Going All In (29 page)

If he wasn’t already dead.

While he pulled on his flimsy wetsuit, which wouldn’t be nearly enough protection for this time of year, he mentally worked out a plan. He glanced at Alex, who was lying flat on his back on the floor of the boat, still in his dry suit, looking like hell warmed over. This scenario was going from bad to worse, and Wade feared none of them would get out of this alive.

He looked at Callie and gnashed his teeth. Fuck that, they were all getting out of this. Maybe a little banged up. And definitely bent. But he’d promised Callie he wouldn’t let anything happen to her, and dammit, if it was the last thing he did, he’d make sure she was okay.

To Alex, he said, “Give me a layout of the ship.”

“The ship’s on its side. Rooms go off the center hallway on both sides. You go down into the rooms on the right, up into the ones on the left. We were about halfway down the hallway. The last time I saw Tyler, he’d gone into a room on the port side.”

Finished suiting up, Wade grabbed his reel, a line he would run from the anchor into the ship along with him. When he found Tyler, they could follow the line out to the anchor, then resurface directly at the boat.

“How quickly did you surface?”

“Entirely too fast.”

Not the answer he’d been looking for, but also not a surprise.

Callie hadn’t said a word since handing him his bag, but her widening eyes and shallow breathing told him she’d been closely following the conversation. “What does that mean?” She turned to Alex. “What do you mean you came up too fast?”

“If you resurface too quickly, you get what’s called
the bends.
” When she continued to stare at him, obviously waiting more information, he added, “The nitrogen in your blood bubbles up—”

“I barely passed science,” she snapped. “Dumb this down for me, please.”

Alex coughed. “It’s kind of like the difference between opening a soda slowly or fast. Too fast, and you get big bubbles that fizz and make a mess.”

Wade could tell hysteria was threatening to overtake her, but tapping into the courage that allowed her to stand up to her father—the same courage that got her onto this goddamned boat and into fucking mess in the first place—she took a deep breath and kept herself under control.

“Callie,” he said, walking to the VHF radio as he slipped his air tank over his shoulders. “This is the radio.” He turned the dial to channel sixteen so all she had to do was key the mic and talk. “If I’m not back in fifteen minutes, use the radio to call the coast guard.”

Her breathing was coming fast and shallow and he feared she’d start to hyperventilate if she didn’t get it under control. Putting his hands on her shoulders, he dipped his knees so they were eye to eye and made her look directly at him. Shit was critical, and she was smart enough to figure that out. But her life, and probably Alex’s, depended on her keeping it together for a little while longer.

“Do you understand what I’m saying? Fifteen minutes, then call the coast guard. Tell them you have two overdue divers who are still down, and you have another on board with the bends.” He pointed to the instrument panel. “They’ll help you figure out the coordinates so they can find you.” He turned to Alex. “If you need them sooner, have her call.”

Alex nodded, then promptly closed his eyes and took a few slow, deep breaths.

Jesus, this was a no-fucking-win situation, but he couldn’t waste any more time. Tyler was an experienced diver and a pro at conserving air, but if he started to panic, he’d burn through his tanks faster… if he had two full tanks and not one, like Alex.

Wade scrubbed a hand over his face and forced himself to take a few deep breaths of his own. He couldn’t chance not getting to Tyler in time, so he needed to put his faith in Callie and trust her to do what was necessary to save herself and Alex.

And if he didn’t make it back to the surface…

He knelt next to Alex and shook his shoulder to get his attention. When his eyes cracked open and Wade was sure he had his attention, he leaned in close and said, “Take care of her for me.” Alex shut his eyes and shook his head, probably not denying Wade’s request, but simply stating he didn’t want to have this conversation. So Wade shook him again. Hard. “Dammit, Alex. She means the fucking world to me. Promise me you’ll take take. Care. Of. Her.”

“Won’t be necessary, but yeah, I promise.”

Wade stood and gave Callie a quick kiss, because if he kissed her any longer than a brief peck on the lips, he’d never let her go and he’d never get overboard. He pulled on his mask, put the respirator in his mouth, and rolled into the freezing water, all the while praying that wasn’t the last time he saw Callie’s beautiful face. Because God help him, if it came down to abandoning Tyler or continuing to search until he’d sucked in his last breath…

He could never live with himself if he didn’t give everything he had.

T
error gripped Callie and she leaned over the rail, grabbing for Wade as he disappeared beneath the inky surface of the water. She tried to scream his name, begging him to return to the boat, but the sound was lodged in her throat and wouldn’t break loose. Her limbs were numb with shock, and she felt frozen in a state of suspended animation, waiting for someone to press a button to get the reel of her life moving again. Better yet, she wanted to wake up and find she’d been having a terrible nightmare when she was actually home in bed with Wade, his strong arms wrapped around her, both of them safe.

A groan from behind her pierced the veil of illusion and forced her to acknowledge that while she was trapped in a nightmare, she was very much awake. Staring into the dark abyss of the Atlantic wasn’t going to bring Wade back faster, nor would it free Tyler, and she certainly wasn’t doing Alex any good.

It felt like she was giving up on Wade or somehow abandoning him, but she knew he’d want her to take care of Alex, so with stiff, jerky movements, she pushed off the rail and shuffled across the deck to the other side of the boat. Alex had pulled himself up onto a bench and was sitting motionless with his elbows on his knees, his head in his hands, staring at the floor.

She knelt next to him and rested her hand on his knee. “What can I do to help you?” When he didn’t respond, she said, “Maybe we should try shedding your skin.” She laughed a little, letting him know she was working hard to lighten the mood and his cooperation would be appreciated.

He didn’t laugh, but his lips twitched and he nodded in agreement. Given the situation, that was the best she could hope for, and she was grateful he was willing to play along. He’d taken off his tanks as soon as he got onboard, but still wore the weights as well as his fins and the suit itself. She still didn’t understand how the dry suit worked, but his clothes were, indeed, just as dry as they’d been before he left the boat. His skin, however, was cold and clammy.

“I brought a blanket with me. Let me grab it for you.”

He didn’t seem to notice her speaking to him as he rubbed his short hair, then fell sideways to lie on the bench. Getting him out of his gear seemed to exhaust him, and along with extreme fatigue, regret and fear poured out of him in waves. She also wondered if he might be going into shock.

Callie had never felt so helpless in her life, so she focused on what she could do. She kicked Alex’s suit to the back corner of the boat, where they’d been keeping their wet gear, and made her way to the hatch at the front.

“Wade has a wetsuit, not a dry suit, right? Which means he will get wet?”

In slow motion, Alex lifted his eyes to her and slowly nodded. “Yeah, which won’t do shit for him. The water is fucking
cold
.”

Another wave of fear sucker-punched her in the gut, knocking the breath out of her, but she refused to succumb. Crying wouldn’t help, and she needed to keep her wits about her. She felt helpless, but she wasn’t. Wade had given her specific instructions, and she needed to be prepared to follow through in the event he didn’t return within the fifteen-minute window. She also needed more information on what, exactly, was going on with Alex so she knew best how to help him.

In the hatch with her blanket, she found the guys’ heavy wool blanket—the same one she and Wade used the night they were at the campfire—a stack of towels, her spare coat, and a handful of old rags. Anything that looked useful for either mopping up water or keeping someone warm was brought into play.

After draping their wool blanket over Alex and tucking it tightly around him, she gathered Wade’s clothes from the floor. They’d gotten damp from the water on the floor of the boat, so she slung them over the chairs at the front so they could dry, at least a little, before he returned.

And dammit, he would come back.

Bile rose in her throat and tears burned her eyes as she remembered the look in his eyes as he went overboard. As he locked gazes with her, she knew exactly what he was telling her.

If Jen or Tiffany were down there, would she come back to the surface and save herself, knowing they would die if she left them?

No. She wouldn’t. She wasn’t brave like Wade, but she could never leave her friends alone to die. She would do everything in her power to free them, and she wouldn’t stop until she’d either gotten them loose or run out of air. One of the things she loved and admired most about Wade was his loyalty to his friends, and she knew with every fiber of her being he’d either come back with Tyler or neither of them would come back.

She shook off the morose, debilitating thoughts and made her way back to Alex, who was curled into the fetal position, quietly moaning. Needing the life-affirming touch of another human being, as well as hoping to give him some measure of comfort, she took hold of his hand and squeezed.

“Alex, I need you to help me understand what’s going on down there. Okay?” He nodded, so she continued. “Is Tyler trapped, like, caught in something? Or is he lost?”

“He’s lost.” He paused and licked his lips, like he was searching for moisture, so she grabbed a bottle of water and helped him take a drink. “The boat’s on its side, so the rooms are up and down, not left or right. There are a lot of sharks in the area, so either one of us accidentally kicked the wall of the hallway, or one of the sharks bumped into the side of the wreckage.”

Callie shuddered at the thought of Wade and Tyler swimming with sharks and focused on Alex’s words.

“All the rust and algae that’s been building up for decades broke loose and fell into the water around us. Visibility dropped to zero, and I lost sight of Tyler. A few minutes before that happened, I realized I had a problem with my tank.” His lip curled with anger as his gaze cut to the tanks in the rack. “See the valve between the two tanks?” When she nodded, he said, “That’s an isolation valve. It separates the air between the two tanks. When the dive shop filled my tanks, they didn’t open that valve, so I only had one tank of air.”

“Oh crap.”

He tried to grin, but it looked more like a grimace.

“But that means Tyler has twice as much air as you. Right? So he has more time to get out.”

Alex lifted a shoulder in a helpless shrug. “Hopefully. I don’t dive that much, so I’m not accustomed to double-checking everything like I should have. He dives all the time, so hopefully he checked his gear before we even left the shore.”

Callie released a deep breath, feeling a little better about the situation down below. “What’s going on with you?” The term they used was strange and she hadn’t the foggiest idea what the Pepsi metaphor had to do with anything.

“The bends. If you come up too fast, the nitrogen in your blood expands. It hits the joints and the spine and is not a pleasant experience.”

She rethought the soda metaphor and the difference between opening it slowly—no bubbles—or opening it quickly—a messy explosion. And sometimes, if she drank too quickly, the gas bubbles would come back up through her chest and into her throat, seemingly expanding as they rose.

Oh, God. That pain was terrible, and if Alex had something similar going on all over his body…

She rubbed her hand across her forehead and reconsidered her options. “Wade said to wait fifteen minutes before calling the coast guard. Do you agree?”

“Yeah—” He started to nod but froze and then curled into the tightest ball she’d ever seen.

The pain or cramp that hit was severe, and she made an executive decision to ignore Wade’s advice, and Alex’s second, and figure out how to reach the coast guard on her own. If they agreed to wait until Wade and Tyler returned and reassured her Alex would be okay, then she’d be fine with their decision. But for her own peace of mind, she needed another opinion on this matter, and it was time to reach out and touch someone.

Please, God, let me figure out how to work the radio. And let there be someone on the other end.

Emulating what she’d seen on television and in the movies, she pressed the button on the side of the microphone and yelled, “Mayday, mayday, mayday.” She released the button, waited ten seconds, and when nothing happened, tried again. “Mayday, mayday, mayday. Can anyone hear me?”