and Deidre believed it.

“Are you working tomorrow?” she asked him, hoping she didn’t sound too eager.

“Yeah, I’ve got a deep dive to replace some components. Should take a couple of hours.”

“You don’t work every day, though. Right? What do you do with your time off?” She was curious about his schedule.

“We usually stay in the deep on our days off. Being cooped up on this boat gets a little too crowded, you know?”

“I know exactly what you mean,” she replied. “Maybe we can swim together for a bit sometime,” she proposed cautiously, trying to sound nonchalant.

“I’d really like that,” he said, smiling that sexy Latin lover smile at her. She just about swooned right there on the spot. “Have dinner with me tomorrow night. We can have a picnic on the top deck. What do you say?”

She smiled at him, liking his suggestion a lot more than she probably should. Well, if she was going to go off the deep end, she might as well go all the way.

“I say, why not?” she answered finally. “I’ll look forward to it.”

They made a few more arrangements, nailing down the time and place where they would meet, though the boat wasn’t so large that it would be truly hard to find someone on it. Then they parted. She wanted to reach out to him, but it was too soon. She wasn’t going to dive in with both flippers this time. No. She was going to let this situation develop as naturally as possible while keeping her wits about her. He wasn’t a seal. She wasn’t sure if hammerheads felt the same feelings as seal shifters. They had fish halves, after all, and who knew how fish really thought?

Seals were mammals, so they were a bit closer to human sensibilities than fish. Or so she believed. She wasn’t really sure how fish viewed the world. Mostly, her seal thought of them as dinner. Though she had never, and would never, be up to challenging a shark. Some of those hammerheads grew to ginormous size! She wondered what it would be like to swim with Miguel in his shark form. He could breathe underwater, so he wouldn’t have to surface at all, though she had to come up for air every few minutes. Would he be considerate of her needs or would he just do his own thing? She’d have to find that out for herself. Soon.

Yes. She looked forward to learning a lot more about the man. Starting with the dinner date tomorrow. After that, if it went well, she’d want to swim with him. Her seal was naturally curious and playful. Would he find her silly? Or would he humor her whimsical side? There was only one way to find out, and that was underwater. She could hardly wait to swim with him and discover what kind of heart lay beneath that sexy exterior.