Chapter 9
Triton
I’D DONE ALL I COULD to baby the woman, to allow her the time it took to get through her shock enough that we could make our escape. The pause in the forest to grieve her murdered colleagues had been dangerous, but I felt it had to be done, would maybe allow her to leave it behind and come with me, somehow.
But between that and taking time to create the fake trail, we’d delayed for far too long—if we were going to get off the island, it was now or never. My instincts, honed over years of moments like this, told me it was only a short matter of time until the terrorists’ backup arrived. And then we would be in trouble.
We had to go. Now.
If she followed me, I would help her. But if I got in the boat and she was still standing on the shore, I would have to leave her. The choice was hers, now. My mission hadn’t been a rescue mission—it had been to get information about the strange goings on near the contested islands and, if possible, destroy them.
Destroying them wasn’t an option anymore. I had to get word back to my superiors so someone else could. My team had given their lives to ensure I could do just that, and I wasn’t going to fail just because someone else couldn’t handle the pressure.
Knowing what we’d seen in the water with the cable, not just lives but the world hung in the balance.
The cold hit me as I dove under the water. What had been chill in my wetsuit was frigid against my bare skin, and I had to bite back the instinct to freeze and surface. I had to make it back to the boat.
Suddenly, I felt something at my feet and risked a glance back. Expecting a tangle of seaweed or a fish, instead, I saw hair floating towards me through the green-blue water. Surprised, I realized the woman had jumped into the water as was following me. Part of me had expected her to stay back on the island—she wasn’t a trained SEAL—and fear did strange things to people.
But not only had she followed me into the water, she had also caught up to me. And she was keeping up. She had to be an excellent swimmer.
As we raced forward, surfacing only to draw breath, the dark shadow of the bottom of the boat drew closer. I beat the woman to the old fishing trawler, but not by much. I stopped just before the ship, and so did she, and indicated with hand signs to swim to the opposite side of the boat. We did and crested the water with the island hidden by the hull, so it was between us and anyone waiting on the beach.
She was gasping for air, treading water beside me, waiting for the next move.
Cold and stiff, it took my fingers several tries before I could grasp the rungs on the side of the fishing trawler. I had to heave myself over the side before rolling wearily to my feet. I turned to help the woman into the boat but had to take a step back instead to make room for her as she pulled her way over the top of the railing and dropped onto the deck. If I’d had time to notice, I would have been impressed. I was in top physical condition, and she’d followed me all the way back to the boat through cold water, keeping up the entire time, and pulled herself into the ship.
“We’re not staying long,” I called over my shoulder, rushing into the steering cabin. I tried the radio, hoping against hope what I found would be positive. But it was just as I suspected—it wasn’t working. Someone, probably Carter, had disabled it so no one could track us. It had been for safety, to make sure we were a ghost ship, but now it meant we had no way to contact anyone.
Well, even if we had, there was a good chance the terrorists were monitoring the frequencies—the other reason Carter had disabled the radio—and would hear our message before anyone who could come to our rescue.
“Where are we going?” The woman was in the doorway, her eyes wide and concerned. “Back to the island?”
I pushed past her. “No.”
Her footsteps, fast and anxious, followed me down to the small cabin where we’d stored all our gear, but nothing remained there, either. The entire ship had been cleaned out as though a phantom had driven it to the island and disappeared.
Which had been precisely the reason for clearing it out. But now, it left me in a bind. Us in a bind. I didn’t just have myself to save, but someone else. That made it doubly tricky, and I doubted the woman in front of me, arms wrapped around her for warmth as she stood there shivering, had taken any survival courses.
Pushing past her again, I climbed the steep steps back to the deck, glancing quickly at the shore and the surrounding waters. No one was running onto the beach, and I didn’t hear anything—no roar of a motor or motors, no shouting or sounds of gunfire. The area was silent except for sea birds and the sound of the water against the hull.
“I meant we’re not staying long on the boat.”
“What?” the woman blinked, her eyes widening in panic.
I ignored it and moved towards a large storage box sitting on the stern of the boat. But her hand snaked out and caught me before I could make it.
“We’re not taking this boat back?”
She was one of those people who asked a lot of questions when she was nervous, wasn’t she? Questions I didn’t have time to answer and anxiety I didn’t have time to alleviate. Detaching her hand from my arm, I reached the storage container.
“No.” I opened the top of the storage box, stale, fishy air wafting into my face at the movement. As I suspected, it contained old life jackets and other odds and ends. But the lifejackets were old and crumbling and would probably only be added weight instead of the lifesaving devices they were supposed to be.
“Why not?” I had my back to the woman, but I could almost hear the other questions in her demanding query and the anxious pitch of her voice. “There is no way I can swim all the way to Japan.”
Annoyance flared in the center of my chest. I sighed and straightened, pausing in my search to turn toward her. Why couldn’t she get it? “We’re not swimming all the way to Japan.”
I barely bit off the rest of that sentence; you idiot. But the words had the ring of my father’s voice to them, and I swallowed them back down.