Page 129 of Ford

A massive wave swelled, maybe thirty feet high, tall enough to crest over the bow of the freighter.

RJ screamed.

He glanced at Scarlett, still fighting the motor. “Red! Get down!”

The wind ate his words.

“Hold on!” he shouted as the wave hit the bow of the ship. He secured himself to the ladder, scrambling up behind RJ and clinging to it with everything he had inside.

And sure, he’d ridden waves and fought the surf and knew how to breathe and not let the sea take him, but for a moment, as the wave swamped him, he heard nothing but the tempest of the depths mocking him.

I’ll get you home.He’d said it to Scarlett, to RJ so many times, he thought it was all on him.

But clinging to the rope, his lungs burning, he realized just how far underwater he was.

Because in his head, God was his breacher, sure. But Ford was His backup.

And that very thought was laughable in the face of the storm.

He wasn’t the rescuer at all.

They finally broke the surface, and RJ gasped, dragging in breaths.

“Go—they come in threes!” At least that’s how it worked on the ocean.

As RJ moved, he searched the spotlight glare from the freighter on the black waters for their skiff.

His heart froze, his entire body jolted when he spied it.

Overturned, the flat hull glinted against the light just barely before it got pulled into the blackness.

“Go!” RJ said. “I can do this. Go!” She glanced at the skiff, then to him. “Hurry!”

He couldn’t leave her.Them.

RJ kicked him. “Move, sailor!”

Right. He pushed off hard into the sea in an overhand crawl toward the boat.

The sea kept knocking it out of view. A wave caught him up, buried him, and he came up sputtering. Lost the skiff only to find it again in the crackle of lightning.

He swam with everything inside him, but the current had taken the boat, spitting it out to sea.

The swell of another wave grabbed at him, and he dove under it, refusing to let it have him. But when he surfaced, the wave had carried him outside the perimeter of light from the boat.

“Scarlett!”

He turned, searching the sea. Nothing of the skiff.

The freighter’s light winked across the darkness.

Okay. Stay calm. Scarlett was a good—very good—swimmer. And if she was smart, she’d hang with the skiff. He just needed to get back to the freighter, get one of their lifeboats.

I will show up for you, Red. Whatever happens.

God, please help him keep that promise. He swam hard for the freighter, heard them blow the horn three times, then watched as a flare blew up the night, bright and turning the violence of the sea into orange fire.

Three hundred yards away but the ship wasn’t moving that fast, yet.