RunningScaredBN (40 page)

She lost the flashlight. The book. The bucket. The anchor line. Everything was gone as she tumbled end over end in an underwater current with the power of a fifty-foot breaking wave. There was no up, no down. Just water, which broke the seal on her mask and flooded her sinuses.

She had no idea how far she’d been tossed or even her depth. It was far too soon for her to surface, but one hand found the strap for the heavy air tank, while the other found the pull cord for her buoyancy compensator vest.

She released the tank and tugged the cord, then shot to the surface.

Luke Sevick reacted instinctively and slid his arm around the rail mounted to the dive platform and gripped his wrist, bracing himself for the sudden wave triggered by the rapid series of explosions off the port side. Frigid water sluiced over the low platform of the research vessel, drenching him. His body lifted and his chest slammed into the side as the boat rocked, but his grip held and he remained on the platform instead of being tossed into the icy strait.

The biologist to his left wasn’t so lucky. Henry was swept over the edge as smoothly as a poached egg slides from a pan.

Shit. This was supposed to be a calm day out at sea. None of the crew had donned their survival suits. Stupid.

He braced for a second wave. After the drop, he grabbed the nearest life buoy and tossed it to Henry, then he climbed to the upper deck and hurried to a lifeboat. He had only a few minutes to fish the man out before hypothermia would get him. Plus, they needed to see if there were survivors from the boat that blew up.

What the fuck was that? He hadn’t yet begun to wrap his brain around the explosion. He’d barely had time to react to the resulting waves.

He pulled back the cover of the lifeboat and jumped inside just as two others reached the rail. “Joan, lower us down! Martin, you’re with me.” They were all trained for water rescues, but Martin was a stronger swimmer, and as a former SEAL, Luke was the most experienced with this sort of thing. It was an easy call to make.

The boat dropped. Martin grabbed the loose bowline, while Luke took the helm. He started the engine within a second of hitting the water and set a course for Henry, who, thankfully, had caught the floatation device. A hundred meters beyond Henry, he caught a flash of orange in the water. A life vest?

Could someone from the wreck have been thrown that far?

“After we grab Henry, we’re checking out the wreckage. I see orange at twelve o’clock,” he shouted over the roar of the motor.

“There was a diver-down flag by the boat. I heard over the radio they’re out here for that Navy salvage project,” Martin shouted back.

That explained the dive setup he’d been admiring before the boat blew to hell.

Luke steered the craft to Henry’s side, and Martin scooped the man from the water.

“Hold on!” Luke shouted. He gunned it, aiming for the fleeting orange that dipped and bobbed in the unsettled water.

Odds were anyone on that boat was fish food, but he had to try.

He slowed. As the boat neared the debris field, the figure took form. It was a body, a woman from the shape. She was faceup thanks to her BC vest, wearing a dry suit.

A diver, as Martin had suggested. If she hadn’t been
on
the boat, she might have a chance.

He and Martin pulled her into the lifeboat. He laid her flat on the bench seat and pulled off the full-face mask. Water poured out. Hell. How long had she been without oxygen?

She still had a pulse.

“Shit,” Martin said, “She’s bleeding from the ears. Popped eardrums. Probably bent. You good with rescue breathing?”

Luke nodded.

“I’ll radio the Coast Guard and tell them to get their chopper ready. She needs airlift to a hospital with a hyperbaric chamber.”

“Do it,” Luke said as he checked her airway and tried to inflate her lungs. Nothing. He gave her abdominal thrusts, then turned her to the side as she vomited seawater.

He pressed his mouth to hers and gave her breath. Her chest rose. He filled her lungs again as Martin gunned the engine, steering the small boat toward Coast Guard Station Neah Bay, which was less than two nautical miles away.

Another lifeboat had launched from their NOAA vessel and was headed for the debris field, likely to search for more survivors. They would do the same as soon as this woman was loaded on the Coast Guard copter.

She vomited a second time, then her chest rose of its own accord. She was breathing. He wasn’t ready to cheer, though. She could yet suffer a stroke—if she hadn’t already.

He lifted one eyelid, then the other. Bloodshot with uneven dilation. At the very least, she suffered from external ear squeeze, but the fact that she was unconscious indicated an air embolism.

She needed to be kept flat and warm. No point in removing her dry suit until they had her at the station and could wrap her in heated blankets for the airlift.

He studied her face as her breathing evened out. There was something familiar about her, but the creases around her cheeks and eyes from the mask and bluing of her lips made it hard to tell. She could just have one of those faces.

Martin had mentioned the Navy, and he knew a lot of people in the Navy diving realm. Water-based ops had been his SEAL team’s focus. It was possible he’d met this woman at some point.

He swept the end of her dark, wet braid off her chest, revealing a name emblazoned on her dry suit:
Gray
.

His stomach dropped as his gaze returned to those blue lips and wide cheekbones. There was a family named Gray who was synonymous with scuba diving and underwater research. So deeply entrenched was the family business, they had custom-fitted dive suits with the family name emblazoned on the left breast.

And underwater explorer Stefan Gray’s daughter, the pretty water nymph, Undine, was the woman who’d fucked up his life twelve years ago.

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Cold Evidence
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. For more information about Rachel Grant’s Evidence Series, please visit her website at
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