by Gayle Wilson
“Maybe,” Jake said. “That’s not really what I meant, though. Whatever it is, it’s moving.”
“On the current,” she agreed, pulling her gaze away from the object and back to his. He wasn’t looking at her, so she raised the water again to her lips.
“We’re running out of time, Claire,” Jake said softly.
She lowered the bottle slowly, eyes widened. “What does that mean? The water’s warm. The sun’s...bearable,” she said, glancing up toward the afternoon dazzle of clear, blue sky and then, eyes narrowed, quickly away.
“That’s the Gulf Stream. Probably the most powerful current in the world. If Griff is caught in that...”
Her eyes lifted again to the floating object. Even in the short time they had been talking, it seemed to have grown noticeably smaller. Of course, that was probably the power of suggestion, but it frightened her, just the same.
“Then we’ll follow the current,” she said, feeling a tinge of excitement at that thought. A resurgence of the hope that had begun to falter. “We can plot it. You know where we were last night. Where the plane went down. We ought to be able to figure out how far out the current would have carried him. Surely there are charts with the information we’d need to do that on board.”
“Except we’re supposed to be making contact with the kidnappers in a few hours,” Jake stated, interrupting that more hopeful line of thought.
“Do it from here,” she suggested. “We know Diaz is dead. Tell them that.”
“Griff’s the one they’re expecting. He’s the one who’s talked to them. And the arrangements were very specific. And pretty sophisticated,” Jake admitted. “They seem as security conscious as we would be in this situation. Calls from shipboard are too easily monitored, so the call Griff is supposed to make has to be placed to a particular Miami number from a specific pay phone there. They don’t want any mistake about who they’re dealing with.”
“What happens if he doesn’t make that call?” she asked, watching Jake’s eyes, trying to read the truth of what he would tell her. And when he spoke, she thought she could.
“The crash will have been mentioned on the news. Word that it was Diaz’s plane will probably get out to those involved. I’m not sure, however, if it will be enough to satisfy them that we’ve done our part. Or to satisfy them that, despite the delay, we’ll be in touch. And they were pretty adamant about proof.”
“What kind of proof?” Claire asked, trying not to think about Gardner. Trying not to picture her daughter in the hands of people growing increasingly angry about not receiving the message they were waiting for.
“Video of Diaz boarding the plane. The takeoff. Hawk and Jordan have that. We’re supposed to rendezvous with them on one of the smaller keys and pick them and the video up. Then Griff makes the phone call in Miami and offers the package to the kidnappers. They tell us where to go from there. At least that’s the way it was supposed to work.”
“Surely they’ll wait,” she said. “If they know that Diaz’s plane went down.”
“If Diaz was what these people are really after,” Jake said.
“I don’t understand,” Claire said, shaking her head. What else was this all about, if not that? “Griff thought this might be a rival who wanted to take over Diaz’s operation.”
“Maybe,” Jake said.
“You don’t think that’s what it is?” she asked carefully.
“Drug cartels don’t have access to information about the internal operations of the CIA,” he suggested. “At least not about something as sensitive as what this team does. Or about how it operates. And how did they even know about Gardner? Or know that Griff was the only one who could set this up?”
“Maybe they got the information through the computers,” she said, remembering what Griff had told her, about how much information was stored within them. And remembering what he had said Jake could do with them. But she also remembered that Griff had told her that these questions, the same ones Jake was asking, were things the team had already been trying to figure out.
Jake’s mouth tightened again, as if he were thinking about what she’d suggested. “Maybe,” he conceded. “I don’t think so, but... I mean, I guess it’s possible, but in my opinion someone like that breaching our system would be highly unlikely.” to
“So...who else would have that kind of information?” she asked. “Outside the agency, I mean.”
Jake’s lips pursed a little, and then he looked past her to the sea. An empty sea. And he didn’t answer her question.
GRIFF CAME AWAKE with a start. He had no idea how long he had been asleep, but at least the sun was setting. It had beaten down mercilessly throughout the day. Despite the natural darkness of his skin, he knew his face and scalp were burned.
Of course, he thought, lifting his eyes to the shifting horizon that composed his limited view of the world, that was the least of his problems. His cracked lips lifted a little at the corners, despite the seriousness of his situation.
After all, he’d been in worse spots through the years. And the best thing he had going for him was the fact that they would be looking for him. The team. At least Jake. And Claire.
Obviously, the damn transmitter he was wearing wasn’t working. Which meant, he supposed... He closed his sun-and-salt-burned eyes, trying not to think about all the things it might mean. And of course, those were the very things that continued to circle in his brain.
That maybe he wouldn’t ever have a chance to say to Claire what he should have told her on deck last night. She had wanted him to kiss her. Had invited it. He knew Claire too well to have had any doubt about that.
Instead, he had pushed her away. And right now he couldn’t quite remember why. Guilt, maybe? There had been a lot of that circling in his head as well throughout this endless day.
Guilt because he knew Claire had been right. The kidnapping had been his fault. Guilt because he hadn’t told her the truth about what was going to happen. And because for a year he had let her believe the agency’s lie. And Griff was honest enough to admit the things she had said to him when she had ended their relationship had played a role in that decision.
But he hadn’t known about the baby. His daughter. His child, whom he had never even seen. And with everything else that had been going on, he realized he hadn’t even asked Claire what she was like.
He had always considered himself to be a rational man. Logical. That had been the guiding principle in most of his relationships. Except with Claire Heywood, he acknowledged, his cracked lips moving again into a painful parody of a smile.
Except with Claire.
He turned his head to the left, resting his chin on the cushion of the life vest, and watched the sun begin to sink beneath the slow rolls and swells of water that lay between his line of sight and the bands of gold and red disappearing slowly into the sea. His eyelids began to drift downward, the urge to sleep almost too powerful to resist.
He pulled them up by sheer force of will. He scooped up a handful of water and splashed it on his face. The salt in it burned the sun-damaged skin, but its chill was refreshing. Stimulating. Helping him to think more clearly.
He dipped his cupped hand in the water again and raised it, a small silver stream overflowing each side of his palm. Almost unconsciously he began to carry it to his lips, painfully dry with heat and dehydration. He even knew how the water’s soothing coolness would feel on them. And on his tongue.
He opened his mouth, burned skin cracking further with the movement. He couldn’t gather enough saliva to swallow. All this water, all around him, and his mouth was too damn dry to spit.
His hand journeyed closer to his lips until it bumped against the forgotten bulge of the vest, spilling most of the water it held. Only with that bump did his brain kick in. Seawater. Saltwater. No matter how thirsty he was, that would only make things worse. He turned his hand, releasing the small, remaining puddle of water from his palm and letting his arm fall.
Claire an
d Jake would find him. Somebody would find him, he told himself. All he had to do was endure. Just hold on. Stay awake so he could wave if he spotted them. Or another boat. All he had to do was just stay awake. And not do anything stupid.
THE SEARCHLIGHT PLAYED slowly over the dark water. Claire wasn’t sure anymore that even if her eyes found anything bobbing on the surface, the discovery would register on her tired brain. Too tired. Too many hours. Too many empty miles of ocean. And she felt as if she had examined them all.
She turned and looked over her shoulder toward the dim light coming from the bridge. She couldn’t see Jake, but she knew he was there. The last time she’d gone inside, he had looked almost worse than she felt. If the two of them, who had access to water and shade during the course of the day, were like this...
She turned her head to look back over the sweep of ocean. It was dark enough that the point where the sky met the sea had been lost, but at least the moon was rising. Her eyes lifted to find it, floating silently, low in the sky.
Except she wasn’t supposed to be looking at the sky. She followed the path the moonlight threw across the swells. Like a road. Yellow brick road. No, not brick. Water. A silver moon path lying across the black water, and in the middle of it...
She didn’t dare breathe, watching the object rising and gently falling with the movement of the waves. Slowly, almost with a sense of dread that she might be mistaken, she raised the binoculars. It took a moment to find through them the path of moonlight. A moment to follow it.
And then to focus on the patch of color it illuminated. Yellow. Not the pale gilt of the moon path, but the bright yellow of a life jacket.
And then the glasses moved minutely upward to focus on the dark head that lolled lifelessly between the inflated sides of that yellow vest. She watched it, still not breathing. Without lowering the glasses, she closed her eyes, squeezing them together to make sure that they were moist. And when she opened them again, the object was still there. Still the same. A man.
Her hands began to shake because, she realized, she had really given up hope. Whatever had kept her out here looking for Griff hadn’t been belief that they would find him. Stubbornness instead. Endurance. And not having sense enough to know when to give up.
“Jake,” she screamed. “I see him! Oh, my God, Jake, we’ve found him!”
GRIFF WAS CONSCIOUS when she reached him, but he seemed to drift in and out as they worked to get him on board. Claire had been the one who had gone down into the water because she couldn’t wait to make sure Griff was all right. Now she had managed to maneuver him near the ladder. Jake was waiting at the top, ready to pull Griff over the rail, something which Claire, with less upper body strength, wouldn’t have been able to do.
Jake was directing the small, portable spotlight down on them. From the surface of the sea, the side of the yacht stretched a seemingly impossible distance above them.
“Griff,” she shouted, taking his chin in her hand and turning his head to face her.
His eyelids opened, moving in slow motion. In the glare of the light, she could see that his skin was burned. Beneath the surface red, however, it had a gray tinge, especially around the sunken eyes. His long, dark lashes were beaded with water, and the eyes they framed were rimmed with red, the whites bloodshot. His lips were cracked and almost blue. And yet, in the depths of his eyes, fastened now on her face, was the same intelligence and force of will that had always been there.
“You have to help me,” she said, making each word a command, clear and distinct, her voice raised to reach him above the noise of the water and the idling engine. “You have to climb that ladder, Griff. Far enough up so that Jake can pull you over.”
She gripped the rung that was just above the swell of the waves. The fingers of her other hand were fastened in the straps of Griff’s life vest, and as a result his body floated nearer.
“Put your hand on the ladder,” she ordered.
She was almost afraid to try to help him do that. Afraid that they’d move away from the yacht if she released the ladder and afraid that if she let go of Griff, he would somehow drift away and disappear again into the darkness. And she wasn’t sure, if either of those things happened, whether she would have the strength to do this all again.
Sluggishly, Griff lifted his right hand, bringing a string of phosphorescent drops up with it. They shimmered in the glare of the spotlight. Although he reached out, his hand didn’t connect with the rung of the ladder, but fell into the sea by his side. She could even hear the small splash it made when it struck the surface, distinct from the slap of the waves against the side of the boat.
“You have to hold on,” she said.
In desperation, she released the ladder and fished under the water for his hand. By the time she found it, gripping his wrist and bringing it up to the surface, they were too far away from the boat for her to put his fingers over the flat, wooden rung. She took a few awkward strokes with her free arm, again bringing them against the hull.
“Put your hand on the ladder and hold on,” she shouted.
“I’ll get a rope,” Jake yelled down, his voice seeming to come from a great distance above them. She glanced up, but couldn’t see anything except the spotlight She closed her eyes immediately, but was still almost blind when she opened them again.
Slowly Griff’s face swam out of the darkness. If anything, he looked worse than he had a few minutes ago. Grayer. Less focused. Less capable of doing what she was asking him to do.
Which was probably, for a man in his condition, little short of impossible, she realized. Of course, finding him in this black wilderness of water had been little short of impossible. And she and Jake had done that.
Surely they could do this. They had to. They had come too close to give up. And, as Jake had reminded her more times than she wanted to think about, time was running out. Time to contact the kidnappers. Time to get to Gardner.
“We have to get back to Miami,” she said to Griff. “We’ve already missed the deadline.”
She was no longer shouting at him. She was so close her mouth was against his face. Close enough that she could occasionally feel the brush of his whiskers against her cheek as a wave lifted and then released them. Her lips were right beside his ear, and her tone had changed. She had stayed out here, looking for him, while those bastards had Gardner, and now...
“If we don’t get back, they may kill her,” she warned.
She didn’t know that. But it was the thought she had fought since Jake had told her about the deadline, and finally giving utterance to it made it more real. Infinitely terrifying.
It had been five days since they had taken her baby, and Claire couldn’t even remember how it felt to hold her. And if Griff didn’t help her, didn’t make this effort, then she might never hold her again.
“She’s your daughter, Griff,” she said. “Your daughter, damn it, and you promised me you’d get her back. And if you don’t help me get you up that ladder right now, then we won’t reach her in time.”
A wave, stronger than the others, pushed them apart, the water slapping against the plastic of his life jacket. She ducked her head to keep the resulting spray out of her eyes.
When she looked up, she realized that Griff was looking at her, the dark eyes more focused. More coherent than they had been since her trembling fingers had first touched his cold cheek. She had been afraid that he was dead, and then, with a rush of gratitude so overpowering it made her weak, she had watched his eyes open and fasten on her face.
Almost the way they were fastened there now. Holding on her eyes. Full of recognition. And understanding.
His hand lifted again, and the parched, cracked lips closed into a taut line. This was a look she had seen on Griff Cabot’s face a hundred times, and seeing it there now, her heart lifted.
His hand reached out and gripped the wooden rung of the yacht’s ladder. This time the long, dark fingers held. And then he carefully fitted his foot into one of the rungs
that hung beneath the surface. And then his body began to lift away from her. Moving upward.
Chapter Nine
“Just a little more,” Claire said, fitting the rim of the bottle against Griff’s lips again.
She was sitting on the bed in the largest stateroom, the one where she’d been sleeping. Her back was against the headboard and she was sitting behind Griff, her arms around his bare chest. Despite her concern for him, she was finding this physical proximity as evocative as watching his hands had been last night.
Griff was still shivering occasionally, but once she had gotten the wet clothing off and covered him with a blanket from the compartment above the bed, those involuntary tremors had gradually lessened. His lips were also regaining their color.
Just as he had obeyed all the other demands she had made, he obeyed this one, drinking from the bottle she offered. Jake had suggested she get the ginger ale from the galley while he helped Griff down the stairs. Because of its sugar content, he claimed the ginger ale would be better than plain water to fight shock.
Claire had no idea if that were true, but it made sense. And Griff certainly wasn’t protesting. She suspected he would have just as readily drunk anything she gave him. Trustingly. Obediently.
After all, since his hand had first locked around the rung of the ladder, he had done everything she’d told him to do. Even to putting his arm across their shoulders once she and Jake had finally managed to get him on board.
Getting Griff down the steps to the living quarters had been the worst That had been the only time in that nightmare journey Griff had made a sound. Because the passage was so narrow, she’d had to step back and let Jake support his weight alone.
Until then, Griff hadn’t revealed how painful his leg was. His groan of agony had obviously been torn from him against his will. And she knew something about the nature of Griff Cabot’s will.
But he was safe, she told herself. At least he was safe, and the yacht, under Jake’s tired but steady hand, was racing belatedly to the rendezvous with Hawk and Jordan that they had missed while they searched. And as for their being late for the other, for the call Griff was supposed to make from Miami...