Quick and dangerous, p.10
Quick & Dangerous, page 10
Better him than her.
He couldn’t even marvel at the incredible school of manta rays at a fish cleaning station, he was so focused on finding her or finding anyone at this point. Then out of the corner of his eye, he spotted something orange. A flick of neon that was too opaque to belong to anything with a pulse. Rob kicked forward, swimming slightly against the current toward what appeared to be a shelf with a severe drop-off. He didn’t have enough oxygen to go any deeper. Neither did Skyler.
Pushing himself forward, he saw a hand clutching a rock, and that hand belonged to Skyler. He stopped himself before getting too close and going over the shelf, managing to grab on to a rock on the sea floor.
She was kicking frantically, tangled up in a fishing net and trying to keep her purchase as a deep undertow below her, running along the shelf, trying inexorably to pull her along. She looked exhausted and scared, but when she glanced up, relief flooded her eyes.
Rob reached out a hand, but she shook her head, pretending to flex the muscles of her other arm to say that the undertow was too strong and would pull him with it too. Her fins were all tangled up in the net, and it was wrapped around the knobs on her tank and snorkel. She was fucked.
He pointed to his pressure gauge and asked her how much oxygen she had left. Her eyes said it all, but she showed him anyway. She was running out. Most likely because she’d been breathing heavily, fighting the current for so long.
He had to get her out of there. He had to get them to the surface. Even as they slowly ascended, they’d continue to drift. Most likely now they were well away from the boat and all the other divers. But he couldn’t think about that right now. He had to get her out from the undertow and back up to the surface.
Waving a hand to get her attention, he pointed his fingers at her eyes and then at his. He needed her to know that he was going to get her out of this mess. He was going to save her. She just needed to watch him. To trust him. He pointed to his flipper and instructed her to grab hold. He was going to grip the rock and extend his body toward her. She needed to grab it, and he would pull her forward so she could grab on to his rock. That would get her back into his current and out of the undertow … he hoped.
He nodded, checking to see if she understood. She nodded in return, fear burning in her bright green eyes. It had to work. It just had to.
Repositioning himself on the rock, Rob extended his body toward Skyler. He was over six feet tall; add in another two and half feet for the length of his fins, and she should have a lot to grab on to. He couldn’t look back at her. He needed to remain focused and hold on tight to that rock. He really wished he was wearing the diving gloves he wore when he was a SEAL. It made holding on to shit so much easier, and your hands didn’t freeze. But they were in the tropics, and he wasn’t an on-duty SEAL anymore, so his gloveless hands would have to do.
Suddenly, he felt a tug on his foot, and then the power of her weight pulling him. Shutting his eyes, Rob dug down deep and, bending his knee, slowly, he pulled her forward, battling the current and her almost dead weight. He could feel her kicking behind him to help propel herself forward. But her fins were tangled in the net, so she couldn’t do much. She flopped and flailed on his fin like a fishtail, but it did help. With pain searing his leg and his fingers aching and raw from the rock, he kicked forward just enough, and Skyler came shooting out from behind him and grabbed his rock.
Her eyes alighted with a smile as she let go of his fin and clung to the rock with both hands. He reached for her pressure gauge with his free hand and checked it again. She was nearly in the red zone. He checked his own. He wasn’t far off, either. They needed to get to the surface. But he needed to free her from the net first.
Snatching the dive knife from the holster on his ankle, he circled around her, cutting free the netting from her tank and fins. If he had more time and they weren’t running out of oxygen, he’d have destroyed every hole so nobody else would fall victim. But they were too far down for him to waste time, so instead he let it go and watched it drift off with the current.
Facing Skyler again, he pointed at his weight belt. She nodded, and they both released their weights, letting them fall to the ocean floor. Making sure she was still paying attention, he grabbed his spare regulator, handed it to her and pointed upward. Nodding again, she spit out her regulator and put his in her mouth before inflating her BCD. Rob did the same, and they slowly started to ascend.
They’d drift some more, but at least they were together now. At least he’d found her.
Now he just had to save her.
Chapter 10
Skyler
Skyler pulled the regulator out of her mouth as the breeze hit her face. She took a gulping breath of fresh air and peeled her mask down around her neck. She didn’t think she’d ever been so happy to see the clouds, sun and sky in her life.
Rob followed suit, coming up in front of her. His fins knocked hers beneath the waves as they both treaded water in the sloshing surf.
She reached out and looped her arm through the handle on the back of his BCD. She couldn’t lose him again. They needed to stay together. They were in this together.
The sun was high but not directly overhead. She remembered glancing at the clock over the wheelhouse right before she bailed into the water. It had said it was quarter past one. It was probably close to two o’clock now, maybe even later. The reflection of sunlight on the water transformed the sea into an endless blanket of dancing diamonds making it hard to clearly see their surroundings. Islands dotted the horizon, but there wasn’t a boat in sight. No yellow blemish on the glittering ocean bobbed in the distance like a beacon of salvation. Not even a dinghy.
“What are we going to do?” she sputtered, knocked against Rob by the rolling waves.
His eyes darted around, his face a scowl of concentration. But he didn’t say anything.
Was he mad?
There were islands all around them, but some were simply pinnacles of rock, standing up out of the sea like a column of stone. Impossible to climb and with nary a plant or sign of life above the water.
They needed to find suitable land to swim to, not just cling to and hope a passing boat spotted them.
“There!” Rob announced, pointing off into the distance. “There’s an island there.”
Skyler squinted. She couldn’t really see where he was pointing. She was also exhausted, and without her contacts, she couldn’t see much.
“You okay to swim?” he asked.
No. She’d been fighting the current for what felt like hours. Her limbs were jelly, and her arms ached. She’d never be able to make it to that island if she had to swim.
They didn’t really have a choice, though, so even though she would just as easily have shut her eyes and let the surf toss her sleeping body around like a lump of driftwood, she nodded. “Yeah, I can swim.”
“Good. Let go of my BCD, and let’s go.”
Reluctantly, she released the handle on his vest, the only lifeline she had to him. If a sudden swell came up, they could get separated again, and she was too tired to try to swim against the current back to him. But he seemed to read her mind and pulled a strap out of a small pouch attached at his waist.
They didn’t provide those straps at the dive shop.
He must have brought that himself.
The same with the pouch.
It was roughly ten feet in length, and he attached one end to his BCD and the other to hers.
“This way you stop floating the fuck away,” he said with a very discernible grumble. “Okay, let’s start swimming.” Then they were off.
It was probably no more than a mile or so to the island, but they were fighting the current, and Skyler was fatigued. They didn’t say much as they swam. They couldn’t. But with every stroke, every kick, every jerk of the tether, Skyler could feel Rob’s anger.
She could see it.
Hear it.
Smell it.
The man was an active volcano ready to erupt; he just needed to wait for the proper venue. And in the middle of the ocean was not the place.
It’d been the weirdest dive Skyler had ever been on. The current was stronger than any drift dive she’d done before, and the bottom was bare. There was hardly anything for her to grab on to and stop herself from continuing with the drift. All the other drift dives she’d been on in the past had been along a reef, the current had been slower, and there were rocks and reef to hold on to if needed. She was out of her element and knew it the moment they’d descended. But by that time, it was too late. She couldn’t tell Rob she wanted, no, needed to resurface. That she was having an anxiety attack. He’d been weird and avoiding her all morning. So she pushed all her emotions, all of her fears down and got on with the dive.
Then things started to go wrong with her left and right. She’d never struggled with her buoyancy before, at least not in the way she had today. She couldn’t maintain a stable level in her BCD and kept sinking. Had she grabbed the wrong weight? Was her weight belt too heavy?
Then she kept having leg cramp after leg cramp, which impeded her swimming and ability to keep up. Probably because she was dehydrated. She’d had more alcohol last night then she had in years, and she hadn’t had any water with the booze, or that morning. She was dehydrated and her limbs were paying the price. And finally, she’d spotted a whale shark off in the distance and, without even thinking, swam after it. She’d been diving for years now, even before she fled France for her life, and never had she spotted a whale shark. It was her bucket list animal. Her unicorn. Her Holy Grail.
So desperation and stupidity took over, along with all the other factors—too strong a current, buoyancy problems and leg cramps—and suddenly Skyler had lost sight of Rob and was drifting too fast, winding up on the reef shelf and sucked into the undertow.
She honestly thought she was a goner and considered a few times releasing her grasp on the rock just to see where the undertow took her. Only her oxygen levels were too low, and she knew she wouldn’t resurface in time if she got swept away with the current.
Rob had saved her, though.
How had he found her?
Had his Navy SEAL training kicked in?
He’d been already acting really weird all day.
Did he think the sex was bad? A bad idea?
Was he embarrassed about his nightmare?
He shouldn’t be.
She had them too.
She’d witnessed Nico being murdered in cold blood and then heard the gunshot as her mother was killed. Dreams haunted her too, and she often woke up in a cold sweat and screaming.
The two made quite the pair.
But when she’d tried to reassure him that it was okay, he’d kicked her out of his cabin. Then he was awkward and dismissive.
She knew men typically didn’t like to talk about their feelings, and Rob was one of the manliest men she’d ever met. But their relationship (if you could call it that) had progressed to the next level. They’d slept together. Shared a bed. He owed her, at the very least, a decent conversation after they’d spent the night together. If she didn’t already know she was dynamite in the sack, she’d be feeling all self-conscious.
“Almost there,” he huffed and puffed beside her.
She’d been so caught up in her thoughts that she wasn’t even paying attention to their swimming and had somehow managed to keep up. Sure, they were tethered together, but he wasn’t pulling her along.
“Good,” she said, nearly out of breath. Seawater kept splashing in her mouth, and the salt was making her thirsty. Her stomach grumbled and threatened to spasm as she continued swimming.
Not much farther.
You can do it.
In no time, they could see the bottom again. Fish and corals shimmered beneath them as they neared the beach. Before too long, the tips of their fins grazed the sandy bottom, then finally their heels touched. Skyler peeled off her flippers and ran up the beach, falling onto her knees and digging her fingers into the warm sand as if it were her last living relative and she had to make sure it wasn’t just a mirage. There had been a moment down there where she thought she’d never get to step foot on dry land again, never get to feel sand between her toes or hear the rustle of palm fronds in the wind.
Tears stung her eyes as the realization of her brush with death came on like a dam breaking.
She’d almost died.
Rob saved her.
As she knelt there on the warm sand, sobs wracked her body, and her chest burned. She was alive. She was here. She was safe. All thanks to Rob.
Pushing herself up, she turned around on her knees only to find Rob, out of his dive gear and wet suit, wandering around the beach and up into the foliage and copse of palm trees. The island wasn’t very big, but it had a small rise of rocks and a fair few trees that, should they be stranded overnight, would protect them from the wind.
She stood up and peeled off her own gear, along with her wet suit. Rob had rested his suit on a rock to dry in the sun, and she placed hers next to it. Twigs and dry grass poked at the bottoms of her feet as she followed him up into the brush.
What was he doing?
“Need to build a fire,” he murmured, collecting dry branches and leaves. He glanced up at the sun. “We’ve only got a few more hours of daylight.”
“Y-you don’t think they’ll find us today?” she asked with a stammer.
Oh God. They were stranded on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean. With no food, no water, no supplies, nothing. They’d survived the dive, but would they survive the island? How long could they last on the tiny little rock before they starved to death or got too dehydrated? It wasn’t the rainy season. They couldn’t lay out palm fronds to collect rainwater. At the most, they might get a bit of evening dew.
Rob growled as he lifted a big log up and chucked it up into a palm. It knocked a couple of coconuts, sending them plummeting to the ground.
“You’ve done this before?” she asked, looking on in awe.
“Training.”
Right. He was a SEAL. He probably knew how to fashion a fishing line out of a toothpick and a strand of hair. Meanwhile, she couldn’t do a damn thing useful on the island. No, her specialties were on the computer and at the poker table. She could make a killer fake passport or bluff her way into the winners’ round in an illegal poker tournament, but she was lost when it came to anything out in nature. She could barely tell the difference between a carnation and a chrysanthemum.
He made a pile where the sand met the brush, dumping the coconuts, sticks and leaves, then he went back into the foliage to continue searching. Skyler knew she needed to prove herself useful, so she began collecting leaves and twigs as well. If he figured they needed a fire so the smoke drew the attention of a nearby boat, they’d need lots of dry tinder.
For roughly an hour they wandered around the small island in silence. Skyler couldn’t tell if Rob was mad. Was he still upset from earlier in the day, or was the embarrassment from yesterday carrying over? They hadn’t talked much at all since last night, even though she’d wanted to. Was this just him being the strong silent type, or was there more to it?
She was gathering rocks to make a fire ring when Rob wandered over, a stick in his hand and what looked to be some twine.
“Did you find a fishing rod?” she asked.
“Found twine and a nail,” he said, wrapping the line around the stick.
Score one for an ocean full of garbage. Not. It disgusted her, the amount of trash floating in the ocean. Plastic everywhere, being eaten by creatures, trapping sea life, and brushing up against your leg as you swam, making you think it was a jellyfish tentacle. More than once while out diving, she’d taken a mesh bag with her and collected garbage she found floating around. She’d even saved a sea turtle that was heavily tangled in a fishing net. But today, garbage was their friend. She only hoped Rob knew how to fish, because she’d never cast a line in her life.
She finished making the fire ring and then filled it with bone-dry leaves and twigs. That wasn’t a good sign. Not an ounce of moisture in either of them. When was the last time it’d rained?
“Start a fire,” he said, not bothering to turn around. “I’m going to go see if I can catch us some fish.” Then he took off toward the rocks that hung out over the water and what looked to be a drop-off.
Start a fire?
What did he think she was? A Girl Scout?
Growing up in France with her mother, who was a full-time emergency room nurse, and a dad who worked nonstop, Skyler had very few extracurricular activities. That’s how she’d become talented on her computer. Hours spent at home, alone, teaching herself how to code, how to Photoshop and then eventually how to play online poker. She remembered a year or so of ballet class when she was small, but after that, her parents were too busy to enroll her in anything.
And she’d certainly never been camping. Randall McAllister didn’t camp, and her mother was always too tired or busy.
But she had to try. So, gathering some sticks and rocks, she did what any reasonable person who’d been unwillingly flung into survival mode would do. She began to rub two sticks together and pray.
The sun was close to setting by the time Rob returned to her. Her fingers were blistered and there were tears in her eyes, but no fire. Not even a spark or a tuft of smoke. She’d worn through ten sticks before giving up and taking off down to the water’s edge to look for sharp shells and rocks that might help them open up the coconuts. But even then, she’d come up with nothing. So instead she’d returned to the bushes and collected various fronds and soft foliage she thought would make a suitable bed. She inspected it for bugs and made sure it was big enough for two people before returning to her station at the sticks to once again try to build a fire. That’s where Rob found her.
With blurry eyes, she lifted her head to find him sauntering forward, all chiseled and tanned perfection with abs like an Adonis and arms that, for a brief moment last night, had felt so right wrapped around her.
