Page 81 of Lieutenant

Probably not soon enough to help me, but maybe Connie will make it.

Hopefully George will make it. Those kids deserve to have their dad back.

I bet he’s going to be a kick-ass governor.

I’m staring out at the horizon as it turns a deep, beautiful purple, and I know my time is short because I’m seeing little lights bobbing around.

“I see angels,” I say. “Well, I’m fucked.”

He snorts. “You’re still alive, honey.”

I go full-on Monty Python. “No, I’ll be stone-cold in a moment.” I snort. “Stone crabs. I’ll be stone crab in a moment.”

“Nah. You’ve got to tell me all sorts of raunchy shit to pass on to your guys. You can’t leave me hanging like that. I’m a widower now. I need stories for my tell-all book I’ll write when I’m eighty to embarrass the hell out of my kids. Ellen would want me to do that.”

I’m still seeing angels. “If I’m so alive, Dom Smart-ass, why am I seeingthem?” I manage to point.

George finally lifts his face from my head and then promptly lets out a scream. He lunges over the side of the raft, dropping me in the process. I fall back, painfully hitting the ground.

He’s still screaming, sobbing, and seconds later, I hear aphwompand a painfully bright light arcs up, up, up, streams of light doubling and tripling in my vision.

Now the others are all screaming, and anotherphwomp, another light.

George returns and helps me sit up, keeping one arm around me so I don’t fall over again. He’s sobbing and laughing and sobbing and laughing and sobbing and…

You get the idea.

Then he shoots off another flare with his other hand, wordlessly screaming before he kisses my cheek and starts screaming again.

I squint reeeeallly hard.

The angel lights change course, from where they were slowly tracking across the horizon, and start heading our way.

Chapter Twenty-Four

Carter

I know there’s not really anything I can “do” but sit and wait and hope for news.

Anynews.

Except the bitch of it is that I’m a realist. My military training comes back to me despite me trying to will the knowledge from my brain. Three days without fresh water, max.

It’s been three fuckingweeks.

I hate being a realist.

The SAR ops has been scaled back, and is now being considered a recovery mission. The black box was recovered, and Mike’s body was found strapped into a starboard seat on the wing.

Susa and Connie’s bodies were not in the cabin, nor were they among any of the bodies recovered so far.

That means nothing, of course.

Two of the life rafts, and one of the slides, are unaccounted for. The one overturned life raft that was found doesn’t give me much hope. No one knows which life raft it was. The eighteen survivors plucked from the life raft say they lost sight of everyone else in the storm in the immediate aftermath of the ditching.

It’s not looking promising, no matter how I ask Owen to please breathe and focus on work and to not give up hope.

Maybe that’s cruel of me to say to him, to not give up hope, but I’d rather be with my boy when I finally acknowledge the inevitable.