The body stances of the people around her were an interesting mixture. They all seemed to have some combination of anxiety and relief that someone was doing something.

  She could see the adrenaline at work in their systems, telling them to act, but not having a ready way to use it up made them fidgety.

  Mostly, they were shocked that this was how their day had turned out.

  Rightly so.

  Usually, people don’t run into circumstances where they are suddenly part of a lifeline.

  Petra’s focus followed the hot pink climbing rope to the four men, who were gripping a section. Sitting on their butts, legs bent, feet wedged into the rocks the way Petra had instructed, they could use their leg strength, too.

  “If things work out the way I want them to, you guys won’t be exerting for a while. I’ll mostly have my own weight. I just need you to get me over the lip. This is a good opportunity to test how this feels and check your grip. Make sure it’s something you can sustain because once I’m down there, my life will literally be in your hands.”

  She shouldn’t have said that.

  It didn’t rally them the way it did at boot camp or Quantico.

  One of the guys released the rope to swipe his hands over his shorts. She could see the rings of sweat at his pits.

  “There are lots of people around who can grab onto the back of the rope. Make sure you let them know you need help before you actually need the help, okay?” She tried to reassure them.

  She got bobbled head nods and wide fixed eyelids instead.

  Adrenaline was definitely kicking around their systems.

  Good. That would give them extra strength.

  Petra sat down, dangled her legs into the hole, and waited for the wave to recede. She bent her head and yelled. “Terry, I’m coming down to you! Coming down now!” She wanted the guy to have a moment to get that thought into his brain.

  He had to be in shock.

  He had to be thinking that this was a hell of a way to go.

  People worried about heart attacks and car crashes, house fires and bad guys. She bet no one ever thought, I desperately hope I don’t die by being bashed to death in a blow hole in Paradise.

  Petra rolled over until her hips balanced on the edge of the hole and her stomach was toward the ground. She gripped the rope and called out, “Lower away.”

  The men pulled their elbows into their ribs and braced to take her weight.

  With her free hand, Petra pressed away from the rocks, looking up to see Beans doing his job as her spotter and conveyer of her directives.

  Glancing over, she made sure that Carlos was still acting as a rogue wave looker-outer—was there a word for that? Wave guard?

  Doesn’t matter. Here I go.

  Below her, seawater swept into the blowhole.

  The men lowered her.

  On the second wave, Petra was ankle-deep in water. She visually marked that space by focusing on a rock that jutted out. “Hold!” Petra waited for the wave to recede. “Lower!”

  Down, down she went.

  One of Petra’s superpowers was that she genuinely believed she could do anything she wanted to. It might mean a little learning or training, but yeah, in body and brain, anything she wanted to do was within her reach or had been so far.

  Of course, her list of wants hadn’t included such things as professional opera singer, MMA fighter, or Olympian, so there hadn’t been anything to dissuade her magical thinking.

  Petra’s other superpower was a wide range of interests, which led to a wide range of skills that might be part of the illusion that she could conquer anything.

  Did she really think that with a length of hot pink rope from a cargo hold and a bunch of good citizens, she could do this?

  Maybe she was just acting on her military training, which taught her to run toward the enemy.

  And then, FBI training.

  Okay, she reasoned as the next wave came to her hips. She did have some training.

  But this, under any circumstances, was beyond her capacity.

  And with a lack of proper equipment, it was foolhardy.

  And yet here she was in a blow hole, for crap's sake.

  Petra tipped her head up so her voice would carry to the rope crew. “Hold!”

  The rope was rough against her skin, abrading the top layer, and exposing her nerves to the salt water.

  The pain was a good sign that she was in her body—thinking, rational, following what training she had that she could apply here.

  When adrenaline stopped the pain, she’d need to reassess. Adrenaline could tell her body it was fine when, in fact, it hid a life-threatening injury.

  Petra did not plan to die today.

  If she died, it was likely Terry would die as well.

  If she died, it served no good. Petra set those parameters, “no pain means I need to come back up and form a new, more plausible plan.”

  Another wave roared into the hole, and Petra shoved hard into her borrowed tennis shoe-clad feet to brace as the wave whooshed in.

  It was surprising how loud it was as the small space captured the roar and sent it ricocheting up the sides to release toward the sky.

  She was surprised at how much space her heart took up in her chest and how the sound of her blood processing through the four chambers joined the roar of the wave.

  Sucking in a lung full of air and pinching her nose, Petra squeezed her eyelids tightly together. The wave only came to her chin, but the spray sprinkled salt onto her lashes.

  When the wave receded, Petra looked down to see how far it was to the opening. Leaning down, she could almost get her fingers around the lip.

  “Terry, are you in good enough shape to follow instructions?”

  “Help.” Terry croaked.

  “All right, Terry, listen up. I need you to count backward from a hundred by twos.” It seemed a cruel thing to do, but Petra’s brain was conjuring all kinds of scenarios where drowning people pulled their rescuers to their deaths.

  If Terry panicked and dragged her down, Petra too could get trapped by the waves and possibly not escape this blow hole alive.

  Before Petra went any further, this man had to prove he could—at least at this moment—process rationally.

  “Ninety-eight. Ninety-six. Ninety-four.”

  “Terry,” Petra called, “a wave is coming. Brace.”

  “Please, please, please help me.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Hawkeye

  Hawkeye had never felt so powerless in his life.

  Panic was a gladiator in the colosseum fighting for dominance.

  There was no air, no up or down—nothing for his brain to grab onto to make sense of reality.

  The single thought that had substance was that he would not, could not under any circumstances, allow his ankle to come unlocked. If he did, he’d lose Roy to the wave.

  His surfboard had ripped from Hawkeye’s hands.

  But from the drag trying to pry his ankles apart, Hawkeye knew that the tether held the board to him. They plunged together.

  On this last tumble, Hawkeye scraped his knuckles through the abrasion of a sandy bottom.

  They’d reached shallower waters.

  As he spread his fingers to anchor himself in that position, Hawkeye reasoned that he must be face down.

  And that meant maybe, possibly, Roy was getting some air.

  Hawkeye dug into the sand and pulled himself along. Then he felt a hand under his armpits.

  “We’ve got you, brother.”

  Hawkeye relaxed into the grip, making it easier on his teammates as they dragged him from the surf.

  “Release your ankles, Hawkeye. We have the guy.”

  Easier said than done. Hawkeye had put so much effort into ensuring he didn’t release Roy that neither his brain nor his cramped and stiffened muscles complied.

  Halo must have understood because he reached out and forced Hawkeye’s legs apart.

  “In coming! Go! Go! Go!” Ash yelled.

  As Hawkeye blinked, he saw feet and legs swarming him. His team grabbed Hawkeye’s arms, hauling him, gasping and sputtering, up the beach to the rocks. Halo and Ash threw their bodies over Hawkeye’s as a wave slapped over them, then retreated with enormous drag.

  They had to be a good twenty yards from the shoreline.

  His teammates clapped him on the shoulder and were once again up and running.

  Hawkeye swung his head. Roy was nearby on a flat rock where two people were performing CPR.

  Farther down toward the shoreline, people were grabbing humans and racing with them back to the rocks.

  Hawkeye was in motion, running to help even before he could process why people were flopping on the shoreline like a school of fish beached by a sudden low tide.

  Heaving a man’s arm over his shoulder, Hawkeye half-dragged the guy as they jogged toward safety, while a third wave drew ever closer.

  “Cerberus, move it! Faster! Get off the sand!” That was Reaper’s booming voice.

  As he laid the guy on the rocks, Hawkeye spotted Reaper on the road with the four K9s sitting in a row. He was flagging down a pickup truck and scoop-gesturing to move them into position.

  “My guy Roy is receiving CPR.” Hawkeye hollered as he deposited this man beside a boulder, ensuring Reaper was aware.

  “He’s first to go,” Reaper yelled back. “In coming!”

  Hawkeye squatted over the man he’d helped to the rocks and used his body to take the pounding of the wave, like his brothers had a moment ago.

  The guy underneath him smelled like diesel.

  Then Hawkeye remembered the boat accident.

  “Listen up,” Reaper called through cupped hands. “I’ll keep wave watch. That looks like the last rogue wave, at least for now. Cerberus, all six of the rip current victims are accounted for. There were thirteen people on the beach during your rescue effort. That’s nineteen. We need to find a good headcount for the number of people on the boat to figure out how many got swept in by the waves and how many are unaccounted for. Boat people, raise your hand if you know your headcount.”

  Three men raised their hands.

  “Sixteen, including crew,” one man called.

  “Was the crew in uniform?” Reaper asked, pointing at the man so the guy knew the question was directed at him.

  The man nodded, then shook his hand along his torso. “White shorts, navy blue shirts.”

  “Life vests?” Reaper asked.

  There was a general shaking of heads.

  Hawkeye cast his gaze along the huddled group. No one matched the description for the crew.

  “No,” a guy yelled, then stopped for a hacking jag. “No, there were twelve of us. We’re in for a sales meeting. There were the four crew members, and there was the guy with the jet ski who met us out there. He was doing the flippy doojiggers when the boat rolled. Bright board shorts. I haven’t seen him since he was in the air.” Then the man turned, looking out to sea.

  They all did.

  The boat was a torch on the water. It reminded Hawkeye of the 19th-century Bierstadt painting, The Burning Ship, he’d seen in a Vermont museum on some family holiday. Hawkeye remembered the horror of it. The idea that there was no way to survive. And that memory was why Hawkeye had gone the Army Ranger route rather than becoming a Navy SEAL.

  In general, he wasn’t a fan of giving up survival options.

  “Nineteen from the beach. Seventeen from the boat event. Five Iniquus. Four K9s, that gives us forty-five. Levi!”

  “On it.” Levi leaped onto the highest boulder.

  “Everyone, stay very still while we get a head count,” Reaper commanded. “It’s imperative that we get this right. No one moves.” Reaper turned his head and spoke with someone, then turned back. “Cerberus, we have a pickup for the CPR victim. You’ve been accounted for. You—and only you—can move. Put Roy on a surfboard, and let’s get him loaded up.” Reaper held a stopping sign gesture in the air. “No one else moves.”

  Levi called out, “We’re missing seven.”

  “Seven,” each of the Iniquus men called out.

  Cooper gave a sharp bark, “I’m here. I’m ready. Put me to work.”

  Hawkeye gave him the hand signal that told Cooper to hold, then he ran for his surfboard, lying behind a boulder, and headed for Roy.

  “People not on my team, before you leave the area,” Reaper called out, “we need to write down your name, so everyone is accounted for. If you have transportation, please offer a ride to those from the boat. Again, I’m asking you to stay still while we continue our rescue efforts of the rip current victim.”

  Hawkeye snagged up a sopping wet beach towel as he ran toward Roy.

  “In the meantime,” Reaper called. “I need two groups of four volunteers who are physically capable of searching along the shoreline. One group will head north and the other south to see if anyone washed into a different cove. Each group should include someone with first aid training. Come forward if you’re ready, able, and willing.”

  When Hawkeye reached the flat rock, the bystanders who had performed CPR crawled out of the way, winded from their sustained effort.

  “His name is Roy,” Hawkeye told his teammates as they moved up.

  Reaper’s voice boomed out, “People who are, at this point in time, ready and able to render CPR, raise your hands.”

  Halo was already arranging Roy into position, bending Roy’s leg, pulling his arm long, and with Hawkeye pushing the shoulders and Halo pulling his hips, they rolled Roy onto his side.

  “You four.” Reaper’s finger traced around, tagging the people he’d chosen. “Come forward.”

  Hawkeye laid the towel under Roy, then he and Halo rolled him onto his back.

  With a Cerberus brother at each corner—and a “One. Two. Three. Lift.”— they transferred Roy onto the surfboard.

  It was a struggle to stay focused on this moment, knowing that there may well be seven people fighting for their lives in the water.

  Together, the team shifted the surfboard onto a shoulder. Without handles and for fear that someone’s grip would slip on the slick surface, this was the safest configuration, though it reminded Hawkeye of the dancing pallbearers he’d seen in Ghana.

  As soon as that thought crossed his mind, Hawkeye thrust it away.

  The Cerberus men passed behind Reaper, who was addressing the volunteers. “The CPR team is exhausted. If you’re willing, we need to supply CPR on the way to the hospital. The driver will be going slow and steady to get you there, but you will be in an open, moving vehicle. Only agree if you are comfortable with that situation.”

  Every second counted.

  All four fell in behind Roy and followed the team to the pickup, where the men used the towel to transfer Roy into the bed.

  With surfboard in hand, Cerberus jumped out of the way.

  The CPR team climbed in and got right back to work.

  Cerberus was in motion, hustling back to the beach.

  During that brief time away, two missing boat crew were located and helped back to the staging site.

  “Five unaccounted for,” Reaper said.

  “Five,” the men repeated.

  “Take your boards. The waves and rip currents have clouded the waters. That’s going to make rescue and recovery more difficult. If you’re confident that your dog can function here like they did on the Potomac—since we were just training this—take your K9 with you. If you’re not a hundred percent sure, leave your dog in my care.”

  What Reaper left unsaid was that “rescue” was the term used for the living, and “recovery” was the term used for a body.

  The training they’d been doing for weeks on the river, was the dogs' ability to perform water searches, finding a human scent under the water. Of course, the dogs had been working by leaning over the edge of a boat, not balanced on a surfboard.

  The team needed to move fast to have any hope of finding the missing five.

  Alive would be amazing.

  But even if dead, retrieving the bodies would bring closure for the families and loved ones.

  The sea was vast, and the conditions treacherous, but Hawkeye and Cooper raced into the waves, determined.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Hawkeye

  With Cooper running at his heels, Hawkeye dashed toward the waterline, the surfboard under his arm.

  Hawkeye knew his dog.

  When they were in mission mode, Cooper was the tip of the spear. He intuited the need and acted.

  As Hawkeye sprinted into the frothing water, lifting his knees high to maintain his momentum, he pulled the board around, diving onto the surface. He looked over his shoulder to see Cooper extending his forelegs and leaping after him, landing between Hawkeye’s legs.

  Cooper moved up until his front paws extended over Hawkeye’s shoulder.

  Hawkeye didn’t realize how much that would help him balance the board and plow through the water until Cooper did that. “Good job, buddy. We’re going on a search. Cooper, search.”

  Hawkeye was digging deep.

  Halo, raised on Australian beaches where surfing was a way of life, slid up beside him. “Bloody hell, mate,” he called. “It’s a bleeding inferno out there. No one’s survived on that boat. I’m going west to the boat, then peeling north if you want to head south from here.”

  “Wilco. Hey!” Hawkeye lifted his voice in warning.

  Halo tipped his chin to see Hawkeye.

  “The guy I had on the beach smelled of diesel. Keep an eye on the water. If the fuel gets on you or the board—”

  “Poof,” Halo said. “Stay out of the fuel ring.”

  Hawkeye should have said that before he hit the water. There were a lot of moving parts. A lot of details.

  Details were survival.

  “Diesel in the water!” Hawkeye called out.

  “Diesel in the water,” Levi and Ash called from behind him.

  With that out of the way, it would take some time for Hawkeye to paddle out. He’d use the time to his advantage. He went back in his memory and tried to recall the details of the first wave.

  There was the man who fell from the jet ski onto the boat. Without a helmet, it was unlikely that he’d stayed conscious after hitting.

 

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