Chapter 1 - THE WRECK IN THE INLET
The sound that awakened Gwen Miller was not thunder.
Thunder rolled.
This screamed.
Metal tore somewhere above the roof of her workshop with a shriek so violent that Gwen dropped the wrench in her hand and looked toward the rain-streaked windows.
An aircraft engine roared over the house.
Too low.
Wrong.
Then silence.
Half a second later, the impact shook the workshop door in its frame.
Gwen was moving before she consciously made the decision.
She switched off the bench grinder, grabbed her flashlight, pry bar, wire cutters, utility knife, and the forty-foot rescue rope she kept beside the marine tools.
At thirty-four, Gwen had learned that northern-coast emergencies rarely waited for professionals.
The sheriff could be forty minutes away in good weather.
Tonight, half the access road had disappeared beneath storm runoff.
She dragged on rubber boots and her yellow oilskin coat.
Outside, the air smelled immediately wrong.
Salt.
Wet pine.
Jet fuel.
Gwen aimed her flashlight toward the inlet.
Fifty yards offshore, the tail of a private aircraft protruded from the black water.
“Jesus.”
She launched her aluminum skiff.
Waves hammered the hull as the little boat crossed the inlet. Rain hit her face hard enough to sting.
When she reached the wreck, the cockpit was already submerged.
The fuselage rested at an angle against the muddy bottom while the incoming tide swallowed another few inches every minute.
Gwen tied her rope around a wing support and climbed onto the slick metal.
The pilot was dead.
She knew before touching him.
Farther back, however, movement caught her flashlight.
A man was trapped inside the cabin.
He wore what had once been an expensive black suit. Water reached his waist. Blood ran from a deep cut near his hairline.
A collapsed luggage structure pinned one leg.
Most trapped people screamed.
This man worked against the metal in complete silence.
Gwen kicked through the damaged emergency opening.
“Don’t touch anything electrical.”
The stranger stopped.
Gray eyes turned toward her.
“My belt is jammed.”
Gwen climbed halfway inside.
She cut the restraint.
“Can you stand?”
“My right leg is trapped.”
She aimed the light downward.
A bent support beam had crushed across his boot.
Water climbed higher.
Gwen wedged the pry bar underneath it.
“On three.”
“I can move when you lift.”
“That wasn’t an invitation to explain my own plan.”
Something flickered in his expression.
Even half drowned, he looked amused.
Gwen planted both boots against the submerged floor.
“One.”
The aircraft shifted.
“Two.”
Metal groaned.
“Three.”
She pulled.
Pain burned across her shoulders.
The beam moved barely three inches.
“Now!”
The stranger tore his boot free.
Gwen almost lost the bar.
He caught the cabin wall with one hand.
Together, they forced their way toward the opening.
He was enormous.
Six foot three, maybe more. Dense muscle under soaked wool.
Every foot of movement felt like dragging an anchor.
They fell into the skiff together.
The boat nearly overturned.
“Stay down!”
The stranger obeyed.
Behind them, the jet disappeared with a long metallic groan.
Gwen started the outboard.
By the time they reached shore, her hands were numb.
Dragging him up the ramp was worse than rescuing him from the plane.
He tried to help.
His injured leg repeatedly gave way.
“Stop pretending you’re useful,” Gwen snapped.
“I’m walking.”
“You’re falling in a direction.”
He almost smiled again.
She got him inside.
The woodstove was still warm from earlier that evening.
Gwen dropped him onto the leather sofa.
“You are ruining my furniture.”
He leaned his head back.
“Send me a bill.”
“Assuming you live.”
Gwen peeled off his ruined jacket.
A black pistol fell from beneath his arm.
It struck the wooden floor.
Gwen stopped.
The stranger looked at the weapon.
Then at her.
He did not move for it.
Gwen picked it up carefully, cleared the chamber the way her father had taught her, and dropped the unloaded weapon into a metal tool bucket.
“You are not shooting me after I dragged your heavy ass out of the ocean.”
“Smart woman.”
“Gwen.”
He frowned.
“What?”
“My name. You are bleeding on my couch. Basic social rules apply.”
His eyelids lowered.
“Roman.”
“Roman what?”
No answer.
He lost consciousness.
Gwen cleaned the wound.
She had stitched herself more than once after workshop accidents, but Roman’s injury required more care. She closed the cut with sterile fishing-line suture material from her emergency marine kit.
Under his shirt she found old scars.
Bullet wounds.
Knife scars.
Burns.
Not the history of an accountant.
Gwen sat in the chair opposite him until sunrise with a heavy wrench across her knees.
At 7:03, the floorboards vibrated.
Engines.
Multiple.
Gwen crossed to the front window.
Five matte-black SUVs emerged from the sea mist.
They formed a semicircle around the house.
Doors opened.
Men in dark coats stepped into the yard.
Some scanned the tree line.
Others approached the workshop.
None behaved like police.
Gwen picked up the pry bar.
The largest man climbed the porch steps.
Broad shoulders.
Dark beard.
Silver ring.
The same design she had noticed on Roman’s hand.
Gwen opened the door six inches.
“You’re trespassing.”
“We’re searching for a passenger from a missing aircraft.”
“No passenger here.”
The man studied her.
“Ma’am—”
“Thomas.”
Roman’s voice came from behind her.
Gwen turned.
He stood against the hallway wall.
Barefoot.
Pale.
Bandage around his forehead.
But awake.
Thomas’s entire posture changed.
“Boss.”
Outside, every man lowered his head.
Gwen stared at Roman.
“Oh, wonderful.”
Roman limped closer.
“Miss Miller pulled me from the aircraft.”
Thomas looked at her again.
Evaluation replaced suspicion.
“The pilot?”
“Dead,” Roman said.
Then his face hardened.
“The crash was sabotage.”
Rain whispered against the porch roof.
Gwen tightened her grip on the pry bar.
“You owe me three hundred dollars.”
Thomas blinked.
Roman looked at her.
“For the sofa, medical supplies, boat fuel, and the fishing line currently holding your face together.”
Thomas reached toward his coat.
Roman stopped him.
“No.”
Gwen’s eyes narrowed.
“You object to paying bills?”
“I object to pretending the debt is three hundred dollars.”
“I don’t want favors.”
Roman looked toward the inlet.
“You may not have a choice.”
Thomas stepped closer.
“The men who brought his plane down will eventually find the wreck.”
“So?”
“They’ll know someone pulled him out.”
“I live alone.”
Thomas’s face remained perfectly serious.
“They won’t question you.”
Gwen waited.
“They’ll burn the house with you inside it.”
Her eyes moved toward the workshop.
Her father’s tools remained inside.
His workbench.
The wooden cabinet he had built thirty years earlier.
The faded marks recording Gwen’s childhood height.
“This shop belonged to my father.”
Roman followed her gaze.
“I can rebuild it.”
“You cannot rebuild history.”
“No.”
Something in the way he answered made her look at him differently.
He understood that sentence.
Roman offered her a choice.
Ten thousand dollars and six hours of protection while she disappeared west.
Or temporary protection at his secured residence until they identified whoever sabotaged his aircraft.
“I am not abandoning my home because criminals cannot settle their own problems.”
Thomas gave Roman a look that suggested very few people spoke to him that way.
Roman only said, “If you stay, they will come.”
Gwen stared into his gray eyes.
“If anybody damages my shop because of you, I’ll finish what the ocean started.”
Roman smiled.
“Fair.”
Twenty minutes later, Gwen entered the armored SUV carrying three changes of clothes and her iron pry bar.
She refused to leave it behind.
Thomas did not argue.
During the drive, Roman’s bandage began turning red.
He sat upright despite his injury.
Gwen watched for a full minute.
Then shoved his shoulder.
“Lie back.”
His eyes opened.
“Excuse me?”
“You’re bleeding because you’re sitting there trying to convince your employees you’re immortal.”
Nobody inside the SUV spoke.
Gwen pushed him against the reclining seat.
“Breathe from your stomach. I did not drag your giant body out of a sinking jet so you could die performing for the staff.”
Roman stared at her hand on his shoulder.
Then, astonishingly, obeyed.
Thomas looked out the window to hide something that might have been a smile.
Three hours later, the convoy entered the city.
Gwen expected a mansion.
Instead, they drove beneath an old industrial building surrounded by warehouses.
The underground garage contained thirty armed men.
When Roman stepped from the SUV, every conversation stopped.
Men straightened.
Heads lowered.
Nobody asked whether he was all right.
They waited for orders.
Gwen leaned toward Thomas.
“What exactly does your boss do?”
Thomas gave her a sideways look.
“You really don’t know?”
“I found him underwater. There wasn’t time for LinkedIn.”
Before Thomas answered, Roman spoke from several feet away.
“Gwen.”
She approached.
A doctor was arguing that Roman needed immediate imaging.
Roman ignored him.
“Get Miss Miller upstairs.”
“I can walk by myself.”
Roman looked at her pry bar.
“I don’t doubt that.”
As Gwen followed Thomas toward the elevator, she looked back.
Thirty armed men stood around Roman.
Nobody smiled.
Nobody touched him.
Nobody called him Roman.
Only Boss.
The elevator doors closed.
Thomas pressed the fourth-floor button.
Gwen asked quietly, “What kind of boss?”
Thomas looked at her.
“The kind people in this city have been trying to kill for twenty years.”
The elevator began rising.
Gwen tightened her grip on the pry bar.
May you like
She had not rescued an unlucky businessman.
She had pulled a war out of the ocean.
