Submerged (Alaskan Courage Book #1) , livre ebook

Baker Publishing Group - Dani Pettrey

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183 pages

English

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"Submerged is romantic suspense that will keep you up at night!"--Bestselling Author Dee HendersonA sabotaged plane. Two dead deep-water divers.Yancey, Alaska was a quiet town...until the truth of what was hidden in the depths off the coast began to appear.Bailey Craig vowed never to set foot in Yancey again. She has a past, and a reputation--and Yancey's a small town. She's returned to bury a loved one killed in the plane crash and is determined not to stay even an hour more than necessary. But then dark evidence emerges and Bailey's own expertise becomes invaluable for the case.Cole McKenna can handle the deep-sea dives and helping the police recover evidence. He can even handle the fact that a murderer has settled in his town and doesn't appear to be moving on. But dealing with the reality of Bailey's reappearance is a tougher challenge. She broke his heart, but she is not the same girl who left Yancey. He let her down, but he's not the same guy she left behind. Can they move beyond the hurts of their pasts and find a future together?

Sujets

Thriller

Informations

Publié par	Baker Publishing Group
Date de parution	01 mai 2012
Nombre de lectures	3
EAN13	9781441271167
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0432€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

© 2012 by Dani Pettrey
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
ISBN 978-1-4412-7116-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide. www.zondervan.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Cover design by Koechel Peterson & Associates, Inc., Minneapolis, Minnesota/Gregory Rohm
Author represented by MacGregor Literary, Inc.
To Michael
For asking me to dance.
It’s turned out to be the dance of a lifetime.
I love you.

To Mom
For always believing.
I love you dearly.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10
11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25
26 27 28 29 30
31 32 33 34 35
36 37 38 39 40
41 42 43 44 45
46 47 48 49
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Back Ad
Back Cover
Prologue
Never wager unless you control the stakes.
And she’d thought she held such a strong hand.
Agnes Grey forced her head against the rattling seat back, clenched the armrests with such force her nails broke. Perspiration soaked her brow, seeping into her eyes, but she refused to cry. She was too old to cry.
The plane was going down into the water within sight of her home. Home warm, safe, dry. She’d never see it again.
Her friend Henry Reid strained to look back, his white knuckles bulging on the wheel as he fought to regain control of the spiraling Cessna, but the fiery plane seemed bent on destruction. Panic flashed through his eyes. “Tighten your belts. Put your head between your knees.”
His concern was sweet, but it wouldn’t change the outcome. Their fate was set.
They were going down hard and fast. The other passengers’ terrified expressions said they knew it too. Innocents, every one, Agnes thought, fury on their behalf trumping her own fear. She was the only one on board who knew this catastrophe was no mechanical failure. It was him. She knew it as surely as she knew she’d seen her last sunset.
A bitter cry tore from her cracked lips. Any semblance of control on her part had been an illusion.
She’d played her hand, and he’d just called her on it.
If she hadn’t been so stinking stubborn, if she’d kept her mouth shut and given him what he wanted . . . But Momma hadn’t raised her like that. She’d done the right thing. She only wished she hadn’t brought the others down with her.
Managing to crane her neck left, she took in the sight of the loving couple’s hands clasped tight, crying as they whispered frantic words to each other.
Agnes’s stomach lurched. She’d brought them on this journey, doomed them to a watery tomb.
At least now he’d be satisfied. She’d be gone. They’d be gone. No one was left to . . .
Acid burned up her throat.
Bailey.
1
O FF THE C OAST OF T ARIUK I SLAND , A LASKA
Cole McKenna left the chaos at the water’s surface for the chaos below. The black water quickly suffocated the floodlights directed down at him from the rescue boats above. Within seconds it was only him, the strobe attached at his waist, and the immense darkness of the sea.
His heart seemed to beat in time with the strobe’s rhythmic flash.
Thump. Thump.
It was amazing the things one heard when surrounded by darkness.
Thump. Thump.
Cole checked his depth gauge with his left hand, keeping his right fixed on the lifeline. When diving in depths without any natural light and with no distinguishing landmarks, in an ever-changing current, a few seconds off the line was all it took to get disoriented, and those seconds could mean the difference between life and death.
Thirty feet.
Thirty-five.
“Diver two in the water,” Gage instructed over the comm from topside.
He was glad he’d have Landon Grainger at his side tonight. He was going to need all the help he could get.
Sonar had indicated that what remained of Henry Reid’s floatplane tottered on the edge of Outerman’s Ridge, forty feet beneath the surface. He wished the flight manifest had arrived before deployment so they knew how many passengers had been on board. He hated going in blind.
Forty feet.
He slipped his external light from his utility belt and switched it on. The Cessna glimmered a murky white in its beam.
“I’m going off-line,” he alerted topside.
“Be safe, Cole. Diver three is in the water.”
Cole swallowed. “Roger that.” He shouldn’t worry any more about Kayden than Landon. As dive captain, he was responsible for every member on the rescue team. He couldn’t allow the fact that Kayden was his sister to affect his decisions. It wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the team or to the victims. But a brother’s innate protective nature always lingered.
He inhaled, the pressure-demand regulator automatically releasing a puff of oxygenated air into his face mask. The device made him sound like Darth Vader, each breath deliberate and punctuated. His black neoprene dry suit, gloves, and hoses only added to the image.
The glow in the fuselage had disappeared, but the fact the fire had lasted as long as it had bolstered his hope that there was still air trapped in the craft. He prayed their search tonight would end in rescue and not just recovery.
Panning his beam along the vessel, he began his inspection at the tail torn and jagged and moved along to the cockpit. His breath hitched at the compressed metal. He prayed Henry had been tossed free before the plane nosedived onto the ridge. At least then there was a chance Ginny would have a body to bury.
“Going off-line,” Landon announced a moment before he was at Cole’s side.
“Best access is going to be that door,” Cole said.
“I agree.” Landon pulled the crowbar from the gear bag.
Kayden joined them, her beam of light bouncing off Cole’s mask before settling on the fuselage.
“Landon, you’re with me,” he instructed. “Kayden, watch the currents and how this wreckage is moving. Be ready to help lift to the surface.”
“You got it, boss.”
Cole wedged the crowbar inside the door’s seam and, bracing against the sidewall, heaved back. Heat rippled through his fingers and up his arms with the exertion. Three minutes later, the door hung open on its hinges.
A tangle of wires littered the opening. Cole set to work clearing a pathway.
He checked his dive watch. Five minutes closer to the Golden Hour the limit for cold-water drowning victims to be revived. Any longer and all hope was lost.
Not tonight. Not on his watch.
He gave Landon the go signal and entered the craft behind him, wedging his body through the opening and to the right.
Landon’s auxiliary light reflected through the water ahead. “I’ve got two. Man and woman. Strapped into their seats, right side.”
Cole didn’t recognize the couple. In a town Yancey’s size, everyone was a neighbor, so he knew most residents of his town by sight. Flying debris had left the woman with a gash on her face, and the man had taken a hard blow to the temple.
He turned the torch on his dive watch. Thirty-five minutes since the crash, another fifteen to get them to the surface, another ten to get them to the hospital . . .
“We take her out first.” Cole unclipped the seat harness and cleared the woman from her seat. “Kayden, I need you at the door ready for a lift to the surface.”
“Ready, boss.”
Cole lifted the woman’s legs as Landon lifted her shoulders. He carefully walked backward, measuring the distance to the opening by the steps he took.
“Hold here.” He lowered her legs and cautiously wedged himself out of the craft. He leaned back in. “Slowly now.” He eased the woman through the doorway. “She’s out.”
Cole held her upright as Kayden secured her for transport to the surface. Giving pressurized air to an unconscious drowning victim caused more harm than good. A fast lift to the surface and waiting emergency personnel was the best option.
He watched Kayden and the woman disappear into the darkness above, then headed back into the wreckage to rejoin Landon.
“He’s almost ready to go,” Landon said, kneeling beside the unconscious man. “You want me to lift with him?”
“Yes. As soon as Kayden is back down, you head up with him.”
Something bumped into Cole’s back, and he panned his torch around. A flash of movement caught his eye. He moved toward the rear of the fuselage and got kicked.
Someone was desperately trying to hug a pocket of air in the raised tail of the craft. “I’ve got another one conscious,” he alerted Landon.
He stepped on a plane seat, getting as high as he could. A pocket of air, no more than five inches deep, hugged the angled roof of the cabin.
An icy hand hit his face. This time he grabbed and caught it. He lifted his torch and found a pair of terrified eyes staring back at him. “I’ve got Agnes Grey!” She was standing on the headrest of the last seat, hugging an air pocket barely a hand’s width deep. He yanked his pony bottle from his vest, pulled the release to let the air flow, and wrapped her cold hand around it, guiding it to her mouth. He shoved his mask back and tilted his head to move into the air pocket so she could hear him. “Breathe slowly, and stay as still as you can. I