Cape Storm Page 0,82

looked like he could bite a metal bar and spit bullets. As rescuers went, not exactly comforting.

But I couldn't help but be relieved that the whole survival thing had been taken out of my hands.

"Hola,"the big guy - apparently, Josue - said, and aimed his machine pistol somewhere in the direction of a number of my more important internal organs. "Is your name Joanne Baldwin?"

I frankly stared at him. "What?"

"Yes or no, mermaid. Joanne Baldwin?" He had an interesting accent to his English - thick, not quite Spanish, more lyrical and unpredictable. Close cousins, though. Portuguese, maybe. "If you're not, I throw you back. I don't have room for pets."

"In that case I'm definitely Joanne." I swallowed another cough. "Somebody told you to look for me. Who?"

"Why? Enemies would have left you sucking water, eh? Must have been friends." He had a point. I couldn't imagine these guys doing anything without a profit motive, and I hadn't pissed off anyone bad enough to make them spend a lot of money to kill me. Easy enough to just let me drown.

Wait... that meant it was someone who'd known I would be in the water.

"You didn't come all the way out here to find me," I said. Josue raised his eyebrows and smiled, not in a comforting sort of way.

"Came for the salvage on the ship that went down," he said. "Stayed for the profits. You're worth a lot of money, mermaid."

"Alive, I guess."

He shrugged. "Apparently."

This ship was far from an honest sort of vessel. They'd picked up the maritime distress calls from the Grand Paradise - I assumed the captain had sent them - and of course the lifeboats would have transponders on them, probably sending out automated rescue calls.

And in these waters, that would draw two kinds of vessels: well-meaning Good Samaritans, and the kind of ship I'd just been fished onto.

In other words, pirates. And somebody had co-opted them to search specifically for me.

"Look!" said one of the crew, stationed at the railing. He called for light, and the beam burned out into the water, turning it from black to a muddy, sullen blue. At first I didn't see what he was looking at, and then I caught a glimpse of bobbing wood. A few bits of debris from the ship had followed the same currents I'd used. There was plenty of small, buoyant wreckage still around, though the debris cloud had long since dissipated and spread itself out over dozens of miles of open water. Not much of a grave for such an enormous vessel.

"Everybody get off?" the pirate captain asked me, and shoved me with the barrel of his gun when I delayed my answer. "Everybody in those little boats, yes?"

"You bet," I said. "Everybody's been rescued. Well, everybody but me, obviously." He seemed disappointed. I guessed he'd been hoping to fish out some rich Americans he could ransom back at a significant profit. I didn't blame him; I didn't look like a rich payday, regardless of what his patron had told him.

"How come you didn't end up on a rescue boat, mermaid? You not fresh enough?" A couple of his crewmates offered helpful commentary about how yummy I looked.

Charming. I was starting to feel like today's catch, still wiggling on the line.

I took a deep breath. That was a mistake; it resulted in more lung-wrenching coughing, and I spat up some more foam and mucus. "Let's just say I missed my boat," I said.

"What makes a woman stay behind when a boat is sinking?" he asked. It was a rhetorical question; he was showing off for his crew. "You have a kid on the ship?"

"No."

"Money, then." He flashed me a vulpine grin. "Always money."

"Speaking of money, who hired you to find me?"

The laughter died out on the man's face, and left it watchful and dangerous. "Don't think I want to tell you that," he said. "Not yet."

"Why?" I was starting to believe I'd been better off with the sharks.

"Americans, they're always talking about money. I give you money if you let me go. My family has money. I got important friends who will pay you. That sort of thing. They think they can buy their way out of anything." He gazed at me for a long, cold few seconds. "You don't offer nothing. That makes me nervous."

"Maybe I'm poor."

He snorted. "Even the poor offer. You don't even try to make a deal."

"Maybe I'm crazy."

He showed me teeth. "Maybe. Maybe you just think we won't hurt