Zack knew what Nick had wanted to ask. And he did want to. It might be best for both of them if they talked it through. “We were off of Bermuda when we got the distress call. We were the closest ship, and the captain had to make a choice. We turned back into the hurricane. Three civilians in a pleasure boat. They’d been thrown off course and hadn’t been able to make it to shore before the storm hit.”

Saying nothing, Nick sat on the arm of the couch so that he was facing his brother.

“Seventy-five knot winds, and the seas—they must have been forty feet. I’ve been through a hurricane after it’s made landfall. It can be bad, real bad, but it’s nothing like it is when it’s at sea. You don’t know scared until you see something like that. Hear something like that. The lieutenant took a rap on the head, it put him out. We came close to losing some of the crew over the side. Sometimes it was black, so black you couldn’t see your own hands—but you could see that water rising up. Then the lightning would hit, and blind you.”

“How were you supposed to find them in all that?”

“We had them on radar. The quartermaster could’ve slipped that ship through the crack of dawn. He was good. We spotted them, thirty degrees off to starboard. They’d tied the kid—little girl—to the main mast. The man and woman were fighting to keep it afloat, but they were taking on water fast. We had time. I remember thinking we could pull it off. Then the mast cracked. I thought I heard the girl scream, but it was probably the wind, because she went under pretty quick. So I went in.”

“You went in?” Nick repeated, wide-eyed. “You jumped in the water?”

“I was over the side before I thought about it. I wasn’t being a hero, I just didn’t think. Believe me, if I had…” He let the words trail off, then swallowed the rest of the whiskey. “It was like jumping off a skyscraper. You don’t think you’re ever going to stop falling. It was end over end, forever, giving you plenty of time to realize you’ve just killed yourself. It was stupid—if the wind had been wrong it would have just smashed me against the side of the ship. But I was lucky, and it tossed me toward the boat. Then I hit. God, it was like ramming full-length into concrete.”

He hadn’t known until later that he’d snapped his collarbone and dislocated his left shoulder.