Page 94 of Inevitable
“The waves are getting a little choppy,” I noticed.
It had been perfectly calm when they’d gone down a few minutes ago, but the waves were starting to kick up.
“Yeah,” he commented. “I noticed that. Things can change out here in a matter of moments. It doesn’t look like it’s about to storm, but the winds have shifted a little. Lake Michigan weather is a bitch sometimes.”
“You should be used to that by now,” I teased.
While Gage was the only native Michigander, the rest of the guys had been here for years. Long enough to know just how fast the weather could change on the Great Lakes.
“I’m used to it,” he grumbled. “But that doesn’t mean that I always like it.”
“You love it here,” I said. “Even the winters.”
All of the guys thrived during the Michigan winters because they loved winter sports just as much as they liked the summer ones.
“Most of the time,” he admitted. “But I could do without some of the crazy storms, especially if I already have plans to do something on the water.”
You had to learn to roll with the weather on the Great Lakes, and Grand Traverse Bay was part of Lake Michigan.
Cherry Cove had its fair share of nasty summer storms and lake-effect snow in the winter that seemed like it would never stop.
I was a Michigander so I was used to the fact that the weather could change quickly, especially when you lived on the lake.
“That’s Seth,” Brock said in a surprised voice as a head popped out of the water in the distance. “Why in the hell did he surface? I don’t see Wren or Marhsall.”
I stood up and leaned over the railing.
Seth was swimming like lightning toward his boat.
My eyes searched the water frantically for my daughter and Colin, but they were nowhere in sight.
When Seth pulled himself onto the boat, his expression was grim.
“Wren got caught up in a current. Marshall signaled for me to surface and call for help. He went after her,” he said solemnly as he sprinted to the captain’s area.
I watched as Seth called the authorities on the radio, my heart pounding inside my chest.
Wren was in trouble.
The currents in Lake Michigan could be brutal sometimes.
Wren knew what to do, but she was still a kid.
“I need to go down,” I said in a panic.
“No!” Brock said as he wrapped an arm around my shoulders. “I know your instinct is to go after your daughter, but you’rea novice diver, Emma. You going down there right now could cause even more problems.”
I looked up at Brock’s pleading gaze.
He was trying to make me see sense, but I was Wren’s mother.
I knew he was right, but I couldn’t let go of the instinct to rescue my child.
“Marshall is with her, Emma. He’ll bring her back,” Seth said firmly after he’d radioed for help. “Wren is a junior diver, but she’s the most competent junior diver I’ve ever worked with. Marshall’s diving skills blow every other diver out of the water. He’ll find her. We need to try to figure out where they ended up and find his emergency surface marker buoy. I imagine that the Coast Guard will be here to help us shortly. Don’t panic on me now, Emma. You know what we have to do, and you know that Marshall would die himself before he’d let anything happen to his daughter.”
I nodded slowly.
I had to pull myself together.
