Now she looked hungry.
Raffaela wasn’t dumb. She had somehow figured out where he was located, and she swam up to the glass. She plastered her hands to it to either side, shadowing her eyes, and peered through.
Their eyes seemed to connect. She showed her teeth, and he raised the scotch in the tumbler to her.
A hungry mermaid might be more dangerous or more malleable.
Malleable was his aim.
Vengeance, another way. Yes. Wolfgang smiled. He was going to enjoy this.
With that decision made, tamped down, cemented in, he felt as if he were finally honoring Merrick’s memory.
He left her another two days to be sure she would be extra hungry then went to see her. In one hand, he carried a duffel bag containing a pistol, a new steel gag, rope, and handcuffs. In his other was a plastic bag with two fresh but dead fish. He opened the frosted-glass door and jogged up the stairs that led to the pool.
CHAPTER 6
Since he’d lowered a cover over the outside of the pool glass, Raffaela could no longer see the beach, the sand, or the waves, though she could hear the muted roar, smell the salt, hear the calls of the sea birds. Reflections of sunlight rippled through the white canvas cover and onto the sand beneath her. Plants familiar to her swayed below, green and healthy, a replica of life in the shallower parts of the sea. Rocks, sand, plants, and the hum of some machine that pushed clean water from holes in the walls.
It was not enough. A longing to return to the ocean had become constant and had strengthened over the last few days. She did not wish to die. Not anymore. The ire of this vile man had enervated her. He’d tricked her, trapped her.
At first, she had been sorry.
Now she was angry at him for wanting to cut her up. He thought she was the monster?
It was he.
The ocean was her home. Her human past was centuries ago. She would have climbed out and torn her way to the sea if it were possible. Reach the beach, then she would roll and squirm back into the water.
But she’d tried to get out and could not.
Her teeth had made only the mildest of scratches on the bars surrounding the pool.
Instead of escaping, she was resigned to swimming back and forth in the water allowed her. Nothing kept her company – not since she’d eaten the last of the fish. Nothing except for a few seagulls and sparrows that ventured inside to perch on the railings or furniture and look down at her.
And him. And Wolfgang.
She could tell when he watched. He stopped the lights working inside the house when he did so. It made the glass darken and reflect the light from out here… unless she swam up to it.
And yet he did not feed her, even though he’d asked what she ate and must see there was nothing left. It made her wonder if he’d decided to let her starve to death.
She was floating on her back, watching the latest sparrow do circuits above her, catching bugs perhaps, when…
The door he’d last left through made a click. The mechanism sighed then it sounded as if the door had closed again. She’d wriggled over the tiles to look at that door a few times. She sat up, listened. Then she heard his feet coming up the steps. Bare feet, sticking to the floor.
She slipped across to the front wall of the pool to be as far from him as possible.
“Hello there! I’ve brought you food.” He raised what seemed a large bubble of water with fish stuck to the insides.
A plastic bag they called those. She’d swum through enough in the sea, along with all the other garbage that came from humans.
Dark gray pants on him today, and a form-fitting white shirt clung to the broad muscles of his chest. As he looked down at her the black curls of his hair hung before his dark eyes and darker eyebrows, and he’d walked up those stairs with the swagger of a confident man. She imagined sliding her arms down those big masculine thighs.
The man was pretty, and she would lay a wager he knew it.
Food. He’d said food.
Her stomach protested, rumbling.
While she stared, he deposited a large, long brown bag on a seat. It clinked and he unfastened an opening, then removed several objects. Shiny handcuffs emerged then rope, and she recognized another gag. Her mouth twinged as she remembered how the last one had felt. Her mouth had bled afterward. She clung to the pool wall, sinking, molding her back to it, revealing only her eyes above the water.
And there was a gun. The form of it was as far removed from the look of the guns of her time as was a sailing ship from the vessels that plied the present oceans, but she knew it. A pistol.
She feared his intent but summoned courage, surfaced higher so her mouth was above the surface.
“Will you feed me or starve me? I will not submit to that again.” She nodded at the devices.
Gun in hand, he sat in one of the long, white seats then casually rested the weapon on his knee.
“I am taking precautions.”
She angled an eyebrow.
“You are more a danger to me, currently, than I am to you. Raffaela.”
He recalled her name.
“You said you would cut me up. I doubt your words.”
“True. I did. And you know my reasons. I didn’t cut you. I have backtracked. I want to keep you. I said that too.”
He had.
“I cannot live forever in a small pool of water.” Or without enough food. She
