Chapter 23
Wyatt was alive.
The realization landed before anything else, cutting through the noise and the blood.
He was soaked through, rain slicking his hair to his head, but alive. Her legs threatened to fold, and she had to clutch the grab rail to stay upright. Her crew huddled around him, bedraggled and shocked.
Max gasped. “What the hell happened here?”
Jen took hold of his arm and guided him down to the deck. “Sit. Breathe.”
“Jen.” Caro looked up, her eyes far too bright. “You’re okay.”
“Caro, are you shot?” Jen crossed to her in an instant.
“Clipped me. I’ll live.” Caro wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “We hit the fuel depot, drew most of them off the crane.”
Wyatt secured the gauze around Caro’s wound with a pin. “Didn’t pay off. The platform’s crawling with hostiles.”
Jen eased the pack of explosives off her shoulders and carefully placed it on the deck. Forty pounds of solutions that suddenly didn’t fit the problem.
The cargo ship was still coming, and the crane was unreachable.
What does the ship actually need?
Max winced as he shifted against the wall. “So we blow up the ship?”
Wyatt shook his head immediately. “The crew could be civilian contractors.” His gaze shifted to Max, assessing the blood-soaked coveralls and the rag packed against his shoulder. “Who’s this?”
“Max Gibbs.” Jen crouched beside him. “My lead engineer. He saved my life at the start of all this. Took a knife wound getting out of the mess hall.”
“Let me see.” Wyatt eased the sodden rag away from Max’s wound. His hands were quick and sure—the same hands that had just wrapped Caro’s arm with care. “Deep, but clean. Missed anything important, or you wouldn’t be walking.”
“Crawling, mostly,” Max muttered. “Your girl dragged me through the vents.”
Your girl.
She didn’t have the energy to correct him. Or the inclination.
But Wyatt didn’t correct him either.
He packed Max’s wound with fresh gauze and bound it tightly. “Stay off it.”
“Not planning on dancing.”
Wyatt snapped the first-aid kit shut. “We need a single point of failure.”
Jen visualized Seven’s structure—the docking platform extending from the main deck, pylons driven deep into the seabed, storm surge stress spreading through the frame.
Her pulse jumped. “The docking platform. The ship can’t get close enough without it because the platform stabilizes the approach. It absorbs movement so the crane can operate safely. Take out the supports and the ship can’t come alongside. Physics won’t let it.”
Wyatt looked up sharply. His gaze went distant for a second before snapping back to her with a clarity that said he’d already mapped the operation in his head.
“Underwater demolition,” he said. “In a storm. With hostiles topside.”
“Yes.”
“How many pylons?”
“Four. One at each corner. They’re driven into the seabed and bolted to the platform crossbeams. Take out all four and the whole structure drops.”
“All four?” Caro shifted her arm carefully. “What happens if you only get three?”
“It holds. Damaged but functional.” Jen met Wyatt’s eyes. “It’s all or nothing.”
“How deep?” Wyatt asked.
“The piles go much deeper,” Jen said. “But the connection points we need are only about twelve feet down, just below the catwalk level. Blow those and the docking frame loses stability.”
Caro hummed under her breath. “The platform pylons are underwater.”
“We have a diver.” She looked at Max. “Stinson?”
Max gave a shake of his head. “Stinson didn’t make it out of the mess hall.”
No diver.
Her jaw locked. She could already feel the mask on her face, the weight of the ocean above her. But it was still the best shot they had. “I know the load-bearing points we need to hit.”
Wyatt didn’t argue. He just held her gaze, measuring. “I can place the charges.”
“Okay. We’ll need someone topside.”
Caro raised her uninjured arm. “Me. I know the procedures.”
Wyatt’s head snapped toward her. “You’ve been shot.”
“My brain is fine. I can still work a control panel. If either of you runs into trouble, I'll winch you out.”
Wyatt pushed to his feet. “Done.”
His gaze swept over the crew’s heads as if he was measuring the distance to every doorway as he helped Max to his feet.
“You need to go to the medical bay.” He turned his attention to the wider group.
“All of you. Barricade yourselves in. There’s communication equipment for when help arrives.
Don’t open the door for anyone except Coast Guard or SEAL identification. Understood?”
“Okay. I can do that.” Max went to move off, stopped and caught Wyatt’s arm. He reached around to the back of his waistband and handed Wyatt two handguns. “I took these off a guard. You look after these girls, you hear?”
Wyatt tilted his head in a yes and took the guns.
Max shuffled away, beckoning to the crew. “Let’s get to the med bay before those freaks find their way back in.”
“Okay, just us then.” Caro climbed back to her feet with a grunt. “Tell me I won’t regret this.”
Jen shouldered the explosives pack. Wyatt checked both handguns, tucking one into his waistband and the other in his hand, automatic rifle slung over his shoulder.
His eyes swept the corridor one last time before he looked at them both. “Stay close. Move fast.”
The air temperature dropped as they descended to Seven’s lowest level via an emergency stairwell. The smell changed from gun oil and fear-sweat to something else. Salt. Brine. The organic scent of ocean water contained by metal walls.
Jen pushed through the final watertight door.
The moon pool breathed beneath her. A deep, steady bass note rolling up from the ocean below, water moving against steel as if the rig itself had a pulse. Salt and rust and neoprene hung heavy in the air.
Caro stopped just inside the door. The greenish lighting washed the color from her face. “Bloody hell and a half,” she murmured. “We’re really doing this?”
Jen swallowed to clear the knot in her throat. Air pressed against her eardrums, turning the world distant.
She could calculate load distributions and stress tolerances in her sleep.
She understood how structures failed and why.
But this—this was black water. Water that could consume her whole.
She’d once nearly passed out during a simple inspection crawl, too close to the waterline.
The memory tried to reach for her—cold water, tight spaces, the feeling of her lungs refusing to expand—
“Hey.” Wyatt’s hand closed around her elbow.
Gentle pressure guided her to the side, away from Caro quietly talking herself through safety checks on the dive control panel.
“Look at me.” His voice dropped, pitched low. For her alone.
She looked up. He was close, his solid frame blocking her view of the dive room. Close enough to see the dark flecks in his eyes, the concentration there. His other hand came up, brushing her temple, tucking damp hair back behind her ear.
Awareness flared through her at the contact.
“I know you can do this.”
The squeeze of her throat made it hard to speak. “I’m an engineer. Not—” She gestured at the moon pool. “Not this.”
“You’re also the woman who climbed through a vent shaft while armed men hunted her. Who destroyed her own systems to stop them and then broke into an armory and walked out carrying a shit-ton of C4.”
He smoothed a lock of hair from her forehead. “You’ve already done harder things than this.”
Her skin lit up under his touch. His palm was warm against her cheek. She could lean into it, close her eyes, shut out the world.
Instead, she took a deep breath. “Those were different. I could solve those. This is just testing I won’t drown.”
His gaze didn’t waver. “You won’t. Because I’ll be right there. The whole time.”
Her breath finally reached the bottom of her lungs, and the ache in her ribs lessened.
“What if I freeze?” The admission came out small.
His answer was instantaneous. “Then I’ll bring you back up. That’s it. But you won’t.” His hand was still on her face, warm against her cold skin, anchoring her in place. “Because when the fear gets loud, you’ll tell me. And we’ll solve it together. You’re not doing this alone.”
“Okay.” She took a breath, then words came tumbling out before she could stop them. “I almost killed a man. With a fire extinguisher.” Her voice cracked on the last word. She looked away fast, swiped at her eyes.
Get it together.
She hadn’t cried through sabotage or firefights or crawling through vents—but now, in this strange lull before diving into black water, it all pressed in. “He was trying to kill Max. And… and I didn’t mean to hit him that hard, I just—” Her throat closed. “I thought he was dead.”
She scrubbed both hands over her face. “I should be better than this. More in control.”
Wyatt took hold of her hands, his thumbs sweeping over her knuckles. “You did what you had to. And you didn’t kill him. You stopped him. You saved someone. Max.”
His voice tethered her like a lifeline. “This doesn’t make you less. It makes you real.” He held her gaze for another heartbeat. “After this, maybe we can grab a coffee?”
“Coffee?” A surprised laugh escaped her.
“Yeah. Somewhere that isn’t a missile platform. Where no one’s shooting at us.” A beat. “Just coffee.”
She looked up at him, letting his calm soak into her. “I’d like that.”
“Me too.” His hands dropped, and he stepped back. Professional distance was restored, but the warmth of his touch lingered.
“Safety checks complete,” Caro announced, straightening. “Suit up. And for the record, come back in one piece, or you’ll have me to answer to.”
The corner of Wyatt’s mouth twitched as he removed the charges from the backpack. “Copy that.”
He checked the detonator timers. "Six-minute delay on the charges. Once I arm the last one, we have six minutes to surface." He held his wrist next to hers. "Sync."
Jen matched her watch to his. Six minutes. The number sat cold in her stomach.
"Plenty of time," he said.
"You're a terrible liar." She crossed to the suits, the hiss of hydraulics and hum of machinery filling the dive chamber. She paused with her hand on the collar of hers.
"Only about the easy stuff." A glint touched his eyes as she glanced at him sidelong.
Her cheek still tingled from his touch. He believed in her. Not because she’d proved it—though she had, over and over tonight—but because he’d decided to. The way she trusted him.
You’re not doing this alone.
That was what she needed to carry into the water. Not the fear or the memory of the last time pressure closed around her ribs like a vice.
This time, Wyatt would be on the other side of it.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Let’s do this.”