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M issy heard footsteps stopping nearby and looked up.

“Go home, Missy,” the nurse ordered, her tone severe. It had to have been the sixth time she’d said something along those lines.

Missy asked her, “Would you leave him if it was your father?”

The other woman sighed. “You’re not doing him any good if you wear yourself down sitting here, just waiting for him to wake up. He may or may not wake up, but it won’t be impacted by whether you’re here or not.”

Since that was more or less in direct contrast to what Missy personally believed, as well as what she thought the doctor had told her earlier, she remained, growing even more stubborn. “I’m staying,” she stated immediately.

The nurse glared at her and shrugged, then walked out, leaving Missy staring at the doorway. What did it matter to anybody else if she stayed?

After all, it could be the last few hours she spent with her father. If that were the case, she wanted every hour she could get. The fact that this particular nurse didn’t believe Missy’s being here made a difference also made her sad. There was considerable research proving that having a loved one around, whether the patient was aware of their presence or not, helped to keep alive the person trying to recover, even encouraging the patient to work harder and to heal faster.

That this nurse apparently didn’t believe any of it was disconcerting to say the least. And yet she was entitled to her opinion and had probably seen more things in the hospital than most people ever did. So, if her attitude was a little bit jaded, maybe that just came from years of working here.

Yet it didn’t mean she should continue working here, and that was something Missy had to wonder at. Why stay in this field if that was how she felt about it? On the other hand, the woman was older, and maybe that’s all she had left in her life. Maybe quitting wasn’t an option or she was fearful of doing something different. That was something that everybody had to come to terms with in their own way.

Missy was young, looking forward to a career that would bring her and her father closer, and she absolutely refused to believe anything different than that would happen. She’d worked long and hard to get to this point—both of them had. So now she wanted to ensure she had that opportunity to work with her father at her side.

And, with that thought, she sat back down again beside her father and kept talking to him, telling him, “It’s okay. I’m here. Come back to me, please.”

“There it is.” Trey pointed off in the distance.

Rob peered through the bright sunshine and muttered, “I can hardly see it.”

“I didn’t see it easily myself.”

As they got closer, Rob looked ahead and snorted. “I don’t see how you saw it at all.”

“Just caught it by luck, I guess,” he muttered because, even now as he stared at it, it was really hard to imagine how he had managed to spot the boat and that he’d spotted Schooner first.

As they pulled slowly into the small inlet, Rob killed the motor, and they sat and studied the boat ahead of them. She had, indeed, been battling the waves, but everything was super calm at the moment. So she was just cresting, riding the wash from their own boat.

“She’s still floating, sort of,” Rob noted, as he eyed it critically. “I don’t know what our chances are to get her out of here, but she’s in better shape than I thought she might be.”

“She’s pretty much what I remembered and why I was thinking we could do something with her.”

Rob nodded. “It’s a little bit odd to see her this way, but I’ve seen worse.” They drifted in closer. Then Rob turned on the motor and pulled in as near as he could, before killing it and dropping anchor. With that, they launched the Zodiac and quickly headed to shore. As they got closer, Rob navigated around Silas’s boat from several different directions, trying to get a good look at just how much damage there was. He shook his head. “We’ll have to go ashore to see the rest of her.” With that, he pulled up alongside the shore.

Trey hopped out and brought the small craft farther up out of the water. As soon as they were safe and the Zodiac was secured, Rob hopped off, and together they studied Silas’s boat. They found a good-size hole in the hull toward the front. With each wave, water rushed in, and water rushed out.

“That’ll be a bit of a bitch,” Rob muttered to himself.

That was one way to put it. As far as Trey was concerned, that hole in the hull was one of the biggest issues, but he also knew that, when it came to these problems, Rob was by far the best person suited to handle it.

By the time Rob had circled the boat three times, he turned and nodded. “I think we can do this,” he said, now smiling.

“That’s what I thought you would say.”

He snorted. “You mean, that’s what you were hoping I would say.”

“Yeah, I sure was,” Trey conceded. “I also have an ulterior motive.”

At that, Rob looked at him and chuckled. “You mean, the fact that you’re sweet on his daughter?”

Trey shook his head. “No, that’s not what I was thinking of.”

“Then you’re not being very honest with yourself.”

“Honestly, I hadn’t even considered it, but, hey, you do you.”

“Don’t worry. I will,” Rob declared, with another snort.

“What I was thinking about was what Missy told me. While they were out here, Silas mentioned that he thought the boat had been sabotaged.”

Silence came from Rob, as he frowned, looking at the damage again. “Now that’s an entirely different story.… I’m not sure what sabotage would end up like this though.”

“It wouldn’t have to be this, would it? It could just as easily be the fact that something happened to the engine, plus Missy said no lifeboat was on board, no backup radio, no first aid kit.”

“Now that’s just foolish, but we also know that lots of people do foolish stuff all the time.”

“And yet Silas wasn’t one to make those mistakes.”

“No,” Rob replied, thinking about it, “he wasn’t. He always had a Zodiac with him. Hell, we used to argue about which one of these was better.” He stood here on the rocks, staring down at the boat. “I’ll have to get some equipment for this,” he muttered.

“I figured you would. I was hoping the pictures would help, but they didn’t really show enough.”

“No, but I wouldn’t have gone forward without seeing her for myself anyway,” he shared, with a nod, “but now I have a good idea what we’re up against.”

“Looks as if we’ve got clear weather for a couple days, but then we’re into rough seas again. So that’s our time frame.”

“Sure.” Rob glared at him. “You paying for it?”

Trey winced and then nodded. “Seeing as I’m the one who brought you out here, I guess so.”

At that, he gave a loud cackle. “I ain’t saying I’ll charge you much, but, for some of the stuff, you know, there is a price.”

“There’s always a price,” he said, with a note of humor. “If nothing else the price of fuel isn’t cheap.”

“God no.” Rob shook his head. “Yet Silas was my friend too, so I’ll do what I can.… I’m just not saying I can cover all the costs on my own.”

“I got it,” Trey replied, “and I appreciate your helping me to see if we could do something about her.”

“Oh, we can do something about her, but I ain’t gonna say what all the damage is until I get on board.” And, with that, and the agility of a man half his age, he quickly clambered onto the broken and battered vessel and disappeared down below. When he popped back up again, he nodded. “We can do this. It won’t be pretty, but we can float her again and bring her back. There’ll be a certain amount of expense involved. I have some big floats that we can inflate on the inside, but I’m not so sure it’ll be enough. She’ll be a heavy weight if we don’t close up that hole.”

They both stared at the big hole at the front of the keel. Rob continued. “We can start by doing our best to patch that hole.”

Trey nodded at him. “That’s a good thought.”

Rob laughed. “You didn’t call me out here for my looks.” Then he went off in a high cackle that made Trey laugh. “I brought a bunch of gear with me,” Rob shared, “but it’ll take some time, and it’ll be a pretty ugly job. Still, let’s see what we can do.”

Four hours later, Rob sat back and nodded. “Now, that’s about all we can do for the moment. We’ll come back out here tomorrow with the pumps and ropes and see if we can get her moving. Then I guess we’ll find out if we can tow her back home again.”

“That would be absolutely amazing if we could,” Trey murmured.

“As long as you don’t tell me that you’re just doing this out of the kindness of your heart.”

“Of course I am,” he admitted, frowning at the man. “Since when did you become so jaded that people never do nice things for each other?”

“It’s not that I think we don’t do nice things for each other. I just think that, all too often, people get their motivations messed up.”

“I’m all for helping Silas, who took me out more than a few times back in the day. He spent quite a few hours with me out on the water.”

“That’s true enough,” Rob conceded. “So maybe you were one of the lucky ones after all.”

“Maybe so,” Trey agreed. “I certainly appreciated the time I spent with him, and one of the hardest things was telling him that I was going into the military. In a way,… I think he almost saw me like a son. As such, I was also a bit of a disappointment when I made choices he didn’t agree with.” When Rob made no response to that, Trey looked over to see Rob staring at him.

Finally Rob nodded. “That sounds to be a wind of truth there.” Looking up at the sky around them, Rob announced, “Time to go.”

Not arguing—because the man had one of those innate senses of weather, direction, and timing—Trey hopped into the Zodiac with Rob and Schooner and managed to get back out to Rob’s salvage ship without incurring any damage. As they approached the big boat Rob had aptly named Mary, Trey noted, “Interesting name.”

“She started off as a beauty, but I’ve made so many modifications that she became Big Mary. But don’t you get any ideas,” he declared, giving him a glare. “She’s a good un.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t say anything,” Trey admitted, with a smile. “I’m very aware that, when you do operations like this, you do it for good reasons.”

“I’ve been rescuing folks off this water for a long time,” Rob muttered, “and, if people would just smarten up and would not do stupid shit, I wouldn’t have to make all these trips.”

“On the other hand,” Trey pointed out, his tone cheerful, “it gave you a good reason to do this.”

They laughed, and together the two of them, along with Schooner, headed home. Just as Trey was leaving the marina, Rob called out to him, “I can’t do it alone.”

Trey stopped, looked back, and nodded. “No, and you shouldn’t have to. I’ll be here. What time do you want to leave tomorrow?”

“Crack of dawn,” he replied, “and plan for all day—and that’s only if all goes well.”

“Right.” Trey winced, knowing full well that all kinds of things could go wrong. At this stage of the game, they desperately needed to get her back in one piece, before anything else could go wrong. “I’ll see you in the morning.” And he walked back home.

As he neared his brother’s place, about ten minutes away, a vehicle pulled up beside Trey. It was Sheriff Woodley.

“Hey,” he greeted Trey. “Haven’t seen you in a while.”

“I haven’t been here in a while,” he replied.

“I hear you found Missy and her father.”

He nodded. “I was just out with Old Rob to see if we can bring his boat back in.”

“Oh, crap,” Woodley muttered. “I didn’t even think that would be a possibility.”

“Not sure it is, but we’ll give it a shot.”

“Good,” Sheriff Woodley said. “I know Silas really loves that boat. I’m sure Missy would like to keep her for that reason alone.”

“No doubt, but I wouldn’t write off Silas just yet.”

“Not writing him off at all. Silas is one of the good ones, and I’m just thankful you gave it a go and found them.”

Hesitating a moment, Trey walked closer to the driver’s side door, leaned in, and shared, “You may want to talk to Missy about this. I don’t really know what shape Silas’s boat is in now, but, according to Missy, Silas was adamant that the boat had been vandalized.”

Sheriff Woodley stared at him. “What?”

“Now we don’t know if that happened or not,” he began, “because, of course, Silas isn’t talking right now. He is still in pretty rough shape and, worst case, may never talk again.”

“I hope like hell that didn’t happen and would prefer to think it didn’t.”

“We won’t know until I can get the boat back in tomorrow.”

“You let me know when you get that boat in,” he stated, his voice hard, “but I’m pretty sure it’ll turn out to be the troubled ranting of a fevered mind.”

“And that’s possible,” Trey admitted, “absolutely possible. I just don’t know yet.”

“What does the boat even look like now?” the sheriff asked.

“Rough, with a good-size hole in the side from banging up on the rocks,” he shared, “and, of course, she was taking on water. We did some patchwork today, and, if it holds, we will use some underwater epoxy or floats tomorrow. Rob’s got an airbag thing he’s been using, if she’s still taking on water,” he added, with a nod down toward Rob’s place.

“I’ve seen something he’s been working on,” the sheriff shared, with a nod, “and it looks pretty sketchy, but, if it works, hell, I’m all for it. I have to admit he has spent many hours over the years helping us bring back people and boats that have gone missing out there. So, if he has any technique or trick to make it work, I’m right there with you,” Woodley stated. “Do you guys need any help out there tomorrow?”

“I don’t think so, but you may want to ask him,” he suggested. “Rob’s pretty set in his ways.”

“Yeah, you’re not kidding.” The sheriff laughed. “I’ll pop by and talk to him tonight if I can.” Just then his radio squawked at him, and he sighed. “Or maybe not.” And, with that, he picked up the mic to respond, even as he drove away. He honked the horn as he disappeared from sight, and Trey, Schooner at his side, finished the walk back to Jackson’s house in contemplative silence, wondering if there could possibly be anything to Silas’s suspicions.

Retrieving Silas’s boat tomorrow would be one way to find out, but it might also confirm the ugly suspicions. That wasn’t good for anybody.