sabotaged the vessel. They’d deliberately set her up to die.
Tears burned her eyes. “Oh, Karon,” she whispered. “I wanted to know what happened... I wanted to know, and now I think I do. But I don’t know why someone killed you. Or who!”
Memories rushed back at her. She’d been going through Karon’s things, looking for a clue as to why her best friend’s body had washed up on the beach. Then Sadie had woken up here. She had the sense that someone had been there in the house with her, but the image, the memory, was too vague. She couldn’t be sure. Nor could she worry about that now. Her life was in imminent jeopardy. How could she find Karon’s killer if she died too? And that gave her even more incentive to live. To survive. She had to find out who was behind this. She wouldn’t let them get away with it.
She searched for a life jacket or flotation device or smaller skiff attached to this boat before it plunged, submerging completely. Anything to which she could cling that would keep her above the surface of a blustering North Pacific Ocean.
But her search left her empty-handed. “Nothing!” Are you kidding me?
Of course, why would she expect there to be a flotation device if the radio had been sabotaged?
Her teeth chattered. Even if she found something to help her float, hypothermia would soon set in. And panic—the absolute worst thing she could do right now—washed over her again, flooding her soul with terror.
What do I do? What do I do?
“Okay, so I’m not going to save this boat, but I can hang on until the very last minute in case someone comes to help.” She said the words out loud, hoping to boost her confidence. But she fought against the reality of her dire predicament.
This wasn’t a princess story with a knight in shining armor to come to her rescue and guarantee a happy ending. And even if it were, she’d prefer to save herself.
Sadie went outside onto the deck to face the raging storm, and maybe even to face God. She stared up into the daunting black clouds as rain lashed her. “Why, God? Why?”
She felt so cliché in that moment, as if there had never been another person or literary character to stand in the rain to face the Creator of the universe—the calmer of storms, even—and ask that question. She searched for the horizon, but it was lost somewhere between the ocean and sky, both dark shades of gray.
How far was she from shore?
Could she swim?
In this weather, even if she didn’t exhaust herself fighting the storm as she swam and actually made it to the coastline, the ocean waves could dash her against the rocks. Same with the boat if it had power so she could run the engine and steer it toward shore.
Okay. No radio. No flotation device. And in a few minutes—less than half an hour or less, she’d say—no boat. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to kill her in a way that would look like an accident and there wouldn’t be much evidence left behind to say otherwise. She was staying in Coldwater Bay with her aunt—a boating and fishing community. Boating accidents happened. But there would be no one to question her death like she questioned Karon’s.
Why had someone killed her friend? Why were they trying to kill her? Some secret that was too important to expose?
The killer had to have made a mistake along the way. Sadie would be the one to find it. She wasn’t about to give up. Except she hung on to the boat in water up to her chest. Frosty, biting water, and her limbs grew numb. Giving up might not be within her control.
Her teeth chattered as she tried to force out the words. “I’m sorry, Aunt Debby.” And to her siblings, “Cora, Quinn and Jonna. I’m really sorry.”
With their parents’ tragic deaths more than a decade ago, they’d already lost so much, and losing Sadie would be so hard for them. Her death in this watery grave would leave them with questions instead of closure. She’d never felt so heartsick than in this moment when she realized there was nothing she could do—no grand scheme to win the day. No brilliant ideas that would save her from inescapable drowning.
* * *
Soaked and chilled to the bone despite his protective garb, CGIS—Coast Guard Investigative Service—special agent Gage Sessions stood at the helm of the USCGC Kraken with Lieutenant Johns, who had steered the eighty-seven-foot cutter straight into the storm. The twenty-foot swells had only just begun subsiding along with the fifty-knot winds as the storm slowly passed over them.
He’d joined the Kraken’s crew as part of a counter-drug smuggling operation, but one particular group eluded him. In the Pacific Northwest, the drug cartels were usually Russian or Asian. The last few months, intel had him chasing the Chang brothers, and he was getting close, but they always evaded him. He might have to work undercover if he was ever going to catch the brothers in the act.
In the interim, they’d received a distress call. Someone spotted a sinking boat and had shared the coordinates but were unable to assist.
Their counter-drug-smuggling operation had suddenly changed to a rescue mission.
Finding the sinking boat in the Pacific during a storm—well, it could already be too late. The boat had likely been tossed miles from the original location where it had been spotted. And in this storm, he didn’t hold out much hope. But he wouldn’t give up yet either.
God, please guide us. Show us where to find the boat, or PIW—person in water, as it might turn out. In that case, the PIW hopefully had on a life jacket or clung to a flotation device. That person would be hoping and praying that the Coast Guard would find and save them. Every minute, every second, counted.
If they had already lost the boat, they would be more easily missed. The vastness of the ocean was cruel in that way.
He was grateful they had been out here, as it was, on the eighty-seven-footer WPB-class Coast Guard patrol cutter—equipped to handle rescues on the high seas. Except, regardless of the equipment, there weren’t enough Coast Guard vessels to adequately protect the ninety-five thousand miles of coastline. That was roughly four and a half million square miles of United States maritime territory. And that made Gage even more concerned they wouldn’t find the sinking boat in time to rescue the person or people involved.
“I see something,” Johns said.
His pulse jumped.
Gage caught sight of something in the water too, just before it disappeared behind another swell. Rain and waves beat the cutter and the small crew of the Kraken. Unlike the Chang brothers, who eluded them because of the storm, whoever was on that sinking boat out there was at the storm’s mercy.
Gage gripped the rail, willing the Kraken to fight the waves, to move faster as it clashed with the treacherous Pacific.
“Come on. If we lose sight of the object in the water now, we probably won’t get another chance,” Gage yelled over the spray of salt water that came with each gust.
He thought his words might have been lost to the wind even though he stood right next to the guy.
“You’re not a crew member, Sessions,” Johns shouted. “You could go back down where it’s warm and dry and let us deal with it.”
“There.” Gage spotted the boat and his stomach plummeted with the crest of the wave. He could see only the top of the vessel. It was about to go under and someone held on to the bow. “Hurry or we’ll be too late!”
Johns urged the Kraken closer.
“Throw the line, we’ll drag him in!” Baines called.
Throw, row and go. That was the usual CG adage to rescue a sinking boat or someone who was about to drown.
A crew member tossed the line over the side, but the rough seas wouldn’t cooperate. The boat dipped completely under.
“Throw it again.”
Gage peered through binoculars, a challenge with the high seas