“We’re getting oil over the booms,” she said, pointing off the bow.

“Yeah,” Tatum said, “waves are getting too high to keep it localized.”

Austin radioed Renuto. “Let it burn out, Phil, and pull your crews back to the ships.”

“You pulling the plug?” Reddy yelled.

“Yeah,” Austin called. They’d have to count on the shore booms to catch the rest of it, until they could safely burn again. She signaled Reddy with a wave and pointed back to the nearest containment ship. He nodded, gunned the engine, and cut a wide arc to head back.

Austin watched the sheen of unburned oil stream out and away, hoping the heavy seas would disperse most of it before it ever reached the final barriers offshore. That was where the endgame would shift. Gem and her people would have a massive cleanup job handling the aftermath of a hurricane. She didn’t want to see oil added to the calamity. Clambering forward, she called to Reddy, “As soon as we refuel, let’s get to shore.”

“Roger that,” he called back.

She needed a status update on the shore preparations, but more than that, she wanted to see Gem. She wanted that even more than she wanted a meal and a couple hours’ sleep, both of which her body screamed for. She just needed to be in the same space with her, even if they couldn’t touch, couldn’t share a private word. Being near her was enough to make everything else right. The rush of anticipation warmed her despite the icy water soaking her from head to toe.

“Fuck,” Tatum exclaimed.

A ten-foot swell crashed over the side of the launch and Austin barely got a hand on the rail as the craft wallowed in the trench. Tatum shouted again and lost his footing. Austin grabbed a strap on his PFD, willing her frozen fingers to hold on, and the two of them bobbed on a rush of water for a couple of seconds. As the launch righted itself, she got her feet under her.

Tatum, eyes wide, shouted, “Fuck me.”

“Yeah!” She laughed, nerves screaming. “Looks like Norma’s knocking at the door.”

“Fuck me twice,” Tatum called, looking upward.

She followed his frantic gaze. One of the copters tilted, dropped twenty feet, and shot up again, rolling wildly. For a second it looked like the pilot found some steady air, and then the rotors quit and it dropped like a stone.

“Reddy,” Austin shouted. “Reddy, head for them.”

The copter hit the water with a loud boom and a geyser of water catapulted into the air. Sirens blared from a dozen ships. Floodlights suddenly speared through the darkness, illuminating the dark surface of the ocean. The helicopter bobbed on its side, half-submerged but intact.

Reddy pushed the launch to full speed, engines screaming in protest as the craft shot up into the air and dropped bow first into the troughs over and over. They were fifty yards away from the downed copter but making almost no progress against the stormy seas. Austin gritted her teeth, her heart pounding.

“It’s gonna sink,” Tatum yelled.

“Grab the life jackets.” Austin tightened her grip on Tatum’s vest as he released one hand from the rail and opened the locker against the sidewall.

“Get ready to toss them in,” she called as the launch finally drew within twenty yards of the helicopter. The door on the upper surface pushed open, and a figure emerged. Arms windmilling, the person fell into the ocean. Austin leaned forward, eyes stinging from the salty spray, searching for some sign of him. For an instant she thought she saw a figure in the water. She pointed. “There! Throw the jacket!”

Tatum lofted the PFD and it splashed into the waves, disappearing from view. Austin held her breath. A lifetime later a head reappeared, then an arm clutching the PFD. The spotlight from the ship picked him out and stayed on him.

“Where’s the rest?” Tatum said.

Austin shook her head, watching the helicopter for some further sign of life. “Reddy, can you get us closer?”

“Hold on,” he shouted, and steered for the rapidly sinking helicopter.

As they approached, Austin could make out a man waving frantically from the open cabin doorway, one arm looped around another motionless form. He dragged the unconscious person free of the cockpit just as the helicopter dropped into the sea.

“Where the fuck did they go?” Tatum said.

“Give me the jacket,” Austin yelled, climbing onto the rail. Sighting the last spot she’d seen the struggling figures, she grabbed the PFD and jumped.

❖

“Hey,” a young blonde in a FEMA windbreaker yelled as she jogged up the shore. “Helicopter just went down out there.”

Gem dropped her shovel and spun around. “What? Where?”

“Out by the oil rig,” the girl said excitedly. “I just heard a maritime alert on our scanner.”

“Who was it?” Gem said, her stomach dropping. “Did they say? Are they all right?”

The girl shook her head. “Don’t know. Search and rescue’s on the way now.”

Gem stared out to sea, as if she could actually see as far as the rig. Sometime in the last hour the dark night had slipped into day, although the charcoal sky seemed only slightly lighter than the dead of night. All she saw were the familiar containment ships holding anchor offshore and, beyond them, endless miles of ocean. It couldn’t be Austin. Of course it couldn’t. Fate wouldn’t be that cruel.

She pulled out her phone and texted Austin. Maybe it was fruitless, but she had to try. Are you all right?

She gripped her phone in numb fingers, her heartbeat so loud it drummed out the surf. The empty screen stared back, taunting her, reminding her with its blank face and foreboding silence how mercurial time and life could be. What had she been waiting for? Why had she been so afraid to face her own desires? Why hadn’t she told Austin the truth? I want you too.

She’d have time to tell her that, and so much more. Of course she would. Please, just give her the time. She tried Alexis. What’s happening? Helicopter down?

She didn’t expect an answer from her sister, either, but she still hoped. Still willed the words to form. All good. But none came. The silence filled her head with a roar of panic. She couldn’t just wait, pretending her world wasn’t shattering.

Jettisoning her shovel and half-filled sandbag, she trotted over to Emily. “I have to go back to the center. Something’s going on out there, there’s been an accident of some kind. I need to see the news.”

“Go. You’ve been out here all night anyhow.”

“We need to pull everyone in. Soon.”

“I know. I’ll talk to the FEMA guys. I’ll take care of it. Go.”

Gem pulled her phone out and checked again for a text as she ran.

Nothing.

Chapter Twenty-six

The frigid shock took Austin’s breath away. One instant she was underwater, the next she tumbled headfirst through empty air, tossed from the crest of one angry wave into the adjacent trough before catapulting up and over another wall of water again. Clutching the extra PFD, she spat out salty water and blinked furiously each time she surfaced, searching in the endless black for the tiny figures she’d seen drop into the sea. The only sound was the crash of wind and waves. If the launch was nearby, she couldn’t hear it. If anyone shouted for help, their words were lost in the roar of Norma’s fury.

She kicked and flailed, beating back against the pummeling waves, her only goal to keep her head up long enough to spot the survivors and to keep from drowning in the process. Finally she caught sight of a thin beam of light lancing down from the sky. Not thinking, driven by instinct alone, she struggled toward it, tossed and turned and upended every few feet. She’d never realized the ocean packed the punch of a battering ram, and understood how the shore surrendered in the face of such an onslaught, receding inland, releasing its tenuous grip on the divide between sea and earth. She wasn’t giving up. And she damn well wasn’t going to let Norma win. She fought her way toward the arrow of light.

A wave carried her up like a giant’s insignificant plaything and tossed her down again. When she kicked to the surface, light blinded her for an instant, and there, an arm’s breadth away, two pale white ovals bobbed and sank beneath the surface.

Faces.

She kicked again, one arm through the PFD, the other reaching, and touched flesh. Cold, immobile, fragile, and fleeting.

“Help,” a reedy male voice called.

Closer now, Austin saw he was dragging another form, a listless body with arms outspread.

“I’ll get him,” Austin yelled, doubting her words carried even the short distance between them. She kicked closer, looped an arm around the inert form, and shoved the PFD at the flailing man beside her. “Hold on to this. No matter what, don’t let go!”

“I won’t,” he croaked.

Austin squinted up into the sky and saw nothing. Her lifeless burden dragged her down and she kicked with legs rapidly turning to stone to stay above the surface.

“Stay in the light,” she yelled to the man.

The body in her arms jerked alive with a strangled scream. Arms and legs flailed. A towering wave crashed down on them, and she went under again, her grip on the survivor slipping. With numb fingers, she clutched a fistful of fabric and battled for the surface again. Her lungs ached, her limbs now too sluggish to move, her blood so cold her mind was blank.

The light dimmed and time slowed.

❖

Gem sprinted the half mile to the center, pushed through the doors, and raced down the hall. A half dozen people ringed the small television set.

“What’s happening?” She pushed forward. “Sorry, sorry. What are they saying?”

“Local news is reporting a helicopter down in the area of the burn,” a voice she recognized answered.

Gem glanced to her left. Claudia Spencer, her face set with worry, nodded to her. “Do we know who?”

“That’s it right now. No details.”

“Have you heard from Austin?”

Claudia shook her head. “No, not for a few hours.”

“Was she in the air?”

“I don’t know. The captain was relaying my updates to her. Last I heard she was heading out in the launch boat.”

Gem focused on the television screen, grasping at the fragments of information. The launch, not the helicopter. Not Austin. A grainy image on the TV came into sharp focus. Two ships, the flaming sea, and a ring of smaller vessels.

“The NBC News helicopter is no longer visible,” a male reporter announced, a tremor of excitement in his voice, “but we were able to capture this dramatic footage just before the craft disappeared.”

The image cut to another grainy clip of tiny figures, antlike, falling from the dot of the helicopter into the vast sea. At the bottom of the frame, a launch arrowed toward the rapidly disappearing helicopter.

“We don’t know the occupants of the launch,” the reporter continued, “that arrived on scene just before search and rescue. We believe at least one of the occupants attempted to reach the survivors. We have lost sight of all of them.”

The image on the TV screen tilted and jittered.

“Conditions here have deteriorated as Norma bears down on us. GOP has apparently suspended operations to contain the oil spill at this time.”

“As if that matters now,” Claudia muttered.

“The launch…it’s GOP’s, isn’t it,” Gem said, a leaden sense of foreboding gripping her.

“Has to be,” Claudia said. “No one else is out there.”

“You don’t think—”

Claudia cut her a sympathetic look. “There are hundreds of crewmembers out there, a lot of them in launches supervising the burn. There’s no way to know.”

For the first time, Gem registered the drumming of rain on the roof. “They have to hurry.”

“In two hours,” Claudia said, “this whole area will be experiencing hundred-plus mile an hour winds and storm-surge surf. Did you pull your people out?”

“Under way,” Gem said, eyes riveted to the screen. The news feed switched back to the local station desk, where a cheery young man assured everyone News 6 would stay on the scene for up-to-the-minute updates. “What are you doing here?”

“The Gulls Inn wireless leaves something to be desired. I’ve been monitoring the storm course from here.” Claudia handed her a key. “You ought to take this.”

Gem glanced at her. “Sorry?”

Claudia smiled. “Austin’s room key. I think she’d much rather bunk with you when she gets in.”

“I…” Gem swallowed around the panic. “Yes, thanks. If you hear from her first…”

“I won’t, but if anyone else has word, I’ll let you know.” Claudia reached into the briefcase by her side and handed Gem a sheet of paper. “This is yours too. Sorry, I picked it up by mistake.”