“Oh. I don’t know. They are not fish, not mammal, not people. They’re other. But I can try. I will try.” She set her jaw. “It would help.”
“An early-warning system. Otherwise, we do what we’ve done?” Sawyer glanced around the table. “Buddy system, stick together, do the work. If things get too dicey, I can shift us. We should have a secondary location. If we have to travel from the water, we’d come here, but if we have to travel from here?”
“How about Monte Tiberio?” Riley suggested. “High ground.”
“If that works, I’ll get the coordinates. Meanwhile.”
Sawyer took out the compass, opened the bronze case.
When he set it on the map, it glowed, shimmered in place on Capri. But didn’t move.
“Gotta work for it,” he said, and pocketed it again.
“I’ll start just that.” Bran rose. “Bullets, bolts, and blades. And bracelets. Interesting.”
“I’ll dig into research. See if I can find out anything about sighs, songs, more underwater caves.” Riley pushed to her feet. “Do you want the map?” she asked Doyle.
“Maybe later.”
“I’ll get dinner started.” Sasha pushed a loose pin back into her bundled-up hair. “Can you help, Annika?”
“Yes, I like to help.”
When Sasha and Annika went inside, Doyle leaned back with his beer, looked at Sawyer. “Happiest siren I’ve ever seen. Nobody would blame you for moving on that.”
“She doesn’t . . . I don’t think she gets that. It. It’s like hitting on somebody’s little sister. From Venus.”
“Looks all grown-up to me, but your call. How about we take a walk, past the grove. See what, if anything, we might want to fortify.”
“Good thought.”
While they ate under the stars, Andre Malmon adjusted h
is formal tie. He expected the evening ahead to be a tedious bore, but duty called. He rarely answered when duty called, already regretting doing so now.
Still, there was a potential for new contacts at this dull charity affair. Contacts were never boring. He wanted something new, something exciting.
So little excited him these days.
What hadn’t he done, after all? What hadn’t he seen? What couldn’t he have simply by flicking his fingers?
His last two adventures—he never called them jobs, though he charged exorbitant fees for his services—had barely amused him. So little challenge.
The woman he was currently seeing had begun to annoy him just by existing, as did the whore he used for more inventive play. He expected he’d dispose of them both very soon.
He had offers pending, of course, but none stirred his juices. Murder? Easily done, but he no longer killed for a fee—unless the kill offered him personal pleasure.
Theft? Sometimes intriguing, but again why steal for someone else? He’d rather steal for himself—and couldn’t, at the moment, think of a single thing worth the effort.
Kidnappings, brainwashings, mutilations. Ho-hum.
Of course there was the standing offer of fifty million for a unicorn, or its horn.
Money couldn’t buy sanity.
If he got bored enough, he might take the time and effort to have a fake horn fabricated. But that was scraping the barrel clean.
He passed a hand over his hair—gilded blond, perfect waves around a handsome face with a sharply sculpted mouth, a thin nose, and deceptively quiet blue eyes.