Rina adjusted the viewfinder. She’d taken the southeasterly position on the beach, gotten herself as close to the surf as possible while Zoot took the western angle. He’d get more of the backdrop shots they’d need to splice in later.The wind whipped around her, and she backed off a little so she wouldn’t have to keep clearing the spray from the lens.
“This was always my favorite part of training.” Mac’s voice boomed behind her.
“You’re finally home.” She left the camera on the tripod and gave her uncle a hug.
“Sorry I was away longer than I expected to be, but from the reports I’ve gotten from Cash, things have gone well here.”
“Yes, very well,” she said, ignoring the twinge of guilt. She was upset enough about Cash’s reaction to her this morning, had spent the better part of an hour stewing about it before shutting off that part of her brain and focusing on her work.
There would be time enough to talk later, when the day’s filming was done. It wasn’t as if Cash was going anywhere.
She refused to listen to that tiny voice inside her head that kept reminding her he could, and had, gotten called away at a moment’s notice.
“Glad to hear it. And keep filming,” Mac said. “I didn’t mean to distract you.”
“I can’t believe anyone would actually enjoy this,” she said, motioning toward where the raft was being tossed to and fro.
“Yeah, well, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.”
“I think I’ll sit that one out,” she said.
Mac laughed. “Yeah, if they even tried to take you out there, none of them would be breathing. I am glad they’ve been behaving themselves.”
She didn’t answer him, only studied the viewfinder as if it was the most important thing in the world. She was grateful that Jenny had kept quiet about what had been going on with Cash, but Rina knew she’d have to own up to it soon enough. Though not here, on the beach, with Cash too far away.
Maybe it was better if she told Mac without Cash. She knew what Cash had said but maybe it would be easier if she got her uncle used to the idea now. Gave him time to think about it, understand it and cool down.
Because really, for this whole thing to work, she needed Cash alive.
“Cash has definitely been a big help,” she started cautiously. What helped was that she didn’t have to look her uncle in the eye for any of this.
“I didn’t give him much choice,” he said, and then she heard the ringing she’d become all to familiar with. “Sorry, Rina, but I’ve got to run. We’ll talk more later—Jenny mentioned that you’re coming to dinner tonight.”
“Yes, I’ll be there,” she said, looking quickly to her uncle, who gave a wave before he headed down the beach and she let out a sigh of relief. Maybe she should tell him when Cash was there.
Because really, after all this, she was still a big fat chicken.
WHEN THE RAFT slammed into the rocks and capsized in the rough swells, Cash forced his body to relax. To negate the panic that was naturally inbred in everyone when the pressure of thousands of gallons of sea water threatened to crush the life out of them.
Thankfully, that instinct was immediately and thoroughly stamped out of the Navy SEAL. Cash had learned it earlier than most, though, thanks to his time spent surfing and getting slammed around by the Atlantic Ocean as both a surfer and a SEAL. But it was still a bitch when it happened, particularly especially when the water was on the verge of being bone-chilling cold, despite the thermal wetsuit. Add to that the fact that he’d been thrown against the very rocks they’d been trying to avoid inside the raft, and the day was not looking up at all.The current was stronger than predicted, and his body pulled down toward the bottom first, rather then toward the break and the oxygen that he would need sooner than later. Getting his bearings while rolling in a downward spiral through the dark sea with no guide wasn’t easy, but thoughts of a warm shower propelled him upright fast. The tug on the rope around his left ankle told him Justin felt the same, and together, the two men kicked up and broke the surface in tandem.
“Call out!” Cash yelled over the sound of the rushing water, as he and Justin kicked hard to tread away from the pull of the rocks, and Hunt’s voice sounded off from behind him. Rev’s followed, and together the four men hooked onto the slippery rocks and prepared to make the unsteady climb to the waiting beach.
The raft was a goner, thought Cash. It came back up out of the waves and slammed into him full-force. He heard himself curse out loud, then he pitched forward into the violent water.
He got his grip again, but the current was fierce, pulling in debris from who knows where. He saw a piece of wood clip Justin on the side of the head, but his friend stayed up and remained conscious. And then something slammed Cash’s midsection, forcing him from the rock where his hold had been tenuous at best, and he went blasting back into the waves.
18
JENNY SLAMMED her old SUV into a parking spot at the Naval hospital Cash had immediately been transferred to following the accident. She’d broken every speed limit, and then some, to make the half-hour trip in record time.
“Aunt Jenny…please come to the hospital,” her niece had sobbed into the phone, and the way Rina was crying—barely breathing—could only mean one thing. Something had happened to Cash.Jenny had dialed Mac’s number frantically, left messages for him wherever she could. And now, seeing Rina sitting in the waiting room all by herself, her face bleak, Jenny could almost feel the presence of all the other wives of all the other team members of Mac’s she’d met in this very room to receive news—some of it better than others, some of it enough to bring even the strongest woman to her knees.
She hadn’t been around most of those women in years and still, the scene hit Jenny with a sadness anew. She didn’t want any bad news, but Rina needed her.
“Jenny.” Rina threw herself into her Aunt’s arms and held her so tightly.
“Rina, honey, you’re shaking.” Jenny managed to calm her niece, but knew it wouldn’t last long. “Come on, come sit down and tell me what happened.”
“I don’t know what’s happening,” Rina blurted. “No one’s telling me anything. But, my God, he was unconscious when they brought him out of the water. It was right in front of me. He was so still.” Rina wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, stared somewhere over Jenny’s shoulder as if she was reliving the entire experience.
She’d probably been doing that since it happened.
“A training accident?”
“Yes. I saw it…filmed it.” Rina’s hands started to shake again, and Jenny grabbed them, held them. “They told me he’d be all right. Something about his spleen, but that he’d be all right. Justin promised me. But that was hours ago….”
“I’ll get information on what’s happening now. I’m sure they’re just making him comfortable. This kind of thing happens a lot during training. I’ll find out more. I promise,” Jenny said, and started to pull away, but Rina wouldn’t let go of her hands.
Don’t ask it, please don’t ask it now….
“Jenny, I don’t think…how did you do this?” Rina asked. She let go of Jenny’s hands and hugged her arms to her body. Jenny slid out of the warm cardigan sweater she’d been wearing and wrapped it around her niece.
“I did it because I love Mac,” she said, and yes, it sounded so simple, but it was the absolute truth. It had been the only way she’d gotten through. The only way Rina would. But that was a decision her niece was going to have to come to on her own.
“I’m not as strong as you are. There’s no way…I’m scared enough of pressing forward with my own career. How can I love someone who does something so dangerous?” Rina’s eyes were wide, red-rimmed, begging Jenny for an answer.
“Do you love him?” Jenny asked.
Rina nodded. “Yes. Too much to risk this, time and time again.”
Jenny nodded, wiping away a few more stray tears from her niece’s cheek and bit her tongue, since Rina would have to
learn for herself that love was always worth the risk, every time.
IT WAS WORSE than waking up from a nightmare, or maybe it was a nightmare, because when Cash shifted he realized that he wasn’t moving. That made him try even harder, to push against his elbows in an effort to sit up, to feel his legs, to do anything.
Terror like he’d never known before surged through him. His body broke out in a hot sweat and he twisted his neck to try and break free of whatever was across his mouth, but his throat felt tight and dry.He yelled, but no sound came out. He heard beeping in the distance, then a crash and then, finally, voices.
“He came out sooner than I thought….”
“Hold his head.”
“Lieutenant, hold still. Hold still and I’m going to help you.”
His eyeballs felt as if he’d had sand poured directly into them, but he was able to focus enough to see the doc standing over him. Cash stopped struggling and nodded.
“I’m going to pull the tube from your throat. You’ll cough when I tell you to. And then I’m giving you more medicine to make you relax. Do you understand?”
He wanted to know why he couldn’t move, but the fact that they were pulling the tube was a good sign—he wasn’t paralyzed. So he nodded and coughed when the tube was removed even though it felt like he’d swallowed fire.
He tried to talk but his voice was shot.
“Lieutenant Cashman, you’ve been injured,” the doctor said calmly. “Your arms and legs are in restraints. We need you to stay still.”
Cash nodded slightly, letting the doctor know that he understood, and wanted more information. He looked down at his hands while he moved his fingers, looked down farther, saw his feet moving from under the sheets, and relaxed marginally.
“Are you in any pain?” the doctor asked, and really, beyond the fact that his throat was killing him, whatever they had him on made him strangely content to be held down.
He shook his head.
“You’re going to be fine,” the doctor continued. “You’ve sustained an injury to your spleen—it’s not severe, but your spleen is bleeding. Protocol suggests that we should be able to avoid surgery if we keep you lying down and still, until the bleeding stops. There’s an excellent possibility your spleen should heal fully on its own. We’ll be monitoring you closely.”
Cash nodded again. Avoiding surgery sounded great to him, and a nurse held up a cup of water, with a straw, to his mouth, her hand on the back of his neck to steady him. He took a few sips.
“Your teammates are here. I’ll allow them to see you for a few minutes, but then you must rest,” the doctor told him.
“Doc, do I have to stay in these?” he asked, his voice a rough rasp.
“You can take away the restraints and elevate his head a bit. But you’re not getting out of this bed for at least a week. For anything,” the doctor insisted. “You can let in his teammates now,” he told the nurse, and within seconds, Justin was standing next to the bed.
“You all right, man?”
“I’m fine,” Cash mumbled, his throat still raw from the tube. He glanced over at the cup of water, and Justin grabbed it, held the straw to Cash’s lips. He took another long, grateful swallow and then dropped his head back down to the pillow.
The last thing Cash remembered was dark, swirling water and pain. “What happened?”
“I’m still not sure,” Justin answered. “Some kind of refuse got stuck in the tide. I think you caught a board to the spleen.”
“That I remember.” He paused. “I can’t sit still for a week.”
“You can, and you will, if you want to keep your spleen,” Hunt said. He appeared at the other side of Cash’s bed. “After that, you’re on light duty for a month to make sure you’re totally healed. As per Hollywood’s orders. A good time to get comfortable with all your new XO duties.”
“Fine. Kick me when I’m down. Where’s Rev?”
“He’s fine. Managed to make it to the rocks. He pulled me in while Justin hauled you up,” Hunt replied. Cash held out his hand and Justin shook it.
“I owe you, buddy.”
“I’ll collect sooner than later, I’m sure. And hey, Rina’s waiting outside. She wouldn’t go home until she saw you,” Justin said.
“How much did she see?”
Justin frowned. “Too much, I guess. Although we didn’t really talk about it. But she’s upset.”
Cash nodded. “Do I look like I’ve been through the mill? I don’t want her to get more upset.”
“Your beauty was spared,” Justin assured him.
“Screw you. How long was I out?”
“You were unconscious when I dragged you in,” said Justin. “Then they gave you something to keep you out.”
And Rina had seen it all. Shit. “Okay, you can send her in.”
Justin and Hunt left and, within minutes, Rina peeked her head inside the room and he forgot about everything else but her.
When she saw him she took a few steps forward and then stopped. The look in her eyes was similar to the way she’d looked when she told him about her uncle. And that was not a look he ever wanted to see from her again, especially not when it involved him.
He’d have to handle this one carefully. “Hey, I’m okay.” He held out his hand. “Don’t worry about all the machines. It’s not like they’re keeping me alive.”
She nodded, and he saw her swallow hard before she approached the bed. He grabbed her hand and held it close, and knew what Zoot and Keith had said earlier about her using him was total bull. Just from the expression on her face, he knew she hadn’t been lying about falling in love with him.
“I’m all right.”
“They said you might need surgery,” she said.
“If I stay in bed and rest, I should be fine.” Granted, the bed-rest thing didn’t bother him much now because painkillers were a beautiful thing. In fact, everything would remain beautiful until the buzz wore off and he’d know just how long and boring seven days of pure bed-rest actually was. At the moment, the thing that bothered him most was that he was wearing some kind of stupid hospital gown.
“I saw you go under. Saw the board hit you,” she said pulling her hand out of his. “I was filming it.”
“Well, that’s some footage you might not want to use. Then again, it might keep the wannabe’s from signing up too quickly,” he said.
“How can you joke about this?”
“What do you want me to do? This is part of my job. You know that. You said you were all right with it. That I was worth the risk.”
“I thought I’d be able to handle it. But I don’t think I can do this, Cash,” she whispered, like she wasn’t sure who she was betraying more, him or her, by saying the words out loud. “Uncle David’s death scared me. I didn’t expect it. He seemed bulletproof. You seem bulletproof.”
“But I’m not,” he said quietly. “Although you’ve got to admit, my armor is thicker than most.”
She ran a hand over the bruises on his cheek, and let her hand drift to his chest. “Not thick enough.”
“Rina, I get it. I really do.”
“No, you don’t.” She pushed away. “You don’t know anything about me. Not really.”
His chest tightened because he knew, just knew, he was losing her. She was slipping through his fingers and there wasn’t a damned thing he could do about it but lie here helpless. He was already tired of that feeling.
“You don’t really know anything about me, either,” he said through clenched teeth. “So, where’s your camera.”
“My camera? Why would I—?”
“Why wouldn’t you? This is what your video’s all about, right? The extreme nature of the job—all the risks it entails, even on a simple training mission, something I’ve done a hundred times over. I thought you wanted to know everything.”
“Not now, not like this,” she said.
“This is going to be your only opportunity, Rina. I can promise you that. So get your film gear, put yo
ur mic on and I’ll tell you my story.”
“Cash, I…”
“What? You wanted the interview, didn’t you?”
“Not like this.”
“A good filmmaker gets it anyway she can. I think you told me that, right? Get the goddamned camera. Now.”
CASH’S TONE didn’t leave any room for further discussion. She grabbed the bag she’d dropped at the entrance to his room. Her hand shook slightly while she set up the shot—the background was too white, but it didn’t matter. She wouldn’t be showing his face, in fact, she didn’t think she’d ever share this portion with anyone.
“So ask me your big question. The one you’ve been harping for an answer to since your first day on base.” His face was drawn, probably more from pain than anything, but she hated seeing him this way, hated knowing she was part of the reason he was so miserable right now.Still, she asked the question he was waiting for. “Why did you join the Navy?”
“I joined because I had nowhere else to go. I joined because it was either that or become a ward of the state or live on the streets, since no one wanted to hire a seventeen-year-old kid with no experience beyond fishing with his bare hands, surfing and carving weapons from wood.”
She lowered the camera, stared at him, but he tightened his jaw.
“Where were your parents? You said they were still in Africa. Did they just let you go?” she asked, not sure she wanted to hear the answer to her own question for once in her life. But it was too late for regrets.
“They were killed.”
She drew in an audible breath, but he ignored it, continued with his story. “I told you—they were doctors and part-time missionaries. They’d worked in clinics around the world before I was born, but after they had me, they settled in Africa. For a long time, we moved along the east coast, in Tanzania, which was where I learned to surf. I was good, too. Had a future.” He paused, wiped his eyes with the back of his hand angrily. “The day they were killed, it was a surprise ambush on the village. Rebels from the neighboring country, running wild. And my parents never liked to handle guns. I did, learned to shoot early. I might’ve been able to help them, to save them. But I was away. At a surfing competition.” His voice was raw, almost broken, but he kept pushing.
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