More Than a Man. Rebecca York

      Award-winning, bestselling novelist Ruth Glick, who writes as Rebecca York, is the author of more than one hundred books, including her popular 43 LIGHT STREET series for Intrigue. Ruth says she has the best job in the world. Not only does she get paid for telling stories; she’s also the author of twelve cookbooks. Ruth and her husband, Norman, travel frequently, researching locales for her novels and searching out new dishes for her cookbooks.

Chapter One

      “We’re too late. They’re all dead.”

      The words drifted toward Noah Fielding as though they were part of a dream. Or a nightmare.

      An all-too-familiar nightmare.

      Other people spoke around him, the sounds reaching him in a confused babble.

      As he hovered in a twilight zone between life and death, paralysis held him in a viselike grip. He couldn’t move. Not even twitch a finger. He knew he wasn’t breathing because a terrible weight pressed against his chest holding his lungs immobile. His limbs might have been sunk into cement.

      Don’t panic. You know you can get through this. Don’t panic. He repeated the words over and over in his mind, fighting to ground himself.

      A commanding voice cut through the shock and confusion around him.

      “Get them out of there.”

      The order came from…

      Noah should know the man’s name. He tried to call it up, but his mind had turned into a pool of treacle.

      He felt hands on his body tug him. Someone grabbed him under the arms and pulled him from the experimental submarine, then laid him on the metal deck of the…

      Again, he drew a blank.

      He could feel hot sun on his face and the boat rocking under his body. More sensations.

      “Get the doc.”

      “It’s too late for that.”

      His mind struggled to make connections. What language were the men speaking?

      Farsi? Eighteenth-century French? Russian?

      As they spoke, the words fell into a recognizable pattern. The men were speaking English. Late twentieth century. Or maybe twenty-first.

      Twenty-first century. Yes. That was the time period. He remembered that now. And he clutched at the fact.

      Were they speaking of a doc or a dock?

      A sudden coughing fit shattered his concentration.

      All around him he heard excited exclamations.

      “Fielding’s alive.”

      Noah’s eyes blinked open and he stared up into the face of…Ken Dupont. The doctor. The doc.

      When Noah struggled to sit up, the man put a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t move.”

      He tried to speak and was caught in another coughing fit as his lungs struggled to function again.

      Someone else spoke. “When we lost communication, we thought you were all dead. How did you get the sub out of there?” Captain Sampson was asking the question, his voice sharp. He was the one who had given the orders before.

      Noah focused on him. “I…” Again he started coughing, cutting off his explanation. But the whole picture was coming back to him now.

      He was ninety miles off the coast of Grand Cayman Island, on a scientific exploration ship—Neptune’s Promise. The mission was to test an experimental submarine called The Fortune.

      This was the second day of diving. He and three other men had gone down into the 25,000-foot trench off the island. Everything had been fine, until Eddie Carlson had gotten over-enthusiastic and maneuvered them into a passage between two rock formations—where the sub had gotten stuck. They’d tried everything they could to get out. But the craft wouldn’t budge and they were running out of air.

      There was no other submarine in the area that could dive so deeply. Nobody who could rescue them.

      When the rest of the crew had passed out from lack of oxygen, Noah had willed himself to stay conscious. He’d staggered to the controls and made one last desperate attempt to free the machine. He remembered silently saying a prayer to any god who would listen as he backed up and rammed forward, like the driver of a car stuck in snow. Apparently the maneuver had freed them.

      After that, everything was pretty fuzzy. But he must have set a course for the surface, because the sub had made it up here. Only it sounded like it had been too late for the rest of the crew.

      Damn. They were all good men. Dead because he’d dragged them down there with him.

      He caught himself up short