Page 75 of The Captain
I pulled the headset down around my neck, exasperated.
In the quiet, I heard my father’s voice in my mind the way you hear a remembered song—ma fille—not a fix, just a hand on the back. I pictured my crew where they always are in my head. I let myself imagine the calf’s blowhole mist catching light—how small things save us until the big ones remember to try.
Get it together, I told myself.
A fresh hiss. A cough of static. “Blue—” and nothing else I could use to build a life on.
I wanted one clean word. Alive. Clear. Anything. Instead I got the kind of silence that teaches you how much a name can weigh.
If I lost him, it would be my fault.
I was the one who’d told him to stay, to liaise, to stand behind me and look like trouble. I was the one who’d said yes to the helo, yes to Dominion Hall, yes to this whole stupid righteous hunt. I was the one who’d opened a drawer and made space like I was inviting the universe to test me. I’d brought him to my porch and let him put a charger behind my nightstand as if future and electricity were the same thing.
Who does that and then lets the ocean have first pick?
I thought of the small domestic proofs that had already started to root—his boots waiting by my back door, the kettle he set on the burner before I’d even decided to stand, the way he saysmorning, Doctorlike a joke he plans to tell me for forty years, Saturday dinner with my parents texted into existence.
If the radio went to ash and stayed there, I would have to carry all of that as a list of things I did wrong. I would have to be the woman who took a man with a new breath in his chest—Lily’s gift—and marched him toward the dark because I needed someone to hold the other end of my anger.
I tried to count and my numbers broke apart like foam. One. Jacob’s hand on my thigh under the bar. Two. His shirt in my drawer. Three. His mouth saying my name exactly right. Four. The way he saidwelike he meant it. Five. The ridiculous hope I let live in me about coffee, and a porch, and a man coming back from the water because I asked him to.
None of it was tactical. All of it felt like breath.
If he didn’t come back, I knew the shape of the ruin I’d become. I’d blame the Navy, and the Russians, but I would save the sharpest knife for myself. I would replay every yes—helicopter, meeting, corridor—as if I had signed them in blood. I would sit on the floor of my quiet room and apologize to the animals for thinking I could keep two kinds of life alive at once.
I put my palm to the nearest wall because it was my wall and this was my house and the ocean is not allowed to take the man I decide to love.
“Breathe,” I told the water, which is arrogant. Then I told myself.
32
JACOB
The night was black as pitch when Marcus and I linked up with the Coast Guard crew at the staging point. The two orange-and-white helos sat on a cleared patch of marshland, their blades still, their lights slicing through the dark.
The chief, grizzled as ever, leaned against the lead helo, spitting tobacco juice into his bottle. The diver, mask dangling from his belt, grinned like a kid about to pull a prank. The pilot, her aviators tucked into her flight suit, gave me a nod as we approached. “Captain Dane,” she said, her voice sharp but warm. “You better have that yacht ready.”
I grinned, my confidence spiking higher. “Working on it. Meet Marcus, the guy who’s gonna make it happen.”
Marcus stepped forward, his grin all warrior. “Yacht’s yours,” he said, clapping the chief’s shoulder. “Bermuda, drinks on deck, the works—as long as you get us in the game.”
The chief laughed, a rough sound that carried over the marsh. “Hell, for a yacht to Bermuda, we’ll give you the whole damn armada. You’re lucky we like a good hunt.”
The diver clapped his hands, his grin widening. “Let’s catch this fish, then. What’s the play?”
We climbed aboard, the helo’s interior smelling of fuel and metal, the seats hard under my thighs. I strapped in next to Marcus, the crew handing out headsets as the rotors spun up. The hum filled my bones, grounding me, my focus narrowing to the mission.
Marcus leaned forward, his voice clear through the headsets. “Admiral Langford sent some toys to Dominion Hall. A net system, still in development. Should help us snag the Russian shadow fish.”
I raised a brow, my instincts twitching. Military gear that “should” work usually came with a catch. “Should? What kind of net are we talking about?”
Marcus’s grin didn’t falter, but his eyes glinted with something sharper. “Not a net, per se. Electromagnetic buoys, underwater, linked to form a perimeter. They pulse, disrupt the target’s systems, trap it by screwing with its navigation and propulsion. Like a stun gun for subs.”
I leaned back, processing. “How’s it work? Mechanics, not metaphors.”
He shrugged, his tone light but evasive. “Buoys emit a low-frequency EM field. Syncs up, creates a cage. Target gets disoriented, slows down, maybe shuts down. We move in, moor it, tow it to a quiet facility for inspection.”
I nodded, but my gut tightened. “If there’s a crew on that thing, what happens to them? They gonna be okay?”
