Blood in the Water (14 page)

Her mother sighed. “You’re an adult, and I can’t honestly think of a single reason to object, other than how fast things are moving. And it
is
fast. When’s the wedding?”

“We haven’t set a date,” Koenraad said. “We’re not in any hurry.”

We’re not?
Monroe wanted to ask, but she held her tongue; she knew what Koenraad was doing, and she appreciated that he was smoothing things over.

Her mother looked dubious, and Monroe knew exactly what she was thinking: Koenraad could change his mind about getting married at any time, and Monroe would be stuck in a foreign country and no support network.

The possibility of Koenraad leaving her was so far from the truth that it was laughable.
 

So she told her mom about the plans for grad school while they finished eating their desserts.

After dinner, Koenraad reserved two tickets for a show.
 

“You’re not coming?” Monroe whispered. Her mother was just in the other part of the suite, and the door was open.

“Come with me,” he whispered, and he grabbed one of the room keys and pulled her into the hallway.
 

Monroe leaned against the wall. She could feel the bumpy textured wallpaper on the back of her arms and shoulders. “Yes, dear?”

Koenraad slid his sunglasses on top of his head. “This goes against every ounce of good judgment that I have, but the truth is that I want you with me, so yes, please come. Nothing would make me happier. I just ask that you promise to do me one favor. If you get tired of being out there, of living that life, you’ll admit it.”

Surprised, she nodded. “It’s a deal.”

“We need to leave tomorrow,” he said. “I promised Brady, and it seemed to calm him. Maybe that’s wishful thinking, but I can’t keep drugging him. It makes me feel…” He didn’t finish the thought, but Monroe could imagine. “I know your mother’s plane doesn’t leave until the evening, so I’m going to take Brady in the morning and will arrange to have you brought out to me.”

“That will work.”
 

The door opened, and her mother cautiously leaned into the hallway. She blinked in confusion when she saw them, and Monroe knew they looked like they were plotting something.
 

“What are you two doing out here?” She shook her head. “Never mind. It’s not my business.”

“I’m being pulled away on a personal matter,” Koenraad said. “It’s going to take up most of my day tomorrow, so I’ll have to say goodbye to you in the morning.”
 

Her mother blinked, and Monroe suddenly realized that Koenraad had forgotten to put his glasses back on.

But her mother wasn’t wearing glasses, either.
 

“Ok. Have a good night if I don’t see you when you get back.” She disappeared back into the room and the door closed.

“She barely noticed my eyes,” Koenraad reassured her.
 

Monroe’s pulse fluttered. “Barely?”

“If she was freaking out, I’d know. There was mild surprise, but that’s it. You might want to just tell her that it’s a congenital condition. Get ahead of it.”

Monroe hadn’t thought of that, but it made sense.

She walked Koenraad to the elevators and started kissing him goodbye. Then she found herself on the elevators with him.

When he stepped off, Dunphy got on to ride back up with her.

“How did you know?” she asked. She held up a hand. “You know what? Never mind. I can guess the answer.”

Then she went to the hotel room. Something told her she was about to find out exactly what her mother thought of Koenraad.

It took her a few minutes to find her mother, who was
naked
in the hot tub on the balcony. Monroe glanced around in surprise, looking for potential witnesses.

“Don’t get your panties in a twist,” her mother said. “There’s no one around. Plenty of room in the tub, though.”

“I’m good,” Monroe said quickly as she sat in a chair.

“I think I should treat us to a bottle of champagne,” her mother said.
 

“Why?”

“My only child is getting married. Of course I want to celebrate.” But she didn’t sound thrilled.

“So you approve?”
 

Her mother shrugged. “I can tell you now that I like him more than any of the other guys you dated. I don’t claim to be a perfect judge of character. Fred is proof of that.” Fred was a man her mother had dated, off and on, for six tumultuous years.
 

Her mother flicked at a leaf that had blown into the tub. “However. I
am
an expert on you, and he makes you happy. For now. I don’t approve of how fast this is moving, but this is the first man you’ve ever dated where I had the impression that the two of you are friends. Partners. That’s something you can build a strong relationship on. However…”

“Yes?”

“I have reservations. That said, it’s your life, and you’re an adult. You don’t need my advice.”

“Mom,” Monroe groaned. “Of course I want you to approve.”

“I want you to come home and spend some time apart from this guy so you can clear your head. If, when your head is clear, he’s still what you want, then I’ll support your decision without any reservations.”

“But—”

“I also want to meet his parents.”

“They live in South Africa and rarely get back here.” Like that didn’t sound suspicious. Actually, she doubted that Koenraad’s parents knew about her at all. Monroe stood. “Let me see about that champagne.” Because she needed a drink.

After she’d placed the order, she saw she had a message on her phone. Her phone didn’t seem to have registered the call; there wasn’t any record of the number.

Spencer’s friendly voice floated through the speaker. “I’m about to board my plane, but I wanted to let you know that I had time to pass by the lab.” What he said after that, she couldn’t hear; it was garbled.
 

She was about to give up when suddenly his voice was clear again.

“I exposed it to the toxin, and your blood reacted exactly like Brady’s did. It doesn’t make any sense, and I want to retest everything. I’ve got samples with me. I don’t have any time the next few days, but I know I didn’t make a mistake. You, my dear Monroe, have become a medical oddity. I don’t know if it’s because of the transfusion or if something changed when he claimed you, but I’ve never seen anything like it, and I wager no one else has, either. You’re going to have to come up to Boston for testing, poking and prodding. Koenraad, too. This is so spectacular that I almost wish I hadn’t renounced my claim on you,” he said.

He was referring to the fake claiming he’d made as part of a plan to save Koenraad’s life. But he didn’t quite sound like he was joking. Koenraad had said the man was married to his work.
 

“So romantic,” she murmured.
 

There was a knock on the door. She looked through the peephole and recognized Dunphy’s expressionless face.
 

She opened the door and saw he had a wheeled cart holding a bottle of chilled champagne in an ice bucket and four delicate glasses.

Poking her head out, she saw a uniformed staff member at the end of the hallway. She wondered how Koenraad had gotten the entire hotel staff to go along with his crazy machinations.

But maybe it made sense. Rich people often traveled with assistants, and really rich people tended to need bodyguards, too. Maybe it wasn’t such an odd request.

“Thanks,” she said.
 

Dunphy nodded. “Excellent champagne choice. That’s one of my favorites.”

She smiled uncertainly. He looked more like the kind of guy she imagined drinking cheap beer by the gallon. “I’d invite you in, but—”

“I’m on duty anyway,” he said with a little salute.
 

As she brought in the cart, she wondered what it meant if her blood acted like Brady’s did. Unstable when exposed to toxins.

Was that bad? Obviously the toxin wasn’t harming Brady too much. Unless that was what had made him aggressive. But Monroe didn’t feel aggressive at all.

Being told she had shifter attributes was far better than being given unambiguously bad news, she supposed. She pushed it out of her mind. It was something to think about later, when she was alone.
 

She rolled the cart toward the balcony, opened the bottle and poured two glasses. She quickly handed one to her mother when she started to get out of the tub for it.
 

“Do you want me to buy you a bathing suit?” Monroe asked. “I’m happy to do it.
Very
happy.”

“I’ve got a swimsuit, but this is a tub. Do you shower with your clothes on?”

“If I were outside I would,” Monroe said.
 

“Don’t be such a prude,” her mother said solemnly. “Will you come home or not?”
 

Monroe closed her eyes.
 

“Let me just point out that if you can’t stand to be apart from him, if you don’t
trust
him, then it’s not a healthy relationship.”

Monroe’s eyes flew open. “I trust him,” she said.
 

“Then where’s the harm in slowing down a little?”

The problem was coming up with an answer that didn’t include the words
shark
,
mated
, or
hiding for my life.
 

“You want my blessing? This is what it will take. I’m worried about you, Monroe. You’re not acting like yourself, and while Koenraad seems like a nice guy, so did Ted Bundy.”

So now Koenraad was Ted Bundy? How the hell did that happen? “I’ll come home for a few weeks if it’ll make you feel better,” she said. She needed to clean out her apartment anyway.

“Thank you. I checked, and there’s plenty of room on my flight—”

“Not tomorrow!” Monroe blurted. “I’ve got that real estate job, and I can’t walk out on them.”

“Did you give Pet Palace two weeks’ notice?” Her mother pursed her lips and took a long drink of champagne.

Chapter 16

At eight the next morning, Koenraad started the tour of a luxury yacht.
 

Ten minutes later, he transferred the full price to the broker.

The mega yacht was too large to explore at the moment, but he’d seen photos of the rest online.

The idea to invest in a mega yacht had come to him the night before, while he sat outside Brady’s tank and watched his son. The tranquilizers had surely worn off, but Brady wasn’t flipping out. It had almost been enough to make Koenraad reconsider leaving so quickly. He faced a crushing number of logistical odds and ends.

But he’d promised Brady that they’d leave in the morning, and he was going to make that happen.
 

Now he wished more than anything that Spencer was still around. Spencer could have kept an eye on Brady for a few hours or even a day, giving Koenraad precious time to pull everything together.

As he’d watched his son, who’d always been obsessed with boats, he’d decided that using a mega yacht would solve several problems. It would give Monroe space.
The Good Life
was large, but Koenraad could do better.

The new yacht, auspiciously named
Second Chances
, was a real beauty. She was designed for crossing the open ocean in luxury.

Second Chances
was three levels. There was a fitness center and a pool, a game room and a dance floor. Among many other things.

While he didn’t love her on first sight, he’d known she was perfect. That she was immediately available cemented his decision. Sometimes the former owner needed to remove all variety of personal effects.

As Koenraad walked down the dock, he wondered how the hell he was going to find a crew on such short notice. Because that was the problem with mega yachts, and it was the one thing that had given him pause. He could handle a lot on his own, but something of this size required help. He’d need a crew with a lot of experience, and people like that tended to have plenty of work lined up.
 

They’d also need to be shifters who could be trusted to keep their mouths closed about Brady.

Some problems couldn’t be solved with money. But some, luckily, could be. He just needed to find some employees who were unhappy with their current positions. He’d up their salaries until they couldn’t turn him down.
 

He also made a decision. He didn’t need to take the boat halfway between the Americas and Africa. That had been his plan when he thought he and Brady would be on their own, but with Monroe in the equation, he didn’t see the necessity of going out more than 300 nautical miles.

Which meant he didn’t have to engage the crew for an extended period. If need be, he could take a temporary crew—

Koenraad’s thoughts were cut off when he pulled into the aquarium’s parking lot. It was already nine in the morning, and the center had just opened to the public, which meant the lot was already full of employee vehicles and rental cars.

There was one convertible, however, that didn’t belong.
 

With a sinking feeling in his stomach, he stepped out of his car and strode to the entrance.
 

The ticket keeper didn’t recognize him, so he handed the girl some money.

“You have to buy a ticket at the counter,” she protested. “I don’t have change.”

He ignored her and hoped over the turnstile.
 

The jellyfish exhibit was straight ahead and to the left. Koenraad knew better than to make a beeline for it. He didn’t want Darius to know that he suspected anything.

Halfway to the tank, Koenraad stopped.

Why did he care? The
sick
in the water wasn’t his problem. As he reminded himself dozens of times a day. Let the Council worry about it. Let the tourism bureau deal with it—they’d lifted the travel ban after mapping out safe beaches, so the problem was manageable.

And whatever Darius and Victoria were up to probably had to do with greed and power plays. Darius cared about power and not much else.
 

Anyway, Koenraad’s nose told him the egomaniac had only passed through this way without lingering.