Wes laughed. “You’re as bad as my sisters.”

“Wait till you get to know me better.”

Wes laughed again. “Nothing, really. Just adjustment. I’m fine.”

“Oh, I’m sure of that. You wouldn’t be where you are if little things like having a new command dropped on you, transferring overnight to a new post, being put through an accelerated version of boot camp, and being charged with safeguarding POTUS threw you off.”

“Well, when you put it like that,” Wes said lightly, “I guess I am doing amazingly well.”

“We’ll see, Superdoc.” Evyn pulled the rented Jeep into the small lot beside the rescue station and cut the engine. She turned in her seat to face Wes. “If there’s something you want to talk about, I’m a pretty good listener.”

“You are. You make it easy to talk.”

The wind had picked up, and whitecaps raced across the water. Wes was studying her, in that completely focused way she had, and the attention was as exciting as the touch had been. She’d never been so aware of being alone with a woman in her life. They’d barely touched, and that had been totally innocent, but her blood sang with anticipation. She didn’t get this keyed up with a woman she was about to sleep with. Her system was primed with expectation for more than a touch, and nothing could be less likely to happen. “I hear a but coming.”

A wry smile played over Wes’s face. “Unfortunately, I think you’d probably end up ratting me out like Denny. Only not to my mother.”

Evyn wanted to deny that, but she couldn’t. “If I thought something would affect your performance, then I might have to.”

“I’d expect you to,” Wes said. “And before we go any further, I can tell you there’s nothing about this situation that bothers me. I’m fine.”

“I wasn’t looking for ammunition against you, Wes.” Evyn pulled herself back from a dangerous precipice. She’d crossed one of her own boundaries without even realizing it. Wes blurred all the lines for her between personal and professional with frightening ease, and that just couldn’t happen. “We both have jobs to do.”

“I know,” Wes said. “And since we do, I appreciate the offer to talk, but I think we’ll both do our jobs a lot better if we don’t complicate things.”

Wes was right and only repeating her own mantra—never get personally involved with someone at work. Evyn pushed open her door and a biting wind rushed in. “We’re on exactly the same page.”

*

The patrol boat rocked on the swell as the winds gathered force. The blue sky had given way to gray thunderclouds above churning seas.

“We’ve got time for one run,” Cord called from the wheel, “until things get too rough out here.”

Evyn turned to Wes, who wore civilian clothes as she would on a regular detail. She and Gary were in wetsuits. “POTUS has a sailboat, and the maritime weather reports aren’t always accurate. He could be caught out in this kind of blow. But this could get dicey.”

“Wouldn’t do much good to only train on calm seas,” Wes shouted, the wind ruffling her hair. “Let’s do it.”

Evyn waved to Cord. “Go ahead.”

Cord threw a water-rescue mannequin into the water and yelled, “Man overboard.”

Evyn and Gary clambered onto the bulwark and dove into the ocean. Even in the wetsuit, the first shock of frigid water on Evyn’s face and exposed hands and feet made her stomach tighten. She cut through the sea toward the bobbing figure, fighting the surging tides and buffeting waves. The figure alternately rode the swells and disappeared beneath the troughs. Were this the real deal, they’d only have a minute or two to reach the president, less if he went off the boat as a result of some kind of injury. The water temperature, the tide, and the rough surf created a swiftly lethal combination. She and Gary reached the mannequin at the same time, and she grabbed it in a rescue carry and started back toward the boat. Gary kept pace beside her, ready to take over and spell her if she grew too tired fighting the currents and the cold. When they reached the side of the patrol boat, Wes and Cord lowered a litter over the side, and she and Gary secured the figure inside. Gary tugged on the line to signal they were ready, and the litter swung away and up. Evyn scrambled up the ladder with Gary right behind. By the time they reached the deck, Wes was already in full resuscitation mode, kneeling on the soaked surface, rapidly running through the emergency assessment protocol, the field-and-trauma bag beside her, Cord acting as her first assistant.

Jeff tossed Evyn a towel, and she rubbed water from her hair, watching Wes work. Every time she’d seen Wes in action, she’d been struck by the way Wes gave everything her full attention, her all, a hundred percent of the time. Evyn spent her days with powerful people, and she wasn’t easily impressed, but that kind of fierce focus was incredibly exciting to watch. Wes issued orders without looking up from her patient, calm, sure, utterly in command. Wes personalized power in a way she’d never experienced before, and watching her, Evyn couldn’t help but imagine what that kind of potent focus would feel like turned on her in an intimate moment. Her skin beneath the tight neoprene suit pebbled with excitement, and heat bloomed in the pit of her stomach. She’d rarely been the recipient of physical attention even half as forceful and was always content to take the lead in bed. Satisfying a woman was incredibly gratifying, and she hadn’t been looking for more. A calm and quiet orgasm was just fine—only when she imagined being with Wes Masters, there was nothing calm or quiet about it. She felt the weight of Wes’s body pinning her down, Wes’s hands exploring her—not asking permission, her consent readily given. Her blood raced with the urge to open, to be known, to surrender. Nothing familiar about any of it, but so right. So damn right.

Beside her, Gary cleared his throat. She shot him a look. He was staring at her.

“What?”

“You looked…mesmerized. Where’d you go?”

“Nowhere.” Evyn was glad her face was already red from the wind and the water, because heat rose through her. “Just watching the exercise.”

“Ha ha. Watching a lot more than that.”

“Shut up, Brown.”

He laughed. “She’s really pretty hot.”

“Will you shut up,” Evyn said through her teeth. Gary had a wife and three kids and was one of the few people on the detail who never fooled around, married or not. She didn’t pass judgment on those who did. When you spent days on end, week after week, with the same people in the tensest situations imaginable, doing things you couldn’t tell your friends and family, letting off steam together was only natural. Sometimes letting off steam took the shape of sweaty groping in a hotel room in some city on the way to or from the next point on a map.

“Just saying,” Gary said.

“Well, don’t.”

The beat of helicopter rotors cut through the howling wind, and a Coast Guard medevac chopper appeared overhead.

“Transport’s here,” she called.

“One minute!” Wes pulled a neck immobilizer from her bag and eased it behind the figure’s neck.

Evyn switched radio channels and advised the helicopter to lower their Stokes basket. The helo rocked above them in the wind, and the metal-mesh toboggan swung back and forth like a pendulum on its cables as it descended from the open belly. She and Gary went forward to guide the basket down.

“How does it look?” she asked Wes.

“First stage hypothermia, potential head and neck injury from impact on the water, and possible aspiration. His neck is stable, we’ve got the thermal blankets on, and I’ve started antibiotics. He needs a CAT scan upon arrival.”

“Can we transfer?”

Wash kicked up from the rotors and sprayed Wes’s back and face. She blinked the water away. “He’s ready.”

Evyn signaled the chopper to continue lowering the Stokes. A sharp gust of wind nearly knocked her off her feet. The chopper dipped and rose sharply, canting in the shifting air currents. A crack like a rifle shot cut through the air and the rear cable securing the basket snapped. The metal toboggan came crashing down. Evyn lunged for the flailing cable end as Wes crouched over the mannequin, shielding the figure from the careening basket. The end of the madly swinging metal carrier sliced the air, struck Wes in the shoulder, and knocked her out of the boat.

For one millisecond Evyn was completely paralyzed. The deck where Wes had knelt was empty. The surface of the sea was nothing but angry water. Wes was gone.

Evyn jumped up on the bulwark and dove over the side.

Chapter Eighteen

The world spun crazily upside down. The light flickered rapidly and finally blinked out and all that was left was cold. Only pain and blood-stopping cold. Unseen hands dragged Wes deeper beneath the icy mantle, into a blackness that extinguished the last glimmer of illumination. Instinctively, she held her breath, struggling to orient herself in the surreal landscape of shock and panic. Her left arm wouldn’t obey her. She kicked and flailed but her water-filled boots and sodden jeans weighed her down. Up and down held no meaning—she revolved in a world without substance. Her animal brain fled from the freezing darkness, away from the primeval terror engulfing her. Primitive reflexes kicked in, and she fought to return to the last place she’d felt light and heat. The surface.

She struggled upward, her chest burning, the pain so huge she hungered to suck in air to soothe the flames. She clamped her teeth shut, finally recognizing the water that entombed her, water that would provide no air, only sudden and swift death. With only her right arm and her clumsy legs to power her, she flailed and kicked and writhed her way toward the shimmer of light penetrating the gloom. Despair squeezed her throat closed.