Page 26 of Shark Bait

I try to speak, but I’ve lost my voice because when I find a corner, I slide down the wall and sit on the cold floor. When I’m quiet, nobody will hurt me. They forget about me, which is good, very good, forgotten is good. But the woman needs my help. And I can barely speak. “N—No,” I try to say, but no sound comes out.

Shark’s on his own.

He’s breathing hard, blinking, clearly trying to contain himself, and the woman’s terrified expression might just haunt me forever.

Luckily, Shark is a professional. He steps back and puts his weapon away, then looks from me to the woman, whose wide eyes and open mouth tell me she’s in shock.

“What happened?” he asks.

The woman’s shaking her head.

“It’s my fault,” I say, finding my voice again. “I didn’t realize someone else was in the bathroom. When she came out, I screamed.”

He looks her up and down. “I’m sorry about the confusion. Are you local?”

The woman nods. “I own the coffee shop here at the airport.”

“Thank God.” Shark relaxes his shoulders. “This is a friend of the Angelini family. When she screamed, I assumed she was in trouble. You understand?”

The woman nods, and when he opens the door for her, she rushes outside.

He offers me a hand. I take it and mouthI’m so sorryas I rise.

We walk out and are moving toward the exit when Shark stops to cup my face, forcing me to look up into his normally warm brown eyes that seem hard and lifeless now. It’s the same look I saw when I first saw him on the yacht. It’s the look of a cold-blooded killer, the person he becomes when he works. It’slifeless and soulless, unlike the Shark I know, who showed me kindness.

“You will need to ease back into society,” he says. “Screaming and startling every time someone approaches you is dangerous. For both of us. You draw attention to yourself and to me. Let’s work on that, because I doubt I could pull back every time. I make fast decisions and kill quickly. I won’t always sense or read the room correctly, which…can lead to innocent casualties. Those attract the noise of the press, which makes everything more complicated. Do you understand?”

The guy’s smarter than he lets on. “Yes, Shark.”

He smiles. “I like it when you call me that.”

“It stuck, didn’t it?” I rise onto my toes and kiss his lips. “I like how you let me kiss you whenever I want.” He’s dangerous and approachable at the same time. It’s an attractive combination that I can’t seem to get enough of. “Don’t forget what you owe me.”

A whistle sounds, and Shark drops his hands from my face, only to intertwine our fingers and pull me out of the airport in the sunshine, where the humidity reminds me of that one summer Mom and Dad decided we should all drive down to Dunedin, Florida, for my aunt Emmy Sue’s wedding. My oldest brother suggested flying, but my parents couldn’t afford seven airline tickets.

We piled into Dad’s van, and they shoved me in the back, where I got sick three times into a plastic grocery bag before Daddy moved me into the front passenger seat next to him. But then Mom started to get car sick in the back, with Carl and Simon following right behind her.

All that happened before the tire blew in the middle of the highway. He replaced it and pulled up into a parking lot for some rest but in the lot some random almost hit our car. I remember Daddy prayed to God he doesn’t shoot the idiot.

We barely made it to the wedding reception, which Mom and I attended with our hair in tight buns instead of nicely done in waves cascading down our backs as we’d talked about. Mom only applied mascara and lip gloss for makeup. She cried the entire time because she never got to do her nails, but that’s okay because the groom’s mother thought my mom was crying because she was so happy that Emmy Sue was marrying her son.

I was seven and didn’t cry. I only wanted a piece of wedding cake.

Recalling these past events, the ones I remember that brought me joy with my family, helps me cope with what arriving here reminds me of. It reminds me of last summer when I arrived overseas and met up with Tracy, a girl who disappeared the moment I walked into my hotel room, not knowing I’d stay here for months before I woke up on Fis’s yacht.

I don’t recall stopping until Shark says, “You’re freezing up again.”

I blink. “Freezing up?”

He nods, but he’s looking not at me, but rather everywhere around me. “Did you see someone you recognize?”

“This place reminds me of Italy is all.” Please don’t tell me we’re near Rome. The name of the airport sounds Italian.

He looks down at me. “What about it is making you freeze up?”

“I met…a man in Rome.” I wish Shark would let it go, but I understand why he’s asking.

“The baby’s father?”

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