Free Warrior (Navy SEALs Romance Book 5) by Rachel Hanna Page A

out of sheer gratitude that the news chopper pilot was willing to help him out instead of try to get aerial footage for the news desk. He’d have to remember to send him a bottle of whiskey as thanks. Every so often, he tried her cell phone again - texting, calling, even attempting to FaceTime her in case it alerted her with a different ringtone - but she never answered. With every passing minute, he became more and more certain that she was the missing passenger, but there was a part of him that had to wonder if she just didn’t want to hear from him.
    When they touched down on the roof of the television station’s ten-story building downtown, Mike shouted his thanks to the pilot and bolted from his seat in the cockpit. He tore across the small tarmac and threw open the door to the stairs, leaping down them a few at a time. He finally made his way outside and punched in the app for an Uber ride, intent on getting to the university and finding out where she had been headed.
    Along the way, he Googled everything he could about local research projects. Only a handful even sounded like the kind of work Emily had vaguely described. One particular project on shrimp triggered a memory of a conversation from their very first train wreck of a date.
    “Hey, do you know where the science building is?” Mike asked a cluster of students as they approached. The first few students shrugged, but others were more helpful. “I’m looking for Dr. Stanton’s office, she teaches...biology, or something.”
    “Yeah, across campus. It’s the short brick building, like, three stories high,” a male in rowing team t-shirt said. He pointed in the general direction, and Mike took off at a dead sprint.
    He found the building and went door to door, racing down the hallways looking for anyone who might tell him the direction Emily should have gone.

Chapter 14
    E mily struggled to breathe as she looked around at her surroundings. She’d used the air in the tank to inflate her BCD and unbuckled her weight belt, letting it fall to the ocean floor. But now, with no boat in sight and nothing but open water in every direction, panic began to set in and she gasped for air for a few moments.
    Okay, Emily… think , she reminded herself. You’re smarter than this, and you know what you’re doing.
    She immediately looked around at her surroundings to get the direction of the sun, preparing to use her dive watch’s face as a signal mirror if any boats passed by. There was no hope of swimming to shore, even if she knew which direction to go and where the currents were drifting her, so her only hope was to be prepared to get the attention of any vehicles that passed by. She patted the pouch secured around her wrist to make sure it was still there, the one that contained an inflatable signal tube that would hopefully be visible from far away.
    This kind of thing happens , she thought, calming herself. There are steps to that get taken whenever someone falls overboard. The authorities are alerted, and search teams begin combing the waters. Unless…
    She couldn’t finish the thought, even silently. She couldn’t start letting her imagination run wild, that there was a reason Macmillan and that weird girl had taken off and left her. What did it possibly serve to get rid of a newbie associate professor? It’s not like she was working on important research, or there could be any kind of motive.
    What if something had happened to them ? Had she survived because she hadn’t been on board? There had to be more to this, but there was no way they just left her without realizing what they were doing.

    * * *
    “ C an you help me ? I’m looking for Dr. Emily Stanton,” Mike said breathlessly when he reached the second floor. A young man was seated at a desk while an even younger girl sat slouched beside him, her feet planted in his lap as she reclined and noisily chewed her gum. The girl looked unconcerned about the appearance of someone in the office