by Geri Krotow
“It was Sanders. He said it’s been a pleasure working together and that he’s left us a gift in the stern of the boat.”
“Hold this.” Miles didn’t wait for her to take over the steering wheel before he went to the back of the boat.
“Shut the engine off.”
He saw the bright yellow cooler that was tucked underneath a back cabinet. His training kicked in and he leaned forward, gingerly pulling the square container up by its strap.
“What is it, Miles?” Ro shouted from the ship’s wheel. She’d cut the engine and they were at the mercy of the currents.
“Call in an SOS.” He saw her dial the numbers and he turned back to the cooler.
Sanders wasn’t smart enough to know how to rig a bomb this small. If it was a bomb. But why wouldn’t it be? Sanders wanted them both out of the picture. He didn’t know that Ro had turned in the incriminating paperwork to Ramsey. He didn’t know that his career was over no matter what he did to Miles or Ro.
Ro.
He couldn’t risk that this wasn’t a bomb. He’d seen enough of them, felt the weight of them. It wasn’t safe to handle or throw over the edge.
He ran up to Ro and grabbed her by the shoulders.
“Help me get my pants and prosthetic off, now.”
Wordlessly, she did as he asked. She’d grown familiar with his artificial limb since she’d seen him remove it and put it back on before and after their lovemaking. God, he prayed they’d be alive to do that again.
“Did you make the call?”
“Yes.”
“Do you trust me, Ro?”
“Absolutely.”
“Then let’s go. We’re jumping.”
* * *
ROANNA FOLLOWED MILES into the deep water without a second thought. Years of jumping from the ten-meter board at the naval academy during swim class, followed by helo dunker training that taught her how to exit an aircraft submerged underwater in pitch darkness, made her actions automatic.
Once the icy water soaked through her clothes and the violent tug of the currents started to make her feel like a useless jellyfish, she cracked.
“Miles!”
“I’m right here.”
And there he was, a few yards from her, fighting the same rip currents that Deception Pass was infamous for.
“Catch this, Ro.” He slung a nylon cord toward her. It took two tries, but she finally caught it and arm-walked herself over to him.
“We have to get to the beach, Ro.” His teeth were chattering and she worried about his bare legs. Bare leg.
“Let’s go, Miles, we can do it.” She linked his life vest to hers as she’d been trained and determined where the closest point was.
“To your three o’clock, Ro.” Miles helped her focus on their target landing spot. As the waves rocked them, she made out a beach with washed-up cedars on it. It was hard to tell from this vantage but judging from where they’d leaped off the boat they had two hundred meters to swim.
In water temperatures that could kill them from hypothermia within a very short time.
“Miles, let’s go.” She looked at him.
“Roanna, I love you with all my heart.” His eyes burned with his love, and her stomach sank.
He thought they were going to die.
“Miles, we’re getting out of this. I called Ramsey after I called in the SOS.” Just in case the commodore had any other tricks to block their survival up his sleeve.
She started to swim with him to the shore.
Oh, hell. She had to tell him. Just in case.
“Miles, I—”
A deafening sound filled the air and the water felt as though a huge vacuum was underneath them, sucking them down. When they surfaced, it was to a fiery scene of burning planks and floating fuel fires.
Ro thanked God that their life jackets were still connected. She reached out to touch Miles’s face and gasped in shock. He was unconscious, a huge gash across the top of his head. Blood streamed from his wound, down over his face.
“Miles, I love you! Don’t you go now, no way.” She gritted her teeth and started to swim them both to shore. He’d lost a limb in Afghanistan. She’d be damned if he’d lose his life in Deception Pass.
Ro was a strong swimmer and making the distance with both of them wouldn’t have been impossible for her. But the water was so damned cold that she started to lose feeling in her extremities.
She pushed on, but even her love for Miles wasn’t enough. She couldn’t get them to shore.
A splash, then a burst of orange smoke surrounded her. Dazed, she stared, her mental acuity slowing as her body temperature fell.
Flares.
Flares!
She looked up as she heard the whop-whop-whop of the rescue helicopter’s blades.
Please let me get us to the hook.
It had been the hardest part of her survival swimming qualifications. Swimming through current and wind to reach the large hook that the helicopter would lower for her to attach to their vests.
But their vests weren’t navy vests. Where was she going to put the hook?
A large splash sprayed salt water in her face and she was temporarily blinded.
No. They weren’t going to die out here.
She blinked and when her vision cleared she saw the rescue diver.
“I’m going to get you into the basket. Just do what I tell you.” The swimmer was clad in a wet suit Ro would have paid her life’s savings for. It was her last conscious thought.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
MILES HAD A bitch of a headache when he came to. At first he tensed, petrified that he was back in the CSH in Afghanistan. But the combat support hospital hadn’t had such clean, white ceilings and he’d felt a hell of a lot worse.
“How you feeling, Warrant?” A gloved medical person stood over him, needles and suturing thread in hand.
“How many stitches this time?”
The doc laughed. “I’m Dr. Dempsey. You’ll have around twenty, all told. But you’ll live.”
Live.
Roanna.
He sat up.
“Whoa, big guy.” The doc pushed on his shoulder and Miles felt another set of hands hold him back. He’d had his share of hospital corpsmen keeping him down on the rack while a surgeon patched him up.
“Where’s Roanna?”
“I’m right here.” She came into focus, looking like a wet rat wrapped in a big hospital blanket. Her hand found his and she leaned over. “It’s okay. We’re safe. We’re going to be okay.”
“Are we?”
Her eyes shimmered with tears and he knew his did, too.
“Folks, I’ve got to get this wound stitched up.”
“Give us a minute, Doc.” Ro’s voice had never sounded so beautiful to him.
Her gaze didn’t waver from his the entire time she ordered the doc around.
“I love you, Miles. If you still love me, we’re good.”
One week later
THE CHEERY COFFEE shop in Oak Harbor was crowded on a Saturday afternoon. Ro watched as Detective Ramsey spoke to her, Miles and Lydia Reis.
“I arrested Lydia with her full cooperation.” Ramsey smiled as he drank his coffee. Black and strong, the same way he’d had it in his office.
“Believe me, if I didn’t think it would help him catch Sanders I would never have allowed my sailors to go through that.” Lydia was quiet and calm. “It’s always upsetting when one of your leaders gets into trouble.”
“Why did you pick the day of the memorial service?” Miles spoke up and Ro reached for his hand, under the table. She couldn’t get enough of him since she’d finally admitted she couldn’t live without him.
“It sent a clear message.
It showed Sanders that we believed his lies about Lydia.” Ramsey nodded at Ro. “Fortunately, you two shared what you knew with me before Sanders called me incriminating Lydia. He’d placed the cans of soda he’d used in the trunk of her car. It was a total setup.”
“Cans of soda?” Ro was lost.
“The witness I told you about who saw Perez acting drunk had seen him leave the bar with Sanders the night of his death. The bartender served them each a can of soda.” Ramsey cupped his hands around his coffee mug.
“Sanders wasn’t stupid. He saved the cans, in one of which he’d dissolved a roofie.”
“The date rape drug,” Lydia clarified.
“Sanders didn’t want to risk the cans showing up anywhere right after Perez’s death, so he saved them. Maybe he intended to frame someone all along, who knows?”
“Did Sanders push Perez off the cliff?” Miles wanted his suspicions confirmed, Ro knew.
Ramsey shook his head. “We’ll never be able to corroborate the evidence. He was seen helping Perez into his BMW outside of the club. That’s it. But I suspect he walked Perez over to the cliff and pushed him off, yes.”
“Will he be locked up for good?” Ro asked.
“With the superb D.A. Island County has, and the navy wanting to take him off our hands to get him to a court martial if the D.A. doesn’t want the case? He doesn’t stand a chance. At the very least he’ll go to jail.” Ramsey paused. “We have enough evidence on Sanders with the soda cans. The other thing he got sloppy about was that he never got rid of the rest of the roofies he had. They’re an exact chemical match with what Perez ingested.”
“None of this showed up in the toxicology reports?” Miles remembered everything, Ro thought.
“Traces, but not enough to call it clearly. Rohypnol doesn’t stay in the system very long at all. By the time we found Perez and collected his bodily fluids, it was at least twelve hours from the time of death.”
“Did Karen Sanders ever provide any evidence?” Ro had to ask.
“She was actually very cooperative with us and painted Sanders as a real narcissist.”
“I hope she gets the help she needs.”
“She is. She’s in rehab. Her mother is staying with their daughter since Sanders was arrested,” Lydia put in.
“I’m glad to hear it.” Ro hadn’t been able to shake the image of Karen Sanders, all strung out and bitter, when she’d paid her that surprise visit.
“What are you going to do, Lydia?” Miles asked the woman who’d been through hell and back.
“I’m retiring is what I’m doing. It’s time for me to make a new start. I might even buy a houseboat and live on the water.”
Ro shuddered.
“Not me.”
They all laughed.
One month later
RO LOOKED AT HER reflection in the salon’s mirror. Her hair was soft and the short style framed her face. Her eye was completely healed and the professional makeup the cosmetician had used covered the small scar on her cheek.
“Thanks so much, Rosy. You’ve done a wonderful job.”
“It’s my pleasure. Can I ask what the special occasion is?”
Ro beamed at her. “I’m getting married.”
She paid her bill and exited the beauty spa. She’d wanted to have Gwen as her maid of honor in a quiet church ceremony, but Gwen got called away on deployment weeks before she was originally supposed to go.
Miles had convinced her to marry him, anyway, in an intimate ceremony. They’d have a big reception for her family in New Jersey, or one out here by the water later on. Neither of them wanted to wait any longer.
She pulled up to the base chapel, the same place where they’d paid their last respects to José Perez. Max Ford was waiting in a minivan with his wife, Winnie, just as Ro had asked him to.
“You look beautiful, Ro.” Max smiled at her as he stepped out of the van.
“Oh, Ro, I’m so glad we can be here for you two.” Winnie was much bigger than she’d been a month or so ago. “It’s going to be fabulous working with you, too. You’re a natural artist!”
She referred to the fact that Roanna had turned in her resignation. In six months she’d be out of the navy and working for Winnie.
Ro wrapped her hand-knit white silk shawl around her bare shoulders. She’d chosen a simple A-line gown in a creamy ivory satin. It was strapless, so she’d knitted a lace shawl for the wedding. The project had kept her up for hours this past week.
“Do you have my boy?”
Max laughed.
“We do. Are you ready?”
“I sure am!”
* * *
MILES WAITED AT the chapel altar for what felt like an eternity. Out of superstition, Ro insisted on driving herself; she didn’t want him seeing her beforehand in her dress.
All he could think about was seeing her afterward, undressed.
“I think I just saw them pull up. Are you ready to go, Miles?”
Chaplain Brunello smiled at him and he smiled back.
“I’ve been ready since I met her almost a year and a half ago, ma’am.”
The doors opened and he held his breath. Then let it out when he saw Max and Winnie.
Max’s laughter shot toward him.
“She didn’t jilt you, did she?”
“Stop it.” Winnie elbowed him as they made their way up the center aisle. They reached Miles, and while he was happy to see his friends, there was only one person he wanted, needed, to see.
All four of them stood, waiting.
The center doors opened and Roanna, a vision in white, walked in.
Pulling a big beast with her.
“Beau?” Miles blinked.
Ro walked up the aisle with Beauregard, who behaved remarkably well for the crazy pup he was. He even wore a tuxedo collar.
Ro smiled at Miles when they arrived at the altar.
“Do you mind? Taking both of us on?”
Miles couldn’t speak for fear of blowing his tough-guy persona with a gush of tears.
He held out his hand to Roanna. She joined him on the altar, and as the chaplain read the opening prayer, Beau sat in between and slightly behind them.
A new navy family.
* * * * *
Navy Hug Hat
You need:
Size U.S. 8 circular knitting needles.
150 to 200 yards of worsted, or 4-weight yarn.
Abbreviations:
MH: make hug: (p1, k1, p1) all in one stitch
k3tog: knit 3 stitches together as one
k2tog: knit 2 stitches together as one
Cast on 88 stitches, place marker and join, taking care not to twist stitches.
Work brim: Knit all stitches for 10 rows
Pattern:
Row 1: purl all stitches
Row 2: *MH, k3tog*; repeat around
Row 3: purl all stitches
Row 4: *k3tog, MH*; repeat around
Work pattern for 18 rows.
Crown Decrease:
Knit all stitches for 8 rows
Row 1: *k6, k2tog*; repeat around
Row 2: *k5, k2tog*; repeat around
Row 3: *k4, k2tog*; repeat around
Row 4: *k3, k2tog*; repeat around
Row 5: *k2, k2tog*; repeat around
Row 6: *k1, k2tog*; repeat around
Finish: Cut working yarn, leaving a 6-inch tail. Draw the tail through the remaining stitches, cinch closed and secure. Weave in ends and enjoy.
To knit hat with 3 colors, use Color A for brim and crown decrease. Work pattern alternating 2 rows Color A, 2 rows Color B and 2 rows Color C for 18 rows.
To knit hat using 2 colors, use Color A for brim and crown decrease. Work pattern al
ternating 2 rows Color A and 2 rows Color B for 18 rows.
Visit Robin’s blog for more patterns and info: www.knittingwithschnapps.blogspot.com.
Join her on Facebook for new patterns: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Delaware-Head-Huggers/250229674280.
Learn more about Delaware Head Huggers by visiting www.delawareheadhuggers.org.
Navy Hug Hat
Copyright © 2012 by Robin Agar-Celli
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CHAPTER ONE
New Orleans, 2013
“HOT GUY AT TWO O’CLOCK,” Pansy McAdams said, craning her head around the form mannequin and peering out the window.
Eleanor Theriot rolled her eyes and swiped her dust cloth over the spindles of the rocker she knelt beside. “You think half of New Orleans is hot.”
“No, I’m just optimistic.”
“Or need a good optometrist.”
Pansy didn’t turn her head from whoever had drawn her attention. “I have perfect vision, thank you very much, and this one is worth the drool I’ll have to wipe off the glass.”
