Get kraken, p.1
Get Kraken, page 1
part #1 of Sea Shifter Protectors Series
Get Kraken
Federal Paranormal Unit
Mandy Rosko
MT Worlds Press
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Federal Paranormal Unit World
About the Author
Also by Mandy Rosko
Other FPU books with characters featured in this story
1
“I don’t need a partner.”
“Actually, you do. You need someone a lot prettier than you for effective bait, unless you want to put a wig on that huge fin of yours, slap on a bikini, and go splashing around in the water on your own.”
Mike Stone knew his boss wasn’t making a dig at his looks, though he could see it on the man’s face that he was cringing a little on the inside for the comment.
The crooked scar that ran down half of Mike’s face was enough to get most people who didn’t know him to stare. It was enough to make a few of the people who did know him to stare at times.
He was lucky he still had use of both of his eyes, but deep scarring on his right cheek, the crooked set to his mouth, and the red lines that raked down half his face didn’t make him the best looking guy in the world.
But he didn’t give a shit about his looks, and he was glad his boss didn’t make some kind of casual apology for his words either.
Honestly, it would have been insulting. Mike didn’t work for the Aquaterrestrial Task Force, a department of the Federal Paranormal Unit, because he got his feelings hurt easily.
If he did, then he wouldn’t deserve to be there in the first place.
“You’re getting a new partner.” Jack Williams wasn’t budging.
“FPU already sent Chase down. We were supposed to handle this on our own.”
“Chase is here for the communications and surveillance. You still need a female. That’s what the killer wants. This woman is a mer shifter, can shift just her bottom half when needed. She’s also got a few natural skills on her side that will make it harder for anyone to do anything with her if something happens while you’re at a distance.”
“What could another mermaid do to this guy? He’s already killed six of them.” Mike pictured the traditional fish-tailed beauty. It was a shame what was happening to them, but he didn’t know what special skills could help this new one get the better of the killer.
“She’s not a mermaid. Not specifically.”
Mike frowned. To this day, the action pulled at the scarring where his right eyebrow used to be.
“She’s a kraken shifter. Think Ursula—”
“I know what that means.” Mike really didn’t have the time for this. “Where did you find her?”
“She came to us. Offered her services when it got out the killer was leaving suction cup marks and digging their claws into the victims.”
Mike popped his knuckles. “So she’s saying she came in because she thinks the killer is one of her kind. And we’re sure she’s cleared? That she didn’t do it?”
Though it was a worthless question to ask. Of course, their department would do a complete and thorough background check into anyone working for them, but especially one who could fit the description of a killer.
“She’s got alibi; work-related and social activities. Phone traces ping to towers confirming her location, and none of her tentacles match any of the marks we pulled off any of the victims. Whoever this is, is much bigger than her.”
Fuck. Of course the bastard would have gone through every step. Dotted every i and crossed all the t’s.
“You know I don’t like those types.”
“Mike.”
“You know exactly what my issue is with this, too, so don’t go pretending this is something you don’t understand.”
Jack nodded. The man carried himself with an air of self-confidence, more assured than stubborn. He knew what he wanted, and he’d already made up his mind, and there was nothing Mike could do that would change it for it.
Bastard.
“You’re going to meet her in an hour. She’s a volunteer, and we need her. You’re here to do a job, and you’re either going to do it or be reassigned.”
Mike was pretty sure his ears began to ring. The ridiculousness of those words… they couldn’t be real. “She… What? What do you mean she’s a volunteer?”
“No formal training, but we’re going to give her a week, a crash course in what we do around here and what her role will be, then we’re putting her out in the field with you and a few other men.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me. You’re making me work with a squid who is also a civilian?” 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 FPU 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 full smell of her.
He got a full everything of her.
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, ethereal than what any octopus shifter, let alone a kraken had 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.
She was his new ideal type of woman.
Perfection.
And then he knew. The knowledge came suddenly and with little warning. Without a shadow of a doubt, he knew it, and it made him want to curse Jack to hell and back all over again.
Fuck him sideways.
This was his mate.
“Hi, I’m Olivia Gray,” she said, holding out her slim hand to him. She didn’t hesitate or pause while looking at his face in a way that suggested she was disgusted or shocked by his looks.
Mike figured she’d probably been briefed on his looks bef
Indeed, he was.
Jack nodded approvingly. “Good. Mike Stone will be underwater with you while you’re all fishing for anything suspicious. Mike, you’ll be glad to know Olivia’s already met Chase.”
“Have you?”
She nodded, looked down, and pushed a long strand of red hair behind her ear. “Yeah.”
His senses immediately went haywire. What had Chase said to her? Something she didn’t like?
Jack cleared his throat. “It’s going to be an awkward situation, but we’re short-staffed and we can’t let this opportunity pass. And Chase insisted he could work through it.”
Mike frowned. “Work through what? What’s the problem with Chase?”
Olivia wet her lips, clearly uncomfortable, but speaking through it. “Chase Belair…he and I saw each other, and…it looks like we’re each other's mates. He doesn’t want to be reassigned now that he knows me, and since I’m the only kraken shifter around to make this work, the FPU wants to continue to use me.”
Mike didn’t hear much of anything else that came after the word mate. “Chase is your mate? You’re saying you looked at him and knew he was your mate?”
Olivia looked him right in the eyes, and he wasn’t getting the sense that she felt anything remotely similar for him. “Yes. He’s my mate.”
Son of a bitch.
2
Not again. This couldn’t be happening again, and Olivia refused to believe that any god could hate her that much.
Even she couldn’t be so unlucky.
Not one mate, but two.
How could she have two? Did her species mate more than once? Take multiple partners?
Olivia didn't think so.
She knew very little about the kraken kind. Of that knowledge, one thing she knew for certain was that they tended to die shortly before their eggs hatched.
Hence why Olivia grew up as an orphan. She'd never even met another kraken.
The fact that both of these mates were in the prime of their lives, perfect age to start having kids, wasn’t what Olivia had hoped for when she signed on to help catch a creep who was kidnapping and killing women.
If she had sex with her mates, would she get pregnant or lay eggs?
And would she die before they had the chance to hatch?
Mike Stone smiled at her, but it looked steely and not exactly sincere. “You mated with Chase? Isn’t that lucky? I've heard of people who find their mates by complete chance, but this, huh, it’s really something.”
“Yeah, crazy, right?” Olivia tried to smile back at him, but it only left her mouth feeling stiff.
The worst part of it all was the way she’d only barely stopped herself from swan diving into Chase Belair’s arms. It was as though the scent of his musk was enough to make her into some kind of primal animal in heat.
Chase had looked at her with intense gray eyes like he wanted to eat her up, and she’d wanted to let him.
Then she was directed out of the room, her hand still burning from when she’d shaken Chase’s hand, and into another room where she found another male who made her blood sing, her heart pulse, and her sex swell and fill with moisture.
The water gods so hated her.
“Mike, this is for you.” Jack held out a folder to Mike, who turned away from her, though he seemed to do so hesitantly. He took the folder, flipped it open, and then shut again quickly.
“Jesus, are you kidding me?”
“She's going to see it soon enough. We've already shown her some of the tamer photos.”
Mike glanced back at her, his eyes intense and searching. “You have?”
Olivia steeled herself, lifting her chin just a little. “Yes. I know this killer is someone like me.”
“Allegedly,” Mike said quickly. “We don't know that for certain yet.”
Olivia nodded. She didn't want to argue with the people in the room who had more experience than her and knew more of the case than she did. She was here to help in any way she could, but it was probably best to leave the investigating side of things to them. “Right, yes, allegedly, sorry. Anyway, it's most likely someone like me. I asked to see the photos.”
They started her off with the less horrible ones, hoping to ease her in, but she thought she was ready to jump straight in.
Before Mike could say anything else, there was a soft knock at the door.
“Hey, just checking in.”
Chase.
Oh no, what if he sensed what was happening in the room?
Olivia couldn't ignore the way Mike and Chase stared at each other. Chase tilted his head just a little. Barely enough for anyone else to notice, but for Olivia, sirens might as well have been blaring in the room.
They noticed. And now they were proceeding to size each other up like men did whenever they were fighting over a piece of meat. Which wasn’t such a far-out idea, when you considered that Chase was a male harpy, and Mike was supposed to be a shark of some sort.
Chase placed a hand on her am in greeting, sending an immediate surge of sexual desire through her. That was something she couldn't help, regardless of how innocent it was. Otherwise, she wasn’t sure how she felt, being in the middle of these two men.
"You're going to be swimming in the deep with her. Can I count on you to keep my mate safe?" Again, the casual observer might not have noticed the way Chase put emphasis on the word mate, but Olivia sure as hell did.
Christ, if she caught it, did Jack notice? It was sort of his job to be aware of those things, wasn't it?
It was starting to look as though the little muscles beneath Mike's eyes were beginning to twitch. "Yeah, I think I can keep an eye on her and make sure nothing happens. Hell, all this worry might be for nothing. One of the other teams might end up catching this guy before we do. It's a big ocean."
Chase grinned, and he looked right at Olivia. “You see? Nothing to worry about, and if something were to happen—”
“Which is unlikely," Mike added.
"Just swim up to the surface, and I'll pluck you right out of the water if I have to.
Olivia nodded, hoping that their posturing had some real promise of protection under it. “Sounds good."
She was annoyed that Mike and Chase were having a silent dick measuring contest while she was worried about what would happen if she ran into another kraken.
"Riiiiiiiight,” Jack clearly sensed something was off with the frequency in the room and wanted to be free from it. “The three of you can get acquainted with each other. You have one week. Olivia, spend some time getting to know what to expect, and we’ll have some of our other team members working with you too, to get you prepped."
"Yes, sir. I’m fully prepared to face what I need to in order to help. The gruesome photos, the long hours. I know I’m not a trained agent, but you can count on me to give everything I can to this mission.” She ignored Mike and Chase, focusing on the boss, Jack, and hoping she was doing a good job of convincing him that she was confident and capable.
“Glad to hear it.” Jack took a moment to look at each of them, one after the other, before continuing. “This mate thing between Chase and Olivia presents a conflict of interest situation, but the higher-ups have okayed us to continue. If I swapped teams and had someone else with Olivia that would just leave Chase distracted, worrying about her, so this is our best option, as long as all three of you are sure you won’t let it get in the way of this investigation. Do you understand?”
They all spoke together. "Yes.”
“Good, so Chase? If I even get so much as a hint that you’re affected in any way that hinders this mission, then I will replace you. No leaving your post because you feel like you have to protect her. While she’s in the water with Mike, acting as bait for the FPU, you do what you’re assigned to do so you don’t put her life, or Mike’s, in danger. Got it?”
Chase stood a little taller. "I understand perfectly. I would be the first one wanting me to be reassigned if I was in any way going to be less than professional or do anything to put either of their lives in danger." He sounded as though he meant it, as though the whole dick measuring thing had never even happened.
