The Crushing Depths

by Dani Pettrey

  “Followed protocol,” Karl said.

  Rissi crossed her legs, shifting her weight to her unbruised, though slightly tender, left side. Man, that’d been a hard hit, but she’d taken harder. And God had again brought her through—once more in the care of Mason Rogers.

  “And the protocol is?” Mason asked.

  “We head to the port side,” Karl said, “where the lifeboats are kept. But Ed radioed me before I made it out the tower door. He said to bring my kit and hurry.”

  “Did he say what was wrong?”

  Karl swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing. “He said a man was on fire.”

  SIXTEEN

  “So you grabbed your kit?” Mason said, clearly trying to keep Karl on track.

  It was difficult to press eyewitnesses to tragedy, but in their line of work, it was necessary. Rissi understood that, and she knew Mason did too.

  “Yes,” Karl said, his fair skin now having a slight greenish pallor. “Then I rushed outside.”

  “And?” Rissi softened her voice.

  “I saw men rushing for the port side.” He cleared his throat, his hand clutched to his mouth. Then he exhaled. “Ed radioed again, directing me aft, between the separator room and the generators. Garrett and Jayce were already there.”

  “Garrett and Jayce?” Mason asked.

  “They’re our damage control team—firefighters, hazardous waste. Basically, anything goes wrong, it’s their job to take care of it.”

  “Okay. That’s helpful to know,” Mason said. “Please continue.”

  “Ed was yelling at them to hurry up. Garrett was spraying . . . spraying the fire extinguisher on Greg.”

  “Were you aware it was Greg at that point?” Mason asked.

  Karl shook his head. “No. The fire hadn’t been completely doused, and he was covered with white foam from the extinguisher.”

  “And then what happened?” Mason asked, his voice respectful of the delicacy of the moment.

  “Garrett put the fire out on Greg, while Jayce fought the ancillary fire on the outer wall of the separator room. Thankfully, he was able to get it out before any of the oil inside caught fire, or we would have had a major catastrophe.”

  “And after the fires were out?” Rissi asked.

  “I knelt down by Greg. I could tell it was him when I got close up. He was badly burned, third-degree throughout his body. He was trembling and gasping for air. I held the oxygen mask to his face, and it helped his gasping, but within a minute he was gone.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know losing a colleague is painful.”

  Karl’s hand rested against his lips and nodded.

  Rissi looked to Mason, and he nodded in return.

  “We’re going to need to see the body,” Mason said.

  “I understand.” Karl stood. “We put him in the auxiliary freezer. Thought the body in the exam room, even covered, would be too upsetting for anyone else I needed to tend to tonight.”

  “Who else did you treat?” she asked.

  “Garrett and Jayce. It’s protocol to check them after any incident. And then Chase”—he looked to Mason—“and you.”

  “You don’t have to be present while we examine and photograph his body, if you prefer,” Rissi said. “However, we will need your medical assessment, as well as details about how the body was moved, who touched it, and so on.”

  Karl led them through the back of the galley to the auxiliary freezer, pulled the handle, and stood back as the fog swirled around him. Cold air meeting warm.

  “You didn’t lock the freezer?” Mason asked.

  Karl’s eyes narrowed. “Why would we need to lock it?” He snorted off a laugh. “Are you worried he might come walking out?”

  “No. I was referring to people going in.”

  Karl shook his head. “Who’d want to go in there? If anything, the crew is totally spooked. Most view Greg’s death as another part of the curse.” He rolled the stretcher, with Greg Barnes’s covered body on it, out of the freezer and back into the exam room, leaving the few men they passed standing and staring in their wake.

  “Will you close that door?” Karl asked, pointing to the main door leading into the medical bay. “We don’t want to subject any of the men to seeing Greg like this when we pull back the sheet.”

  Mason did so and returned to Rissi’s side.

  “Brace yourselves.” Karl exhaled. “It isn’t pretty.”

  Rissi nodded. Death never was.

  Karl unzipped the body bag. The nauseating smell of burnt flesh seeped through the room, hovering thick in the air. Just as Karl had described, Greg Barnes had third-degree burns covering his body. Only scraps of his orange uniform remained on his flayed skin.

  Karl looked away.

  It was horrible to think of how Greg Barnes must have suffered. Examining a severely burned body was difficult, but death itself no longer bothered her. Probably because she’d been exposed to it at such a young age. Finding her stepdad after his suicide had been traumatizing.

  Mason looked at her, making sure she was okay, which was sweet, but she was fine. “Do you want to do the exam or the photographs?” he asked.

  “I’ll do the exam,” she said, pulling on a pair of blue latex gloves.

  Mason did the same and grabbed the digital camera Ed had been kind enough to lend them.

  Karl hovered at the edge of the stretcher.

  “You don’t need to be present,” Rissi said. “I know it’s got to be difficult with someone you know.”

  Karl slipped his hands in his pockets. “He had a family, you know. A wife and two kids.”

  “I’m so sorry for their loss,” Mason said, a crease of pain etching his brow.

  Mason knew what losing a loved one was like too. Rissi remembered the day in their attic hideaway when he’d finally opened up, let his fastidious guard down. He’d told her part of his story. A part that broke her heart. He’d been in the car when his entire family died in one fell swoop. He, the lone survivor.

  How was it that he’d lived through that—and all that came after—and had still become the amazing man standing beside her?

  Brooke cupped the mug of tea, trying to still the shaking in her hands.

  Roxy had changed from her bathrobe ensemble into a red bedazzled Zumba outfit, with a purple bandana covering her pink-rollered hair.

  The doorbell clanged, and Brooke nearly jumped out of her seat.

  “Don’t worry yourself,” Roxy said, popping up like a Jack-in-the-box. “You sit and rest.” She swished toward the door, a spring in her step. The woman possessed more energy than Brooke did at half her age. How was that possible in the middle of the night?

  “Hi, Mrs. Peach,” Gabby said.

  “Hello, dear.” Roxy’s gaze then shifted to Finn. “Well, hello, handsome.”

  “Mrs. Peach,” Finn said with a smile.

  “Uh-uh . . .” Roxy inclined her head.

  “Roxy,” he said.

  “Much better, dear,” she crooned.

  Brooke chuckled under her breath. Such a flirt.

  Gabby rushed for Brooke, concern blanketing her face. She wrapped her in a tight hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”

  “Thanks for coming. I know your flight leaves insanely early, so if you can’t stay, I understand.”

  “We have plenty of time,” Finn said. “I’m going to go clear your house, and then I’ll come back to get you.”

  Brooke nodded as he walked out the door.

  He seemed concerned but calm. She guessed being a CGIS agent, he encountered stuff like this all the time. She, on the other hand, did not. Her still-shaking limbs were definitive proof.

  “I feel like I’m making a bigger deal out of this than it is. . . .” she mumbled.

  Gabby brushed the damp hair from Brooke’s clammy forehead. “Someone was in your house. He, she, or they left you a threatening message. You are anything but overreacting.”

  Brooke reached for Gabby’s hand. “Thanks
.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Finn returned. “Whoever it was is gone. I’ve got my kit in the car. Let me grab it, and I’ll process your house.”

  “Won’t that take quite a while? I don’t want you two missing your flight. I’m sure Finn’s mom is excited to meet Gabby.”

  “We’ve got time,” Finn said.

  “Besides, with Finn being in law enforcement, we kind of get the speed pass through.” Gabby looked Brooke in the eye. “But that’s the last thing you should be worried about.”

  “Okay. Thanks, Finn.” Brooke swallowed and, after thanking Roxy, walked arm in arm with Gabby to her house while Finn popped in his car to grab his CSI kit.

  Brooke moved to open the door.

  “Hold off on opening the door,” Finn called from behind her. “Let me run it for prints.”

  “I already opened it when I came home. Sorry,” Brooke said.

  “All good. There are likely multiple prints there, but we might get lucky.”

  While Finn did his thing on the door, Brooke and Gabby waited on the porch’s wicker love seat. The night air was growing chilly, so she was thankful they could wrap up in the knobby throw blanket she’d pulled from the trunk serving as a coffee table or footrest—whichever folks preferred.

  When Finn finished, he opened the door with gloved hands and gestured them inside. “Show me anything you think the intruder might have touched.”

  “All right.” She inhaled deeply, then released the stranglehold on her chest. “My timer for this lamp”—she strolled to the reading lamp, now on—“was unplugged, but I plugged it back in.” She grimaced. “I’m sorry.”

  “Stop apologizing. Your reaction was completely normal. We can still pull prints and just rule yours out.”

  “Okay.” She gazed around her living room. The eerie feeling of someone having been in her home lingered. “The stack of mail. And the mirror . . .” She pointed to the rose-colored lipstick message scrolled across it.

  “On it,” Finn said, moving first for the pile of mail.

  Gabby rested her hand on Brooke’s back. “Let’s make a cup of tea while we wait.”

  Brooke nodded, rubbing her arms.

  “Do you think it might have been Brodie?” Gabby asked as they settled at the kitchen table over a cup of chamomile.

  Thoughts of her ex-boyfriend and the rocky way they’d left things a month ago resonated through her mind. Brodie had been furious about the split, and his anger spilling over resulted in a restraining order. Had he just broken it?

  Gabby’s hand rested lightly on her arm, tugging her from her fears. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.” She swirled the spoon around in her mug, clanking the sides as she mixed the honey in. “Just frustrated.” With me and yet another example of my poor taste in men. “I can’t believe I dated him as long as I did.”

  Gabby wrapped her arm around Brooke’s shoulders. “You stopped dating him. That’s what matters.”

  She nodded and took a sip of her tea.

  Brodie had been fabulous at the start, attentive, kind. They both served others through their jobs—she a Coast Guard medic and he a firefighter. But just when she started falling hard for him, he did a one-eighty on her. He grew jealous, controlling, short-tempered. And then . . .

  Brooke took another sip, hoping Gabby and her reporter’s intuition didn’t pick up on the embarrassment and shame brewing inside her. The death knell came when they’d gotten into an argument.

  Or rather, he’d started an argument over something inconsequential, and when she didn’t kowtow to his point of view, he’d grabbed her upper arms in a viselike grip and shaken her. Releasing her, he’d shoved her back into her kitchen counter and, thankfully, stormed off.

  She wasted no time in texting him that things were over, and after he’d spent hours banging on her front door or waiting for her at her car, then verbally threatening her, she’d gotten a restraining order.

  She thought about pressing charges for the kitchen incident, but she was so embarrassed, she just wanted him to go away. But it looked like there was no chance of that now.

  Gabby waved her hand in front of Brooke’s face. “You still with me?”

  “Yeah.” She took a deep inhale, her chest still tight. “Sorry.”

  “You never answered my question.”

  Brooke stared at her.

  “Do you think Brodie did this?”

  “He definitely could have. I mean, who else could it be?”

  SEVENTEEN

  The door opened, and Ed popped his head in. “I’m ready whenever you are,” he said as they finished their exam. “Sorry for the delay. As you can see, it’s been extremely chaotic around here.”

  “Understood,” Mason said. “Thanks for taking the time to help us with our investigation.” It was always good to have the boss on board.

  “Trust me,” Ed said. “I want to know what happened too. These men are my responsibility. A man died on my watch, and I want to know why.”

  They thanked Karl—who said he would roll Greg Barnes’s body back into the auxiliary freezer and lock it up until they transported it back to ME Hadley—and followed Ed into the hall.

  As they walked, Ed said, “The first thing we need to do is figure out why the gas sensor didn’t go off to warn us gas was leaking.”

  “Has that ever happened before?” Mason asked.

  “Not on my watch. Not until now.” Sadness edged Ed’s cracking voice. “Tonight, it failed us.”

  Mason inhaled. “If the sensor didn’t go off, how do you know it was a gas leak?”

  “Given the delicate nature of our work, we have two damage control guys on board. They make sure we always adhere to fire safety guidelines, and if, heaven forbid, a fire starts, like it did tonight, they are here to fight it.”

  Karl had mentioned the damage control team and how Garret and Jayce had fought the fire, but it was helpful to hear information from everyone’s perspective.

  Mason turned his attention back to Ed as he continued. “Corporate started placing damage control teams on each platform and oil rig after a gas explosion on one of our drilling rigs in the Gulf of Mexico when twenty men and two women died.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” Rissi said.

  One more flight of stairs and Ed pushed open the exterior door. Floodlights illuminated the deck, gleaming bright in the dark night.

  “Wow.” Rissi shielded her eyes from one angled her way. “You sure keep things bright.”

  “I thought it would be helpful for our purposes to light her up.”

  “Thanks,” she said, shifting a few feet to the left so the light was no longer beaming in her eyes. “That was thoughtful of you.”

  “So you were saying about the gas sensor and a leak,” Mason said, circling back to Ed’s original concern.

  “Right,” Ed swiped his hand over his bald head. “Jayce and Garrett said a flash fire like that is caused by a flammable liquid or gas. No liquid was near the site, so they believe it was gas. We checked the sensors, and they showed no gas leakage, so Jayce took a reading with one of their portable gauges, and it showed a definite gas leak coming through the exterior vent from the compressor, which we’ve shut down until we are sure it’s safe to run again.”

  “What caused the gas to ignite?” Rissi asked. All fires needed three components to start. Oxygen, something flammable—in this case, gas—and a source of ignition.

  “Greg’s bunkmate, Peter, said he saw Greg slip a pack of cigarettes into his shirt pocket before he went to ‘get some air.’” Ed shook his head. “I can’t believe he lost his life over a smoke.”

  “We’ll need to speak with Peter when we’re finished here,” Mason said.

  “Of course.” Ed nodded. “Oh, that reminds me.” He pulled a folded piece of paper from his back pocket. “The employee list you asked for. The names on crew one are in the left column. The names on crew two, who are on the rig now, are in the right.”

  “Thank you,�
� Rissi said, skimming over the list as Mason glanced over her shoulder. Long list meant a long night.

  “We’ll need addresses and phone numbers as well,” she said. “Especially for crew one, as we’ll need to interview them back on land.”

  “Of course,” Ed said. “I’ll put Adam on it.” He radioed his second-in-command and relayed the order.

  “Just to confirm. What time was the last crew transport rotation?” Mason asked.

  “0600 this morning.” He looked at his watch. “Make that yesterday morning.”

  Rissi mulled over the information. Had the problem started with the departing crew or the arriving one?

  Mason looked at Rissi’s finger tapping on a name. “Recognize someone?” he asked.

  “Lucas Eason?” she said more as a question than a statement.

  “Yes,” Ed said. “He’s one of our mechanics.”

  Mason shifted. “Eason? As in . . . ?”

  She looked up at him. “Caleb’s nephew.”

  Caleb stood at the water’s edge, leaning against the farthest pylon from his house. The bottle’s neck perspired in his grip.

  He lifted the brown bottle to his lips, the hoppy scent mixing with the stagnant night air.

  He took a draught and looked out over the sea. Waves broke a good thirty yards out, crashing and pummeling the frothy surface.

  He pinched the bridge of his nose at the realization she was never going to love him back—not that way.

  He took another sip, emptying the bottle as the knowledge permeated his thick outer skin and drilled down to where his fears lay. Setting the empty bottle atop the pylon, he pulled another from the six-pack. He flipped the top off with the bottle opener and took a swig.

  EIGHTEEN

  “The fire occurred between the separator building and the generators,” Ed said, leading them around the piping and buildings to the far end of the vessel.

  Rissi’s mind still held on Lucas. She had no idea he was working on the Dauntless, and neither did Caleb, or he surely would have said something.

  Last Rissi heard, Lucas was at the University of North Carolina Wilmington working on a marine biology degree. Why he’d left school to fall back on the trade he’d learned from his last stepdad, a mechanic on oil rigs, she didn’t know, but it wasn’t surprising. His mom, Caleb’s flighty sister, Susie, never stayed in one place long.