When I awoke the morning after I fucked her, my heart was already pumping adrenaline into my system. I justknewshe did something to fuck me over. And when I found her gone, my fear was cemented.
It took me the rest of the day to figure out what she did. Nothing was missing from my wallet, and my safe went untouched. It wasn’t until I went into my office and found the bottom desk drawer unlocked that I knew she had pulled something.
Nothing was missing, and I couldn’t figure out what she was up to for several days. That is, until I looked at my credit report and discovered I had a new credit card on it. One that I didn’t fucking open.
The bitch stole my goddamn identity.
It’s been a few weeks since that happened, and since then, I’ve been calling to see the charges on my account. She hasn't blown through the money as I expected, but there's still time. For the life of me, I can’t figure out what her angle is.
Can’t figure out my own either, considering I haven’t brought myself to freeze the account and call the authorities.
Yet.
The anger coursing through my system is fucking astounding. If I didn't possess control over my emotions, it would’ve been dangerous for me to get in the water today.
Sharks can feel when we're anything but relaxed. An elevated heart rate would be the equivalent to strapping seal guts to my body and going for a swim.
I’m furious enough to take on a two-ton animal, and though I can’t promise myself I’d win, I’d put up a really good fucking fight. Problem is, I don’twantto fight a shark.
What I want to do is throttle the little siren that tricked me.
Christ, and to think for one fucking second, I thought I might actually want to see her again.
I force her from my mind, for now, focusing on the beauty before me. She darts to the left, thrashing her tail a little and throwing me a tad off-balance.
Down here, it’s where I feel most calm—swimming alongside Mother Nature’s fiercest creation.
I run my hand alongside her fin, coaxing her back into a relaxed state.
Slowly, I slide up the side of her body and toward her mouth, continuing to pet her as I do. She’s a fourteen-footer and bulky, too. Covered in mating scars, which gives me hope for research. It’s not very often we find females mature enough to give birth.
Keeping a close eye on her body language, I snag the plastic and slowly slide it off her tooth. Then I release her fin, letting her swim out of my hold while I aim for the ladder to the enclosure ten feet away. The second my head pops out of the water, I find my research partner, Troy, crouching down at the ladder, waiting for me.
“You good, Zo?”
I hate when he calls me that.
His red, curly hair is piled into a bun today, the freckles smattered across every inch of his face, prominent beneath the blue light.
“Stop calling me that, asshole,” is my response.
“Well, you’ve been stomping around the place all day. Surprised she didn’t take a bite out of you. I was expecting to have to get the net and fish out your limbs today.”
“Watch me throw you in so I can fish out yours instead,” I retort, pulling myself out of the water while ensuring to splatter Troy as I do. He only chuckles, used to my attitude by now.
“She good to go yet?” Troy asks, referring to the shark circling in the massive enclosure.
A few years ago, I built this research center from the ground up—Vitale Oceanic Research for Selachians. It’s my life’s work and something I’ve been privileged to do since I got the funding for it from the government.
It’s a massive lab built a few hundred miles off the shoreline. The only way to get here is by boat or helicopter—one of my favorite things about being out here. It’s an oasis.
The surface is made up of mostly all boardwalks surrounding the four enclosures where we bring the sharks into. There’s a platform for helicopters to land—sometimes other scientists travel here to learn about what we’ve gathered—and a dock for the boats. Below the surface is where the research is conducted.
Not much is known about mating rituals for great whites, and I’ve spent my entire career trying to learn as much as possible about it. We bring them in every so often to conduct our research and then immediately release them with tags attached to their fins so we can hopefully gain insight into something humans know very little about.
“Yup,” I say.
“You’re a sourpuss today—more than usual. What stingray barb got lodged up your ass?”