Men of Courage II

by Lori Foster

  In fact, as she drove the tension fell away from her in waves, and so did the tarnished, cynical cloud she’d worn like a cloak. By the time she could see the sparkling, deep blue water, she felt as if a huge weight had been lifted off her chest, one she hadn’t realized she’d carried.

  She was home now. Home.

  She liked the sound of that. Hopefully here she could find herself again, relax, take a deep breath. Maybe even be happy again. She could grow some roots, reconnect with old friends, possibly settle down.

  Easier said than done, of course. She was perfectly aware that people found her too direct, but that came from honing herself to a sharp point for her job. Few ever saw past it.

  Once upon a time, Wyatt had. They’d been best friends, and more. At least as more as she’d been able to offer him, but even then she’d still been reeling from her parents’ devastating divorce. It had irrevocably changed her, made her more reserved and careful with her heart.

  As Wyatt had learned all too well.

  The lake was clear, choppy from the winds, and so many miles across she couldn’t see the far shore. Jimmy was on the dock, along with six students, all waiting for her with a palpable excitement. Their professor had gotten sick, so his TA was there instead, a grad student named Stu who’d been trained in driving and handling the houseboat.

  The houseboat itself was two levels, with open decking around each. It was more than fifty feet long by the looks of it, and just scruffy enough that she’d guess it’d been in service for a good long time before being donated to the school by a retired, wealthy alumnus. Both the upper and lower decks had once upon a time been painted white with red trim but that had faded to a gray-and-rust color. The fly deck was wide and spacious, though, and the sun awning protecting it looked new.

  In any case, it was the interior that meant anything to the students, which had been set up as a roaming photographer’s wet dream, complete with darkroom, full galley and bunk room for overnight excursions.

  It took them a few moments to get the cranky old engine started, but they finally got it moving and set off a good hour and a half before dusk so they could catch the sunset. They all stood on the upper deck just behind the flying bridge, in front of the boat’s controls, the winds whipping at their hair and clothes. Leah had checked the weather channel and gotten a good report, but now she had to hold her skirt down in the gusts. Probably pants would have been better, but her new boss was old-fashioned enough to request his women reporters wear skirts. She wasn’t in New York any longer, that was certain.

  It would take them an entire hour to get out to the middle of the lake, and Leah was thinking they probably could swim there faster but the water was beautiful and the students so excited she didn’t mind. While the boat crawled along to their destination, she talked to the students, getting an angle for her story on their photo studies and how it would appeal to her viewers.

  “Tell me why you love photography,” she asked Stu at one point, having to talk loudly over the unexpected wind.

  Stu smiled as he staggered about like a thin, lanky sailor without sea legs. “I love the expression of it. Showing people how I see things.”

  She asked Debbie, a sophomore, the same thing.

  Debbie grinned as happily as Stu had. “I love photography because the teacher gives us freedom to do what pleases us.” She leaned in, her hair whipping them in the face. “And because the guys are hot.”

  Leah asked Ronnie why he loved photography. The senior laughed as easily as the others had. “Because I can take pictures of whatever I want. Look at us, out of school and on the lake. What other class could be this cool?”

  Expression. Freedom. Hot guys. She showed her notes to Jimmy, who sighed. “Ah, to be young and free and stupid again,” he said.

  Young and free…Most adults, locked into their daily routine, fondly remembered their youth. These guys were living it. Maybe she had her angle. She scribbled notes for the rest of the hour it took to get out to the middle of the lake.

  And then suddenly the clear skies weren’t so clear. Clouds were rolling in from the northwest at an alarming speed. The students set up their equipment anyway, but ten minutes later the rain had begun, a slashing downpour that seemed to come from nowhere. Thunder cracked, lightning lit up the sky with a shocking violence, and though she’d grown up with this weather, Leah started to get nervous.

  Twenty minutes later, the storm had stirred the lake into frenzied whitecaps. In the north, the sky had darkened considerably. Thunderous gray clouds churned, making their way southeast. Leah’s nerves went straight to her throat. It’d been ten long years since she’d dealt with a twister, and she didn’t want to be out in the middle of the lake for her first one since then. “This isn’t good.”

  “Are you kidding?” This from Trent, one of the seniors, who began clicking away at the sight of the sun, still blazing yellow and red and orange in the far west, being chased and beaten back by the storm overhead. “This is amazing.”

  Leah pushed her now-wet hair out of her face and turned to Jimmy. With the lake so choppy, the boat had been rocking and swaying, and the poor guy looked green. “I don’t like it,” he said. “My stomach doesn’t like it, either. Make it quick.”

  Leah lifted her microphone to begin her report, but a flash of lightning kicked her heart into high gear. The accompanying booming crack of thunder nearly startled her right out of her skin. Waaaay too close. “No. We’ve got to go back.”

  Though the students looked disappointed, Stu agreed with her, but even as they stood there, Mother Nature let loose. More thunder and lightning strikes, so close the hair rose on Leah’s skin. The rain came in sheets now, drenching everything. Looking shaken at the speed with which the storm had gone from bad to worse, Stu leaped into action, jumping back into the flying bridge to start the houseboat.

  The engine wouldn’t turn over. “Uh-oh.”

  “No.” Leah squinted through the rain and shook her head. “No ‘uh-oh.’”

  Stu tried again, but the engine didn’t catch. Jimmy moved next to him to give it a go, to no avail. “Where’s the engine compartment?”

  Stu bit his lip. “I don’t know.”

  A general panic began among the students. “It’s all right,” Leah shouted over the wind, needing both hands now to keep her skirt down while the hard-hitting rain beat them up. “We’re going to be all right. Get below deck.”

  “And get life vests on, all of you!” Jimmy demanded, gripping the rail to hold steady.

  Leah staggered over to him. “Radio this in. Get another boat out here now. We need to get these students off the water.”

  Jimmy got on his radio, but a moment later turned to Leah with an expression that had her stomach clenching.

  “What?”

  “I’ve got bad news, and badder news,” he said. “Which do you want first?”

  “Jimmy.” She gripped the railing to keep from falling over when the boat pitched. “Now’s not a good time to mess around.”

  “I’m not messing around, trust me.”

  She looked into his green face and her skin prickled with fear. “How soon until someone gets here?”

  Jimmy held on, too, as the boat bumped in the waves as if they were on the ocean. “That’s the problem.”

  The students were all huddled together like a litter of kittens as they moved carefully below deck. Leah kept one eye on them, worried about someone getting tossed overboard. “Tell me.”

  “There are no boats that can come out for us.”

  “What?”

  “The two coast guard boats are employed in rescues, one twenty miles from here, the other twenty-five miles.”

  Oh, God. They were at least five miles from shore, unable to go anywhere, and no rescue in sight. She swallowed hard. “And the other bad news?”

  Sirens went off from shore, carrying across the water with ease, signaling a twister warning.

  Jimmy smiled grimly. “They’ve just issued tornado
and waterspout alerts.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  WITH THE DRIVING, punishing, icy rain beating down on her, Leah pulled out her cell phone and called the TV station. She could barely hear them over the roar of the winds and the clatter of the rain on the deck and canvas overhang, but they told her to hang tight, they were already doing what they could to get a rescue effort going. Unfortunately the entire county was being devastated by the drenching rains, on already oversaturated ground. Flooding was imminent.

  Jimmy stood at the railing, divesting himself of anything he’d ever eaten, but it wasn’t motion sickness churning Leah’s stomach, just good old-fashioned terror. Quickly as she could, she got Jimmy below deck with everyone else. There they sat, only five of them in life vests because that’s all they’d been able to find. They were on the galley floor, their backs to the cabinets, figuring it was the safest place for now. But as the rain bombarded the boat around them, shuddering the roof and windows, there seemed to be no true safe place.

  Outside, the sky had darkened ominously, which somehow magnified the fear. Yet there was little to do but remain as cool and calm as possible and hope that any tornadic activity would bypass them…instead of ripping them open plank by plank.

  Then suddenly Leah heard the unmistakable thump thump of a helicopter over the driving rain. After staggering to her feet, she climbed the stairs and opened the hatch door leading to the open upper deck.

  Sure enough it was a helicopter, hovering as steadily as it could above them. Shading her eyes from the drenching rain, she squinted upward and saw it was black with a bright yellow stripe…the same helicopter from the other day.

  Wyatt?

  She staggered out onto the upper deck, followed by an equally startled Jimmy, only to be shoved back against the bulkhead by the wind.

  “What is he doing?” she gasped.

  “He’s on the SAR squad. Search and Rescue,” Jimmy yelled. “I didn’t think he’d fly in a storm like this, but then again, Wyatt’s pretty crazy.”

  Behind them, one of the students poked her head out from the lower deck. It was Sally, a freshman, and her wide gaze shot straight to Leah’s. “I can’t stay down there!” she cried. “It’s too closed in, too tight!” She began crawling toward them.

  She was tiny, and no match for the weather. Halfway to Leah, she lost her hold and went flying toward the fiberglass rail.

  “No!” Jimmy dove after her. Unable to stay upright on the slick deck, they fell, sliding across the planked wood, slamming into a steel railing post.

  “Oh, my God.” Sally was sprawled over top of Jimmy, who hadn’t moved. Her face was so pale her freckles stood out in bold relief. “He hit his head!”

  Leah crawled toward them and gripped the front of his T-shirt. “Jimmy!”

  “Did I kill him?”

  “No, he’s breathing.”

  Above them, the helicopter lowered, hovering. A man exited the craft and began to rappel down toward them.

  Leah shrugged out of her drenched blazer and shoved it beneath Jimmy’s head, which was bleeding freely out of a gash at his temple. She glanced up at their helmeted rescuer and gasped. Wyatt wasn’t flying the helicopter, he was rappelling, landing easily on the balls of his feet only a few yards away from her.

  For a single heartbeat, their gazes met, and for Leah, time stopped. How many times all those years ago had she looked into his eyes and just known everything would be okay? When she’d lost her student council election. When she’d been in a fender bender with a mailbox in her dad’s car. When a bully had cornered her at the park. With one touch, one look, Wyatt had always imparted a sense of composure, a reassurance that everything would turn out fine, no matter how crazy it all seemed.

  And with just a look, he did it now, as well.

  He unhooked himself and jerked once on the rope, giving a thumbs-up sign to the man peering down at them from the helo above. Then he swiveled back toward her, dropping to his knees beside Jimmy. Though water drenched behind the lenses of his goggles, his eyes glittered with adrenaline and authority. “How many of you are here?”

  “I can’t remember.” Sally burst into tears.

  Wyatt looked at Leah.

  “Eight,” she said quickly. “No one else is injured.”

  Jimmy groaned, and Wyatt put his hand on his shoulder. “Gotcha buddy. Just relax now.”

  “I would but my head is going to fall off.”

  “Nah, you’re hardly nicked.” He met Leah’s worried gaze. “He goes on the first run, with two others. If we hurry, we can make the additional runs needed to get all of you before we’re forced to wait out the winds.”

  His voice was tense and urgent, and yet somehow calm, and even though she was a woman who prided herself on being independent and levelheaded in an emergency, she had the ridiculous yearning to put her head down on his chest and let her fear rule, knowing he would take care of her.

  To keep herself from doing anything stupid, she leaned down and hugged Jimmy, then backed up to let Wyatt work his magic. The next few moments were tense, the air filled with fear along with the shuddering thunder and lightning, and the ever-present driving rain.

  Some sort of winch pulled Wyatt and Jimmy into the helo. Wyatt rappelled down again, taking Sally next, while the others remained huddled in the galley below on Wyatt’s orders. With the wind as heavy as it was, and the pilot fighting just to stay in place above them, he didn’t want to deal with anyone being blown overboard.

  There wasn’t time to talk, not with the storm growing more violent by the second, and their very lives at stake. Wyatt handled everything with the same natural confidence he always had. Leah found herself staring at him, shaken by how familiar, yet utterly unfamiliar he was at the same time, as well as how, when he had reason to look at her, he did so with a challenging gaze void of any of the fondness she felt swamping her.

  Since she’d been the one to end their relationship, and had done so badly, she had no one to blame but herself. But damn it, they’d been teenagers, just kids really. No one in their right mind would have expected them to make it. They hadn’t been old enough, hadn’t known themselves yet, hadn’t the experience to make it work—

  Excuses. He’d loved her and she’d known it. And though she’d felt more deeply for him than she’d felt for anyone before, her past was such that she hadn’t trusted it. Or, when it came right down to it, him.

  Once again, he landed on the deck.

  “Come on,” he said, wiggling his fingers for her to move closer. “We can take one more.”

  She twisted around and yelled down the stairs for another student. Debbie showed her terrified face, and Leah grabbed her, thrusting her at Wyatt, who was staring at her, clearly surprised she hadn’t elected to go herself.

  She understood what it meant for her when she put Debbie ahead of her. She was risking that he might not be able to come back until the storm was over, and just about anything could happen out here while they waited. A twister that could break up the ship, or even sink them.

  But she couldn’t go ahead of the students still below, she just couldn’t. “Just go!”

  “Get below with the others!” He hooked Debbie up to the harness. Winds whipping at them, they began to rise, and the momentum turned Wyatt away from Leah. But he craned his neck, finding her gaze again, and for one split second, his icy calm cracked, revealing a tortured regret, even fear, at having to leave her and the others in the choppy dangerous waters.

  She stared up at him, lifting a hand, not wanting him to worry, and yet oddly touched that he did. She didn’t fool herself though, this was a job for him. He’d be stressed about leaving anyone in this. Still, something loosened deep within her, and warmed.

  “Below!” he shouted down at her, through the slashing rain.

  She nodded, and shoving her wet hair out of her face, did as he commanded. The way was slippery, dangerous, but she crawled to the hatch and then inside. Sitting on the top step, she gripped the railing.
There, she dropped her head to her knees and took a couple of careful gulps of breath. “It’s going to be okay,” she whispered to herself in an old mantra. “It’s going to be okay.” She’d gotten good at believing this, starting years ago when her mother had left her and her dad.

  Back then, Leah had thought she’d never be okay again, but she’d gotten through it. Her dad had done his damnedest to help her. His own life had been hell, but he’d never let her suffer for it.

  She’d survived. And given what she’d gone through to get to this point, she could survive anything. She had a drive, a hunger within her. Once it’d been borne of a burning desire to prove herself. She’d been bound and determined to go off to college, then rake in her fame and fortune. Nothing would hold her back, not her love for her hometown, or her friends, or even Wyatt.

  Wyatt himself had had different dreams. His childhood had been spent riding shotgun in his father’s big rig. They’d landed in Denton when his dad had fallen asleep at the wheel one night, hitting a telephone pole. Shaken, he’d turned in the wrecked truck for a job wrenching at Bob’s Motors. Wyatt had gotten the most out of that deal, thriving on having a real home for the first time in his life, thriving on creating lasting relationships…like the one he’d forged with Leah.

  But then Leah’s dream had come true. She’d been accepted at New York University, full scholarship. In a testament to how much she’d let herself care for Wyatt, she’d actually hesitated, knowing Wyatt was going to a junior college here. But in the end, there’d been no choice. She had her father to repay for all he’d given her, and her future to grab. She’d broken up with Wyatt and left.

  It hadn’t been easy. Wyatt had been quietly furious, and hurt that she’d refused to see their relationship through to the end. But she’d been young and so damn sure that being on her own in New York was what she needed to do.

  At first, the loneliness and fear had nearly done her in, but out of sheer grit and determination, she’d done what she’d set out to do. She’d made it in her fast-paced world of war and politics. She’d been able to support her father all the way up until his death a few years back. When she’d sold the house she’d bought for him, she’d put the final vestige of her past behind her.