Chapter 36: Harbor Rescue

The storm came in off the sea at four in the morning, and the harbor siren went at ten past.

Dante was on the east pier before it stopped.

He wore an oilskin coat and a plain cap, and he had no gun.

The Whitfield berths were his now, bought outright from the court for a fair price.

Where the cots and rifles had been, there was a long white shed with a red cross on the door.

A hand-painted sign above it said HARBOR RESCUE, and under it, smaller, the one word nobody had asked for: Rossi.

"Fishing boat, six crew, aground on the north breakwater," a man shouted.

"Launch both boats," Dante said.

The old family speedboats, which had carried rifles for sixty years, went out into the black water with lifelines and blankets.

Dante went in the first one.

The spray hit him in the face, and the wind took the shouting out of his mouth.

He did not feel fear.

He felt the steady attention he had learned in a dissecting hall.

It was the same quiet that had come over him with a tray between him and Javier.

The fishing boat lay on its side against the breakwater with a green light still burning.

Four men clung to the rail.

Two were in the water.

Dante went over the side with a line.

He got a boy of twenty by the collar, and then a heavier man, and passed them up to the hands above.

The last one he pulled out himself, a gray-bearded captain with his arm bent the wrong way.

By the time the boats came in, the sky was pale over the water.

On the pier, under the shed's bright lamp, Javier knelt beside a stretcher in a green jacket.

A medical bag lay open at his knee.

Javier looked up.

His hair was plastered flat, his glasses were fogged, and his hands were already moving.

"Who's first?" Dante called.

Keep reading free with an account. Start He Died for His Lover, Then Returned to Win His Trust from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.