The rushing sound of the wind and waves made her shout seem impossibly small. She couldn’t be sure, but she didn’t think it had carried very far. Certainly there was no response.
Some kind of search-and-rescue operation was needed on the scene now. But given the remote location, and the storm, and the time frame before it hit, she knew it wasn’t going to happen. Jittery with alarm at the idea that she was the only help there might be for days, she picked up the radio again.
“There’s been a plane crash,” she said into it. “Arvid, can you hear me? Call the Coast Guard and get help out here. I repeat, there’s been a plane crash. Can anyone hear me?” She gave her location and coordinates in hopes that Arvid or someone could hear her even if they couldn’t respond. If a couple of her fellow scientists could join her with the other boat that was docked at the main camp, that would be way better than having just herself out here alone. But even as she had the thought, she realized that there wasn’t time. She was probably a good half hour away by sea from the former Coast Guard station, and the storm would hit way before any of them could reach her.
Reluctantly accepting that she was on her own, Gina was grimly listening to more static in reply to her latest transmission when she spotted something floating past that was definitely human.
Her stomach dropped as she stared at it.
A man’s leg, severed below the knee. Bare and white as a fish’s belly except for the dark sock that still covered the foot.
Gina was watching its progress in mute horror when a movement a few hundred yards out caught her eye.
Looking up—and thankful to the core to have her attention diverted—she carefully clipped the radio to her pocket again, lifted the binoculars, and peered through the wind and blowing snow as she sought to verify what she thought she’d seen.
Yes, there it was again.
Adrenaline raced through her. Somebody was bobbing in the water. Somebody with open eyes and a gasping mouth and flailing limbs. Impossible to be certain, but from the size of him she thought it must be a man.
A survivor.
Gina’s heart beat faster.
Chapter Four
He should be dead. In fact, Cal had been pretty sure that he was dead until he’d caught a glimpse of an orange boat glimmering above the icy blue world in which he’d found himself. The explosion, the hurtling into utter blackness, the sudden immersion in freezing cold water, the lack of air, the sense of being separate from his body, all made a kind of twisted sense in the context of having just lost his life.
An orange boat did not. An orange boat had no place in the Hereafter. An orange boat meant that he’d fallen into the sea instead of some icy, watery version of hell, which was where he’d always assumed he would end up when he died. Now he was freezing, and drowning, and maybe even bleeding to death, but he was not dead.
Not yet, anyway. Not ever, if he could help it.
If he was going to live, he had to have air. Not easy when an ocean’s worth of water kept slapping him in the face, smashing down on top of his head, pulling him under and spitting him back up again, toying with him like a cat with a mouse before closing in for the kill. Not easy when water gushed up his nose every time the sea bucked around him and he found himself gulping down gallons of salt water whenever he opened his mouth for air.
He was so weak it was ridiculous, so cold he was almost paralyzed with it.
What it came down to was, did he want to live or die?
If he died, would it even really matter? To whom, besides himself?
His mother was dead, killed in a car crash when he was five. His father was a tough old bastard, a now retired Air Force officer who prided himself on being a man’s man. His idea of raising a son had consisted of beating the crap out of him for the smallest transgression until Cal had gotten big enough to turn what had started as a beating into a fight. After that, they’d pretty much circled each other like snarling dogs until he’d graduated high school and left home. They barely kept in touch. Would the old man grieve the death of his only offspring? Cal snorted inwardly. He’d be more likely to shed a tear over getting a dent in his car.
His business partner, John Hardy, another former AFSOC, would keep the company running. Nobody who worked for them would even be out of a job.
His latest ex-girlfriend was still mad at him over the fact that he’d failed to be forthcoming with a diamond ring. She might, possibly, shed a tear over his demise. She might even give a home to Harley, his dog.
Harley would grieve. Part Irish wolfhound, part German shepherd, part God knew what else, Harley was a rescue that another previous girlfriend had left with him when it had become clear that the animal was going to grow to the size of a moose. He was six years old, clumsy as a camel on roller skates, and absolutely devoted to Cal.
Cal came to the semireluctant conclusion that he could not abandon Harley.