by Lee, Rachel
Chase shook his head. “You know better, Tom. It’s a standard precaution on a commercial dive boat, especially on a deep dive. I wouldn’t have gone down without one there.”
“I still didn’t like the feeling, but I was damn grateful we had it.” Tom dropped his hand from his neck. His face had been weathered to the patina of old, gnarled wood by a life at sea, and right now he didn’t look happy. “Something was wrong out there that day.”
Chase agreed with him, but he didn’t want to say so aloud. Giving voice to the fears that plagued him would only make them seem more real. “There sure was. Me. I fucked up royally.”
Tom’s eyes, the color of the sea on a cold day, narrowed. “You? The way you plan and consider every detail? No, I ain’t buyin’ it.”
“That’s the only explanation. I didn’t do something right. I know it. It’d be nice if I knew what I did wrong, but I don’t. It doesn’t matter. I’ll never dive again.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“Figure out what to do with the rest of my life.” As soon as I can figure out how to sleep again. But he didn’t tell anybody except his doctor about his sleep problems. He didn’t want anybody to know how far gone he was.
“Well, you’ll figure out something. You were a SEAL, for God’s sake. You can do damn near anything.”
Chase gave him a half smile. “That’s sure what they try to beat into you in training.”
“And you did it. All of it. Not many make it through Hell Week, let alone the rest of it. And if you can do that…”
“That was a long time ago, Tom. A long time ago.”
Tom snorted. “Not so long that you’ve lost your determination. You’ll find something to do. Something dangerous, probably.” He chuckled. “Yup, it’ll be something dangerous.”
Chase didn’t know about that. He was getting awfully sick of living on the edge. He and Tom went back a long way, though, all the way back to when they’d both been in the navy, he a SEAL and Tom a boatswain’s mate. They had served on the same ship, been stationed at the same base, and both had gotten tired of the military life around the same time. Tom was five years older, but that had never stood in the way of their friendship, not even when Chase had been a brash nineteen-year-old who was sure he could conquer the world.
Now, with sixteen years of friendship behind them, they looked across the table as equals. Tom could say things to Chase that no other living human being could get away with. Tom knew it, and he took advantage of that now.
“What you can’t do,” he said, “is hide away out here like some hermit. At least stick your periscope up once in a while. I start to get insulted when you don’t call for a month.”
One corner of Chase’s mouth lifted. “I reckon I can manage that.”
Tom laughed. “You reckon right. Stop acting like a wounded dog and crawl out of your den.”
“Damn it, Tom.” Chase wanted to laugh, but he resisted the urge. “I just managed to crawl into it. After two months in the hospital and rehab, I need the quiet and solitude.”
“Mmm.” Tom sounded doubtful. “What you need is some fun and the company of good friends.”
Chase didn’t answer that. He found himself looking past Tom, out at the dark, stormy afternoon, and wondering if his nightmares would be easier to handle if he lived in town. Or if they’d just be worse.
“I came out here for the quiet,” he said levelly. And indeed he had. He had believed that there would be less stimulation, less to rasp his raw nerves. He’d also figured that it would be a lot harder for somebody to get at him—if somebody wanted to get at him. But he didn’t want to say that out loud, not even to his oldest friend.
“Well,” Tom said after a bit, “I guess you know best what you need.” His tone was heavy.
Chase dragged his gaze from the window and saw how troubled Tom looked. “What’s wrong?”
“You. What happened to you.” Tom shook his head and took another swig of his whiskey. “Call me a superstitious old sea dog if you want, but something about this ain’t right. Damned if I can put my finger on it, Chase, but something sure as hell ain’t right.”
Chase felt his stomach twist uneasily, but he refused to let go of his rationality. “It’d be easy to believe that, Tom. Real easy. But I have to accept responsibility for what happened.”
“Responsibility? I’ll lay it at your door when you tell me exactly how it was you screwed up.”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember. But I must have done something.”
“Yeah. That’s what everybody wants to believe.”
Silence fell between them, filled by the drumbeat of rain on the roof and the low growl of the storm. Yeah, thought Chase, everybody wanted to believe he’d made a mistake. He wanted to believe it himself, because to believe otherwise would give substance to the things he saw in his nightmares.
“I miscalculated something,” he said finally.
“Mmm.” Tom’s response was noncommittal.
“It had to be. My first thought was that I’d gotten a nitrogen-oxygen mix in my tanks instead of helium and oxygen, but the tanks tested for the right mixture, Tom.”
“That they did.”
“So whatever happened probably wasn’t nitrogen narcosis. Which means the doctors were probably right about me having some kind of stroke that caused my hallucinations and panic.”
“I never heard of a stroke doing that, but I guess it’s possible.” Tom’s tone remained dubious.
“Transient ischemic attack, they called it. They said it might even have been caused by pressure on my carotid arteries at that depth.”
“Constricting the carotid arteries causes unconsciousness and death, not hallucinations.”
Chase nodded slowly, neither agreeing nor disagreeing.
“Well, I suppose the doctor knows better than I do.” Tom pushed back from the table and walked around the room, checking things out. “Pretty cozy little place you got here. I wouldn’t mind holing up here myself.”
“So crash in the spare room.”
Tom laughed. “Don’t tempt me. I sure as hell haven’t got anything to go home to.”
“When do you sail next?”
“Not for three weeks. The Hope is in for some scraping and painting.”
Chase knew how restless Tom tended to get when he was tied to the land, especially since his wife had died. At these times, he and Tom were usually busy planning all kinds of things to keep busy.
“Why don’t you sail with me?” Tom asked suddenly. “I can always use a good mate.”
For an instant, just an instant, Chase seriously considered it. The sea was in his blood, running through his veins. He needed her scents and sounds as if they were the very essence of life.
But the thought of being out there on the water again, with nothing between him and the grasping arms of the sea except the hull of a ship, made him go cold all over.
“Think about it,” Tom said, as if sensing his reaction. “Don’t answer now. You might feel different in a couple of weeks.”
“Thanks.” But he knew he wouldn’t do it. And for the first time he realized that not only would he never dive again, he would never sail again. The realization stirred the embers of rage in his belly.
As suddenly as if someone had thrown a switch, the rain stopped. Through the open windows, they could hear the waves against the shore, but not one other sound.
Tom picked up his whiskey. “Let’s sit out on the porch,” he said.
Chase didn’t need an explanation. Tom might talk about how cozy his place was, but he hated to be indoors for long.
“That’s better,” Tom said, standing at the porch railing as if it were the bow of a ship, one hand stuck into his pants pocket, the other holding his highball glass.
The world was a collage of grays and dark greens, everything shining wetly. From the Carlson house around the inlet came the warm glow of lamplight falling through windows.
“Who lives over there?”
Tom asked.
“The Carlsons. Brother and sister. She’s waiting for him to get home. The kid sailed out this morning in a thirty-foot rustbucket. He’s okay, though.”
“Kid’s got more balls than brains,” Tom remarked.
“That’s what I thought. He’s probably feeling pretty proud of himself, though. He salvaged a pretty nice fishing boat, from what he was saying on the radio earlier.”
Tom perked up. Salvage was a subject he was comfortable with, unlike illness, injury and nightmares. “Yeah? That’s some piece of luck.”
“The kid thinks so.”
“What was wrong with the boat? What happened to the crew?”
“I don’t know. He found it sinking, said it had been scuttled.”
“Scuttled?” Tom turned and leaned back against the railing, shaking his head. “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Neither do I.”
“Nobody scuttles a perfectly good boat unless they’ve got something serious to hide.”
“The thought crossed my mind.”
“You didn’t tell the sister that?”
Chase shook his head. “What’s the point? But it did cross my mind that if somebody had something to hide, and these boys bring it to the light of day, they could be in some serious danger.”
Tom nodded.
“The Coast Guard may think the same thing. They’re escorting the boys in.”
Tom sucked air between his teeth. “Not good.” He jerked his head toward the house. “So what’s the sister like? A withered old prune?”
In spite of himself, Chase laughed. “Far from it. Cute and blond.”
“Hmm. Well, with that right next door, I guess I can see why you want to hide out here. Especially after Iris dumped you.” Iris, Chase’s most recent on-and-off girlfriend, hadn’t even visited him in the hospital. Chase didn’t want to think about that, and Tom didn’t seem to want to get into those dark waters either. The change of subject was swift. “Speaking of which, Dave Hathaway asked me to say hello to you.”
Dave Hathaway was the executive at the insurance company who directed salvage operations when the company decided it was worth their while. “What’s Dave got to do with Iris?”
Tom chuckled. “Brain fart. I don’t know what made me think of him. But he did want me to say hi, asked me to remind you if you want a job with the company, he’s got one for you. He said he could use an experienced diver to oversee deep-salvage operations.”
“He mentioned that to me just before I got out of rehab. I told him no.”
“Why?” Tom set his glass down on the railing and put both his hands on his hips. “Look, Chase, I know you’ve been through a rough time. Nobody feels great after a serious accident and weeks of rehab. But you gotta get on with life again sometime, and now’s as good a time as any to get off your butt and get going.”
Chase nodded.
“Don’t you nod at me. Talk to me, damn it! Supervising deep-salvage operations would be just the ticket for you. There isn’t a thing you don’t know about the subject. You’d be a hell of a lot better at it than some white-shirted pencil pusher who’s never had to salvage anything more difficult than a golf ball in the rough, because you know what’s involved and what the risks are. You’d be a real help to the people who actually have to do the work.”
“I don’t want to work for that damn company again.”
The vehemence of Chase’s response took Tom by surprise. He stood perfectly still for a few moments, his gaze scanning Chase’s face intently. Finally he said, “What aren’t you telling me?”
Chase shrugged a shoulder. “Not a damn thing.”
“They took care of you after the accident, didn’t they? Paid all the hospital bills and everything?”
“Every last dime.”
“Showed proper concern?”
“Oh, yeah.”
“I thought so. They sure investigated the hell out of it. At least as far as I could tell. Do you know something different?”
“I keep telling everyone, I don’t know anything at all!” Chase’s tone was impatient, and he regretted it instantly because this was Tom, his old friend, and Tom didn’t deserve that.
But Tom had known him a long time, and it apparently didn’t faze him in the least. “I’m just trying to figure out why I hear hostility in your voice when you talk about the company. You keep saying you must have made a mistake, and all they’re doing is offering you a job, so why are you mad at them?”
Chase threw up a hand. “I don’t know why I feel this way. I just do. I don’t want a damn thing to do with them again.”
“Okay, okay.” Tom held up a pacifying hand.
“Sorry. I didn’t sleep well last night, but that’s no excuse for biting your head off.”
“Forget it.” He turned back to the rail and looked out over the choppy inlet.
Chase stared at his friend’s back and saw by the way his shoulders were set that Tom was unhappy with him. Well, hell, what was he supposed to do? He had too much shit to deal with right now, and he didn’t need any additional pressure about getting out and getting a life. The time for that would come, but not yet.
“Look,” he said finally, hating the feeling that he’d wounded Tom, “I just need some time. I’ve got some problems I need to deal with before I’ll be ready to start working.”
“Problems?” Tom turned and looked at him. “What kind of problems… other than the pain?”
“I’ve got… well, I have some flashbacks. They’re supposed to start wearing off in a few months. But…” He shrugged, not wanting to discuss it in detail.
“Flashbacks to what happened when you got into trouble?”
“Sort of.” And that’s as specific as he was going to be. If he told Tom what was really going on, Tom would probably want to have him committed.
“I didn’t know that. Hell.” Tom rubbed the back of his neck again, a nervous gesture. “I’m sorry, man. I’m really sorry. You got someone helping you with that?”
“Yeah.” A bottle of sleeping pills and a Beretta. He wouldn’t take any of the other drugs the doctor had suggested.
“Well, okay. But you better keep in touch, or I’m going to be showing up on your doorstep unannounced every week, got it?”
Relieved to be getting away from the difficult stuff, Chase laughed.
After that, it got a whole lot easier. They put Jimmy Buffett on the stereo and kicked back on the porch, talking about old girlfriends, distant ports of call, and the hell they had raised in younger years.
They watched as the Lily sailed into the cove and the two boys tied her up at the dock. Chase noticed the boys didn’t have the boat they had salvaged with them, and wondered what had happened. He almost suggested going over there to find out, then remembered it was almost darkfall. No way was he going to be out after dark.
“Say,” said Tom, “we’ve got time. Why don’t we go to the Bahamas for a few days?”
“That’s a possibility. Let me think about it.” He looked around and saw that the night was beginning to creep out of the shadows in the undergrowth. It would be dark in a few more minutes. The back of his neck started to crawl, and his empty glass gave him the excuse he needed.
“Let’s go inside. I’m getting cold, and I need a refill.”
Tom followed willingly enough, and he didn’t even say anything when Chase closed all the windows and locked them. But he did look thoughtful. Very thoughtful.
Chase had a good idea what Tom was thinking, but he was damned if he was going to confirm it by saying it out loud. He didn’t need for the whole world to know he was insane.
It was bad enough that he knew it.
CHAPTER 3
Torn between wanting to give Jeff the cold shoulder when he got home and needing to take care of him the way she had for years, Callie finally decided to at least make a decent dinner for them. Afterward she could give Jeff hell for blowing off his job and scaring her to death.
By the time
she heard the Lily’s engines approaching, she had two chickens almost done in the oven, instant mashed potatoes ready to microwave, a sheet of biscuits, and a big tossed salad. She had even made up her mind to invite Jeff’s friend Eric to join them. Maybe if she couldn’t get through to Jeff, she could get through to Eric. She had often thought that of the two Eric was the more sensible and down to earth.
When she heard the Lily pull up to the dock and the engines cut out, she couldn’t stand the suspense any longer. Instead of waiting indoors as if she didn’t care, she went out onto the side veranda from where she could see the boys tying the boat to the dock. Folding her arms, she waited, determined not to run out there and demand the entire story.
Once the boat was secure, the boys jumped back aboard to get their gear. Callie tapped her toe impatiently, staring through the gloom, wondering if they were just trying to annoy her with their dilatoriness.
From across the inlet, she heard the faint strains of Jimmy Buffett, and had the sudden wild wish that she could be over there with Chase Mattingly, sipping a drink and relaxing. Instead, she was standing here being a mother to a twenty-year-old who was convinced she was overly protective. A twenty-year-old who never let her forget that she wasn’t really his mother, she was just his sister, and she wasn’t all that much older besides.
Of course, she believed that Jeff only said those things to irritate her, because the truth was, she was the only mother Jeff had had since the age of six, and he knew it as well as she.
Finally, Jeff and Eric were trudging up the dock through the gloom toward her, carrying bait buckets and a cooler.
“Hey, sis,” Jeff said. He was a taller version of his sister, with the same Nordic blond hair and blue eyes. “Did the Coast Guard call you?”
“Yes.”
“Hi, Callie,” Eric said politely. He was as tall as Jeff but dark-skinned, with eyes that were a soft, warm brown.
“Hi, Eric. Join us for dinner?”
“Sure!” Eric’s enthusiasm was palpable. His parents were divorced, and neither one of them seemed to have any time for him anymore. At twenty, he was old enough to be on his own, but it didn’t seem right to Callie, and she had a feeling Eric was pretty lonely living by himself.
