Page 102 of Finding Elodie
But all through her panicked retreat from the shark, the dolphins had stayed nearby. When she finally got her bearings and realized she’d been swimming in the wrong direction, away from Oahu instead of toward it, she wanted to cry once more.
With the waning light and approaching storm, it was getting harder and harder to see Diamond Head. In the dark, she’d have no idea which way to go, she’d be completely lost. Not only that, but she’d begun to shiver. The water off the coast of Hawaii was warm, but it was far below her normal body temperature. Swimming had helped keep her warm, but the chill was seeping into her bones more and more.
One of the dolphins swam close enough that Elodie could reach out and barely touch its rubbery-smooth skin. Her earlier thought that maybe a dolphin would let her latch onto it and take her into shore sprang to mind once more. She envisioned herself making friends with the things, like the boy in the movie Free Willy did with the killer whale.
“Find Scott,” she found herself telling the mammal. “Go tell him where I am. But you’re gonna have to be fast. I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out. I’m trying, but I hate the ocean. No offense.”
The dolphin didn’t reply, but it did nudge her hand before sinking below the surface once more.
Elodie turned over onto her back and stared up at the sky. She couldn’t see any stars, partly because it wasn’t quite dark enough yet but also because clouds were quickly moving in.
Closing her eyes, Elodie bobbed up and down in the waves and let her mind wander. She tried to remember every moment she’d spent with Scott. The good times and the bad. If she was going to die, she was going to do it with the man she loved on her mind.
Chapter Twenty-One
Mustang stood at the bow of the boat and strained his eyes to see something. Anything. It had taken way too long to not only get the information they needed to get a starting point for their search, but also to get Aleck’s friend’s boat.
The Coast Guard had been called, and they had boats out looking, but so far hadn’t had luck in finding Elodie. Mustang knew, after hearing Kai’s story about being shot and how the man after her was firing at Elodie from the boat, that the Coasties thought there wasn’t much chance of finding her. But he’d never give up. She was out there, counting on him to find her.
The police had immediately tried to check the GPS system on the Fish Tales, but had found it shot all to hell. Whoever had shot Kai and been sent to kill Elodie wasn’t as dumb as Mustang had hoped.
But Perry had quickly come to their rescue when they’d called to give him the news. He’d retrieved the day’s data from his computer and passed the information to the SEALs…but when Mustang had seen where the Fish Tales had been that morning, he realized the search for Elodie wasn’t going to be quick and easy. There was a lot of ground to cover, too much. Knowing she was out there somewhere, and needed his help, was almost too much for Mustang to take.
It was Slate who had calmed him down, which was ironic, considering the man was the most impatient out of everyone on the team.
“We’re gonna find her,” Slate had said.
Desperate for reassurance, Mustang had asked, “Do you really think she’s alive?”
“Yes,” Slate had said without hesitation. “Because I’ve never seen anyone have such an instant connection like the two of you. At first I was skeptical, but now I understand it’s because you two were meant to be together. There’s no fucking way you found something so special, so rare, only to lose her now.”
His words had comforted Mustang then, but now he was completely and wholly focused on the ocean in front of him. The Coast Guard had recommended they not go out because of the approaching storm, but his team had ignored the warnings. They were fucking Navy SEALs, there was no way they were scared of the ocean. Besides, if Elodie was out there, and had been all day, they all knew it was unlikely she’d last through the night.
Mustang held a high-powered spotlight used mostly by law enforcement. Jag was holding another as he stood next to him, searching as well. They scanned the waves in front of them as Pid and Aleck searched the water on either side of the boat. Slate was in the back doing the same. Midas was driving, plowing through the waves as if they weren’t even there.
The rain fell almost sideways, pelting the boat and its occupants, but Mustang didn’t even feel it. He was soaked to the bone, but merely blinked the water out of his eyes when it interfered with his sight.
They’d studied the coordinates Perry had retrieved from the GPS data and charted a distance about five miles from the Pinnacle, where they’d said they’d be fishing. Then they’d gone to Penguin Bank and the boat had been idle there for about forty-five minutes before making a beeline for the shore…more than an hour before the boat should have docked at noon.
The surveillance cameras at the Ko Olina Marina had shown a single man leaving the Fish Tales after haphazardly parking the boat. He hadn’t even pulled into a slip, had just pulled up to the end of the dock and wrapped the rope around the light pole. Officers were working on tracking where the man had gone from there, but Mustang knew where he was headed. Back to New York.
Pid had identified him as Andrew Ferry, one of Paul’s capos. There had been no record of him leaving New York, but he was obviously using a false name to travel under. Kai had called him “Steven.”
Slate hadn’t said much about his phone call with the infamous Tex, except to relay the man was “on it.”
At the moment, Mustang couldn’t think about anything past finding Elodie. They’d deal with the Columbus family once he had her back safe and sound. The alternative, that he wouldn’t be able to find her, was unthinkable and unacceptable.
But the longer they went back and forth in a grid pattern in the area where the last coordinates had shown the Fish Tales to be, and where it was likely Kai had been shot and Elodie had jumped overboard, the more stressed Mustang got.
“Come on, where are you?” he muttered, knowing he wouldn’t be heard over the sound of the engine, the wind, and rain. His eyes strained to pick out even the smallest thing that was out of place.
Then something moved off to his left.
Mustang swung the light around and watched as a dolphin leaped out of one wave, into another. It did it again…or maybe it was a second dolphin, Mustang wasn’t sure. It wasn’t unusual to see dolphins in the ocean, but these weren’t playing at the bow of the boat or in their wake. They seemed to be traveling the same speed as the boat.
Mustang couldn’t take his eyes off the animals. He’d always enjoyed watching the dolphins play, but there seemed to be more to their actions than jumping through the boat’s waves. But then again, he could be imagining things.
For a split second, the boat rose to the top of a wave before crashing down—but that was all it took for Mustang to see something else. Something that made his heart almost stop in his chest.
