Chapter One
They were going to drown.
Kelly Jacobs could already see the headline on the front
page of the weekly Coronado Eagle newspaper: "Riptide
Kills Teen and Lifeguard." The cold water had her by the
throat. Six minutes had passed since she'd last seen the
boy bobbing in the swells, and they were being pulled out
to sea at a horrifying clip.
She had a lifetime of experience in the Pacific waters off
San Diego, numerous rescues, but nothing like this. The
water in early May, warmer than usual from La Niña, was
still only sixty-seven degrees, cold enough to induce
hypothermia. The swells dropped her four feet down in the
troughs. If she didn't find the boy soon she wouldn't have
the ability to get them back to shore. And this was a big
ocean for a search party to cover in the dark-to her left
the sun had already set and the twilight was fading fast.
The riptide created by the conflux of ocean currents and
the outgoing tide had formed late in the day with an
explosive suddenness. When conditions changed, the riptide
would fade as abruptly as it had formed, but whether it
lasted a few hours or a day would not matter in the end.
It was already on the verge of becoming deadly.
The fear of what was coming overwhelmed her. This fight to
reach the boy was turning into a personallife-and-death
struggle. The saltwater burned her throat and sent her
gasping as another wave caught her in midbreath. To give
up the attempted rescue to save herself, to let the boy
drown- It had been years since she had cared about
something this much. She wasn't going to give up, and she
wasn't going to fail.
Kelly strained to find a way to work with the waves rather
than against them. The boy was out here, somewhere near,
and she was going to reach him. She thought about her
husband as she fought the cold of the sea. Nick, did you
die because you drowned? The Navy had never told her.
She would have said it was impossible for her husband, a
Navy SEAL, to drown. With all his training, with all his
confidence and courage, she had dismissed it as even a
consideration, but she was suddenly not sure anymore and
the thought was agonizing.
Three years ago she had said good-bye to her husband at
the gates of the U.S. Naval Amphibious Base, half a mile
down Highway 75 from their home in the Coronado Shores
subdivision. It was a typical good-bye-loving but rushed.
Nick had been slipping away from her ever since his pager
went off forty minutes before, his attention already on
the upcoming mission.
She stole one last hug, burying her face against his
uniform, wishing he wasn't leaving but unwilling to put
that wish into words. She never wanted to hold him back or
give him reason to hesitate. She loved him and she would
keep everything on the home front together and ready for
his return. Nick lifted Kelly off her feet for his kiss
good-bye and then strode with purpose through security to
join the other members of SEAL Team Nine gathering to hear
why they had been paged to assemble at 8 P.M.
A confident man, her husband, serving in one of the elite
branches of the U.S. special forces-a Navy SEAL: from sea,
air, or land, they would get the job done. Fluent in three
languages, a competent backup medic, he was accustomed to
being sent to deal with crises around the world where
force had to be brought to bear rapidly. They called him
Eagle because he saw everything. A useful trait since he
walked point for one of the two squads in Golf Platoon.
Kelly dropped him off at the base and returned home,
knowing neither where he was going nor how long he would
be gone. She trusted his confidence in himself, in the men
around him, in their training. They were the best and the
best didn't fail.
There had been no welcome home.
A training accident. That was what the Navy officially
said as it buried her husband with full military honors
and handed her the folded flag.
She knew they were lying. A training accident didn't bring
her husband home in a sealed coffin and bring Nick's
commanding officer, Lieutenant Joe Baker, home nursing a
bullet wound through his shoulder. She never tried to
break the understood code of silence to learn the truth.
They were SEALs, and she had been a SEAL's wife. The truth
was classified.
She nearly dropped the flag when they handed it to her.
She had not been able to see her husband; the coffin
remained sealed. They handed her the flag he had fought to
defend, folded neat and tight with no red showing. It had
been prepared by the men in uniform with a solemness of
ritual that would allow no slackness in the fabric or
imperfection in a fold. They gave her his flag because
they could not give her back the man; they gave her his
flag to stand in his place. Their salute honored the man,
the flag his service, the taps his passing. And it hit her
in that instant, the fact Nick was gone for good.
Looking into the eyes of the hurting men of SEAL Team Nine
as the funeral concluded, looking into the solemn eyes of
men who grieved with her, she was assured that her husband
had done his job and not let them down. They were not able
to share it in words, but they all shared that truth in
their expressions. She clung to the fact Nick died doing
what he loved. Under her own grief she was grateful for
that.
And yet the pain that had come in the passing days and
months ripped deeper than anything she had ever felt. Her
life had changed forever. She missed Nick more than words
could express. The men of SEAL Team Nine had replaced him
because his was a profession that required another to
stand in the gap of one fallen. They went on while they
always remembered. But no one could replace him for her.
The medallion she wore, Nick's eagle, slapped against her
in the waves. She reached for it with one hand, grabbing
hold, grateful now she had secured the chain so she could
wear it in the water. It had traveled with Nick through
five years of missions. Now it was her closest reminder of
him.
"People drown because they panic."
She clung to the words Nick had so often said. During SEAL
training the instructors tied his hands and feet and
dropped him into the deep end of the pool for thirty
minutes doing various tasks-the drown-proof test. Nick
knew what he was talking about. He just hadn't told her
how hard it was not to panic.
Relax. Do your job.
Nick would wonder why she was panicking when she'd been
trained for hard tasks such as this. She put her energy
into judging the swells, riding them up to scan the
surrounding water. The boy had been south of her the last
time she had seen him.
There!
She surged toward him with a hard crawl, willing to use
the last of her energy, knowing this might be her last
chance before darkness fell.
The teenager had been surfing with a friend; both boys got
into trouble in the heavy surf. She went into the water to
back up her partner. Alex reached them first, securing a
hold on one boy bleeding from a gash on the forehead and
pushing his float board to the other boy. As Alex headed
toward the shore towing the injured boy, she went for the
other teen, not surprised when in his panic he fought her.
At the same instant she got hit in the eye, they hit the
riptide. The sea tore them apart.
The sea helped her this time, tossing her the last few
feet. She snagged the boy's arm as she slammed past him,
spun into him, the wave breaking over her head and into
her face. She coughed hard, struggling to clear her lungs
as she held on for all she was worth. She was not going to
lose him again.
The fight had gone out of the teen. The straps of the
float board that had been pushed to him were around his
left wrist, his right arm hugging it. Even though she
desperately needed a few brief moments of rest, she was
careful not to put any of her weight onto the float board.
It had kept his head above water during the last long
separation and been a factor in keeping him alive. It
would never support them both.
Sandy blond hair, blue eyes, slim, younger than she
originally thought, fourteen or fifteen, long, skinny arms
and lanky, still trying to fit into his sudden growth
spurt. Both his fear and fatigue were obvious in his face.
The waves sent them up and down and rocked them back and
forth in a never-ending sensation of movement that made
seasickness too calm a word for the reality. "What's your
name?" She leaned close to him to be heard.
He was swallowing water, coughing, and his voice
rasped. "Ryan."
"I'm Kelly." Fighting fingers that were stiff, that did
not want to do as she asked, she unwrapped the nylon rope
at her waist and maneuvered the buddy line around his
waist, securely tying the line. She wasn't going to take a
chance on the sea once again tearing them apart. She put
her hands on his face, smiling at him, even as she studied
his eyes and assessed his condition. "That was a pretty
impressive wipeout you did on the surfboard."
He gave a glimmer of a smile back. "My dad is going to
kill me. I wasn't supposed to be surfing."
Hypothermia. She could hear it in the dragging words and
see it in his swollen eyes as he struggled to keep them
open against the sting of the saltwater and the cold-
induced fatigue. She wasn't in much better shape herself.
She looked to the east. The twilight was almost gone; the
shoreline appeared only by reflected lights on the
horizon. The distance was distorted by the dim twilight,
but even by optimistic assessments it was far away.
Getting them back to shore was no longer possible. Even if
she had the strength, she would not be able to judge the
location of the beach and the dangerous rocks in the
descending darkness. There was little she could do but
keep the boy talking and hope help arrived soon. She knew
the rescue crews would be out looking. As soon as Alex had
reached shore, the call for help would have gone out.
"Who's your dad?" The conversation was as much to distract
her as to distract him. Waiting was almost harder than
searching. She had to figure out some way to get them
through the coming ordeal while she still had the clarity
to plan. The cold water was a deadly foe for it ruined the
ability to think clearly.
"Charles Raines."
"You live here in Coronado?"
"Across the water on the Point Loma peninsula. Dad bought
a place on Hill Street."
A wealthy man's son. The homes on Hill Street bordered
Sunset Cliffs National Park. That stretch of shoreline had
the most beautiful rock formations carved out by the sea
she had ever seen. "Those are beautiful homes."
"The house is okay."
"Just okay?" she asked, amused at the perspective of
youth.
"Our home in Hong Kong was more exotic, but we had to
leave three years ago when the lease expired."
"On the house or the country?"
He laughed; it was weak but there. "The country actually.
Dad's British. He had to move his company headquarters to
San Diego when Hong Kong reverted back to China."
Having never traveled outside of California, Kelly felt a
little envious. Hong Kong sounded intriguing. "That must
have been fun for your mom."
"It's just Dad and me."
"I'm sorry."
"It's okay. I barely remember my mom, Amy. She died when I
was little."
Even though his words were matter-of-fact, she heard the
wistfulness in his voice. He missed not having a mom. And
in that simple brief exchange, Kelly felt like she took a
step toward understanding him. He would hide the depth of
his grief, hang out with friends, and wonder why they
thought their moms were the worst when he thought their
moms were pretty great. Kelly knew it was after the loss
that you missed what had been taken for granted. "My mom
died about five years ago. It's rough."
Ryan looked toward her. "Did she-" His hand slipped from
the float, momentarily dropping his head below the
surface. His panic was instantaneous.
Kelly suddenly found herself pulled down as Ryan tried to
claw his way back to the surface using her, his hand
pressing down painfully into the nerve in her shoulder,
his knee catching her in the calf. She broke to the
surface, grabbing him from behind and wrapping her forearm
under his chin. "Easy!"
"We're going to drown out here!"
She yanked the float board back by its rope. "Hug it
across your chest and stop moving," she ordered, treading
water for both of them, knowing just how precarious their
situation was.
Ryan went still but he was crying now, the sound of his
sobs carrying across the water, the fear overwhelming him.
Kelly's heart broke at the sound, knowing for a boy his
age, tears would be the last thing he wanted someone to
see. She smoothed her hand over his hair trying to comfort
without embarrassing him. "It's going to be okay. Just
relax. I won't let you drown."
His grip on her arm finally eased enough so circulation
could return. "How can they find us in the dark?"
She looked around, deciphering in the flickering moonlight
that the waves were increasing in size. There had been a
low front coming through this evening and its front edge
of wind was already reaching them. "Spotlights.
Searchlights. The boats will be out, even helicopters."
She didn't add what she knew and feared. Even with the
resources, finding them before morning would be difficult
if not impossible.
No. She couldn't let herself doubt.
Joe would find them.
"Kelly, I would like you to meet my new boss,
Lieutenant Joe Baker."
She turned at the touch of her husband's hand on her
shoulder. Standing beside Nick, Joe seemed dwarfed, a good
four inches shorter, the same powerful muscles but less
bulky. But then at six feet four Nick broke the rules for
what made a good SEAL physique. Joe could have been the
prototype. He was a triathlete if she'd ever seen one. He
had the warm copper tan of a man who spent most of his
days outside.
Joe had nice eyes. She always looked there first because
nothing told her more about a soldier than his eyes. Joe's
were blue, like the sea she enjoyed watching at dawn, and
they were calm. He held her gaze as she looked at him,
doing his own study. She knew the man was brave. He was
known in the SEAL community as one of the best, and that
said a lot among men who didn't give accolades until they
were earned. He also looked kind. The fact he was taking
time to come and meet the families of his men said a lot.
She offered her hand with a smile. Her husband would be in
good hands.
"Lieutenant. Thanks for coming to the cookout." She felt
the warmth as his hand closed around hers and could feel
the texture of calluses, the strength of a man who could
fight hard and yet still touch with tenderness.