Part 2
“We hear you,” Rowan shouted into the opening. “I need you to stay where the air is. What’s your name?”
The answer broke apart under a surge of water against the hatch. Rowan caught the second attempt.
“Evan. Evan Shaw.”
“Evan, I’m Rowan. My partner’s Vic. Rescue is coming, but we’re going to help you now. Is your wife awake?”
“Claire’s awake. Her shoulder—she can’t use her left arm. Loose belt webbing is looped around her hips and pinched under the back seat frame.”
A woman coughed inside the vehicle. The sound was close and thin.
Vic redialed dispatch, put the call on speaker, and gave the dispatcher the new information. Her voice was calm without being casual. A swift-water crew was launching from the public ramp downstream; the washed approach blocked the shortest road route, but an ambulance was staging at the old mill landing. She asked whether the vehicle was moving, how much glass remained above water, and whether Rowan could see an air pocket.
“Maybe ten inches at the upper hatch,” he said. “Less when it rocks.”
“Do not enter the water,” she said. “Keep contact with the occupants if you can. The rescue boat is approximately twelve minutes out.”
Twelve minutes was an honest estimate. Rowan respected that more than a promise. He also watched the water lick another inch over the hatch seam.
“Evan, listen to me. Is there a child in the vehicle?”
“No child. Just us.”
Claire said something Rowan could not make out. Evan answered her, his voice changing in a way that made the exchange feel private even through steel and water. There was a pause.
“Say it again,” he told her.
“She’s pregnant,” Evan called. The words came out stripped of everything except fact. “Seven weeks. She told me after we went in.”
Rowan looked at Vic. The older man was already pulling two extra life jackets from beneath the center bench and laying them beside the boat hook for Claire and Evan.
“We are not pulling that car with this boat,” he said. “And you are not diving through a broken window.”
“Did I say I was?”
“You’ve been saying it with your shoulders since we got here.”
The dispatcher heard them. “Sir, the safest help you can provide is to keep the boat stable and maintain communication.”
“Understood,” Vic said.
Rowan studied the upper hatch. Most of the glass remained beneath the surface, but the upper right corner rose clear each time the vehicle settled back against the abutment. A maker’s mark near that corner carried the word TEMPERED. If they could break it and clear the opening, Evan might push Claire into reach. Might.
Rowan knew glass. He replaced windows in guide boats, side glass in pickups, and once the windshield of Vic’s bass boat after a tow strap hook came loose. In the waterproof tool roll beneath the stern seat, he kept a spring-loaded center punch meant for marking metal before drilling. He also knew the river could turn a workable idea into an obituary before a man finished explaining it.
“Vic, hold her there. Keep us a foot off the hatch.”
“What are you doing?”
“Making them an exit.”
“That glass drops inward, they get cut. You knock the vehicle loose, it goes under.”
“It’s already going under.”
The crossover shifted with a grinding jolt. Marlow flung himself against the crate. Inside the vehicle, Claire cried out and Evan began hammering on the hatch in a fast, unplanned rhythm.
“Evan,” Rowan yelled. “Stop hitting. Tell me what changed.”
“The back moved. Water’s at her mouth when it lifts.”
Rowan reached for the tool roll. Vic caught his wrist, pressing the faded blue cord between their gloves.
“Look at me,” Vic said.
Rowan tried to pull free. Vic held on. Rowan’s hand went still.
“Danny had nothing to do with this car.”
For a moment the river at Miller’s Ford vanished. Rowan saw a narrower bend fifteen years earlier, a sycamore limb bouncing in cold runoff and his sixteen-year-old brother’s fingers slipping one by one. He heard Vic’s younger voice through a bad phone connection telling him not to go in, that the volunteer truck was almost there.
“Let go.”
“Not until you hear me. You want to save those people, then do the next useful thing. You want to drown beside them so you never have to wonder whether you tried hard enough, that’s a different job.”
Vic released him. He looped a short dock line through the jon boat’s built-in grab point as a handhold, then moved a long cam-buckle strap, the extra PFDs, blanket bag, and boat hook within reach.
“I’ll hold us here,” he said. “You warn them. One strike at the top corner. If it doesn’t granulate, you stop. If the car moves, you stop. If I say back off, you back off.”
“And if the water covers the hatch?”
Vic looked at the inch of black glass still breathing above the river.
“Then we change the plan before the river changes it for us.”
Rowan tightened his PFD, pulled on heavier work gloves, and opened the tool roll. The center punch was no longer than a pen.
He slid onto the forward bench and told Evan what he intended to do. Evan was to move Claire as far toward the opposite side of the cargo area as the belt allowed, cover both their faces, and wait for three strikes on the roof. When Rowan broke the glass, Evan would put the spare life jacket on Claire before trying to move her through the hatch.
“Can you cut the webbing?” Rowan asked.
“Nothing sharp. I can feel where it’s pinched under the frame, but I can’t get the angle.”
Rowan took a guarded seat-belt cutter from the first-aid kit and looked at the narrow quarter-window gap. Too small for his forearm. The upper hatch would have to give him enough room to pass the tool inside.
“We’ll cut it from out here.”
“Rowan,” the dispatcher said through Vic’s phone, “the rescue boat is eight minutes away.”
Eight minutes. The crossover sank another fraction of an inch. The remaining air hissed through the broken quarter window, carrying the smell of wet upholstery and a woman’s frightened breathing.
Rowan raised the boat-hook handle and knocked three times. Inside, Evan answered twice. Ready…
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