Worry flickered through me, but I had to focus. “Grant and I need to go out and throw a tow to the fishing boat while Bryan communicates with the crew!”
Grant’s bleak expression matched my own as we braced ourselves to go out on deck.
Heather’s, Angus’s, and Taran’s faces flashed before my eyes as Bryan reached for the door.
Please. Please let me come home to them.
39.Taran
Even though we all knew to hunker down and stay inside during a storm, it wasn’t long after Quinn left that the doorbell rang and a shivering, soaked Cammie stood on the porch. She’d gotten drenched just walking from her car to the front door.
The wind whistled through the trees around Quinn’s house as Cammie hurried inside, and the wind pushed forcefully against the door as I closed it.
It was unimaginable that Quinn was out in the North Sea in this.
“I heard.” Cammie shrugged off her raincoat, blue eyes dark with fear. “Forde and Quinn are on the lifeboat. There’s a fishing boat in trouble down by Islay.”
My gaze darted toward the living room. “How do you know?”
“They asked Ramsay to man the station. Tierney’s with him. She called me. I said I’d tell you. Taran, the winds are raging at a hundred miles per hour.”
“We can’t.” My stomach was sick with dread. “The kids … we can’t worry them.”
Cammie nodded. “Okay. Then we need to distract them instead.”
Two hours later, I didn’t know how much more acting I could do in front of Heather and Angus. There was no word. The storm had grown more violent. And it was too much. After everything I’d lost … it was too much. The only thing tethering me, stopping me from racing out of Quinn’s house in a flight of sheer panic, were his children. Heather and Angus had grown quiet, and I knew they weren’t paying attention to the comedy movie Cammie had put on.
“It’s really bad, isn’t it?” Angus said suddenly, his lower lip trembling.
“No, my darling, it’s not.” Cammie put her arm around him, far better at acting than I was as she cuddled her nephew into her side. “The electricity hasn’t even gone out.”
That was true.
I clung to that.
For a whole hour.
Until the house abruptly plunged into darkness. Angus cried out seconds before machinery sounded and the lights popped back on.
The generator had kicked in.
“Is it bad now?” Angus whispered.
40.Quinn
Our data showed the waves had reached a height of eight meters while we were out there. Grant and I had managed to throw the fishing boat a line. The plan was to tow them into safer waters and then have them board the lifeboat. We were only doing around two and a half knots with the fishing boat attached to us. Then Forde had appeared at the stairs from the engine room, sweaty and frantic. “We just suddenly hit five knots.”
Fuck.
It could only mean one thing.
Grant and I rushed out onto the wet deck, our hearts sinking when we realized the tow line had snapped with the violent pull of the waves. Battered by sea spray and winds, we somehow managed to throw a second tow before we made it safely back inside.
Bryan called to us. “Wind speed is starting to drop!”
“Then call the coast guard! We need urgent helicopter assistance! There’s no way we can keep this up. We need that crew off that boat—now!”
Bryan nodded and picked up his radio.
