“Sing. Ooo-ooo-ooo.” He had one shot. On his stomach, Rey coaxed him to make noise to build energy and body warmth while he yanked an extra twenty feet of rope across the ice. Whatever happened, Grace and the others could pull him home. The afterlife didn’t seem interested in him yet, but could he grab the kid?
“Ooo—” the plunge into frigid water locked other words in his chest. This was where training mattered. His arms pulled through the water, his legs nonexistent and his pants dead wet weight. How many times had his captain made him shed gear in the cold pool to a stopwatch, or thrown him from a boat while zip-tied, just to tweak the SEAL Team Six commander?
He reached the floating cooler, looped one arm under the boy’s armpits to hold him firmly on the floating plastic and grabbed a handle. “Pull in!” he yelled.
The men on shore heard, and he felt tension on the line and they moved. Too slow. Kid was blue.
“Sing!” He put his deepest command in his voice. “Ooo-ooo.”
“Don’t know…” the boy’s voice was a thread, thinner than spider silk, “…that one.”
What the heck did teenagers know? “Op-op-op.”
“Eh…sexy…”
The ice was closer, almost at them, and then the front of the cooler bumped. Now for the hard part. The tug of the ropeharness pulled him sideways, bringing his shoulder and the boy’s next to a solid piece.
“Let go.”
“I c-c-can’t,” he whimpered.
“Trust.”
“S-s-s-scared.”
“On three. One. Two. Three.” He heaved the kid’s waist, and the equal and opposite reaction dunked him below the cooler. The liquid roof closed over his head, but he’d float in a second, now that his arms were free to pull.
For an instant the ice was on top of him—that was near-panic, to be entombed in blue without an impossible spy gun to shoot an air hole—but then he surfaced at the cracked edge. Air seared his lungs, good and lifesaving and cold and killing at the same time. With his hands as far along the rope as he could reach, he yelled for a pull and porpoised like one of Grace’s marine mammals, and there he was, flopped and panting on the ice.
The boy had made it five feet, nowhere near dry blankets and heaters.
No way could he drag even this skinny teen. Plan B. With his arms crossing the kid’s torso, he ordered him to roll and threw his weight over at the same time, landing on his back and cradling his charge. “Pull!”
First the line jerked, then they started to slide. His head dug into the snow and bounced on the ice, and he bit his tongue. He was so giving Grace shit about not buying helmets for ice-fishing. Right after he took a hot bath. With her.
To keep his spine rounded enough to glide, he had to maintain a crunch with his shoulders high. The Marquis would love this workout. Rub his hands together and send vets to be dragged behind sled dogs, but damn, he’d text the man thanks tomorrow.
Then they reached the crowd. Other people took the boy. Grace hugged him, kissed his face, which would be nicer if hecould feel it but he was too iced. Someone wrapped him in a blanket while Grace kept kissing the wrong parts, like his forehead, which wasn’t half as cold as his lips and nose.
“Don’t you even think…what you did…”
“You saved my son.” The big man was shaky and crying too. “Thank you, thank you.”
They recovered in a warm truck cab, clutching heat packs. He couldn’t help Grace strip his wet clothing because his fingers weren’t working yet, but she managed fine. When she started to work on his innermost thermal shirt, she was close enough that he could hear what she muttered.
“And it’s ‘ahh-ahh-ahh, staying alive,’ dammit. Not ooo-ooo. No wonder. If you ever.”
“Shhh.” He reached a finger to her lips. “Roped. Don’t worry.”
“Worry? I’m furious! I’m so mad, I could… Do you have any clue what I thought when you jumped in?” Her face was splotchy red and her nose dripped. “Do you?”
“But why…mad?” Even superhero penguins obviously didn’t understand women.
“Because I love you!” She threw herself at his chest, mashed him into the seat, and this time he could feel her lips, but he couldn’t hear past the roar those words had started in his heart.
“I love you too.” Easiest sentence he’d ever say.
They stayed in RapidCity and pushed to make up time Saturday by driving as far as Bozeman. Rey wanted to see his family, but he also resented every mile that rolled past.
