Page 6 of Shark Bait

I laugh. “You’re making jokes now.”

“I’m not trying to be funny.”

“Fair enough.” I parrot his words back at him. “Just don’t get the three of us killed, Daddy.”

When he groans at me calling him Daddy again after he told me I shouldn’t, I turn back to the stove with a smile. After the months of captivity, I learned how to talk to violent men, andthis man, while violent, lets me tease him. Around him, I can laugh.

THREE

THE LOLLIPOP THIEF

SHARK

Taking apart the burner phone reveals an explosive device with a highly sophisticated trigger, one even Niksha would have a difficult time procuring and assembling. It also tells me someone distributed booby-trapped phones with the intent to execute the crew.

The trigger is set remotely and can’t be set off by anything the user would do. If Fis dialed a certain number or messaged someone using a particular string of words, nothing would happen. The only time the device would detonate was if someone remotely activated it.

If the people Fis worked for set him up by contacting Alessio with the coordinates he dispatched to me, maybe that was them calling the phone to be sure I finished the job. The hiring party gets no reports on what I did or didn’t do until Alessio contacts them, and he won’t do that until I get back to the base.

I’m curious about the caller, but since I can’t allow an externally controlled explosive on the yacht, and I can’t destroy it because they’d likely know, and I want access to the burner in case they call again, I reroute the trigger to our remote servers, which Valerina controls.

The lollipop thief napped after eating twice as many pancakes as I did. Now, she’s lying on the couch under a gray blanket, twirling her golden hair while watching a reality show on TV.

I sit by her legs. “Thing about the…” I pause when she sits up and balls her hands into fists. Understanding her fear of me, I move to the chair.

Her gaze follows my movement. “Oh hey, it’s you,” she says as if she just remembered where she is and who she’s with.

Poor thing. “Normal life will take some getting used to,” I tell her as I flip open the burner phone. “But you’ll get there.”

“Will I?”

I nod. “I promise.” I can’t really make her such a promise, but she needs to hear it. Besides, I need her to trust me and warm up to me so she can get more comfortable telling me everything she heard and saw during her time in captivity. I presume it was captivity because of her “good riddance” comment regarding the gang the sharks consumed. If that didn’t clue me in, the breakfast she made me after I executed Fis and Co. would have.

She decorated my pancakes with a smiley face made of whipped cream.

The thief leans her elbow on the armrest, tucks her feet under her, and sets a pillow over her middle.

I open my mouth to speak, but her attention drifts back to the big screen.

“Hold that thought,” she says, facing the TV. “Karnian just rang a bell, okay? Thing is, he’s standing at the blue door that looks like the same door his girlfriend, Sammy, walked through this morning when she was supposed to be going to work.”

“You can pause the TV,” I suggest.

“I know, I know. Hold on.”

I guess I’m on pause instead. Okay, then. I turn toward the TV and watch the man, Karnian, discover that his girlfriend ischeating on him with his wife. I can see why our complicated and potentially life-threatening real-life situation took a back seat to the drama unfolding on the TV.

The man’s running down the street, his wife chasing him. Uh-oh, he lost his shoe. The man stops and returns for the shoe.Are you kidding me?But the wife picks up the sneaker first and starts hitting him with it.

He deserved it for coming back for the shoe when being chased by his wife.

The lollipop thief starts to laugh, and I find myself admiring her resilience while recalling that when Alessio found me, I was barely clinging to life. After I healed physically, it took me almost a decade to learn how to laugh again.

Her resilience is different from mine. My resilience is brute force of character, something I think I was born with, but hers is flexibility. Like a bunny, she hops from one situation to the next with ease. This adaptability strikes me as…attractive. And that’s not the only thing about this girl I find attractive. In fact, she’s one of the prettiest women I’ve ever seen, her Southern accent making her almost irresistible. Almost.

Restraint is a skill of mine, after all.

She shuts off the TV and turns to me, a big smile on her face. “Thing about what?”

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