You're the One That I Want (4 page)

The swells seemed to be speeding up, and Scotty checked her instruments. “Waves are at thirty feet.”

“I wish we hadn’t thrown that last line.”

She blew out a breath. “I know Red hasn’t said anything, but it’s his last run. We need to reach our limit.”

Carpie stilled, and she felt his old eyes on her as she continued, “The boat’s in hock after Red’s heart attack. If he doesn’t pull in a decent catch, he’ll never climb out of debt.”

“And you
 
—you’re taking over the
Willie
, right?”

She adjusted the throttle, her gaze on the gauge. “No. I . . . I don’t know.” What could she say, really? She didn’t have the cash to buy the old man out but
 
—

“Please tell me you’re not going back on the job.”

“I know you don’t believe this, but I actually like being a cop.”

“No, you don’t. Not anymore. The shooting changed you.”

“It didn’t change me. Just flushed the glamour from my eyes. Besides, being a cop is all I got. The job and this boat, and I can’t have the boat, so . . .”

“Being a cop nearly killed you, Scotty!”

She glanced at him, past him, toward the galley, where his voice surely echoed. “Take it down a notch, Carp. I just didn’t handle it well.”

“And how could you? You saw your best friend killed in front of your eyes. You had to shoot a family member.”

“Distant cousin. I hardly knew Evan.”

“You knew him well enough to let it shake you. And I get it. Nobody heals from seeing their best friend murdered. Not without God.”

“Again with the religion. I know you mean well, Carp, but I don’t need God’s help. Yeah, I will admit it was rough, that I went down some dark places, but I’m okay. And I don’t need help from a God who hasn’t bothered to show up in my life, like . . .
ever
. So thanks. I’m just fine without God’s help.”

He sighed and she knew it was coming. Braced herself as his low words began.

“Remind me, but that was you I hauled out of the Moosehead six months ago, hiding the fact that you could barely walk, right?”

“It was just that one time
 
—”

“I know. But in Alaska, once can get you dead. Listen, I know you think you’re fine alone, and yes, you’ve picked yourself up, been cleared to go back to work. But I can’t help but worry, Scotty. You can’t live holding people at arm’s length. We need people.”

“Alone seemed to work okay for Red.”

“Really? You think it’s okay that he can count the sum total of his friends on his closed fist?”

“Enough. You know what being Red’s daughter has taught me? That there is no room for crying. Life happens. People die. There’re no fairy tales or happy endings. It’s the way it is, and if I want to survive, I can’t let people get close enough to hurt me. So yeah, I have a job waiting for me in Anchorage after this run, and I plan on taking it. Now if you’ll excuse me, my job tonight is keeping you and everyone else on this ship alive.”

The boat crested another wave, and this time she throttled down across the back side to beat the next crest.

By the time she topped it, turned the boat to tack her way across the next wave, Carpie had disappeared.

Probably to go pray for her lost soul.

The nudge broke Owen free of the darkness, and he blinked awake.

“Time to work,” Juke said.

Owen glanced at the clock: 8 p.m. It felt like he’d dropped off seconds ago; how had two hours passed? Kicking out of his sleeping bag, he ran his hands over his face, scrubbing away the exhaustion.
He’d been on this ride before
 
—a thirty-six-hour grind hauling in the last of the pots before heading back to Dutch Harbor.

Nothing compared to it
 
—not hours of practice in the juniors, not a heavy workout in the weight room, not even the grimy, sweaty hours he’d spent fighting wildland fires with the Jude County Hotshots.

Carpie handed him a cup of coffee as Owen leaned against the galley doorframe, trying to hold his eyes open.

“I know,” Carpie said. “I just got to the good part in my dream. Going home, seeing the wife. One last stretch and I’m kissing dry land.”

The waves unseated Owen, and he grabbed the doorframe as his coffee spilled onto his shirt. He bit back a word, made a face. Setting the coffee down, he dragged his T-shirt over his head and unfortunately stood bare-chested as Scotty came down the stairs.

She glanced at him, lingering a moment before she addressed the crew, still wiping sleep from their eyes.

Owen grabbed another shirt from the tangle of clothes in his duffel, this one cold and a little smelly, and pulled it on as she spoke.

“Okay, guys, it’s blowing forty-five, sleeting, and getting gnarly out there. The swells are really starting to stack up, and I’ve decided we’re not taking any chances.” She carried what looked like a modified survival suit and tossed it at Juke. “Happy birthday, everyone gets a pretty orange suit.”

“I’m not wearing this,” Juke said. “It’s too thick and hard to work in. Can’t we just wear our life jackets?”

“It’s made to work in. It’s just like a dry suit the military wears. Made of neoprene, and it’ll keep you dry and warm if you should go in. And it acts as a flotation device. It should keep you above water long enough to be rescued. Red special ordered them
 
—”

“No,
you
special ordered them,” Carpie said. “And we thank you for it.”

“Speak for yourself,” Juke said.

“I promise you can work in this. Maybe not as fast, but better safe than sorry.”

“I’m already sorry,” Juke said.

“Stuff it, Juke. You go over, you have about thirty seconds before the waves take you out of reach of the boat. Another four minutes and you’re dead. This suit could save your life
 
—at least long enough for us to find you and pull you in. So the right answer is ‘Yes, sir.’”

Owen raised an eyebrow as Scotty picked up another suit and tossed it at him. He caught it. “Yes, sir.”

She didn’t spare him a look. “Listen, we’ve only had two overboards on the
Wilhelmina
in twenty years. Both were from rough weather and deckhands taking chances. Not today.”

Greenie took his suit without argument. Carpie had already begun to work his on.

“Let’s not kid ourselves. No one is getting rescued if they go in the drink,” Juke said. “You go in, you die.”

Greenie looked up, eyes wide.

“No one is going over,” Owen said and glanced at Scotty with a frown.

She drew in a breath. “No one is going over.”

“I have kids at home, and I plan on not only living through this, but getting paid,” Carpie said as he zipped up the suit. He shoved his feet into his boots, pulled the hood over his gimme cap. “It’s time to fish.”

Owen zipped his suit and headed outside, noticing how Scotty had vanished into her bunk to squeeze into her suit. Probably so
he wouldn’t hear her moan in pain, which only fueled a small knot of frustration inside him.

Two hours of sleep hadn’t erased the memory of her fitting, ever so perfectly, in his arms.

If only she weren’t so stubborn. Impossible. Bossy.

He emerged to a world of chaos on the deck, the boat tossed in a frothy sea with forty-foot waves. The sorting table jerked against its lashings, the riggings white with ice. The boat pitched into a trough, then crested to the top and splashed down again, the water sheeting over the bow onto them.

“We’re supposed to fish in this?” Greenie yelled above the gale wind.

“Let’s just get it done!” Juke said and climbed up to man the crane as they pulled the pots in.

Scotty joined them topside, dressed in head-to-toe orange. She signaled to the wheelhouse, and Old Red’s voice boomed from the speaker. “Last string. Let’s get these pots in and go home!”

As Owen grabbed the grappling hook and swung it out to snag the buoy line, the word hung in his mind.

Home.

He caught the rope, hauled in the line, and attached it to the winch, his face against the spitting ocean spray, a surge of adrenaline firing through him.

Yeah, home. To see if he could face his mistakes, repair the damage of his impulsive actions.

The pot emerged, dripping, bulging with crab. The winch lifted it and Owen reached out with Carpie to pull it in.

They worked it onto the lift, and Owen unhooked the winch as Carpie opened the trap.

A hundred opies, as big as Frisbees, spilled onto the sorting
table. “Woo-hoo!” Greenie shouted just as the boat dipped into another trough.

Owen grabbed the rail to keep from ramming into it.

“Let’s get these in the well!” Scotty said, the wind taking her voice. She leaned over the table.

The next wave hit the boat like a hammer, crashing down, the vessel shuddering as icy water engulfed the deck. Shards of foamy ice fell like an avalanche, the wave scooping up everything in its path.

The force of this one slammed Owen against the railing, raking pain across his chest. Then the crest sucked him under, dragging him across the deck, rolling him like the ice chunks spilling over the edge.

He flailed, fighting for purchase, and found it on the edge of the lift, one hand on the pot. He worked his hand into the netting and held on against the surge.

Then, suddenly, the pot broke free and started sliding back toward the ocean.

Dragging Owen over the lift, his hand entangled in the netting.

No! Not like this!
He writhed, bracing his legs on the lift, shaking his hand, straining to stop the rush
 
—

His hand broke free and he tumbled back hard as the pot slid into the sea. He gulped icy breaths, hearing only the thunder of his heartbeat, the roar of the waves.

The bitter edge of regret cut through him. He shouldn’t be here. Not anymore. Time to think about his life, his future.

“Help!”

The voice jerked Owen up. He rolled over, and his gaze landed on Greenie, wedged against the hopper and the live well.

Carpie lay on his back under the table, blood dripping from his chin.

“Juke!” Owen yelled.

“Over here!” He clung to the drag anchor.

Owen pulled himself up, began to scramble toward Greenie. That’s when he heard the words, riding the wind
 
—from Juke or Carpie, he didn’t know, but they turned him cold.

“I think I saw Scotty go over!”

No. A quick scan of the deck
 
—Carp, Greenie, Juke. No Scotty.

“Scotty!” Owen ran to the rail and held on, shaking away the spray in his face.

He scanned the turbulent water, the frothy darkness, and then
 
—“There!” He made out her neoprene orange suit bobbing just inside the puddle of light. “Scotty! Hang on!”

“Is everyone all right?” Red called from the wheelhouse through the PA system.

“Alarm! Man overboard!” Juke’s voice. “Throw out a life raft!”

Owen didn’t wait. He had a leg over the edge when Carpie shouted, “Owen!”

But he didn’t listen, launching himself overboard and into the sea.

G
ROWING UP IN
M
INNESOTA,
just thirty miles from the Canadian border, and then later, spending every day on the ice during his hockey career, Owen knew cold. He knew how it turned every movement to shards of pain slicing through a man’s body, and the terrifying welcome of numbness, the effortless fall into fatigue.

He knew how easily the cold could entice a body to surrender, pulling it to the bottom of a lake. Or as the case might be, the ocean.

No amount of neoprene could stave off the breathtaking grip of the Bering Sea. Worse, frigid water seeped into his collar, inside his suit, turning his body to ice. The waves tossed him, turning him around, crashing over him.

Drowning him.

“Scotty!” He fought the choppy sea and his own blinding panic to search for her in the darkness. “Scotty!”

He found her twenty feet away and drifting fast from the light. The waves bounced her like a buoy. “I’m coming!”

Owen lay on his back, paddling with his hands and feet, calling her name and trying not to ingest seawater. Behind him, the emergency horn sounding man overboard blared into the night. Growing dimmer.

“Scotty!” How she might hear him over the chop of the sea, he didn’t know, but she turned, treading water.

“Owen!”

Thatagirl. “Swim to me!” He rowed his body harder through the water, long strokes from his years growing up on the lake. He looked over his shoulder. “Swim!”

She flailed toward him as if afraid to take her eyes off him. It took too long, but he finally reached her. His hand found her suit and he fisted it.

She was breathing hard, her face drawn, white. “You . . . idiot.”

Huh?

For a moment, it seemed she might crumble. Then she gritted her jaw, her eyes fierce. “Now . . . we’re both . . . going to . . . die.”

There it was, her determination not to cry in front of him. Too tough for her own good. Still, he grabbed her arms. “No, we’re not. Listen. The horn.”

It continued to blare, a hum over the choppy sea. But the waves had sent them out of the splash of light.

“They can’t see us!”

He held on to her, cumbersome as it was. “We have to paddle back. Take a breath, Scotty. We can do this.”

Her eyes had gone so wide with fear that he thought he’d lost
her. But in a moment, she returned to herself, shaking the seawater from her face. “Right. Yes. We can do this!”

The boat dipped on the horizon, and Owen refused to acknowledge that it seemed to be drifting farther away. Or that he’d taken in too much water, and it swam in the bottom of his suit. Or that he seemed to be ingesting the sea with every breath.

He lay back. “Swim.” Already the weight of the water at his feet tugged at him, urged him to the bottom. Next to him, Scotty struggled as she pawed the water.

“Scotty. Remember your training. Lie back.”

She rolled onto her back, and he grabbed her shoulder, yanking her forward, kicking through the water.

Only then did he realize the searing pain in his chest, deepening, squeezing his ribs with every kick.

“We’re not moving!”

He grabbed her just as another wave crashed toward them. “Hold on!” He turned then, kicking along the angle, riding the wave up, over the crest.

“We’re just going farther away. We’re not going to survive out here!”

Owen righted himself, confirming her words as he watched the light from the boat vanishing in the swells.

“They’re never going to find us. We have about two hours before we die, even in these suits.” Scotty’s voice shook.

And that was just . . . it.

“Stop, Scotty. You don’t give up, you hear me?” He found her eyes in the fading light. “We’re not dead till we’re dead, got it? We’re going to lie on our backs and link up.” He turned her in the water.

“Don’t let me go!”

“I got you. Just lie back. Link your arms around my legs. We’re going to paddle together.”

He gripped her around the waist with his feet and began to paddle, fighting through the waves. “Kick, Scotty. You have to kick for us. We’re going to ride these waves all the way to the
Willie
.”

Owen angled them into the waves, which lifted them, settled them back into the trough, pushed them forward again. He blinked back water, but it no longer crashed into his face, no longer spewed down his gullet.

Please, God, let this work. Let us find the ship.

But he’d lost the feeling in his feet, his body shivering uncontrollably.

“Turn your light on, Scotty,” he said. The survival suit came with a beacon, and she flipped it on, a pulsing flash against the darkness.

Numbness spread over Owen, his body becoming a boulder in the water.

Sinking.

Even Scotty seemed to have settled down in the quiet rhythm of her kicking.

Not dead till we’re dead. Not dead
 
—

In a pulse of light, he spied it. An orange floatable, something large and enclosed
 
—

“A life raft!” Scotty sat up in the water. “They threw out the life raft!”

She roused new strength as she surged toward it, wild in the water, catching the dragging line and pulling it to herself, hand over hand.

Owen caught up to her, grabbed the raft
 
—inflated, tented. Thank you, Carpie. Or Juke. Or maybe even Greenie.

Or God, probably, giving him a sliver of the grace he knew he didn’t deserve. He didn’t second-guess, just gripped the line with one hand, Scotty with the other. “I’m going to push you in.”

She put her hands over the edge of the raft’s doorway as he grabbed her around the middle. Then with everything inside him, he threw her over the lip and into the raft.

But Owen had hurt himself
 
—really torn something
 
—because suddenly he couldn’t breathe. Jagged edges knifed his insides. He didn’t even possess enough air to scream.

He doubled over in the water, moaning, writhing. Oh
 
—

“Owen! What is it?” Scotty gripped his suit, pulling him against the raft. “Get in!”

The raft bumped him, pushed him away, would have crested right over him had she not held him up against it. “Owen!”

He panted, “I . . . can’t . . . breathe.”

“Oh no you don’t! You’re not dying on me. Not yet. We’re not dead till we’re dead!” She got a better grip on his suit, and suddenly he found himself dragged up, crying out as the pain seared through him.

But he kicked hard, surging through the agony to grab the edge of the raft. And just when he started to fall back into the ocean, Scotty grabbed him around the waist. Hauled him in to safety.

He landed hard in the belly of the raft and rolled onto his back, wanting to howl.

One breath, then another, and the band cutting off his breathing loosened. But his torso burned, and he’d endured enough past injuries to know the truth. “I think I broke a rib. Or two. I think I’m bleeding internally.”

“Okay. Okay. Just . . . okay.” Scotty pulled off her hood, worked off her gloves, her hands trembling. “I’m going to shoot a flare.”

Right. A flare. Good thinking. Owen tried not to let the pain consume him as he watched her fumble with the supply box, find the flares, fit the flare into the pistol. She hung on to the raft as she leaned out the door and pulled the trigger.

The flare illuminated the night in a spray of bloodred light. He watched it fall, turning the sky from red to pink before returning to black.

Then Scotty velcroed the door shut. “They’ll find us,” she said. She ran her hand down her face, wiping it. “Red won’t give up.”

“Mmm-hmm,” Owen said. He hadn’t realized how much water his suit had trapped, and now it settled around his legs, his back. And he’d started to shake harder.

Shock.

He closed his eyes, trying to ride the waves, to calm his heart.

Trying not to wish he’d called his mother, at least once, before stepping foot on the
Wilhelmina
. Or further back, that he hadn’t been the guy who so neatly eviscerated everything he’d stood for. Faith. Family.

Mostly, as he stared at the ceiling in a pitching black sea, he tried not to regret nearly every moment of the past two years.

Please, God, save us
 
—I promise to fix it i
f
You just save us.

Scotty hovered above him, her light illuminating the orange of the tent, her beautiful gray-green eyes so fierce, her expression so resolute, that he thought she might have read his miserable mind.

She pulled off his glove, and he felt her hand grip his, warm, solid. “You’re not going to die, Owen Christiansen.”

He opened his mouth to disagree, but she put her other hand over it, silencing him. “No one dies tonight.”

He closed his eyes. “You’re so bossy.”

“A ‘Yes, sir,’ will do.”

Don’t panic. Keep your head in the game. Breathe.

“Are you talking to me?”

At the sound of Owen’s voice, Scotty lifted her face from where she’d buried it in her up-drawn knees, waiting. Listening to time tick away hope as the waves buffeted the raft. After an hour, someone should have found them, right?

She flicked on the flashlight, scrounged from the supply box, and let it shine over Owen. In a raft built for twelve, they had plenty of room, but he huddled near the middle, curled nearly in the fetal position. He had his hand lashed to a safety rope on the inside of the raft, holding on for dear life as the waves threw them from one trough to the next.

She’d never felt so sick.

And he looked worse. He’d already thrown up once, probably from the pain, although how he’d managed to crawl to the door to empty his gut, she didn’t know. With every minute he seemed to turn more pale.

I think I broke a rib. Or two. I think I’m bleeding internally.

Yeah, she’d heard him, but she wished she hadn’t. Because now she had to think about the fact that if the Coast Guard
 
—and surely Red would have called for help
 
—didn’t find them soon, she’d be all alone in this boat.

Which felt so utterly selfish when she thought of the fact that she wouldn’t even be in the boat if it weren’t for Owen Christiansen diving into the ocean like a fool to save her sorry life.

That pushed another wedge into her throat, daring her to cry.

No. Because if they lived through this, she’d never live that down.

Still, the urge to weep, to shake, to hold on to Owen like he might be her lifeline swept through her, and she shuddered with the longing to . . .

No.

“Scotty, are you okay?” Even with his own suffering
 
—she’d heard more than one moan escape in the darkness
 
—his voice emerged gentle, caring.

Just like it had in her bunk room.

It didn’t take much imagination to remember the way he looked at her on the boat, a softness
 
—even, perhaps, desire
 
—in his expression. Followed ever so fast by a smile, one she didn’t want to interpret.

Stupid girl, letting her emotions trickle out like that. Holding on to his shirt like she needed him.

But now she had her emotions safely tucked back into place, had managed to keep her voice calm, her wits about her as she struggled to hang on in the turbulent waves.

“I’m fine.”

“I’m glad one of us is because I’m not. I’m totally freaked out here.” Then, crazily, Owen grinned at her through the light.

“If you’re trying to be funny
 
—”

“Oh, c’mon, Scotty, calm down. We’re going to be fine. Red and the crew are searching for us right now. Have a little faith.”

Seriously? “I have faith. I have faith in the fact that we are out here alone, in the pitch darkness, and not a soul knows where we are. Red is probably frantic. We’re too far from St. Paul Island for the Coast Guard to just send a chopper, which means they’ll have to send the cutter out first, and that could take hours. How are they going to find us in thousands of miles of ocean? You’re bleeding, probably to death, if hypothermia doesn’t kill you first,
and I’m not much better. My arm is killing me, my head aches, and . . .”