Darkness

by Karen Robards

  Not yet, anyway. Not ever, if he could help it.

  If he was going to live, he had to have air. Not easy when an ocean’s worth of water kept slapping him in the face, smashing down on top of his head, pulling him under and spitting him back up again, toying with him like a cat with a mouse before closing in for the kill. Not easy when water gushed up his nose every time the sea bucked around him and he found himself gulping down gallons of salt water whenever he opened his mouth for air.

  He was so weak it was ridiculous, so cold he was almost paralyzed with it.

  What it came down to was, did he want to live or die?

  If he died, would it even really matter? To whom, besides himself?

  His mother was dead, killed in a car crash when he was five. His father was a tough old bastard, a now retired Air Force officer who prided himself on being a man’s man. His idea of raising a son had consisted of beating the crap out of him for the smallest transgression until Cal had gotten big enough to turn what had started as a beating into a fight. After that, they’d pretty much circled each other like snarling dogs until he’d graduated high school and left home. They barely kept in touch. Would the old man grieve the death of his only offspring? Cal snorted inwardly. He’d be more likely to shed a tear over getting a dent in his car.

  His business partner, John Hardy, another former AFSOC, would keep the company running. Nobody who worked for them would even be out of a job.

  His latest ex-girlfriend was still mad at him over the fact that he’d failed to be forthcoming with a diamond ring. She might, possibly, shed a tear over his demise. She might even give a home to Harley, his dog.

  Harley would grieve. Part Irish wolfhound, part German shepherd, part God knew what else, Harley was a rescue that another previous girlfriend had left with him when it had become clear that the animal was going to grow to the size of a moose. He was six years old, clumsy as a camel on roller skates, and absolutely devoted to Cal.

  Cal came to the semireluctant conclusion that he could not abandon Harley.

  Besides, if he died, no one would know what had gone down on that plane. No one would know that his mission had gone catastrophically wrong, or start asking why.

  He was in shock from the accident. His mind was befuddled by cold and lack of oxygen. But he knew that it was vitally important to get that information to his employer. And he was the only one who could do it.

  Summoning every atom of strength that remained to him, he kicked and pushed against the angry violence of the water and forced himself up above the surface of the waves. Sucking in burning lungfuls of the briny, scorched-smelling air, he waved a leaden arm at the boat.

  Hope springs eternal and all that.

  The sea took instant revenge, rolling over him, carrying him under, doing its best to drown him, but not before he saw that there was only one person in the boat, a mistake if whoever it was intended to try to finish him off with a final coup de grâce. Probably, he thought as he battled back to the surface and the breath he’d been holding exploded from his body, if the boat was indeed intended as backup to the downing of his plane, they hadn’t expected to find anyone alive. The boat, and the person in it, was out there as a fail-safe.

  After all—and here he greedily sucked in more of the tainted air before another wave crashed down on him with what felt like all the force of Niagara Falls—how many people survived being shot out of the sky?

  He probably wouldn’t have survived if he hadn’t been leaning against an outside wall at the exact moment when what had to have been a surface-to-air missile hit them.

  It had taken off the nose section. Even as he was blown into what he’d thought at the time was oblivion, he’d watched Ezra and Hendricks and Rudy, who’d all been in or near the cockpit, disintegrate into a bloom of pink mist, taken out by the concussive force of the explosion that had brought down the plane.

  His mind might not be firing on all cylinders at the moment, but he retained enough of his wits to know that if his plane had just been shot out of the sky by a surface-to-air missile, then somebody on the surface had to have been close enough to have shot it. Like, say, the figure currently racing toward him in the orange boat.

  Chapter Five

  The survivor was a man. His hair, the shape of his face, the width of his shoulders—Gina was certain about his gender even though she only had a few seconds before a swell got between them again, blocking him from her view. If he was calling to her, Gina couldn’t hear him over the noise of the sea. Couldn’t see him now, either, as the boat plunged down the back of a wave and tall peaks of steel-gray water topped with foam and littered with pieces of wreckage rushed past her on all sides.

  But she would find him again.

  No way was she leaving this guy behind.

  Dropping the binoculars, she came about and went to full throttle, sending the boat flying over the watery cliffs and valleys toward where the man had been. He was lost, temporarily, she prayed, amid the waves. As she did her best to dodge the bursts of spray breaking over the bow, the possibility that this might be the man who belonged to the leg sent a shiver of horror down her spine. If so, his life hung by the thinnest of threads, and might depend on what she did in the first moments after reaching him.

  She had adequate basic first aid skills, along with a small first aid kit tucked away in her backpack, which was secured in a compartment in the stern beneath a waterproof flap, but for so severe an injury . . . her mind boggled at the thought of trying to deal with it.

  That concern was forgotten as she crested a wave and saw him there in the water almost directly below her, his head bobbing, his arms barely visible as they moved back and forth in front of him in a slow, treading-water motion. His face turned up toward her even as she spotted him. It was as pale as a corpse’s beneath short, soaked seal-black hair that was plastered to his skull. From that distance his eyes looked black, too, narrow slits above a triangular blade of a nose and colorless lips pressed into a thin, tight line. He saw her and gave another feeble-looking wave.

  “Here,” he yelled.

  She barely heard the hoarse cry, and would’ve thought her ears were playing tricks on her if she hadn’t seen his lips move. He waved again as she sent the boat toward him.

  “It’s okay, I’ve got you,” she shouted to him as she throttled down and maneuvered the boat to bring it in as close to him as possible. The waves worked against them, sweeping him away before she could reach him. For a worrisome moment she lost sight of him once more. She cautiously juiced the throttle, forced to take heed because of all the objects in the water, many of which might be jagged enough to damage the boat if propelled into it with sufficient force. A moment later she was rewarded by spotting him laboring toward her with an awkward swimming stroke that made her think he might be injured. This time her eyes stayed glued to him even as she worked the wheel and throttle to close the distance between them.

  Watching him struggle against the current, she realized that she might have spoken too soon when she’d assured him that she had him. Getting him on board was going to be difficult, she feared. But there was no other option: towing him to shore behind the boat while he held on wouldn’t work. The water was so cold that if he stayed in it much longer he would die from hypothermia.

  “Grab on to the boat,” she yelled as she got close enough to see that his eyes were shadowed by dark circles and his lips were blue. His face was waxy white with cold, and so taut with effort that the strong, square bones of his cheeks and jaw were starkly visible beneath his skin.

  He can’t last much longer. She knew it with an utter certainty.

  Another stroke of his arms and his fingers brushed the boat’s starboard side. To her dismay, it instantly became clear that there was nothing for him to grab on to: the tubular sides were smooth and slick.

  The increasing strength of the waves made the too-buoyant craft difficult to handle with any precision. The wheel vibrated beneath her hands as she fought to hold the
boat steady long enough to give him time to climb aboard. It was useless: even as his fingers scrabbled at the rubber, the water caught him up and pulled him away.

  Should she lean out and try to grab him? Gina’s heart urged her to do it, but her head said no: he might latch onto her like the drowning man he was. She was five-seven and toned, but slim. From what she could see of him he looked large and solidly built. If she were to get pulled into the icy water, instead of rescuing him, she would die with him.

  All she could do was get the boat as close to him as possible one more time and hope that he could get himself into it.

  Taut with anxiety, pulse racing like she was the one whose life was at stake, she did battle with the rushing waves.

  “Try again,” she cried as the boat drew near, only to watch aghast as one of the unceasing waves broke over him without warning. He disappeared, swallowed up by the cascading torrent.

  Her heart lodged in her throat. Nerves jumping, she scanned the roiling water in growing alarm. When his dark head broke the surface at last she let out a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Shaking his head, throwing off water droplets like a wet dog, he started swimming toward the boat one more time.

  “I’m coming!” Shrieking now, with no guarantee that he could hear her over the relentless roaring of the wind and sea, she sent the boat shooting toward him. Its blunt prow slapped up and down on the water with a sound like a hand smacking flesh. The repeated fishtailing of the stern forcibly reminded her that the craft was too flimsy and light for the increasingly harsh conditions. It was meant to be used in clear weather and calm seas. Keeping her gaze firmly fixed on his dark head, she refused to acknowledge the quiver of fear that shot down her spine at the thought, or to worry about the ferocity of the storm exploding toward her. There was nothing she could do about what was coming—except get the survivor on board and then get both of them out of there as fast as she could.

  Even with the sea spitting foam and the wind whistling around her ears and conditions growing worse every second, leaving him was not an option she was prepared to consider.

  His head was up and he was looking at her as he dog-paddled clumsily toward her. He was shouting something, she saw, and strained to hear.

  “. . . rope.”

  The only word she caught of those he screamed at her was the last one, but it was also the most important: she understood instantly that he wanted her to throw him a rope.

  “No rope.” Screaming back, she shook her head vigorously so that he would understand. There was no rope on board.

  He was swimming now as she maneuvered the boat as close to him as possible, but his strokes seemed jerkier and his body rode lower in the water than before. She knew his arms and legs must be numb, and would soon be completely immobilized by cold. When that happened, he would be gone.

  He could die within her view, sink beneath the waves within feet of the boat, and there wouldn’t be anything she could do to save him.

  Gina felt sick at the thought.

  She had just reluctantly reached the conclusion that she was going to have to risk leaning out and trying to grab him when it hit her—she could use her coat. If she were to take it off and throw him one end of it—say, a sleeve, while she held on to the other sleeve—maybe she could pull him on board. But that came with its own set of problems. To begin with, her coat would inevitably get soaked, which meant that she would no longer be able to wear it, leaving her dangerously exposed to the elements. In any rescue situation, the number one rule was, don’t endanger yourself.

  And then suddenly her coat didn’t matter, because she remembered the emergency paddles that were affixed to the interior of the stern just above the place where her backpack was stashed, covered by a rubber flap designed to keep them safe and dry and out of the way.

  The moment she thought of them, she throttled down into neutral. She was afraid to turn the motor all the way off in case she should have trouble getting it started again; the boat was notoriously tricky like that, and if the boat’s engine went out they were both dead. Even as she swung her legs around and dropped to her knees because trying to stand up would be insane given the conditions, the boat was caught up on the shoulder of a wave. Crawling unsteadily to the stern, an exercise that was rendered way trickier than she’d expected by the pitching of the boat, she yanked the flap free of the Velcro that secured it and grabbed the uppermost paddle.

  It obviously had not left the brackets that held it for a long time: she had to wrestle it free. Succeeding at last, holding it triumphantly as she sank back on her heels, she saw that it was lightweight molded plastic, about six feet long. If they were both lucky, she might be able to use it to get him into the boat. Scrambling back to her seat, she scanned the heavy swells. He was nowhere in sight. Just as fear tightened her throat, she spotted him bobbing amid the debris farther out into the bay and waved.

  He did not wave back.

  Was he already too weak?

  Galvanized by the thought, she went after him. As the boat drew near, he rolled onto his back, his arms moving just enough to keep him afloat. Either he was resting, or, as she feared, the frigid water was taking its inexorable toll.

  His head turned toward the boat as it reached him. She could feel his eyes on her, sense his desperation.

  “Get ready,” she yelled. Throttling down into neutral again as the prow slid past him so that he was mere inches away, she scrambled off the seat and plopped down flat on her butt on the deck. Crooking one hand around the back edge of the seat to anchor herself, she thrust the paddle toward him. The water was already catching the boat up, pulling it away. The distance between them increased at a shocking rate with every passing second.

  “Grab hold,” she encouraged him. The wind was louder now. She wasn’t sure he’d heard her. But he definitely saw the paddle: she watched the life come back into his face, watched the muscles around his mouth and eyes tighten, watched his jaw clench as he spotted it. Grim resolve showed in every line of his face. Rolling onto his stomach, he stroked laboriously toward her. It was obvious that he was finding it harder to move. It was also obvious that he meant to fight to the last to survive.

  “Hurry,” she screamed, one eye on the next line of waves rushing toward them.

  He did, abandoning swimming to launch himself out of the water and latch onto the paddle in a desperate lunge. With his dead weight suddenly attached to one end, it was all she could do to retain her grip on the other. She thanked God for the nonslip material of her waterproof gloves, and for the doughnutlike design of the end of the paddle, which created a hole into which she managed to hook her fingers. Icy spray broke over them both as the waves hit, and the boat was caught up again and hurled skyward.

  “Hang on,” she yelled as a haze of blowing seawater obscured everything except the wave that rose like a mountain beneath them. It was the biggest one yet, a roaring monster, and with the motor in neutral they were no more than a scrap of debris caught up by it. Gina’s face was so wet and cold by this time that she could feel it freezing in the wind, and her fingers started to cramp from the force of her grip on the paddle. She felt as if her arms and shoulders were being wrenched apart as she held grimly on to both the paddle and the seat. Her mouth went dry with fear for him, but he managed to hang on while the boat climbed and plunged with the wave.

  “Now,” she screamed when the boat leveled out.

  They had only a moment or two of relative calm before another series of waves hit. Letting go of the seat, she braced her feet against the side nearest him, and held on to the paddle with both hands and every bit of strength she possessed as he put what felt like a thousand pounds of force on the other end.

  His head shot into view as he levered himself partway out of the water. Then the pressure lessened suddenly, and Gina exhaled with relief as he hooked a hand over the side of the boat.

  “CAN YOU climb in?” she shouted. Suddenly the top half of his drenched, haggard face came into view.
He was maybe midthirties, she saw. His brows were thick, straight black slashes above dark eyes that were narrowed to slits. Their eyes met for an instant through the flying droplets of water that warned of yet another approaching wave, and she saw grim determination in his.

  “Get out of the way,” he growled. The words were uttered in a thick, hoarse voice that she could barely hear over the roar of their surroundings. They were accompanied by a flexing of the muscles of his shoulders and arms that was a warning in and of itself. She got out of the way, scooting backward while still retaining her precautionary hold on the seat. He seemed to explode out of the water, landing across the fat sausage rolls in a mighty dive that sent the opposite side of the boat flying upward.

  Squeaking with alarm, Gina threw herself back toward the rising edge. Hooking both arms outward over the rolls, she flattened her back against the inflated tubes, hoping to counteract his weight with her own. With a groan he heaved himself inside the boat. The impact of his body hitting the deck was enough to make the precariously tilting side drop back down toward the water.

  Heart thudding, Gina unhooked her arms from the sides and let her head slump forward in relief.

  He shifted onto his back beside her, stabilizing the boat still more, and started coughing and wheezing like he’d swallowed half the ocean. His eyes were squeezed shut, his hands rested palms down on his chest, and his legs were bent at the knee. He’d lost his shoes. His feet, in drenched black socks, were long and wide. Water poured off him in streams, adding to the puddle in the bottom of the boat. His skin was leached of all normal color. Even half-drowned and frozen as he was, though, Gina couldn’t help but notice that he was way handsome in a rough-hewn, ex–prize fighter kind of way: broad cheekbones, square jaw, with a meaty, slightly crooked nose and a well-shaped mouth turned blue with cold. A shadow of stubble darkened his cheeks and chin: from the looks of it he’d shaved sometime within the last twenty-four hours. He was big enough that he took up almost the entire deck, and obviously fit, with broad shoulders and a wide chest above a flat abdomen, narrow hips, and long, powerful-looking legs. There was something dark staining his shirt on his left side around his waist, she observed with a frown, and the stain seemed to be growing as she watched.