Page 2 of Get Kraken

“You’ve got to be shitting me. You’re making me work with a squid who is also acivilian?” The word tasted dirty on his mouth. He practically spat after saying it.

A civilian. An added responsibility on his shoulders while he chased a killer. If anything happened to her, he would be haunted by it for the rest of his life.

“There’s not many out there like her. She might be the draw we need to pull the killer out.”

“I don’t believe this.”

“Your job will be to shadow her. Stay down low while she swims higher up. Keep her safe, and if anyone suspicious approaches while she hunts for crab, collects seashells or whatever, intervene.”

“And if she’s attacked? If anything happens to her, that’s going to be on my conscience, you know that, right?”

“And mine.” Mike heard the deadly seriousness tone to Jack’s voice, but he couldn’t appreciate it. Not when this was already so heavy. “Mike, I want this guy caught. I wouldn’t take a risk like this with her if there was another choice, but Fedya Afanasi’s team is on the trail of a trafficking operation, and now the AILE has handed down three different cases that could potentially link up with it. We have to do everything we can to stop this.”

He was right, about the need to stop the disappearance of the women, but Mike still disagreed with his methods. “Having someone with wet feet,you know what I mean, is the last thing we need if this is our trafficker.”

“A kraken shifter is a major asset. She’s just what you need with you on the Scotland shores.”

“Come on, what do I know about Scotland?” His Texas twang should have made that point for him.

Jack ignored the comment. “Chase will be there for surveillance and backup.” Mike would be in the water, though, hiding at deeper, darker depths, where he could sense the approach of most anything with a pulse. “And you’ll be there, doing your best scary-looking motherfucker shit. When in your shark shape.”

Mike definitely caught the way he said that. “Thank you.It’s nice to know my talents will be going toward babysitting.”

“We’ll get her ready. We’ve used civilian volunteers before for stings.”

“Those were different.”

“How so?” The sharp-eyed look Jack gave him suggested the boss didn’t give a shit how they could be different, and he was seconds away from throwing Mike’s ass right out of the office.

But Mike couldn’t stop himself. “We’ve used civilian actors in situations where we could have them wired up with mics and followed by dozens of cameras while we waited for the suspect. It doesn’t matter how good Chase is, communication and surveillance are going to be heavily limited two hundred feet down in murky waters.”

“Which is why I need you to cooperate with me on this.”

Motherfucking, manipulating, cocksucking asshole.

“All right, fine.” He might as well give in since he never got his way around here. “When do I meet Ursula?”

“Right now.” Jack gestured to the door opening behind Mike

Damn it.Mike spun around, pissed that he hadn’t sensed someone there. Christ. Had she heard him?

But then she stepped inside, and Mike got a full look at her, and he got a fullsmellof her.

He got a fulleverythingofher.

She was…definitely not like Ursula.

The blood-red hair seemed more akin to Ariel than anything else. She was pale, almost ghostly so, which was normal for most merfolk who spent a lot of their time underwater.

She looked more delicate and, dare he think it,etherealthan what any octopus shifter, let alone akrakenhad any right to be.

This willowy, delicate beauty was supposed to be a fearsome kraken? A descendant of the great monster of the sea feared by many a sailor?

…one of the creatures who had torn off half his face when he was a kid.

She looked right at him, bright green eyes shimmering as though the waves of a sun-kissed ocean danced within them, and Mike’s gut clenched. The intensity of the contraction inside his body felt more like a punch to his stomach than anything else.

He’d never liked freckles before. Now he realized just how much he was really into them.

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