Crew banks left. The helicopter torques so violently I nearly lose my breakfast, but we drop hard and fast toward the target. I catch a better glimpse: the boat’s belly-up and half-submerged. No bodies clinging to it. No one waving for help. Just the empty shell of the hull and, ten feet to starboard, something bright floating in the wash.
A head. Pale. Light hair plastered to a skull.
Abel.
He’s face-down in the water, arms loose. Not moving except for how the water moves him.
“Starboard,” Zade calls. “One hundred meters farther out.”
I turn and see the flash of a reflector in the helo’s searchlight.
Scarlett!
She’s wearing a life jacket, but the current’s got her, dragging her away from the wreck, away from Abel, out toward the open sound where the water gets deeper and colder and more vicious.
In a storm like this, you can still drown in a life jacket.
Two people.
One of me.
Just like the last time.
The basket deploys. The cable whines through the hoist. I stand in the open door and wind tears at the drysuit. Rain drives into my face. The water below looks like hell made liquid.
“Abel first,” Zade says.
I want to protest. I want to say “fuck him” and swim after Scarlett. But I know Zade’s right. It’s protocol, and protocol’s the only thing keeping me glued together at this point, so I follow it because otherwise everything inside me detonates.
Zade catches my arm again before I jump. “Are you sure? You haven’t done this in years.”
I meet his gaze. “I need to, Z.”
He nods and backs off. “Swimmer ready.”
I take one more deep breath and step out of the helo, dropping into the storm.
The noise is impossible. Rain hits like thrown gravel. The rotors thunder overhead, wind slicing every direction at once. I keep my eyes on Abel, track his drift, and time the entry. My boots hit water. It opens up around me, cold as death. The drysuit’s a joke against it; the shock knifes through anyway. I fight the surface tension, fight the suit, and break upward. Abel’s head bobs toward me, pale and slack, eyes closed. I reach him. He’s limp—no resistance as I roll him out of the water, cradle his chin back so he can breathe. My gloved fingers find the pulse at his throat. There. Weak, flickering, but I have it. Above, the basket lowers. I wedge my shoulder under Abel’s arm and haul him upright. He’s waterlogged and heavier than himself, but I know this weight, know how to turn dead water into backward leverage, and I get him to the basket with fingers that aren’t entirely mine. The harness is next. I remember the rhythm. I get him buckled, lock the restraints, and give the ready signal.
Zade’s voice hisses over the comms: “Cleared to hoist.”
Then Abel is rising, chest and limbs flopping, and I have exactly three seconds to brace before the next wave damn near bowls me under.
Scarlett.
I spin, water blinding me, and search for her. The searchlight sweeps the surface and—there. Barely a smear of color in the chaos: orange lifejacket, small, arms wound tight around herself as the current chews at her, shoving her farther from the wreck, farther from the helicopter, farther from me.
Some part of my brain knows the protocol: swimmer always stays within line of sight of the aircraft, keeps to the perimeter, doesn’t ever, ever go off-mission for a secondary target when there’s a risk of losing both. I don’t even bother listening to that part of my brain. I rip the comms plug from my collar and swim hard, keeping low, letting the drysuit and my own bulk take the brunt of the next wave.
Every reach feels like trying to claw through stone. The cold slices the little bit of skin at my face, and my arms are numb before I’m halfway to her, but I lock onto the flicker of the lifejacket and the desperate, stubborn way she’s still fighting. I can see her face, when the rain lulls for just long enough to give me a look: eyes wide, teeth clenched, hair gone colorless and slicked to her scalp.
She sees me coming. She opens her mouth, but whatever she says is lost to the storm.
She kicks toward me, and for a second, I’m thirteen years old, swimming against a tide on Whidbey Island, and my whole universe is the sound of my father yelling from shore. I shake the memory off and swim harder; the world tunnels down until all that exists is her face, her hands, the distance between us and whether I’m fast enough to close it.
I’m not.
The current’s got her, and she pinwheels, losing ground. I overshoot, almost, and have to lunge awkwardly sideways, snatching at her shoulder and catching only a handful of jacket. She’s ripped from my grip, and goes under.
