shipping lanes and fishing grounds. And it was the rule of the sea that any ship who heard a distress call must respond to it. Nobody might own these international waters, and nations might fight like dogs over them, but sailors stuck together.
The sun set in a brilliant splash of crimson and faded into the violet hues of twilight without anyone responding to her periodic radio calls. As the utter blackness of night at sea fell around her, she sighed and settled down to wait out a long, uncomfortable night. She needed to preserve her battery for radio calls and had turned off all unnecessary equipment, which meant no air conditioner or even an electric fan for her tonight.
She must have dozed off because the stars had wheeled around in the sky overhead and the night was balmy when she blinked her eyes open. The New Dawn bobbed on light swells, pulling against the sea anchor she’d deployed to keep from drifting too far from her reported position.
A faint rumbling caught her attention. She looked about eagerly for the running lights of her rescuer and gasped as a massive black shape loomed off her port side. The sharp point of a ship’s prow was bearing directly down upon her. Fast.
Yikes. That ship was really bearing down on her fast! Her sleepy mind exploded to full consciousness as the deadly danger of her situation registered.
“Hey! I’m here!” she shouted, waving her arms frantically over her head. As if anyone would hear her over the roar of the much bigger vessel’s engines. A white V of water sliced away from the black blade of the prow. The ship displayed no lights whatsoever as it raced at her like an attacking shark closing in for the kill.
Panicked, she scrambled backward, stumbling and falling over her waterproof camera bag. She hit the deck hard and her head smacked the cabin wall painfully. She flung herself toward the railing, every survival instinct screaming at her to get out of the way before that ship sliced the New Dawn in half. Clutching her camera bag in one fist as she rolled, she plunged over the side and into the icy water.
The Pacific Ocean closed in over her head, entombing her in a dark so cold and heavy, she felt as if she’d been buried alive.
Panic gave way to shock as every muscle in her body clenched at the frigid grip of the sea. She kicked hard for the surface, but it was as if she attempted to swim through concrete. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t seem to get anywhere. Assuming she was even headed in the right direction. She tried to feel which way the bubbles racing past her skin were headed, but who knew if she’d gotten it right. For all she knew she was kicking down toward Davy Jones’s locker with all her strength.
And then a new threat registered—a deep throbbing noise that pounded through her body rhythmically, growing in volume and intensity with every beat. Oh, God. The larger ship’s propellers. She kicked like a madwoman, praying her random swimming would carry her clear of the rotating blades before they made bloody chum out of her.
The water grew violently turbulent, tossing her head over heels in a chaotic swirl that left her so dizzy she wanted to throw up. Probably not a good idea with the single breath in her lungs already running painfully low on oxygen. Little sparkles of light erupted behind her eyelids.
The ocean calmed around her as abruptly as it had gone mad. She was farther than ever from knowing which way the surface and air might be. Perhaps her best bet was to quit fighting and let her natural buoyancy and lungful of air lift her to the surface. But would it be in time before she passed out?
In a few seconds she wouldn’t be able to hold her breath anymore and she would inhale a single, lethal lungful of salt water. And then in twelve to fifteen seconds, as the last oxygen in her brain was used, she’d lose consciousness. Without the buoyancy of air in her lungs, she would slip down into the depths of the sea, lost in its cold embrace forever. Vague curiosity about whether or not there was life after death passed through her mind. Guess I’ll know one way or the other pretty soon.
Who’d have imagined she would end up like this? It seemed like such a waste to die so young. She was only twenty-seven. She’d assumed she had so much more time. So much more to experience. Her parents’ faces flashed through her mind. Her sister’s face—Chloe was going to be furious at her for dying.
Sunny reached deep and fought one last time. It was simply not in her nature to give up. She’d go down trying to save herself. But her kicks were feeble now, and to no avail. As she used up the last of her strength and oxygen, the darkness claimed her.
Aiden McKay scanned the ocean through binoculars from the bridge of the Sea Nymph, one-hundred-forty feet of pure yachting luxury on loan to him from billionaire Leland Winston.
“Do you see her?” he asked the Nymph’s captain, Steig Carlson.
“Negative. We are exactly at the last coordinates the girl transmitted, though.”
Aiden frowned. The sexy female voice had been making periodic calls throughout the day asking for assistance with her marooned vessel. He’d been annoyed at having to break off his mission to respond to the call, but it wasn’t as if he had any choice. He was one of the good guys, after all.
“Large vessel off to port,” Steig announced. “Must have responded to the New Dawn’s distress call, too.”
Aiden snorted. Every vessel within a hundred miles had probably set course at full speed toward that girl’s sensuous voice coming across their radios. Sailors were nothing if not a lonely bunch.
He swung his binoculars around to port. It was a dark night, but he made out the bulk of a good-size ship. “That vessel’s moving fast,” he commented, frowning. Looked to be pushing twenty-five knots or more. Why would a ship searching for a small boat be tearing along like a bat out of hell? Wouldn’t they be trawling slowly like the Sea Nymph, searching the waters quadrant by careful quadrant?
He swung his binoculars to the next quadrant of his search, in front of the speeding boat, and lurched. He thought he’d caught a glimpse of—
He swore as the Nymph rolled and he momentarily lost his target. He scanned left and right with the binoculars and caught sight of it again. A small vessel bobbing like a helpless cork in the swells directly in front of the racing ship.
“Sweet Mother of God,” he breathed. “Those bastards are going to ram her.”
Steig swore beside him. “They’re going to smash her boat into matchsticks at that speed.” He reached for the throttles and threw the sleek yacht’s twin diesel engines to full power.
Aiden shouted into the radios, “Unknown rider, alter course! You are about to collide with a small craft. I say again, alter course immediately!” But the black hulk in front of him either didn’t hear or didn’t care. Or worse, it knew good and well that it was about to sink the disabled cabin cruiser that could only be the New Dawn.
Aiden watched in helpless horror as the blacked-out ship slammed broadside into the smaller boat. With a terrible grinding noise audible even from here, the big ship’s prow crashed through the New Dawn’s hull. The little boat lifted up in the air like a toy in a bathtub and then all of a sudden disappeared underneath the larger ship, dragged below the water like flotsam in the ship’s path.
The girl with the sexy voice was on that boat!
He kicked off his deck shoes frantically and reached for the swim goggles that were always in his pocket.
“Don’t do it,” Steig bit out. “The water will
