R&R folks. Hope your week is more devoid of rude dummies than mine.
Chapter 13
"Masako Hara. You part from your name surprisingly easy for a secret agent."
The doll like girl rolled her eyes. "Please, sir, you demean me. Secret agent?"
Kazuya just mirrored her cold, dry smile. "There's always spy, a failure of one, at that."
"That is yet to be said."
Which was quite funny, seeing as Kazuya and Lin had tied her caterpillar style to a broken closet door. At the moment she was propped up in the tank room like some tiki pole. Every now and then her eyes would flash to the sloshing water within, where Mai had first been kept.
Scattered behind Lin and Kazuya was the rest of the crew, who were just there for the show.
"We should probably keep a watch on her," said Takigawa. "Take turns. No telling what she might do."
"That's a given," said Kazuya. "But I never said we were going to let her live."
A harsh, pregnant silence. He could feel the eyes of his new crew on his neck and didn't have to see their faces to register their horror.
A bit of water sloshed out from the tank as the boat sliced through a particularly big wave. Lin exchanged a glance with Kazuya before heading out to man the wheel.
"You're a school boy, not a killer," said Masako, though he didn't miss the shift in her gaze. She probably had heard of the last team sent after him and Mai. Little did she know that it was Mai's singing that had drowned them all, and it had been in self-defense after they had murdered another mermaid in front of her. Kazuya had only a limited hand in it.
But whether she knew that or not, he kept his hands relaxed and his expression cool as he ducked his head to meet her coal black eyes.
"I do what I have to, and you had intended to put a bullet to my head for a mermaid. I don't even think the softest of conscience will twitch at me shoving your nose into your brain should you try it again. My disarming you should tell you enough about my ability to go through with that threat, even for a professional like you."
Her elegant jaw tightened till he could see the tendon bulging from her neck. If possible, the girl's eyes went blacker till no shine reflected from them.
But it was Ayako who spoke up.
"Wait, did you just say mermaid?"
He was so tempted—so very tempted. But he could only push his luck so far with these people, when their trust of him was already tenacious at best.
"Yes, mermaid. She wanted to kill me when I couldn't tell her where a mermaid was."
A cruel smile broke across the china doll girl's face. "Now that's rich, where'd you pick up these planks, Shibuya? Walmart?"
"Hey, I'm at least Target class!" said Yasu, who had been unusually quiet through all of this.
"Hold on," said Takigawa, who also had been uncharacteristically quiet. "That girl of yours—is she…?"
"More or less."
Ms. Hara started to laugh. "Oh man, you really have lost her, haven't you? You weren't lying? Well, shit, guess I'll just be on my merry way, if you would—"
"No. I'd rather not. Triple A has enough guns on me that I can't see, I'd at least like to keep you in sight. Though that nose through the brain deal is still in force."
"What, so you're just going to leave me tied up like this?"
"Until we reach another port, yes, unless you want to be on your merry way in open ocean, then be my guest."
The girl groaned. "Aw man, how long was I out? Don't answer that, I'll take the plank. Next port, then?"
He gave a curt nod. She gave a weak smile.
"Maybe you're not as bad as you're trying to be, little nerd."
"Maybe. Let me know how it feels after three days."
Her eyes widened. "What? Are you kidding me? You can't treat a girl like this!"
"Not my fault you snuck on board on our way to the Bahamas. Now, if only you had just been more civilized."
She open and closed her mouth, not unlike the fish gawking looks Takigawa and Ayako had given him on their first meeting, but then she just settled for a cold, expressionless glower.
Without another word all of them but Ayako left, as she had volunteered herself to take the first watch. Apparently she had found some nail polish and wanted some time on her butt with it anyways.
Out in the sun and metallic waves, Yasu and Takigawa scurried to block his path to the control deck, where he had been planning on conducting a powwow of recent events with Lin. He barely had the time to glare before Yasu blurted out, "You weren't kidding when you said copy and paste a bad thriller novel, weren't you? You really think your girlfriend's a mermaid?"
Kazuya just raised an eyebrow at him. He didn't think. He knew. "What does that have to do with your job?"
"Well I am getting chased by the feds for it," he said with consternation. "But you can't be serious!"
"He is serious," said Takigawa, who had an entirely different air about him than the baffled Yasu. "Kazuya, look me in the eye and tell me it's true."
This was getting ridiculous. He had research to do. They still had to find the coordinates for where exactly in the Bermuda Triangle they wanted to search. "Look, I don't care what you think, but I don't make it a habit to lie. Also, I have a doctorate in essentially proving myths and fairytales wrong, so I would be the first to tell you if it wasn't true, so if you'd excuse me—"
"Woa, you have a doctorate?" Yasu eyed him in disbelief. "Just how old are you?"
But Takigawa had gone slack with surprise. "Wait, you're not the-THE Dr. Kazuya Shibuya, the one who proved all those shape shifter myths not true? The one Discovery channel did a documentary on?"
This caught Kazuya off guard. He hadn't expected any of them to have actually heard of him, famous scientist or not.
"What of it?" he asked.
Takigawa's jaw dropped, and he did another once over of him. "They said you were young, but…please tell me you just have a baby face."
"I'm eighteen."
"EIGHTEEN?" exclaimed Yasu and Takigawa in unison.
As usual, people's reactions to his age tended to rub him the wrong way. It was as though they expected all teenagers to be stupid and horny or something. Which just brought up the dream he had had of Mai the other night, but he didn't have time to argue with himself about his hormonal sanity. Stiffly excusing himself, he pushed through the gawking young men and marched up the stairs to the control room, where Lin stood at the helm with his attention to a yellow GPS on the dashboard.
"How soon would you say we could get rid of our unwanted guest?"
Lin didn't answer right away, but turned the wheel of the ship around till it satisfied him first. Kazuya was in no rush. The quiet company of Lin's was always welcoming.
"She is the symptom of a much bigger problem."
Kazuya was afraid he would say that. "As in how she was able to find us?"
Lin gave a noncommittal jerk of his head, which said he thought that was minimal, at best. "With technology as it is, especially with your satellite internet, getting found isn't that difficult. I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to download what you need before I toss the satellite off board."
"Lin, you can't do that, that thing is our radio too. What if we get into trouble?"
His assistant turned a flat look to Kazuya. What if indeed.
But if an assassin had already been sent after them, and if they had already connected the drowning of all those men to him—but there simply wasn't any proof. They couldn't do anything to them legally without proof.
But Triple A wasn't exactly legal territory, otherwise they wouldn't be situated just within the borders of Mexico.
Suddenly, it hit Kazuya what Lin was saying. If Triple A found them, they would kill them. Masako had already tried to attempt that, and it had probably been more luck on Kazuya's part that he turned out to be far stronger and better trained than she had anticipated.
All their communication equipment had to go.
"We can keep a very basic radio, the antenna is still salvageable," said Lin, as though trying to console his employer. "But it needs to be completely shut down, and we can never use it unless we really are about to die."
Because, odds were, Triple A would be the first ones to find them the moment they cried wolf.
Which also brought up another matter.
"We won't be able to dock at the Bahamas…will we?"
Lin said nothing, eyes forward.
Which troubled Kazuya more than having to throw off the satellite did. Sure they had enough food to last them for a month, and if they were conservative with their fuel, enough for about two weeks. The boat was designed to catch rain water, so they would probably be okay there too. But keeping someone as dangerous as Masako on board for that long—she was bound to wriggle out at some point.
"They can use her to locate us," said Lin.
"We could drop her off somewhere uninhabited—"
"And they'll find her, if they haven't already." This time, the look Lin gave to Kazuya was the closest thing to intimidating that he had ever gotten with his boss. "I would be surprised if she didn't have a tracking device under her skin."
Even though the first thing they had done was to strip her of her gear.
Kazuya's blood ran cold. His mouth went dry.
"I've never killed anyone," he whispered, and his own frailty made his insides writhe. "Can't we just drop her off somewhere?"
"They will find us," said Lin. "They could be here any moment if she does have a tracking device."
"But we don't know for sure, we should at least check first."
Lin sighed and turned back to the yellow GPS, his long hands settling back into their places on the wheel. After a few long, heavy quiet, in which Kazuya ambled to the corner of the cabin where he had last left his laptop, Lin locked the wheel, marked a map taped to the other side of the dash board, and turned the full brunt of his grimness to his boss.
"Your parents hired me to protect you, Kazuya. That will always be my first priority."
Kazuya didn't answer. He had nothing to say. Besides, he had to download all that he could before Lin knocked out the satellite.
When the door clicked shut behind him, Kazuya refocused on his computer.
'How could you.'
He shook his head. Mai wasn't here, and if he didn't let Lin do his job, he may never see her again anyways.
'Is that how you're justifying murder? You really are a heartless narcissist, aren't you?'
His knuckles locked. Of course she'd say something like that, but why did he have to hear her voice now of all times? Is this what happened when you were lonely? Or was it just another side effect of being hormonally sick in the head?
'It's self-defense,' he would tell her. 'It's either us or her.'
'You don't know that. You don't even know for sure if she's with them—you have no proof! All you have is Lin's guesses!'
He swallowed and pinched the bridge of his nose. He must be going mad. Mai wasn't here, that was final. Lin was the only one on this entire boat who knew how to survive in the twisted situation they had found themselves with. And it wasn't just himself and LIn he was responsible for anymore.
His knuckles wouldn't unlock on his keyboard. The article blazed white and black before him, devoid of shades of gray, just like Mai. She was so naïve. Right and wrong, love and hate, it was all so clear and bright to her in a colorless world.
He left his laptop on his chair and shot to his feet.
"Lin!"
He bounced off the railing and down the steps, where he could just see Lin vanishing through the doorway to the refurbished ballroom. He leaped off the last five steps and stumbled to his knees as a wave rocked the boat.
A shrill shriek sent his hair on end.
"Get off of me, you little bitch!"
If you've managed to get a copy of my book "Out of Duat," please pretty please leave a review on Amazon! I'm really hurting for reviews. . Though I'm also just really grateful you're taking time out of your lives to read 'The Mermaid and Her Boy.'