Zain squeezed her hand. “Easy, sweetheart. You’re fading.”
“Wait.” Bodie clicked on some keys, his voice drawing her back. “I missed one.”
He shoved the laptop back over, the image filling the screen. Dark hair, a square jaw, with narrow set eyes, the resemblance stole what little breath she’d managed. Had the room spinning for a different reason.
“Saylor?”
Zain’s voice sounded distant, as if he’d wandered into another room. She glanced over at him, mouth slightly open, nothing but a frantic rasp making it past the lump in her throat. She stared at the photo, then back at Zain, praying he put it all together.
Zain nodded, then focused on Bodie. “That’s him, Bodie. Who is he?”
Bodie reclaimed the computer, breaking that invisible hold the photo had over her as he tapped on some keys. “Eric Vasquez. Graduated from MIT with an Electrical Engineering and Computer Science degree. Went on to get a masters in Ocean Engineering. He’s worked for a number of research companies, but there’s not much on the surface for the past few years before he popped up on theVigilant. But now that I have a name, I can dig deeper.”
Saylor stared at the table, the guy’s name ringing in her head. She hadn’t imagined it. He’d been on the ship. Which meant, all those flashes were likely real, too. The men. The footsteps. The gunfire — that sound.
Zain squeezed her hand. “Saylor? Are you okay?”
She managed to lift her gaze. “I…”
The chair shot back as she pushed to her feet, Zain catching the arm before it clattered to the floor. He dragged it to the side, following her when she took a few hurried steps back.
He moved in close. “We’ll figure this out.”
“How is he alive?” She glanced at the image over Bodie’s shoulder. “How was he on that salvage ship when he died a year ago on theVigilant?”
“I don’t know, but we won’t stop until we have the answers. I promise you.”
“TheVigilantwent down.”
He merely nodded.
“There’s no way it didn’t sink. It was dead in the water. There were waves crashing over the bow. Massive downflooding. Hell, the welds on hull were singing.” She pushed her fingers through her hair. “It was only a matter of time before it cracked.”
Zain tilted his head. “You remember?”
The memories came hard and fast, tripping over each other as they slammed into her head. She pinched the bridge of her nose, trying to grasp onto one coherent thought, but it all faded beneath the echo of that sound. The punishing weight of the truth.
She let her head tilt back, exhaustion eating at her resolve. “It’s gone.”
“Don’t push it. The fact you remembered more is promising.”
She shook her head. “I can’t… What if he’s not the only one? What if others made it off that ship?”
Zain took her hand in his. “Between what youremember, and the fact Vasquez was alive and on that salvage ship, suggests a much darker scenario.”
She glanced around at his teammates, reading the same dire expression on their faces. “You think someone sank it on purpose.”
“I think you were never supposed to survive.”
She rubbed the back of her neck. “This is insane.”
“But you’re not.”
She smiled at the way he grinned at her. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. I could still be batshit crazy.”
Kash chuckled as he placed his elbows on the table. “You fell for Zain. That’s a given.”
Zain rolled his eyes. “Ignore him. He’s grumpy when he doesn’t get his beauty sleep.”
