She knew the tides by heart thanks to the Northern California Tidelog, her bible. Although she’d committed the book to memory, she read for fun daily, a compulsion she couldn’t stop. Today she had minimum tide ebb and flood with hopefully no current—optimum working conditions where she wanted to dive.

Despite Blythe’s concerns, Rikki really did consider safety paramount. Rikki stowed her wet suit and gear in the truck along with her spare gear. Divers—especially Rikki—generally kept a spare of every piece of equipment on the boat on hand just to be safe, in an airtight locked container that she checked periodically to make sure it was in working order. Moments later she was driving toward Port Albion Harbor, humming along to a Joley Drake CD. The rather famous Drake family lived in the small town of Sea Haven. The Drakes were friends with her sisters, particularly Blythe and Lexi, but Rikki had never actually talked to any of them—especially not Joley. She loved Joley’s voice and didn’t want to chance making social mistakes around her.

Strangely, she’d never been bothered by others’ opinions of her. Friendships were too difficult to manage. She had to work too hard to fit in, to find the right things to say, so it was easier just to be herself and not care what people thought of her. But with someone she admired—like Joley—she was taking no chances. Better to just keep her distance entirely.

Rikki sang along as she drove down the highway, occasionally glancing at the ocean. The water shimmered like jewels, beckoning to her—offering the peace she so badly needed. She’d had a few months’ reprieve from her nightmares, but now they were back with a vengeance, coming nearly every night. The pattern was familiar, an affliction she’d suffered many times over the years. The only thing she could do was weather the storm.

Fire had destroyed her family when she was thirteen. Definitely arson, the firefighters had said. A year and six months later, a fire had destroyed the foster home she was staying in. No one had died, but the fire had been set.

The third fire had taken her second foster home on her sixteenth birthday. She had awakened, her heart pounding, unable to breathe, already choking on smoke and fear. She’d crawled on her hands and knees to the other rooms, waking the occupants, alerting them. Everyone had escaped, but the house and everything inside had been lost.