Blood in the Water (2 page)

Monroe rolled onto her side and reached for her glass, giving Koenraad a glimpse of the mating scars on her back. Any shifter who saw her would know she was claimed.

Koenraad stepped into the galley to grab the pitcher of lemonade. He refreshed her drink, then poured himself a tall glass before sinking into the chair next to her.
 

“Do you want to get rid of me?” she asked. “Throw me back and try to catch a better mate?” Her tone was light, her brown eyes sparkling, but Koenraad could smell her apprehension.
 

“Never,” he said.
 

“Even though I suck at fighting?”

He smiled. “We’ll work on your wrestling moves tonight.”
Naked. In bed.
 

His cocks got harder, and he turned away so she wouldn’t see him wince, though there was nothing he could do about the bulge in the front of his shorts.

He left when the sun went down.
 

Swimming away from Monroe was difficult, but there was no perfect solution. He had to search for Brady, and he couldn’t very well take Monroe with him.

At least she was armed, and he hoped she’d be less shy about firing a gun at an intruder than she was about stabbing him with a flexible rubber knife.
 

He picked up the search where he’d left off the evening before. The choice made little sense; Brady wasn’t a dropped keyring just waiting to be picked up.
 

But Koenraad had no leads, and he had no help. If he was going to find Brady, it would be through brute determination, just like the first time he’d found his son.

Never mind that it had taken eighteen months and that Brady was now older and savvier.

The best chance at capturing Brady had already slipped through Koenraad’s fingers. He’d nearly killed himself searching right after discovering that Brady had escaped from the inlet. There hadn’t been any trace of the young shifter then, and hunting now was probably a fool’s errand.

But Brady was his son, and despite everything, Koenraad would never give up. Never.
 

It simply wasn’t an option, and thank goodness Monroe understood that.

Koenraad kept to the swaths of clean water untainted by the
sick
that permeated stretches of ocean in dense formations. Dozens of shifters had descended on Tureygua to help out, but their efforts had been useless. No one knew what it was.

Now they waited for a good storm to disperse the
sick
. One threatened to bash the islands in the next few days, but whether this storm, like the last few, would turn back out to the open ocean was anyone’s guess.
 

But the
sick
wasn’t Koenraad’s problem anymore. Patrolling Tureygua was no longer his job.

After hours of frustrated searching, Koenraad decided to revisit the ocean near his mansion.

He detected nothing off the coast.

Since he happened to be there, he fought his way through the rip currents, shifted human, walked across the beach and let himself into the mansion via a side door. The sprawling building was a U-shaped maze, but he knew the corridors intimately. He moved from room to room, remembering how optimistic he’d been when he’d purchased it.
 

There was no proof that Victoria or anyone else had been here since he’d left, and that was a relief. Koenraad had done some very bad things, and he didn’t need anyone snooping around.
 

Finally he stepped back outside and walked down to the inlet.

He still hadn’t figured out how Brady had escaped. He was trapped as a shark, unable to shift human again. He couldn’t have walked out, nor could he have unlocked the gate that closed off the inlet’s mouth.
 

Koenraad stood there a moment, water lapping his ankles, and stared into the depths.
 

It was depressingly easy to fool himself, to believe that the tips of Brady’s fins would cut through the water, that his son would swim up to him.
 

Koenraad clung desperately to the feeling, so tightly that his heart ached.

One step.
 

He did it. Then he took another until the water came to his waist.
 

There wasn’t anything in here except fish, eel, crabs.
 

Still, he lowered himself under the surface and shifted before swimming around the inlet. Frustration was making his teeth itch with the urge to tear into something.
 

When Koenraad had first discovered Brady missing, he’d assumed Victoria was behind it. She’d discovered his mansion that day, and there had been female footprints in the sand. She didn’t care about Brady, and she had always used her role as Brady’s mother to manipulate Koenraad.
 

But it had turned out that Victoria didn’t know anything at all. The footprints must have been from Monroe, or perhaps Victoria had been to the inlet but hadn’t noticed anything.

So how had Brady gotten out?

Only two people even knew that Brady had been there. Spencer, Koenraad’s best friend, who had generously agreed to oversee the research into Brady’s condition, and Monroe.

And Koenraad trusted both with his life.

Everyone else thought the young shifter was still lost in the ocean.

Well, now they were right. And because Koenraad had publicly called off the search—not that anyone beside him had still been combing the ocean—restarting it now would only raise suspicion.

Cursing his luck, he inspected the gate that kept the artificial inlet separate from the ocean. Brady was much smaller than Koenraad, but the gaps in the fencing were too small for anything larger than twelve inches to wiggle through.
 

Far, far too small for eight-year-old Brady. And Brady couldn’t have gone over the top, not without ripping himself to pieces.

Brady’s escape defied all reason. Had an unknown third party discovered him? Taken him and closed the gate up afterward? If so, why?
 

Koenraad continued visually inspecting the barrier, trying to make sense of the illogical.
 

It was a waste of time.

Just as he was about to turn away, he noticed something in one bottom corner. Swimming closer, he inspected it. Here, the fencing was slightly bowed.
 

He shifted human and pressed his fingers against the deformity. The barrier held. But he continued to work it, to worry it, and then, with a twist, he was able to pull the bottom up.

Stunned, he stared at it. He wasn’t sure what it meant. He was far stronger than Brady, and pulling it up hadn’t been easy.

He dropped the fence, but it didn’t snap back into position.
 

So what did that mean? Had someone pulled it up, let Brady out, then fixed it again?

That didn’t make sense. Even the resulting hole was still half Brady’s size, and the bottom edge was jagged. Scraping against it wouldn’t have caused any lasting damage, but Koenraad would have smelled blood in the hours after Brady’s escape. He would have known that Brady had injured himself.

Koenraad shoved the fencing back until it looked the way it originally had.
 

The fence felt significant.

But Brady still couldn’t have gotten out that way. It was physically impossible.

So what the hell did it mean?
 

More troubled than ever, he swam underwater to the far side of the inlet and resumed his investigation, his hands disturbing the sandy bottom while he probed for some sort of tool that Brady could have used to get out.

He found nothing. And even if he had… Brady didn’t have hands, and a shark’s mouth wasn’t capable of fine-tuned dexterity.

Disheartened, Koenraad forced himself to retreat from the inlet. It was getting late, and he’d left Monroe alone longer than he’d planned to. Time to get back.

He decided to take a different route, one less direct but that passed through a wide stretch of water mostly unaffected by the
sick
.
 

It took him near Eden Underground. The pristine reef would be good, easy hunting grounds for a young shark. It was also popular with the snorkel and scuba tours, though tourists had been scarce after a few humans drowned because of the
sick.
The dangerous beaches had been marked and the airports had been reopened. Soon the island would be crowded again.

Suddenly, he caught Brady’s scent. It was so subtle that for a moment Koenraad wondered if desperation was making him hallucinate.
 

There it was again, the thread stronger.

He turned, chasing the scent, not caring when it led him near the
sick.

He wasn’t going anywhere without his son.

Chapter 3

Koenraad cursed himself as he rechecked the area yet again. Brady’s scent was faint, almost imperceptible, and it kept turning back on itself.

It had to be the
sick
, screwing up Brady’s orientation.

And Koenraad lost the trail.

The idea of his son out here, in this area that was frequented by tourists, was strong motivation. But he had nothing to go on.

The trail was gone.

Koenraad slowed and considered what to do. He needed to get back to Monroe. Even if he left immediately, he still had forty minutes of sprinting before he’d arrive at
The Good Life
.

Koenraad ran into the
sick
.
 

Swimming into a physical wall would have been less painful, and he whipped to the side and swam parallel to the noxious water while he tried to shake off the impact.
 

Maybe it was his imagination, but it seemed that the more time he spent near the diseased sections of the ocean, the less they affected him. His first exposure had been intolerable, but now he could still function, just in a diminished capacity.

Perhaps the potency was weakening. He couldn’t know, and he wasn’t going to test the theory—less potent or less effective on him—by plunging into the thick of it.
 

But the more the wall took him out of the most direct route to Monroe, the more he wanted to grit his teeth and try to swim through it.
 

The wall grew thinner, an opportunity. He was on the verge of dashing through it there when he smelled a very faint scent almost at the same time that he
felt
it.

Shark in the water.
 

Not Brady.

An adult.

Not just any adult. Darius. Victoria’s scheming uncle. Victoria was vindictive, but her inability to control her anger made her weak.

Darius had no such weakness. He was also smarter and stronger, and he had the power of the Council behind him.

And at the moment, he wasn’t too happy with Koenraad. Not after the embarrassment of the trial the week before. Darius had backed Victoria, but Koenraad had walked free.

The problem was that Koenraad’s hands weren’t clean. Victoria’s claims that he’d murdered a human had been proven wrong—Monroe was quite clearly alive—but Koenraad had broken a few rules.

Serious rules.
 

If that wasn’t a reason to change direction…

But Koenraad wouldn’t be put off his course.
 

Moments later, the older shark was in sight. Working under the assumption that Darius had smelled and felt him, Koenraad slowed.
 

If it were up to Darius, he’d be the
only
Council member. But even Darius’s power and connections couldn’t reorder the shifter hierarchy. Sharks might agree to a set of rules and laws for the greater good, but they would never bow to a monarchy.

Koenraad bet that minor inconvenience bothered Darius to no end.

Darius was very close now.

He waited for Darius to acknowledge him, but the shifter seemed unaware of Koenraad’s presence. Koenraad slowly swam a bit closer.

Still nothing. Darius… didn’t see him?

Koenraad was lower in the water than Darius, and it occurred to him that he could attack the other shark. After all, he didn’t smell or sense any other shifters; there would be no witnesses.
 

How many problems would be solved if Darius disappeared?
 

A whole lot of them.

Without Darius’s sway, Victoria would surely leave Tureygua and likely never return. She’d accumulated enemies. Even though his moment of weakness had resulted in Brady, Koenraad had never liked Victoria. He’d tolerated her, and when she had relocated to Brazil, Koenraad had been much happier.
 

But it wasn’t until she’d threatened Monroe that he’d learned what true loathing felt like.

He circled under Darius. Even though he was a good forty feet away, Darius should have perceived him.

What was the shark doing out here, anyway? And where was his enormous yacht, filled with armed bodyguards?

The mere act of circling awoke Koenraad’s hunter instincts. It would be so easy to hurtle through the water, jaws wide. He could rip out Darius’s throat.
 

No Darius, no Victoria.

Monroe would be safe.
 

Brady, too, because as long as Victoria was in the area, there was always the chance she’d find out about Brady, either that Koenraad had located and been hiding their son, or that he was somewhere in the area.

Or that Brady had attacked a human, an offense punishable by death, no exceptions. There wasn’t a shred of proof at this point, but Victoria knew something had happened at Koenraad’s beachside mansion. She’d seen the copious amounts of blood, and she’d assumed that Koenraad had a dark secret, that he was killing and eating humans.

If he knew Victoria, she was surely trying to work through all the things she’d seen, trying to make sense of it.

If she ever figured out that Brady had something to do with it, Koenraad would never be free of her.

One bite.
 

He could drag Darius’s broken body into the
sick
. No one would find him there.

One mighty rush. Three seconds, and all his problems would be solved.