Geri Krotow - Navy Rescue

“I’ll try.”

“Okay. One, two, three.”

Gwen went under with her arm around Lizzie’s chest, pulling her through the totally submerged aft cabin. Their progress was excruciatingly slow and Gwen sent up a prayer that they’d make it to the over-wing hatch.

The fuselage groaned with each wave that hit the steel frame, sounding deadly, final.

Gwen’s fingers caught on the rim of the hatch and she pulled both herself and Lizzie through it. Something scraped her arm and a piece of metal clanged on the top of Gwen’s helmet.

She didn’t stop. She couldn’t, wouldn’t. She was Lizzie’s only chance.

Her own lungs burned and she was afraid that Lizzie had sucked in fuel or seawater in an effort to breathe. Gwen felt the tug of the aircraft’s drag once they were free of the fuselage. They had seconds to clear the area. She reached over to Lizzie’s LPA handle and pulled. Lizzie left Gwen’s arms as though a great arm had stretched down and pulled her up. Gwen grabbed her own beaded handle and yanked. Her LPA inflated and bolted her to surface.

The black spots that she’d tried to fight off dissipated as she gulped in the salty, wet air. She blinked. Lizzie floated a few meters away from her. She swam over and wanted to scream when she saw Lizzie’s closed eyes and blank expression.

Please let her be unconscious, not dead.

She tried to hook their LPAs together but the rough seas only allowed her to clutch Lizzie’s vest collar as they were tossed like pieces of trash.

“XO, over here!”

Gwen couldn’t tell whose voice was behind the flashlight beams as she started swimming toward them, Lizzie in tow.

Get away from the aircraft. Get away. Get away.

Hours of training in simulated ditches had drilled into her the necessity of putting as much distance as possible between her and the ditched craft. It was moments from sinking and would take down everything around it.

She pushed and kicked and hung on to Lizzie. After what seemed like hours, they arrived at the side of life raft number two. Number one was attached to the right of it. She couldn’t see the third raft.

“Get her up—she’s injured.” Gwen pushed Lizzie as hard as she could, watching as the hands of two crew members reached over to haul her up.

She saw Lizzie’s boots go over and into the life raft.

She’d done her job. All crew members safe, in their rafts.

“Grab my hand!” The second flight engineer leaned over the raft and held out his arm.

Gwen prayed it wasn’t too late. Exhaustion weakened every muscle and she couldn’t lift her arm out of the water.

“Go, report it.” She wasn’t sure he’d heard her, and the sea spray threatened to choke her each time she opened her mouth.

Drew.

She had to fight, to get back, to get home. A sob escaped her throat as she willed her booted feet, so heavy, to move, damn it! Her life, her hope, was on Whidbey Island.

Not lost at sea.

“Please. Let me get there.” Her words came out as the tiniest of whispers.

She focused on the FE’s outstretched hand and dug deep for the core of her will, her remaining physical strength, to grasp it.

To save her life.

A wave crashed over her and made it impossible.

If she was going to survive, it would be on her own. She didn’t have control over the ocean any more than she did the memories that clawed at her.

The family room with its woodstove burning while the Christmas tree twinkled... She and Drew wrapped in each other’s arms in front of the fire.

CHAPTER ONE

Six months later

“YOU’VE GAINED TWENTY-SIX degrees in your mobility over the last six months, Helen.” Drew smiled at his prize patient and snapped his protractor closed. Helen Burkoven was sixty-two, and had presented with a frozen right shoulder, due in part to her competitive tennis practice of the past fifty years. She made a lot of his younger clients appear lazy.

“I can’t tell you how great it is to be able to pull weeds again, Drew. The brambles had taken over my rose garden!”

“As long as you keep doing the exercises we’ve gone over, you’ll be fine—but take it easy on the tennis court, okay?”

Helen grunted and walked over to the chair, where she waited while Drew got an ice gel pack out of the chiller.

He arranged the pillow under her arm to make her more comfortable before he placed the gel pack over her injured shoulder.

Helen groaned in pleasure. “Oh, that always feels so good after all the work you make me do.”

“Sit tight and enjoy. You’re free to go in fifteen minutes.” He set the timer near Helen’s chair and went to see his other client, Tom, who was doing leg exercises for his knee on a wheeled office chair.

Drew relished the modern layout of his clinic. One large room held the equipment and therapy tables for up to six clients at a time.

“How’s it going, Tom?”

“Fine, doc. But I feel like a crab on the beach, walking around while I’m sitting on this stool.”

“It’s going to help your knees, trust me.”

“Drew?” Serena Delgado, his receptionist, interrupted him.

Drew looked at her sharply, but his annoyance dissipated at the stunned expression on her beautiful face. Whatever it was, she wouldn’t express it in front of his clients. Serena didn’t normally interrupt his consultations. The last time she’d burst in like this—

Gwen’s plane had gone down.

That was well over six months ago, but damned if he didn’t tense up and expect Serena to give him more bad news.

There isn’t anything worse than knowing Gwen’s never coming home.

“You have some visitors. It’s very important.”

The dread that had simmered in his gut since the minute he’d learned Gwen was missing erupted into an all-out boil.

They’ve found her body.

As much as every piece of naval intelligence that he’d been told about, not to mention logic, indicated that Gwen had perished in the South Pacific six months ago, he’d held out hope. That she’d survived—that she’d come back. That, somehow, against all the odds, she’d made it.

He shook off the fantasy.

If she’d lived, if she came back, they’d only be the friends they’d become since the divorce.

“Drew?” Serena stared at him. He swung his gaze to Helen, his rotator cuff patient. She hadn’t said a word, but she wasn’t deaf. Her eyes sparked with knowing. Hell, the whole town knew what he’d been through. The P-3 ditch. Gwen’s role in it—she’d saved her crew. The entire damned crew had returned safely to Whidbey Island. To their families.

Except Gwen.

Gwen didn’t have a family to return to anymore. Only him, her ex-husband, and their shared pets. The island newspaper had detailed Gwen’s naval career as well as her personal bio, including their divorce. Her MIA status had been picked up by the national news, as well.

While locals like Helen knew an awful lot more about his personal life than he’d choose, they didn’t know the half of it.

“Go ahead, Drew. You’re done with me.” Helen’s eyes didn’t twinkle any longer, and her expression was gentle. Motherly. “We’re all praying for you.”

“Thanks.”

After a quick nod at Helen, he followed Serena to the back office, behind the therapy room.

He stopped at the threshold when he saw the occupants.

“Ro.”

Lieutenant Commander Roanna Mikowski, his wife’s best friend since they’d been midshipmen at the Naval Academy, stood with her hands clasped in front of her. She was still on active duty, but had put in her resignation so she could remain in the same place as her husband, Chief Warrant Officer Miles Mikowski. A stab of envy broke through his shock as he saw the obviously happy couple.