Page 77 of Shark’s Pride

At last, he spoke again. “Once we turned on the lights…we found close to four hundred piranhas in the pool. Well, give or take. We couldn’t get an actual count.”

“Piranhas?” Though I got the word out in one croaking try, the syllables didn’t settle totally into my comprehension. “You—You mean…like…little fish with big teeth and killer appetites?” Images bombarded my mind. In Southern California, there were a lot of them, from the comical to the dramatic, used to market everything from surfboards to microbrews to yoga pants. But never the real things. Not that I knew of, anyway. And certainly not in a backyard swimming pool.

Slapping my hands to my burning cheeks, I asked, “Who’d do such a thing? Who’d even think of it?”

Sebastian surged to his feet. “That’s what I’ve got Elijah working on,” he explained while retrieving the pitcher of sangria and refilling our glasses. “And I’ve authorized him to hire a team to help out. These fuckers won’t be able to hide under their rocks for too much longer.”

I took a long and grateful gulp of the fruity wine. My shock-parched senses needed it. “I—I thought that was a myth…piranhas attacking humans. So they really do?”

“Yes and no. Apparently humans aren’t their prey of choice. But if you starve them long enough and then chum the water with blood, it gets them on the scent. Then they’ll attack anything.” Sebastian paused to look out over the yard.

“Oh my God.” I dropped my hands to cover my mouth. I was suddenly really thankful he’d held off on starting dinner. “Did…did you see them…doing it? To her? Was she still…”

“Alive?” he filled in. “No.” While there was no repeat shiver, his tension remained tangible. “By the time we turned on the lights, there was nothing…significant…left.”

Crazy as it sounded, a spike of hope hit me, and I pushed to my feet. “How can we be certain it was Tawny’s body, then?”

Just as quickly, Bas quashed my momentum. It wasn’t deliberate, but his gravity wasn’t dubious. “Some bones and teeth were trapped in the pool’s filter,” he disclosed. “And the forensics team had enough to match DNA with some items they collected from the pool house.”

After a minute of stunned silence, I could finally speak again. “She’s really dead?”

“It would appear so. For real this time.”

I sat—fell?—back into the cushions of the fireside chair. “Wow.”

“Yeah.” Sebastian stayed on his feet. His energy turned nervous, like a rainstorm ready to burst from a black cloud. “Wow.”

“I bet you had a lot of explaining to do.” That definitely clarified why he hadn’t come upstairs until nearly four in the morning.

“A bit, since the cops thought they’d closed the Tawny Mansfield file after they thought she ‘dived’ off the Vincent Thomas bridge.” After air quoting his verb, he drove his hands into the deep pockets of his track pants. “But it was a lot less drama than I expected. I don’t know; maybe the evidence they had from the Vincent Thomas incident had been flimsy all along. It also helped to have Elijah with me while they asked their questions.”

“Why is that, do you think?”

“For one thing, he knows just about everyone on the police force. For another, not many people fuck with him. He knows how to answer questions in ways that don’t leave much room for follow-ups. When that doesn’t work, that bastard can charm his way out of a paper sack.”

I absorbed that in silence since it made complete sense—though it was the only factor about all this that truly seemed to. All this new information was dizzying.

“Where does this leave us now?” I asked pointedly. “Do you have any idea who would do something like this?”

Bas’s face darkened. “Still none,” he muttered. “And yet, several hundred—which is why I’ve got Elijah hiring a small army.” He shook his head. “I’ve pissed off a lot of people over the years, baby. This could be any one of them.”

“Or it could be none.”

“Either way…” He faced me fully, his demeanor as inscrutable as what he’d just said. “I’m concerned, Abbigail. Deeply concerned.”

I shook my head, refocusing from thoughts that had gone a thousand directions at once. “Of course you are. I get that.”

“No. I don’t think you do.”

I tilted my head in question.

“Because what—who—I’m most concerned about…is you.”

“Me?” For some reason, or maybe for a thousand of them, it was difficult to keep my voice calm. “I…I don’t understand. You’ve got this person—or these people—doing all this crazy shit to you, and—”

“What about you?” he cut in. “What about your safety right now, Abbigail?”

“I still don’t understand.”