Chapter 5
His gut turned into a lead ball. He tightened his fist, tensing every one of his muscles and squeezing every last ounce of mental strength he had until he felt in control, felt the panic retreat.
“Let’s watch it for a few minutes before we panic. It could still be a squall. I’m sending a boat to check the sound further out. It should be okay. We’ll monitor it.”
“How about some coffee?” Dane asked. He wasn’t leaving.
“Help yourself.” Vendi paused and then put a hand on Dane’s shoulder. “I’m sorry about your mother, Blaise.” His words were like a fog of dry ice freezing him on contact.
Cap said, “Coffee sounds perfect. For real—how’d you pull this duty on Christmas Eve, Vendi? I figured you’d be long gone by now—back to your family in Boston.”
“Weather events on an island trump all else in the coast guard. But don’t worry about me—I’ll be there in time for Christmas dinner tomorrow.” He paused and added, “Ever since they designated the Vineyard a SAWRS station we’re required to ensure operational continuity of the automated system.”
Cap nodded his head and poured himself a coffee.
“Don’t pretend you know what he’s talking about,” Dane said.
Cap grunted. “And you do?”
“Supplementary Aviation Weather Reporting System. Vendi is the co-operator collocated with a commissioned automated system.”
Vendi raised a brow and nodded. “We’re also a MARS station. I’ve been trained, but our weather specialist is on holiday. Of course.”
“So what are all your gadgets telling you now?” Dane asked.
“Right now the sampling frequency is off. But we may have a meso-weather situation—small surface area with weather differing from the general district’s weather.”
Dane said, “Who’s in this meso-weather situation? Us or the ferry?”
“The ferry.” Vendi licked his lips and took measure of Dane like he had more to say and didn’t want to.
“Spit it out. I won’t hit you.”
Vendi snorted like he hadn’t been worried.
“The ferry is headed straight for it—straight into—something. Not sure how big. I need to make some calls.” He looked back at his computer screen but didn’t pick up his headset for the call.
Hell if Dane was leaving the room. Vendi could damn well make the calls with him standing here.
Dane prompted him. “They’re headed across the channel to Woods Hole—how bad could it be?”
Vendi looked up from his screen. He didn’t say anything. He reached out and took the cup of coffee from Cap and put his radio headphone set over his ears. “I’m using channel 16 marine VHF-FM.”
Dane knew that was the emergency channel.
Cap handed Dane a cup of black coffee. Steam rose from the mug, but he took a sip, not caring about a singed lip.
It was clear Cap knew Dane’s head was still up his own ass, not caring about anything, especially not concerned about small details.
To his surprise, Dane was thinking big now, though.
He was thinking of Shana and the useless padre on a sea-tossed ferry.
But what was the worst that could happen? The ferry was a good-sized boat and steady. The passengers would hit some high seas and roll a little, likely not suffer more than mild nausea, but the image of high seas was enough to disquiet Dane’s otherwise numb soul.
The ferry left the dock like a fugitive on the lam. Shana stayed on deck at the rail to watch the island disappear faster than she’d expected.
“You’re looking for him? What would you do if he came to take you back? Would you go with him?” The padre gave voice to the dark swirl in her head that refused to become thought.
She didn’t answer. Couldn’t answer. Didn’t turn to look at him.
Padre Pedro had one of those annoying mirror qualities about him.
She stood at the rail. Her hands frozen to the metal.
She might have kept the unhealthy pose of an ice sculpture had the padre not put an arm around her shoulder to guide her away.
It was a gentle floating nudge in the direction of the nearly empty cabin of the boat.
There was a line at the snack bar and the smell of coffee in the cozy inside air.
“Looks like we got past the worst of it.” The padre stood next to her while she still looked out the window at the falling snow swirling harmlessly around the boat. She could no longer see land. Martha’s Vineyard had disappeared.
“It’ll be—”
“Don’t say it,” she snapped her head around to slice him with an accusing look, unfair and mean. The anger erupted from nowhere like a dormant volcano. Except she’d been anything but dormant with her emotions simmering and bubbling in a cauldron of heat.
He only smiled in that way he had that she still hadn’t learned to trust, but that she knew she should.
She felt raw. The sounds of other people’s merry Christmases around her and small laughs and soft music in the background clawed at her, every one of the noises opening cuts so that she felt like she was exposed and bleeding and pathetic.
“I’ll get us some coffee.”
Normally she’d have protested that she’d already had a cup and another cup in the afternoon would keep her up all night.
Normally she’d have asked for a shot of something or at least spiked eggnog.
But she turned back to the window to where Martha’s Vineyard had been floating minutes ago, to where she’d lived and breathed and loved for so short a time it seemed like forever.
Her life had now split in two. The woman she was before Dane and the woman after. She had no idea who the woman after would be. The girlie version of Dane Blaise.
Shana was about to turn from the window when a dark cloud caught her eye on the eastern horizon. She turned more fully to it and felt her heart give a seismic thump then accelerate. She went back outside to the deck to get a closer look.
The cloud—or whatever it was—was dark and swirling and looked ten times the size of Martha’s Vineyard. Would she measure everything against her one-time home now?
Pedro found her. He returned to her side and handed her coffee. The warm cup barely registered.
“Look at that. It can’t be good.” She nodded in the direction of the approaching cloud. Or the cloud they were approaching.
“Are we headed right for it?” he asked.
“No.” Accessing her brain from its fog, she said, “Maybe. We’re headed northeast. I think. That storm cloud is coming in from the east. Fast. It’s going to ram right into us.”
She thought of Dane, of how he didn’t say good-bye.
Not really. He hadn’t so much as touched her.
No bone-melting hug. No soul-melting kiss.
She longed for his touch, for him to reach out and tug at a strand of her hair, or to run his fingers through her locks.
She took a deep breath. She longed for him to lean in and press his face into her hair and breath deep.
She loved how he appreciated the scent of her hair.
She never told him that. Never told him she used a special shampoo and that she had it shipped from Australia, that she did it for him because he loved it.
There would be a lot of things she wouldn’t tell him now. Every one of them crowded into her mind at that moment. But as the boat rolled over a swell and she held tight to the rail, she realized this was not the time to dwell on regrets about Dane.
There would be plenty of time for that later—like the rest of her life.
“I’m going to have a chat with the captain of this boat. Coming with me?” The snowfall thickened and a gust of wind moved her.
Pedro shook his head. “I think I’ll stay here at the railing.”
She wasn’t surprised. He didn’t look too well.
A rolling deck had that effect on a lot of people.
She wasn’t one of them. She had an iron stomach.
Dane had an iron stomach too. She blinked away the thought with a last glance at the dark swirl of weather and the increasing swells lining up against their boat. “I’ll be back. Don’t go anywhere.”
Dane stood watch over Vendi’s shoulder while he spoke into his headset.
Dane took pleasure in being obnoxious, in spreading his pain, handing it out like coal.
There was a small decorated Christmas tree sitting on an old map table.
If he didn’t watch himself, he might say something like “bah, humbug” out loud.
The only thing stopping him was his refusal to become a complete cliché.
That and a growing awareness of the well-honed danger meter going off inside him like a nuclear siren.
Downing his coffee, he listened to the nearly unintelligible weather-speak and resisted the tug of Cap’s sphere of reason attempting to pull him in as the man stood stalwartly and silent by his side.
Vendi spoke into his headset. “I’ll have the MARS report for you as soon as the WSR-88D is operational again.
Until then I won’t know the SWR, the SWV and SWW and so my analysis will mean shit.
” He paused. “Pardon my language, sir. I can use the old S-band radar as back up. I’ll get right on it.
Until then, the most I can give you is a SELS confirmation and a severe weather potential statement with an SMW at this time.
” He looked up and took a long glance out his window, squinting into the distance.
“No, we’re not ready for the SAME alert, but it looks bad.
Unofficially, sir, damn bad.” He signed off, tore off his headset and turned around.
“Get the hell out of my space and let me do my job.”
“Not until you translate what you just said to your commander.”
“That was NOAA. This is a marine weather observation reporting station for them. Remember?”
“Tell me what you said.” Dane’s voice went a decibel lower but his heart rate kicked up a notch. Cap put a hand on his arm.
Vendi paused. Dane had been through some rescues and apprehensions with Vendi.
They’d worked together well. But he didn’t kid himself.
They were rivals of a sort. The sort where two alphas have their eye on the same woman and that woman is in the possession of one of them.
Tony Vendi had always coveted Shana’s attention.
He was worthy enough, but no way in hell Dane would ever concede to him.
Not even now. Now Dane had to out-alpha the man or hope to hell Vendi’s sense of duty was higher than Dane’s sense of anything. Maybe Vendi was the better man.
“I said our equipment went out so we can’t technically confirm the weather like we normally would, but it looks like at least a short-term severe weather situation and I recommended an SMW—special marine warning.”
“Short term. So the ferry should be okay if they get through the squall.”
“Something like that—now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see if I can get a SAWRS report—”
“That’s aviation,” Cap said.
Vendi nodded. “It might help us.”
“Help do what? Send out warnings? What about the ferry that’s already out there—if things turn for the worse?
If it turns out to be a blizzard and not a squall?
What are you prepared to do then?” Dane asked the question he’d been burying from the moment he left his beach shack.
What the hell was he going to do about it if Shana ran into trouble?