“Back on the boat, lass.” Exertion chopped up Lachlan’s words.
She held up her hands, and a crewman tossed her the ring. “One more.”
Headstrong lass, but brave. Lachlan’s breath came hard, and he drew up to the motorboat. “He’s unconscious.”
“Aye, sir.” The men wrapped their hands around Billy’s wrists and heaved the lad on board.
Lachlan swam toward Cilla.
Jamie had abandoned the wreckage. He splashed in the water, crying out, his panic understandable in the circumstances—but deadly dangerous.
“Cilla! I’ll get Jamie.” Lachlan swam harder to catch up. “Get back to the boat.”
She turned to him, her hair plastered to her head, then to Jamie, who floundered toward her. Her eyes widened, and she passed the ring to Lachlan.
“Smart lass.” Lachlan stretched the life ring toward Jamie. “Take the ring, Jamie. Dinnae come to me. Take the ring.”
“I—I cannae hold it.”
Lachlan edged away from the lad’s flailing limbs. “You can. I willnae let you drown.”
Jamie plunged one arm through the ring, his eyes wild.
“Haul him in!” Lachlan yelled. “I’ll stay with you, lad.”
The crewmen dragged Jamie toward the boat. Lachlan swam six feet away, close enough to help, but not close enough for Jamie to grab.
One of the fishermen leaned over the side of the boat and pulled Cilla on board, and Lachlan released a shivering sigh of relief.
The crewmen lifted Jamie from the water. One guided the lad down to the cabin, and the other extended his arms down to Lachlan.
Lachlan clamped his hands about the man’s forearms and let him haul him onto the deck like a flopping fish—a fish banging his ribs on the gunwale.
Lachlan sat up, pressed his hand to his ribs, and a great shivering took hold of him. “Full speed to Brough.”
“Aye, aye, sir.”
He swung his legs down into the forward cabin and entered. Billy and Jamie Gunn lay together on the floor under the blanket. “How’s Billy?”
“He took a knock on the head,” Jock said, “but I dinnae see other injuries.”
“And you?” Lachlan said.
Jock sat in an upholstered chair with one of the crewmen’s greatcoats around him, and he stuck out one foot. “A gash on my leg.”
“Any other injuries, men?” Lachlan wrenched off his necktie and unbuttoned his shirt—it wouldn’t keep him warm anyway.
“Naught but cuts and bruises,” an older man said, his gray hair silvered by seawater.
“Good.” After Lachlan wrung water from his shirt, he picked his way to Jock past the Gunn lads and all the men’s feet. Cilla didn’t look up as he passed. “Are you all right, lass?”
She hunkered low with Lachlan’s service jacket around her.
He squeezed her slender shoulder but continued on his way. He squatted before Jock and ripped the man’s trousers away from the injury. “What happened to your boat? What did you see?”
“We were all on deck except Sandy.” Jock’s voice broke. “He never came up.”
Lachlan murmured in sympathy, but he needed information. “Did you see a periscope, a torpedo track?”
