Uncharted Waters Read Free

heard the pilot receive the order to return to base. Because he couldn’t meet the other man’s gaze, he turned to lean against the cabinet.
    The captain put his hand on his shoulder. “They’ll find him and bring him home.”
    Drew opened his eyes only to realize his vision was blurred with tears. Tears of anger and frustration, but most of all grief. “ Damn it!” He slammed his fist through the cabinet door.
    Pain sang through his knuckles and up his arm, but Drew barely noticed. He heard Joe speaking to him, but couldn’t understand the words. He couldn’t believewhat had just happened. Couldn’t believe they were going to leave Rick behind. That he could be dead.
    â€œHe was burned,” he heard himself say.
    â€œHe’s strong.”
    â€œI dropped him.”
    â€œDon’t go there, Drew.”
    â€œI let him go—” The next thing Drew knew, he was being spun around and shoved hard against the panel.
    â€œIt wasn’t your fault,” Joe said. “Now pull yourself together. We’ve got civilian casualties to tend.”
    Giving him a final, hard look, Joe shoved away. Drew leaned against the aft panel for several long seconds, his head reeling, his heart feeling as if it were about to explode. Vaguely, he was aware of the medic getting one of the subjects into a litter and starting an IV drip. The crackle of the VHS radio coming through his headset comm gear. The rank smells of crude oil, singed hair and scorched clothing. The little girl crying for her mommy.
    Numb with the remnants of adrenaline and horror and grief, he walked over to the hatch and looked out at the driving wind and rain and the churning, black water below. In the distance the fire lit up the horizon with unnatural yellow light. But it looked small and inconsequential from this far away.
    He couldn’t believe Rick was still out there. Injured. Maybe dying. Drew closed his eyes against the brutal slice of pain. He thought of Rick’s wife and wondered who would tell her. He wondered if she would blame him. If she would hate him.
    Responsibility for what had happened settled ontohis shoulders with the weight of a Navy ship. The guilt that followed crushed him.
    Sinking to his knees, Drew put his face in his hands and wept.

CHAPTER ONE
    Four years later
    Emerald Cove, Florida
    D rew Evans stepped out of his small office and squinted against the bright morning sunshine, trying hard to ignore the headache grinding his brain into little pieces. The aspirin he’d downed with a cup of yesterday’s coffee sat in his stomach like a handful of rocks. He felt as if he’d gotten into a fight with a Mack truck and lost. He didn’t even want to think about how he looked.
    He had a vague memory of a thatch-roofed bar, a pretty bartender who’d evidently flunked out of bartending school, the sound of reggae mixing with the sound of the surf, and the smooth burn of Puerto Rican rum. He’d been a goner in less than an hour.
    That had been two days ago. Forty-eight hours lost and hardly missed. One of these days he was going to learn the slow crawl out of the bottle was a hell of a lot harder than the plunge into it.
    Shoving his aviator’s glasses onto the bridge of his nose, he started across the gravel lot toward the dock. Around him, the South Florida morning dazzled like a big, gaudy emerald, beckoning him to notice. Because he did—he always noticed how beautiful the morningswere in the Keys—Drew smiled in spite of the headache. He’d lived in plenty of places in his thirty-five years—San Diego, Hawaii, Germany, Norfolk—but none of those places could compare to the magic of the Florida Keys.
    He glanced over at the windsock a few yards from the maintenance hangar near the water and gauged the wind speed and direction. The wind was below ten knots and coming out of the south. Perfect for flying, but he knew there would be storms later.