“What do we have?”
He moved for the open bay door, looked down and...spotted blood in the water. A pool of crimson spread out around Daeg, even as the spotter barked out a terse announcement. “Houston, we have ourselves a problem.”
They sure did. No way could Daeg make it up the ladder, dangling from the chopper, so Cal sent the basket back down. It seemed to take twice as long to reach the ocean’s surface as it had on the previous trip, but he knew that was an illusion. Time hadn’t really slowed to a crawl. He’d reach Daeg in time.
As soon as the basket was down, Lars loaded Daeg in. Cal assumed strong-arming was involved. The basket was for survivors and not for SEALs. Daeg would be razzed about his ride for months.
Cal grinned, relief washing over him, and then, just like that, Lars disappeared. One minute he was treading water, his hand holding on to the ladder as he waited for the basket to clear, and then he was gone. They’d dropped the chopper lower, searching. He couldn’t tell if the water was clear or not, but Lars wasn’t on the surface. He’d jumped, mask on, arms crossed and fins down. He couldn’t get down there quickly enough, ripping through the water’s surface and mentally sectioning the area into quadrants.
No Lars.
Nothing but brown churn from the tsunami and the cyclone. All the picture-postcard blue was gone, and he was diving in a garbage dump. Boards and trees and wood. Pieces of fishing boats, netting and what had to be the contents of a half-dozen villages. Animals and who knew what else.
Dive. Surface. Over and over, until the chopper ran dangerously low on fuel.
He’d ascended, leaving Lars out there somewhere. He’d have gladly traded his own life for the other man’s, but destiny wasn’t willing to broker the deal. He’d lost a brother, when there should have been something he could do to rescue him. Like his job. Years of training, thousands of mission hours rescuing others, but he’d come up short on the most important rescue of them all.
* * *
“ANOTHER TEAM RETRIEVED Lars’s body a day later. All I have left of him now are his tags.” He fisted the tags around his neck.
By his side, Piper didn’t make the uh-huh noises or the head nods. She sat there silently, taking in his words, but her shoulder pressed against his arm, her fingers stayed tangled up with his in the sand. He fought the urge to press her down and strip off her clothes. To lose both himself and the memories in Piper. That wasn’t fair to her, though, and he didn’t deserve the escape.
After, when he’d told her what he remembered, there was silence. He concentrated on his breathing, the regular in and out of air moving through his lungs the same way the waves came in and then retreated. One breath. Inhale and hold for twenty. Exhale, and then a second. And a third. Eventually, she snuck a peek at him. He was pretty sure he didn’t look okay, because the pressure on his arm got deeper, and then she stood up.
“Can you swim with me?” she asked. “Not a dive,” she added quickly.
He had a sudden feeling he might follow Piper just about anywhere. He filed the thought away to consider later.
“I can swim. I train every day.”
She nodded, and he could practically see the gears turning in her head as she considered various ideas. He didn’t need her to fix him, which was a good thing because he had a sneaking suspicion he was broken beyond all repair. Or that it was going to take years he didn’t have before the Fiesta demonstration. She reached down and held out a hand.
“You’re still sitting down,” she teased.
Warmth unfolded in him.
When he took her hand, she eyed him cautiously. They did have history, after all. “You’re not going to pull me in, are you?”
She’d done that to him on more than one occasion. She reacted first, thought later. He tightened his fingers on hers and her eyes narrowed.
“Nope,” he said. “Although I reserve the right to do so later.”
She grinned. “There’s hope for you yet, Cal.”
He hoped so. He really, really hoped so.
* * *
PIPER HAD ALWAYS had nothing but respect for the men and women who chose to serve. She couldn’t imagine flying away and leaving a man down because it was the right thing to do. Because otherwise the people you’d come out to rescue would be jeopardized. Those kinds of decisions didn’t come up in her life—and probably explained Cal’s fanatic insistence on staying safe.
She tugged and zipped as they waded in, grateful for the shorty’s insulation. Although the water here was shallow enough that the sun had warmed up the surface, it still packed quite a chill. The ocean off the California coast was definitely no South Pacific dream when it came to warmth, although it didn’t seem to bother Cal. Maybe it was his SEAL training.