Prologue #3
Blake scanned the crowd, looking for any sign of auburn hair, a rose day suit, those violet-blue eyes—
Stop. His jaw tensed. He pinched his eyes closed against the weakening around his heart.
She made her choice.
You have a mission.
But even as he thought it, his gaze continued searching.
The ship lurched again, the list growing more severe. Blake grabbed the railing to keep from sliding. Deck chairs and loose equipment began shifting toward the bow, picking up speed as they slid. A woman nearby stumbled, and Blake caught her with his good arm, steadying her toward a lifeboat.
“Get to a boat,” he told her. “Stay calm.”
She nodded, staggering toward the growing crowds surrounding the davits designed to lower the lifeboats.
Once the ship could slow down.
But was there even time for it to slow before it disappeared beneath the sea?
Blake moved along the deck, helping where he could—a child separated from his mother, an elderly gentleman struggling with a life belt, a woman attempting to find her husband.
Blake’s shoulder throbbed with every movement, but he pushed the pain aside. There would be time for pain later.
If there was a later.
His gaze returned forward.
The water was rising too fast. The ship’s bow had already submerged, and the stern was beginning to lift out of the water. Passengers fought against physics or desperation—or both—as they began to realize the lifeboats on the port side couldn’t be launched away from the tilting hull.
He’d barely made it through the companionway connecting the two sides of the ship when an eruption of screams pulled his attention to the left. Careening down the deck came a lifeboat filled with people, mostly women and children.
He jumped out of its trajectory, barely, but could do nothing to stop its ultimate destination as the boat crashed into the water-covered bow and joined a motley collection of deck furniture, debris, and … bodies sloshing together in a pool, awaiting the sea to swallow them.
Heaven help them.
Nearby, he caught sight of a familiar face in the crowd—the steward who’d served him dinner just last night, now helping women and children into an overcrowded lifeboat.
Their eyes met for a moment, and Blake glimpsed the resignation there.
The steward knew he wouldn’t be getting into a boat. There weren’t enough.
Blake sent him a small nod of acknowledgement and moved on.
Just as he reached one of the boats to assist, a massive explosion from somewhere deep in the ship sent a shudder through the entire vessel, quaking everything around him.
Blake seized the railing again as the deck tilted even more sharply.
The funnels groaned. Somewhere nearby, glass shattered.
The beautiful Lusitania was dying, and she was dying rapidly.
Holding to the railing, Blake worked his way down the ship, dodging debris and panicked passengers. One lifeboat he passed hung at an odd angle, half its occupants already spilled into the churning water below.
At this speed, the ship would be gone in minutes. And when she went, she’d likely take anyone still aboard with her—pulled down by the suction, the churning propellers, the deadly dynamics of a ship this size going under.
He looked over the railing at the approaching sea and made his decision.
He had to survive. Had to deliver that intelligence to Director Lark.
Without another look back, he stripped off his jacket, removed his shoes, and made his way to the railing just as the ship gave another sickening lurch. Around him, others were doing the same, sliding the fifty or more feet down the hull toward the rising water.
With a prayer on his lips, he took a breath and vaulted over the railing.
The impact with the water drove the air from his lungs. Frigid. So impossibly cold. The Atlantic in May was barely above freezing, and the shock of it almost made him gasp and inhale the sea.
Beneath the waves, the murky ocean offered its own sort of confusion as Blake fought his way through disorienting bubbles and a barrage of debris to the surface, his wounded shoulder protesting every stroke.
But the surface introduced new chaos.
More debris everywhere. Cries of various sorts. Bodies—some moving, some not. Overturned lifeboats. People clinging to anything that floated. And the Lusitania herself, her massive bulk towering above them all, as her stern rose almost perpendicular to the water.
Using his good arm and kicking hard despite the cold seeping into his bones, Blake swam away from the ship and from the suction she’d create when she went down.
A large piece of wood floated past, and he grabbed it. A … door? It wouldn’t support his full weight, but it would help keep him afloat.
Around him, hundreds of people fought for survival.
Some called for help.
Others swam.
A few had already gone still and quiet.
A child cried nearby, and he instantly swam toward the sound, but a lifeboat reached the boy first. Thank God.
He kept swimming, putting distance between himself and the dying ship, as quickly as the cold water and his wound would allow.
And then, with a wail that shattered through the cries around him, the Lusitania‘s stern lifted completely out of the water, shaking the last people clinging to its railing down to the ocean like raindrops. The colossal propellers hung suspended in the air for one impossible, unforgettable moment.
His breath held in anticipation.
Then the Greyhound of the Seas, as she was popularly known, quaked, expelled a massive gasp, and slid beneath the waves.
A charged silence followed and then … the pull.
Blake swam against it, clinging to the door. Gratefully, the suction wasn’t as bad as he’d feared, or perhaps he’d gotten far enough away. But the wave that followed rolled over him, pulling him under and sending him into a spin. For several terrifying seconds, he couldn’t tell which way was up.
His shoulder screamed. His lungs burned. The cold was everywhere, tugging him toward surrender.
But he would not. He could not!
He didn’t know if Evie had survived. Didn’t know if Evan had made it off the ship or drowned with his blasted secrets. But one thing was certain: Blake couldn’t fail!
He kicked hard, following the bubbles, and broke the surface sputtering for air.
The Lusitania was gone. Entirely.
Where moments ago a ship larger than most buildings had floated, there remained only a quiet sea and debris and bodies—living, dead, and dying.
The horizon looked eerily empty.
And even though Blake was a strong swimmer—better than most with his training—the cold was already affecting him. His limbs were going numb. His wounded shoulder was barely functioning.
But he had no choice. He had to make it to shore. This war was already the bloodiest conflict in modern history. Trenches stretched across Europe, and poison gas and machine guns were turning men into statistics.
And if he didn’t get this intelligence to Director Lark—if the Midnight Angel continued feeding information to Germany, if Montgomery connected her with other traitors in British intelligence—it would be bloodier still.
Blake had survived the Lusitania for a reason.
He just had to stay alive long enough to make it matter.