Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Rory

I had a rule. Never jump into black water during an active storm unless someone’s life depended on it, because in the dark you can’t tell the difference between a rescue and a suicide until it’s already too late to change your mind.

I broke that rule the second I saw the kid clinging to the rail of the sinking cargo ship, screaming a name that wasn’t even his own, like grief had already started rehearsing before the ship had finished going down.

“Rory, don’t you dare,” Talia yelled behind me, grabbing at my arm, but I was already out of my jacket and over the side before she finished the sentence, because that’s how it always went between us. She yelled the warning. I ignored it. We both knew the script by heart.

I swam toward the sound of the kid’s screaming instead of his shape, because sound traveled better than sight out there, and I’d learned that lesson the hard way, on a night I don’t talk about.

I got a fist around his life vest and started hauling him back toward the tug, shouting at him to kick, kick, don’t go limp on me now, and for a second I actually thought we were going to make it clean.

That’s usually when the ocean decides to remind you who’s in charge.

A shipping container broke loose above us and came down sideways, and I heard it before I felt it, this deep metal groan like the whole ship was exhaling, and then something slammed into my tank hard enough to spin me halfway around and knock every bit of air clean out of my lungs. The world went white, then gray, then the kind of quiet that scares you more than any noise ever could.

The next thing I knew, somebody had a fist in the back of my wetsuit and was dragging me up through the water like I weighed nothing, and I broke the surface coughing up half the ocean, gasping, blinking against rain that came down sideway.

“Hey. Hey, look at me. Eyes on me.” A man’s voice, close, sharp with panic he was clearly trying not to show. “What’s your name? Can you tell me your name?”

“Get off me,” I said, or tried to say, except it came out as more of a wet croak, and I shoved his hand away and turned to find the kid I’d actually been trying to save, because that mattered a hell of a lot more than whoever had decided to play hero number two.

“He’s fine, your guy already got him, look,” the stranger said, pointing, and sure enough one of my crew had the kid up the ladder already, coughing and crying and very much alive. Which meant I had exactly zero excuses left to keep ignoring the man currently treading water next to me in a soaked leather jacket that had no business being anywhere near a salvage operation.

“Who the hell are you,” I said, “and why are you dressed for a bar and not a boat.”

“I’m the guy who just pulled a drowning woman out of a shipping accident,” he said, and even half drowned himself he had the nerve to sound amused about it. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

“I wasn’t drowning. I was working.”

“You were unconscious for about four seconds. I counted.”

“You don’t get to count my unconscious seconds. That’s not a thing you’re allowed to do.”

He laughed, actual laughter, right there in the middle of a sinking ship and a screaming storm, like none of it was real to him yet, and something about that irritated me more than it should have.

My crew got us both up the ladder, and the second my boots hit the deck of my own tug I felt like myself again, which meant I felt furious, because adrenaline always finds somewhere to go once the danger’s technically over. I turned around to actually look at the man who’d just hauled me out of the water, soaked through, dark hair stuck to his forehead, jaw tight, watching me with an expression that flickered between concern and something closer to fascination, and I did not have the patience for either one.

“You’re not my crew,” I said. “You’re not Coast Guard. So who exactly sent a man in a leather jacket to go swimming during a live salvage op.”

“I sent myself.”

“That’s the wrong answer.”

“It’s the honest one.” He wiped rain off his face with the back of his hand, breathing hard, and something about the way he said it made me actually believe him, which annoyed me even more. “Your crew wasn’t moving fast enough for my taste, and I wasn’t about to stand on deck watching a kid go under because paperwork hadn’t cleared yet.”

“Paperwork,” I repeated. “You know something about paperwork I don’t?”

Talia appeared at my elbow, dripping wet herself, holding a blanket she practically threw at me instead of handing it over, the universal Talia gesture for I am furious with you and also relieved you’re alive, both at once. “Captain,” she said, using my title the way she only did when she wanted me to remember I had a crew to answer to, “we need to talk. Now.”

“In a second.”

“Now, Rory.”

I looked back at the stranger, who was still standing there like he hadn’t decided whether to leave or stay and make more of my night difficult. Up close he looked younger than I’d first clocked, twenties, tan from actual sun and not a tanning bed, with the kind of restless energy that made him seem like he’d rather be doing literally anything other than standing still in the rain making small talk with a soaked, furious salvage captain.

“You got a name,” I said, “or should I just keep calling you the idiot who jumped in without a wetsuit?”

“Kian,” he said. “And for the record, I got the kid out fine without one.”

“You got lucky.”

“I got him out,” he said again, quieter this time, like the correction actually mattered to him, and something about the way he held my eyes a second too long made my stomach do something I chose to ignore completely.

Talia dragged me belowdecks before I could ask him anything else, and the second the door shut behind us her face went from concerned to livid in about half a heartbeat. “You went in the water during an active drop,” she said. “With no backup diver confirmed, no clearance from the client, nothing. Do you understand what would have happened to this company if you’d died out there tonight?”

“I didn’t die.”

“That’s not the same as being okay, and you know it.”

“Talia.”

“I mean it, Rory. You keep doing this like the company can survive without you, like the crew can survive without you, and one of these days you’re going to be wrong and none of us are going to be able to fix that.”

I sat down hard on the bench along the wall, dripping, suddenly aware of how much my ribs hurt where the container had clipped me, and I let out a breath that came out shakier than I wanted it to. “I know,” I said. “I know, okay. I’ll be more careful.”

“You say that every time.”

“And I mean it every time. I just keep having bad timing.”

She almost smiled at that, the fight draining out of her the way it always did once I actually admitted she was right, because Talia had never once needed to win an argument, she just needed me to hear it. “There’s something else,” she said, and her voice dropped in a way that told me this next part wasn’t going to be the good kind of news. “The insurance paperwork for this job. It’s not filed.”

I sat up straighter. “What do you mean it’s not filed.”

“I mean I called dispatch to confirm coverage before you went in, standard protocol, and they told me there’s no signed authorization on record for tonight’s op. Which means legally, as of right now, we did not have permission to touch that ship.”

“That’s impossible. The contract was signed weeks ago.”

“The contract for the account was signed weeks ago. Tonight’s specific job order wasn’t. Somebody dropped the ball on the client’s side, and it means every hour we’ve spent out there tonight is currently unprotected. If anything had gone wrong with that kid, with you, with any of it, we would have been the ones holding the liability, not them.”

My jaw tightened. Ten years of building this company out of nothing, and it could all come apart over a piece of paper nobody bothered to send. “Whose account is this again,” I said, already knowing I wasn’t going to like the answer, because the universe has a sense of humor I’ve never once appreciated.

Talia checked the tablet in her hand, scrolling, and her expression shifted into something careful, the kind of careful she only got when she knew a name was about to land on me like another container coming loose.

“Ashcroft Holdings,” she said. “Client contact listed as Vice CEO Kian Ashcroft, who apparently authorized emergency response verbally tonight, which is probably why your mystery man upstairs jumped in after you without waiting for a diver.”

I felt my whole body go still. “Ashcroft.”

“Yeah.”

“As in Damian Ashcroft’s company.”

Talia’s eyes flicked up to mine, sharp with the kind of instant understanding only ten years of friendship gets you. “Rory,” she said slowly, “please tell me that man on deck isn’t who I think he is.”