SeaChange

Cindy
Spencer Pape

Shot at by drug dealers and left to
drown, marine biologist Heidi is rescued by the hottest boat bum she’s ever
seen. Tall, dark and handsome, Jake is every girl’s dream. But with her best
friend missing or dead and the bad guys still after her, the last thing she has
time for is romance.

As a merman, exiled from his colony
and cursed to shapeshift with the moon, Jake can’t afford to be around humans,
especially a marine biologist who might discover his species. But he can’t
throw Heidi to the drug dealers and the possibly corrupt law enforcement. He’ll
fight drug lords, pirates and even the gods to protect her. More complications
arise when Jake’s family shows up looking for help, but the biggest problem of
all is whether Jake and Heidi can resist the massive attraction that grows
between them.

A Romantica®
paranormal erotic romance
from
Ellora’s Cave

Heidi knew they were in trouble before the first crate hit
the water.

It had been a great day right up until it went to hell. The
night was warm and clear, the water calm as a lake. She loved the sun, the sea,
and especially her post-doctoral research project recording the behaviors and
social activities of dolphins. She got to sit in a boat in the sunshine for
hours on end with her favorite person in the world and study her favorite
animal. In fact, she’d been so caught up in tonight’s research that she’d
ignored the seaplane circling the cove where they floated in a rocky,
cliff-lined inlet, just south of Ensenada. A pod of Pacific white-sided
dolphins had played in the cove all day, providing an ideal observation
opportunity. A few minutes before midnight, though, when the plane started
dropping wooden crates wrapped in inflatable sleeves into the glassy, black
water, Heidi’s gut clenched. Things were about to get messy.

“Brad, we need to get out of here. Fast.” She packed up her
camera and notebook, her fingers shaking with haste. “I mean it.” Couldn’t he
hear the terror making her voice quaver? Later, she might be embarrassed about
being so scared. Right now she just wanted to be gone.

“Just a minute.” Lost in the research “zone”, Brad continued
to scan the horizon. “I’ve got two adults and a juvenile…”

He was her best friend and she loved him like a brother, but
right now Heidi longed to shake him into action. “Dude, we’ve got a freaking
drug deal going down in this cove. Ignore the dolphins and start the damn
engine.
Now.”
She secured the last of her equipment and yanked the
binoculars out of Brad’s hands.

“What the hell?” He looked to where she pointed, saw the
plane, gulped, and then turned his back to her to start up the small boat’s
outboard engine.

“Strange planes dropping crates at midnight can’t be good.
We’ve got to get out of here before the retrieval team shows up.” Heidi
mentally willed the temperamental motor to start.
Please don’t let us die!

No luck. He pulled the cord but the engine didn’t make a
sound.

“Goddamn it, the crappy-assed thing’s flooded again,” Brad
grumbled. Since their Zodiac was really nothing more than a giant rubber raft
with a plywood floor, they hadn’t invested in a big motor, just a used one that
would let them putter from place to place, watching the dolphins.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.
“Of course it is. It always is when
we need it most.” She watched as the plane disappeared. “Try priming it.”

As Brad primed the motor, Heidi picked up the plastic oars
from the bottom of the boat and shoved them into the oarlocks. If nothing else,
she’d row. One good thing about being almost six feet tall with the shoulders
of a linebacker was that she could row as well as most of the guys in the
marine biology department—better than some.
Thank you, Viking ancestors.

While Brad messed with the motor, she began to pull in long
strokes toward the nearest shore.

She’d only made it about a quarter of the distance when the
sound of a different, bigger engine caught Heidi’s ears. From the south, she
saw the running lights of a fast, slim cigarette boat. The low, sleek
watercraft, about twice the size of their inflatable, sped into the cove then
slowed to an idle near the southern shoreline where the crates bobbed in the
waves.

“Shit, they’re here. They’re picking up the crates.” She
could hear her voice rising in pitch, even as she tried to keep the volume
down. Heidi rowed even harder toward the northern point of the cove. “Come on,
buddy, this is bad. We’ve got to get out of here. Fast.”

There was a chance, just a slim one, that in the meager
light of the moon, they’d blend in with the rocky coast enough to be overlooked
while they rowed around the nearby outcropping and out of the cove.

Shouts in angry Spanish emerged from the other boat.

Heidi groaned. She recognized a few of those words. “Shit,
we’ve been spotted. Hurry.”

Brad just grunted and kept working.

“Why the hell did I have to pick tonight to watch the
dolphins? And why did you have to agree with me?”
Duh, because the full moon
and the calm seas made for excellent viewing conditions.
Apparently they
were also good conditions for a drug deal. “Come on, Brad. We’ve got to move!”
She could see the headlines: “University Scientists Killed in International
Drug-related Shootout.” Not good.

“No luck.” Brad turned to her as the powerful speed boat
gunned its engines and headed toward them. “Any ideas?”

“Kick it!” It was a last-ditch play, one she’d seen her
father use back in Minnesota once or twice, but this was a time for a Hail Mary
if there ever was one. Her arms were beginning to ache—these oars weren’t
designed for speed.

“Aye-aye, cap’n.” Brad hauled off and kicked the old
Evinrude with his sneaker-clad foot. And glory be, it started. Heidi pulled up
the oars and held on to her seat as Brad cranked it up to full throttle and
they turned toward the tip of the cove. There was a resort just a little way up
the coast, with lots and lots of people around. “We can make it.”

“Maybe,” Heidi conceded. But she didn’t believe it. The
cigarette boat drew closer, and the shouts, now in a mixture of Spanish and
English, carried across the unusually placid waters of the Pacific. Desperate
to do something, anything, Heidi grabbed the emergency kit and scrabbled for
the flare gun.

Her words were choked off as she heard a sharp report, felt
something whiz by her left ear. “Oh, fuck, they’re shooting!”

“And gaining on us.” Brad swore in a steady stream. “Get
down, Heidi!”

She did, falling to her knees between the seats and tugging
at his shirt. “Get down yourself, you idiot!” She’d worked with Brad since they
were undergrads. He was her best friend in the world, and she was every bit as
terrified for him as she was for herself.

Their inflatable craft was more maneuverable than the power
boat, but that didn’t help in the open ocean, and the other boat blew it away
for speed. The bad guys were gaining quickly and shooting as they came.

She fired a flare back at the boat, but it fell short and
she heard their raucous laughter ring out over the water.
Damn
, there
were only two flares. She took a steady aim—as steady as she could get in a
boat chopping through the waves, anyway, and waited until the other boat
closed. Then she aimed at the shooter.

He screamed and toppled into the water, but the boat still
kept coming. Another man produced a gun.

Heidi barely remembered how to pray, but right now she was
sending off maydays to every god, goddess or other spirit she could think of.

There was a jarring thud followed by a sickening ripping
sound and the grinding crunch of plywood being shredded. She could hear the
roar and smell the gas fumes from the cigarette boat’s powerful engine. The
impact threw her forward, smacking her head on the seat in front of her. She
heard a scream, thought it might have been herself. The Zodiac spun in
distorted circles no amusement park ride would ever want to duplicate, hissing
and spitting as it went.

But it was only half of the Zodiac, Heidi saw in one
heart-rending moment of visual clarity. A scream of anguish tore from her
throat. “Brad!”

She couldn’t see the other half of their boat through the
spray and smoke. There were more shots, some of them probably at her. And then
the torn bow of the inflatable spun and flipped, flinging Heidi into the air
before dropping her under the oily black waves. Just before she hit the water,
she felt something strike the side of her head.

The world went black.

* * * * *

Jake felt the tingles coursing through his skin and knew
midnight was near. He dove naked off the rear deck of his boat, slicing cleanly
into the calm, dark waters off Ensenada. His eyes adjusted easily to the
moonlit night as soon as he surfaced, inhaling great gulps of the warm salt
air. He reveled in the feel of the gentle waves caressing his skin. They felt
like—like home. He sucked in a big breath, then dove deep and swam out toward
the horizon, away from his boat and the lights of the town.

A pod of dolphins had been frolicking in this area since
early afternoon—that was why Jake had anchored so far out from shore and stayed
there all day. He’d planned to duck into town for supplies but he hadn’t been
able to resist watching the show. Besides, whenever he was around dolphins, he
felt a little like he was with family. Maybe this time there’d even be a
message from his mother or sister. There was always hope, but it hadn’t
happened today or any other day in the past several years. Still, the dolphins
would be welcome company on his midnight swim.

He’d gone a few hundred yards when he felt the change come
over him. His leg muscles stretched and morphed, knees and feet fusing together
as his spine lengthened, forming the powerful arched back and dorsal fin of a
white-sided dolphin. His chest, shoulders and head remained human, but he drew
in deep, deep breaths to fill the air sacs that now nestled below his rib cage.
Then, once the transformation was complete, he allowed himself one joyful breach,
leaping clear out of the water before diving below the surface and using his
powerful tail flukes to propel him through the warm, wet night.

He swam south toward a secluded cove, hoping the pair of
researchers he’d seen earlier had abandoned their studies for the night. Being
seen by human eyes was one risk he couldn’t take. Fortunately his vision now
surpassed that of humans, allowing him to see them before they spotted him. He
took the time to carefully scan the area before venturing forward.

He heard boat engines, one smooth and powerful, one old and
hesitant, interrupting the quiet, and he started to turn back, away from the
noise. Suddenly, much more violent sounds ripped through the night and he heard
the agitated screech of the dolphins as one streaked past him out of the cove.
He identified the harsh noise as gunfire and chattered back at the dolphins,
urging them to flee to safety further out in the open ocean. Several bulls
surrounded a group of females and calves, nosing them ruthlessly forward, and
Jake lent his own muscle to the task, grabbing a wayward calf in his arms and
returning it to the pod, propelling it seaward away from the thundering weapons
and speeding vessels.

When the pod was clear, Jake moved to follow them away,
though he was hard-pressed to take his eyes from the violent chase going on in
the cove. A single, younger bull swam up next to him and chattered to Jake,
whose ears, despite their still-human appearance, were now tuned to pick up the
high-frequency sounds.

Hunters
, the dolphin told him, in the mix of sound
and telepathy that was their language.

I know
, Jake responded in the same manner, the
squeals coming naturally from his human-looking throat. Dolphins referred to
all humans with guns as hunters. A safe enough assumption on their part.
Let’s
get out of here
.

Hurt
, the dolphin added.
Help them
.

Help the hunters? Or were some of the dolphins shot?

No. The swimmers.

Swimmers. Someone who’d swum with the pod, been accepted by
them. Maybe the researchers Jake had seen earlier, which was probably who the
hunters were shooting at. The dolphin streaked past him on its way back into
the combat zone.
Shit
. Mentally cursing himself for giving a damn, Jake
flicked his tail and followed. The boat being chased was a Zodiac, the one Jake
had seen earlier. The shooters were in a sleek cigarette boat. Drug deal?
Immigrant smuggling? Ah hell, there was no way of knowing. You never knew what
to expect in Mexico.

The cigarette boat occupants kept shooting right up until
they rammed the Zodiac, slicing it in half with a sickening crunch. Jake couldn’t
see the occupants from his position at the mouth of the cove, but the churning
black waves didn’t bode well. There were a few more shots at fragments of the
wreckage, and Jake’s inhumanly keen ears picked up a volley of cursing in
gutter Spanglish.

A minute or so later, the cigarette boat sped off to the
south, shouts and laughter trailing behind like an oily residue in their wake. “Needs
a tune-up,” Jake muttered to himself as he slowly approached the remains of the
Zodiac, checking for survivors. There’d been two researchers in the inflatable
boat he’d seen earlier, one man and one woman. He remembered sitting on his sundeck
and waving at the pair as they’d passed. He also remembered the woman’s figure,
sweet and curvy under the half-wetsuit, and her long, sun-streaked blonde hair.
They’d waved back, a couple of friendly kids with serious-looking equipment.
Probably not even thirty.
Fuck
. Jake really hated to see a young life
wasted. He swam toward the shredded boat.

A chitter from the right told him that his companion had
found something. Jake swam over to the dolphin, who was using his nose and
flippers to hold a limp human form above the water. Long strands of
light-colored hair drifted on the surface. Yep, this was definitely the woman
he’d noticed before.

Jake took her in his arms, holding his ear against her
chest. She was choking up seawater, but she was breathing and her heart rate
seemed to be fine.

“Bad?” Her voice was slurred, the word unclear. Jake didn’t
think she was making a comment about his morality. She drifted out of
consciousness again before he could say anything anyway.

Jake thought about taking the woman to the nearest beach,
but his conscience held him back. She was hurt and alone, and this was Mexico.
He didn’t know who’d been shooting at her or how much pull they had with the
Mexican government. Hell, she could be the drug smuggler for all Jake knew, but
somehow he doubted it. Swearing in Greek, he held her unresisting body to his
chest and swam back to his boat, asking his dolphin friend to keep looking for
the man.