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But not completely

Not until he had soed the door open and caught his BlackBerry as it rattled across the bottom of the ers closed on it, the vibration ceased He’dand frowned It was not Painter Crowe

The screen read: R Trypol

He had alence

The captain had been overseeing the salvage operations at the Indonesian island of Pusat He had a report due today on his assess the sunken cruise ship, the Mistress of the Seas He had two navy sub area

But Gray had a more personal interest in the search

The island of Pusat here his friend and partner, Monk Kokkalis, had last been seen, spotted as he was dragged under the sea by a weighted net, tangled and caught Captain Trypol had agreed to look for Monk’s body The captain was a good friend and for, Gray had gone over to the National Mariti to hear any word He had been rebuffed, told to wait until after the full debriefing It hy he had been stor back here, prepared to demand that the director pressure the navy

Flushed with a twinge of guilt for having set aside his cause, Gray hit the callback button and lifted the phone to his ear As he waited for the connection to NMIC, he sank to a bench and stared at the locker on the opposite side Written in black marker across a strip of duct tape was the nah Monk was surely dead, no one wanted to remove the tape It was a silent hope If only sustained by Gray

He owed his friend

Monk had cliside Gray His friend had been recruited from the Green Berets at the same time as Gray had been pulled from Leavenworth prison, where he’d been incarcerated after striking a superior officer during his stint with the Arers They had becoma Monk stood only a few inches over five feet, a shaven-headed pit bull compared to Gray’s taller, leaner physique But the true difference lay deeper thansteel of Gray’s heart If not for Monk’s friendship, Gray would have certainly washed out of Sigers

As he waited, Gray pictured his forether over the years Monk bore the puckered bullet wounds and scars to prove it He had even lost his left hand during one mission, replaced with a prosthetic one As he sat, Gray could still hear the barking bellow of Monk’s laugh…or the quiet intensity of his voice, revealing the enius-level IQ, disciplined in forensic e and vital be gone? Without a trace?

The phone finally clicked in his ear "Captain Ron Trypol," a stern voice answered

"Captain, it’s Gray Pierce"

"Ah, Commander Good I had hoped to reach you this afternoon I don’t have "

Gray already heard the dire overtones "Captain?"

"I’ll get to the point I’ve been ordered to call off the search"

"What?"

"We were able to recover twenty-two bodies Dental records show none of them to be your man"

"Only twenty-two?" Even by conservative estimates, that was only a small fraction of the dead

"I know, Commander But recovery efforts were already hampered by the extreoon is riddled with caverns and lava tubes, led mazes"

"Still, with--"

"Como A good man with a fa the ache of that loss

"To search the caves only risks more men And for what?"

Gray remained silent

"Commander Pierce, I assues?"

Gray sighed

To gain the captain’s cooperation, he had related the one e he had received…or possibly received It had occurred weeks after Monk had vanished Following the events that occurred at the island, the only piece of his friend to be salvaged had been his prosthetic hand, a state-of-the-art piece of biotechnology built by DARPA engineers, which included a built-in wireless radio interface While transporting the diseun to tap out a weak SOS It had lasted only a few seconds--and only Gray had heard it Then it had gone silent Technicians had exalitch The hand’s digital log showed no inco host-in-the-ive up--even as week after week passed

"Commander?" Trypol said

"No," Gray admitted sullenly "There’s been no further word"

Trypol paused, then spoke more slowly "Then perhaps it’s time to lay this to rest, Coes "And what about Kat? Your man’s wife What does she have to say about all this?"

It was a sore point Gray wished he’d never mentioned it to her But how could he not? Monk was her husband; they had a little girl together, Penelope Still,to do Kat had listened to Gray’s story with a stoic expression She stood in her black funeral dress, rarief She kneas a thin lifeline, only a frail hope She had glanced to Penelope in the car seat of the black limousine, then back to Gray She didn’t say a word, only shook her head once She could not grasp that lifeline She could not survive losing Monk a second tiile And she had Penelope to consider, her own piece of Monk True flesh and blood Not some phantoation on his own He had not spoken to Kat since that day It was a silent, mutual pact between them She did not want to hear from him until the h, spent several afternoons with Kat and the baby Hisabout the SOS, but she had sensed that so with Kat

Haunted, that was how his mother had described Kat

And Gray knehat haunted her