CHAPTER SEVEN
HE WAS REALLY HURT.
Ham leaned against the wall of the dark pizza place, listening to Signe’s breathing, watching as the world outside turned dark with the smoke off the mountain, trying not to move.
He’d broken his wrist, he was sure of it. Every time he moved it, a flash of pain spiked up his arm and consumed his entire body.
So, that was fun.
He hadn’t noticed the gash on his leg until he stopped running. Now, it burned, and his blood was probably swimming with bacteria.
He needed a hospital. Or at least a splint and a shot of penicillin.
Never mind the fact that in the back of his mind, he kept seeing their hotel vanish into the sea.
Please let Orion and Jenny not have returned to the hotel. He’d tried his cell phone a couple times, but the towers were down and that only fueled the frustration buzzing through his body.
He needed to be on his feet doing something.
But sitting here with Signe was . . . well, maybe an answered prayer.
Please, God, keep her from running from me. Please help her to trust me.
In fact, he’d spent the last hour simply praying as the building shook around them. Please protect us. Protect Orion and Jenny. Protect Aggie and restore us as a family.
So maybe, right now, not moving was the exact right action. In fact, he’d willingly stay here forever, enduring the pain if it meant keeping Signe safe.
He ran his hand over the funny scar on her upper arm, the one she’d gotten while building the tree house near the river when they were thirteen. A nail he’d half pounded in the tree stuck out and she’d snagged it, hopping down to the ground.
A thick, bumpy scar that had probably long since blended into her skin. But he knew it was there.
Her words kept reverberating through him. “Because I haven’t endured everything I’ve gone through for the last ten years to fail at this. To let Pavel Tsarnaev take more, take everything from me.”
His imagination was having a field day.
Oh yes, he really hurt.
Another tremor reverberated through the stone floor of the restaurant.
“That’s the third aftershock.” Signe leaned away from him.
He barely restrained himself from tugging her back.
She got up. “I’m going to see if I can find us something to eat.”
“Sig . . .”
She walked over to the kitchen area and opened a refrigerator. “There’s leftover pizza in here.”
“I’m dying here. I know it’s only going to kill me, but . . . what did Tsarnaev take from you?”
She had come over to the long bar that separated the kitchen from the cafe, holding something wrapped in parchment. The shadows hid her face, but her tone was clear. “Ham . . . I—”
She was quiet. And he knew—he just knew.
“Did he rape you?”
Paper crinkled as she opened the parchment. “It’s a margherita pizza.”
“Signe!”
“What do you think, Ham? It was a terrorist camp.” She didn’t raise her voice, just kept it small and even, as if she were giving a sit-rep.
Though he’d suspected it, the words punched him, right into the center of his chest.
He struggled to breathe. Lord, give me the right response—
“It just happened once. Right after I arrived. Once Tsarnaev realized I was pregnant, he didn’t touch me again.”
He didn’t know what to say to that.
She came over carrying the pizza in the parchment and set it down in front of him, sat down cross-legged.
He couldn’t possibly eat.
“We never talked about it, but he might have thought Aggie was his.”
Right. Then, wait— “Aggie protected you from him, didn’t she? As long as he thought she was his, then you weren’t in danger.”
She picked up a piece of pizza.
“Signe . . . what aren’t you telling me?”
She took a bite, set the pizza down. “Nothing you need to know.”
Except . . . “Signe, if he thought you were the mother of his child, then . . . did he marry you?”
“As his wife I had access to so much. His private quarters, he took me on business trips, he—”
“You married him?”
Oh, he didn’t mean to let the horror leak in, but—
“Are you familiar at all with Sharia law? If I didn’t, he would have accused me of adultery—”
“He raped you.”
She flinched, and he felt like he’d hit her.
“Oh Signe, I’m sorry.” He scrubbed his hands down his face. “The thought of you married to that . . .” He didn’t say the rest, but inside, he was screaming.
“I didn’t have a choice, Ham. In order to be exonerated I had to produce four male witnesses to the crime. Right. Not a chance. So, it was either marry him, or I was going to be flogged. Maybe even executed.”
He might be ill right here on the floor.
“I realize my stupid choices.” She picked up her pizza, then put it back down. “But once I got there, I had to go all in. Which meant . . . I had to be Pavel’s wife.”
Pavel. “You’re my wife.”
Silence.
He looked away from her, out to the street where the day was darkening.
Oh, he should have gone after her into that bunker. Never stopped looking for her. He gritted his jaw, his eyes burning. But everything inside him was ripping asunder.
You’re my wife.
Clearly not anymore.
“Ham, I know you were hoping that maybe we could put things back together. Be a family. But . . .”
“What else did he take from you?” He didn’t know why, but for some reason, he knew that wasn’t all. “To let Pavel Tsarnaev take more, take everything from me.”
“I think we need to get out of here—”
“What, Signe!”
She stared at him, her jaw hard. “He took my son, okay?”
She got up and paced away from him, standing at the cracked picture window.
Ham had nothing, the words stripped right out of him. She had a son.
She ran her hands down her face, then pressed them to the window, and the old Ham, the one who always, always came to her aid, wanted to go to her. To hold her.
But he also wanted to hit something, to rage with the roil of heat inside him. She had a child with a terrorist?
“He was born a year after Aggie. His name is Ruslan.” She turned around to face him, folded her arms, her face hard. “When he was six, Pavel sent him to live with relatives in eastern Russia. Said he was safer there. I haven’t seen him in three years.”
Ham just stared at her, not sure what was worse—not knowing you had a child and missing ten years of her life or . . .
Or knowing your child was growing up without you.
“I get pictures of him every year. Sometimes a phone call, but I have no idea where he is.”
He pushed to his feet, biting back a groan.
“Sit down!” She came over to him. “Your leg is still bleeding.”
He looked down to see a puddle where his leg had been resting.
She pulled a red checkered tablecloth from the floor and bit it, tearing a long swath from it. “Let me wrap that.”
And wow, they were alike with the need to keep moving, fix something, do anything to push back the hurt.
He stayed quiet as she doctored him, aware that he knew so very little of her life now.
So very . . . wait.
He stilled. If Pavel had her son, did he also have control over her?
The kind of control that would make a woman sacrifice her life . . . or betray her country?
He studied Signe. She’d long since lost her head scarf, her face sooty and dirty. She wore stress in lines around her eyes, and her lips had thinned.
But she was still the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen.
He had no doubt that Pavel Tsarnaev had fallen in love with her. But love didn’t trump ideology.
What if Tsarnaev wasn’t dead, as she said. And what if the information she wanted to give Ham also contained a virus or something that could compromise the security of the US? Ham didn’t want to think that way, but he’d been a special operator for over a decade. He was trained to look for danger.
“You need stitches.”
“Signe, who was the person who came to the camp? The one who you said was from the US government?”
She looked up at him. Her jaw tightened.
“You don’t trust me.”
“I do trust you, Ham. I just don’t trust the people you might work for.”
“Why?”
She paused. “I believe there is a rogue CIA faction that was working with Tsarnaev. And that faction is trying to kill me.”
“That’s not going to happen.”
“Why? Are you Superman? You can stop speeding bullets, see through walls, be everywhere at once?”
“No. I’m your husband! I’m going to protect you!” He didn’t mean for that to emerge quite so hot, but he had a very thin hold on his emotions and—
“You can’t protect someone who doesn’t want to be protected!”
He stared at her.
“I’m a big girl, Ham. I know I asked you not to forget me, but really, that’s the best thing for you to do—forget me. Because as soon as we get out of here, I’m gone—”
“You’re going to leave Aggie.” It was more of an incredulous statement than a question. “You’re going to walk right out of her life, like your mother did you.”
Signe drew in a breath, and for a second he thought she might slap him. “This is nothing like my mother. I am doing this for Aggie. For you. Believe me. If I could, I would go home with you.” Her voice broke. “Ham. You’re the love of my life. Don’t you think I want to be with you?”
He just blinked at her.
“You don’t, do you? Do you believe anything I’m telling you?”
He nearly reached out to her, her words resounding over and over inside him. “I love you too, Signe. I would give my life for you. And I want to trust you. Help me trust you. Tell me who came to your camp.”
She studied him. “I can’t, Ham. People—you, Aggie, . . . me. It could cost lives.”
“Sig. Let me protect you. Protect Aggie. Give us a chance.” He made to take her hand.
She pulled away and seemed like she might be trying not to cry.
“You don’t have to be afraid, Shorty.” And he wondered if maybe he said it as much for himself as her. “You don’t have to be brave or strong or anything . . .” Just be my wife. But he didn’t say that because he didn’t want to scare her. His voice quieted. “You’re not alone anymore.”
Her expression softened. “I really did miss you, Hamburglar.”
She put her hand on his face, leaned in and kissed him.
And he just didn’t know what to make of it. It lit a fire inside him, something he didn’t quite have control of, but he didn’t move.
Maybe he was dreaming.
Maybe this was a kind of test. Especially since her kiss was sweet, absent the passion that had always accompanied their romance.
He didn’t have the strength to stop himself from kissing her back.
And maybe he needed to remind her what they had before it was too late.
So he ran his hand behind her neck and pulled her closer, putting a little of that fire into his touch.
She tasted of pizza, and the sense of it hearkened him way back to the beginning. The first time they’d kissed, right after a football game on a hill overlooking the Mississippi River.
The first time he realized that he would always and forever belong to her.
Signe. He was winding his fingers into her hair when she leaned away, ran a thumb over his lips. “You remember our first kiss?”
“Of course I do. I never forgot you, Sig. And now that I found you, I am bringing you home.”
She closed her eyes, and his heart nearly exploded when she nodded.
Mission accomplished.
Miracles did happen and people did survive the impossible.
At least, that’s what Orion wanted to believe as he motored up the murky waters in the dark-as-night streets searching for survivors.
He’d seen it with his own eyes—while serving as a pararescue jumper in Afghanistan, and today.
Watching from the third-floor balcony of an apartment building overlooking the sea.
He’d practically tossed the two boys he’d carried over the gate cordoning off the yard—mostly because he had nowhere else to go. Then he scaled the wall himself, ran up an outside stairway, and just as the water thundered onto shore, he kicked in a door and took cover in the apartment.
He found a terrified mother and her three-year-old daughter hiding in the bathroom. Shoving the boys in with her, he went to watch from the balcony.
The sea bubbled and roared as it swept past them, rising to the second floor, and he nearly went after the woman to bring them to the roof. But the waters spread out, into the city, and instead he fixed his gaze on the catamaran, tumbling like Styrofoam through the tumult. It hit the stone stairway, bounced off, turned, then was carried up over it and into the garden of a nearby house.
Most of the one- and two-story houses along the seaboard were under water or destroyed, boats piled up in gated areas. The sea was a lethal soup of destruction, the air smelled like ash, and all Orion could think was . . .
Jenny. Please be alive.
His heart lurched when he spotted the man emerge on the catamaran deck, probably from where he’d taken cover inside, and begin to search for an escape. He wore a life jacket, a silly headlamp, and Orion remembered his words about a wife and a daughter.
One pontoon was wedged into the balcony of the house, shattering the window. The waves tossed it but couldn’t dislodge it. Orion traced an escape route for him—if the man was to climb along the pontoon, he could maybe grab the upper rail of the balcony above and pull himself to safety.
Perhaps he had the same idea because he started to inch out on the pontoon.
He slipped. The man’s cry echoed into the air as he tumbled off the pontoon. His hand closed around one of the lines, but the water gobbled him and yanked him away from the boat.
“Help!” He bobbed in the water, trying to haul himself in.
Orion’s heart nearly stopped when a woman wearing a life jacket stepped out onto the deck. A little girl, maybe age five, gripped the back of her jacket.
The woman pushed her daughter onto the hard-topped Bimini. The little girl screamed as the woman left her there, trying to make her way down the boat toward her husband.
She was going to fall, and then that child would be stuck, and scared, and alone, and . . .
Orion went into the bathroom to check on the family. He found the woman sitting on the floor, singing to the kids. “Stay here. I’ll be back for you.” He hoped she understood English.
He’d spotted a dinghy stuck in the garden and sprinted back out to the balcony. The water roiled, the currents lethal, but he eased down, managing to get a leg over the edge of the craft. It was bouncing against the wall, between the balconies, but it looked seaworthy—the motor up, as if it had been brought to shore.
Oh God, don’t let them die.
Orion tumbled into the boat, grabbed the front seat.
A life jacket was still shoved underneath. He pulled it on.
Ham would be proud of him.
Ham. Shoot. He’d tried his cell phone a couple times, but no signal. Please, God, let Ham be alive too.
Orion glanced at the catamaran. The woman had gotten ahold of her husband’s line, was trying to tow him in.
Inches from going in herself. Her daughter was screaming, the waves pounding the cat against the building.
Orion put the motor down, aware of the litter swirling in the water. Please start. He ripped the cord, and the motor coughed to life, gas stirring in the already toxic air.
“Hang on!” Of course, the people couldn’t hear him, but it just helped him stay focused.
Helped him not give in to the desire to turn the dinghy toward the hotel.
He opened the throttle and tore over the wall, kicking up grimy spray as he gunned toward them.
The noise alerted the woman and she looked up. Shouted, waving. Orion searched the water.
There. Yellow life preserver. He was fighting to stay up.
Orion measured the current, then cut the motor just as he came up beside the man.
“Grab my hand!”
The man stretched up his hand. Orion grabbed it and fell back, using his weight to pull the man over the edge.
He rolled into the dinghy, breathing hard.
Orion grabbed the throttle, gunning it toward the cat.
The woman had run up the pontoons to rescue her daughter. By the time he reached the port side, the man was on his feet, reaching for the railing. His wife passed their daughter over to him and he set her in the middle of the boat, safe.
The current slammed the boat against the pontoons, then away.
“Get closer!” the man yelled.
Orion fought to direct them back to the boat. The man held open his arms. “Jump, honey!”
The woman stared at him, a look of horror on her face.
The cat jerked in the waves and she fell. Her husband caught her and pulled her to himself, nearly weeping.
“Get down!” Orion said, and backed up the dinghy, away from the thrashing cat.
He fought the current, the debris, and his own emotions as he returned them all to the apartment.
“I gotta go find my girlfriend,” he said to the man as they climbed out. “I’ll be back.”
Orion turned the boat out into the water.
He guesstimated he was less than a mile from the hotel, but as he drove along the shore, he couldn’t seem to find it in the row of buildings. He remembered it as a tall blue four-story building with balconies on the front. He motored all the way down to where the harbor curved, all the while fighting the swirl of the confused water.
When he motored back, he searched again for anything that seemed familiar. Just debris, broken fishing vessels, wrecked sailboats, homes half-destroyed, others completely off their foundation and disintegrating into the sea.
The hotel was old—so old it had an ancient elevator and questionable plumbing.
So old, maybe, the foundation had worn away. The realization came to him like poison in his veins as he trekked the route a third time, along the seawall, and back.
The hotel was gone.
Just vanished, gobbled by the sea.
No.
He just stared at the way the waters engulfed the shoreline, all the way up the hill, and he knew.
Jenny was gone.
Orion was numb by the time he returned to the apartment. He tied up the dinghy and found his way inside.
The family sat with the woman and her daughter in the main room of their home. The man rose when Orion came through the door, walked over, and without a word, embraced him.
Orion just stood there.
“Thank you,” the man said. “I thought we were dead.”
Orion’s chest tightened. He couldn’t speak.
“My name’s Keith. This is Renee, my wife. And that’s Jack and Finn and this is Katie.” He picked up his daughter and kissed her cheek.
Orion tousled Jack’s head. He guessed the kid might be nine. Too young to watch his family die.
“Did you find your girlfriend?” Keith said. He had long hair, now slicked back and dirty. They were all filthy, covered in ash and grime and stinking of the sea and sulfur.
“No. I don’t know where she is. Our hotel . . . it’s . . .” He looked away, out the window, toward the sea. “It’s gone.”
Silence.
He closed his eyes.
Keith’s hand touched his shoulder. “I’m sorry, man.”
Breathe. Just . . .
He opened his eyes. “Yeah, well. We probably need to get you guys to safety. I don’t know how long this building is going to stay up with all that debris smashing into it.”
Keith nodded and that’s when the women of the house—Irene and her daughter, Noemi—suggested the church on the hill.
“We will go to St. Mary’s and pray,” Irene said.
It didn’t sound like a terrible idea. Especially when she added, “They have a medical center and a school. It is where we go at times like these.”
And maybe where Ham and Jenny might go, if they’d survived.
By the time they arrived two hours later, the place was packed, people sitting on pews, more in the school gymnasium and on the floor of the hallways, and even more in the tiny medical clinic that was designed for the students more than the general public.
Orion walked past people with broken bones, lacerations, contusions—too many wearing despair.
He should probably add himself to the line.
The bell had fallen into the center of the church, but a small group of men were working on hauling it into the courtyard. An assembly of women worked in the kitchen, trying to figure out how to feed people.
He found Keith with his family in the cafeteria.
“Is she here?” Keith asked.
Keith glanced at his family—Finn and Jack sat at the table eating a bowl of cold oatmeal. Renee held Katie on her lap, a blanket over her shoulders.
“Let’s go,” Keith said. He picked up his headlamp.
Orion frowned at him.
“Let’s go look for her. Get the dinghy and we’ll go down to the harbor. I heard a couple people say they heard shouting from rooftops and balconies—”
“The hotel is gone!”
“But maybe she got out. Or maybe”—Keith clamped a hand on his shoulder—“a crazy man showed up in a dinghy to save her life.”
Orion wanted to smile, but his chest hurt and really, he just wanted to shout, maybe throw his fist into something.
“Take a breath, son. Just take a breath.”
For some reason, Orion obeyed him, pressing his hand to his chest. “I just don’t know what to do.” He sank down onto a nearby bench. “I just found her again after losing her for three years and . . . I can’t lose her now.”
He closed his eyes.
Hands touched him. He looked up and Keith’s hand was on one of his shoulders, Renee’s on the other.
“I don’t know if you believe in God, Orion, but you are never helpless when you are in God’s hands. God does not give us a spirit of fear but of power and love and self-control. Which means we do not despair. We do not let the enemy take control of our hope. Hope is the weapon of the Lord, and right now, we are going to wield it, in Jesus’s name.”
Orion just stared at him. The man was channeling Ham.
“Now get up, we’re going to find your woman.” Keith glanced at his wife. “I’ll be back, I promise.”
Orion had the strangest urge to weep. Or maybe high-five someone.
They’d left the dinghy on the sidewalk, where the water stopped two blocks before the church, and now found it in the darkness. Keith flicked on his headlamp.
They got in and Orion pushed off, the waters dark and thick with wreckage. He waited until they were free, then pulled the motor.
It growled to life.
He drove them down to the harbor and discovered he wasn’t the only one looking for survivors. The Italian coast guard and local Catania police lit up the shoreline with searchlights, and he passed a couple rescue boats helping people to safety from their apartments.
“Where was your hotel?”
Orion pointed to a darkness between a couple apartment buildings.
They pulled up to the front of one of the buildings and tied up the dinghy, and Orion shouted up into the darkness. “Hey, anyone there?”
No one shouted back.
“Jenny!”
“Maybe they’re on the roof,” Keith said.
Orion looked at him.
“Sometimes we just need a different perspective.”
It took everything Orion had to climb onto the balcony. Keith followed him, guiding their way with the headlamp.
So maybe it wasn’t silly.
The doorjamb was busted, as if someone had broken in, but the flat was vacant. They took the stairs up and emerged on the roof.
Orion walked to the edge. “I think the hotel was right here.” He pointed to the water, and Keith looked down, shining his light on the ruins.
Indeed. Rubble filled the space, a mound of tile, stone, wood, and probably dead bodies.
As if he could hear her voice, a cry lifted in his heart. Orion!
He closed his eyes. Heard it again, an echo deep inside. “Help!”
“You hear that?” Keith said, and Orion turned.
“Really?”
“Shouting.” Keith turned his light across the water, to the next building, then around to the other side.
Nothing.
Orion took a breath, tried to listen.
Nothing but the splash of water, the dark pang of despair.
“Let’s go,” Orion said, and returned to the stairwell.
He was halfway down the stairwell when he heard it again. “Orion! Help!”
He turned back, his heart in his throat as he ran back up the stairs.
Keith was already at the back edge of the building, waving.
Please, please— Orion sprinted over to the edge.
For a second, he didn’t recognize the people standing on the roof on the house behind the apartment. The water had lipped over the edge of the three-story building, but it was on higher ground, and they stood on a small enclosed stairwell.
The woman was dark skinned, her hair in braids. She stood with an elderly gentleman, and Orion thought he recognized him as the concierge.
Nori?
“Mr. Orion! Mr. Orion!” Nori waved at him.
“You know her?” Keith asked.
“She was a waitress at our hotel.” Orion waved back, not sure what to do with the emotions that bubbled inside him. “Hang on! We’ll come around and get you!”
He and Keith scrambled down to the dinghy, untied it, and motored it around the block, Keith’s light dragging along the fencing until they found the house. Orion brought the boat up to the edge of the building, and Keith helped the concierge and Nori into the dinghy.
Nori curled her arms around herself. She wore her black skirt and a grimy blouse, her tennis shoes. Keith put a life jacket on her, and she shivered. Only then did Orion realize the temperature had dropped.
The older man sat next to her.
Probably they should bring them back to the church, get them warm.
Orion sat down at the motor. “Nori, did you see a blonde American woman in the hotel this morning?”
“I did,” interjected the older man. “She spoke to me when she left the hotel. Asked me where a coffee shop was.”
Coffee.
Orion couldn’t breathe.
“Can you tell me where it is?”
He pointed toward the end of the street. “I can take you there.”
Keith was grinning at him under his shiny, silly light. “Do you believe in miracles?”
They needed help, right now.
Marcello was in trouble, his chest still tight, and with everything inside her Jenny wished she had her roommate Aria’s training as a heart surgeon.
But even then, what was Jenny going to do here on a roof, in the darkness, the temperature dropping, the stink of death rising around them as the water lapped the buildings?
At least the air had cleared, slightly. She couldn’t make out stars, but in the distance, the terrible glow of Mordor testified to the angry mountain.
She sat next to Gio, who sat next to Marcello.
Harley and his group had made a sort of circle of comfort not far away, sharing the meager rations from Angie’s orange backpack. A Snickers bar. A pack of gum. A packet of airplane peanuts.
“Why did you come to Italy?” Gio asked.
The answer didn’t seem to matter anymore. “To meet a friend. Actually, no, for our friend to meet a friend. Sort of.”
In the face of all the tragedy, she had barely thought of Ham, or his contact, but now, staring out at the place the hotel had been, she let herself give in to the ache inside.
Ham was a good man. He’d believed in her, given her a job, although she guessed that job offer had more to do with getting Orion out of Alaska and down to Minnesota.
A move she’d been entirely in favor of.
Wow, she was selfish. She hadn’t even thought about Orion’s feelings, the way he’d uprooted his entire life for her. Because he loved her.
Wanted to marry her.
She pressed her hand to her mouth.
“I hope my mama is okay,” Gio said. He pointed into the darkness, away from the city, to the southwest of the mountain. “She lives out there, near the military base.”
The military base. Right. Fifty miles away was a small city filled with American servicemen. Maybe that’s who had arrived in the harbor an hour ago, with boats and searchlights. She and the others had wasted their voices shouting for help, but they were a good three blocks from the harbor, so probably no one would find them.
They had to find help themselves.
Jenny looked at Gio. “I’m going to get your grandfather to a hospital.”
She walked over to Harley. “We need to get off this roof. It’s getting cold out, and Marcello is not doing well.”
Harley hadn’t said a word about her breakdown and now he looked past her, to Marcello. “How? The water hasn’t receded, and it’s dark out. Angie does have a flashlight, but the batteries got wet.”
“The water is probably not terribly deep—maybe we walk him out.”
“It’s like a cesspool down there. And where are we going to take him? We have no idea where the hospital is.”
“Maybe someone here knows.”
She turned. “Gio, where’s the nearest hospital?”
“We go to the base, or to Catania,” he said.
The base. But that was forty, maybe fifty miles away. “What we need is to get the attention of one of those boats,” she said and pointed out to sea.
And maybe it was there before—she hadn’t seen it, but she might have missed it—but a light flickered on the building near where her hotel had been. She ran to the side of the roof. Too far to see, but maybe they could hear her. “Help!” She waved her arms.
Which was silly, because it was too dark out to see. Still, the light panned as if searching for her voice. And the crazy, desperate woman in her added, “Orion!”
No. She couldn’t let her hope stir, find footing.
The light stopped, turned toward them. “Help!” She jumped up and down, and now Angie joined her. “Over here!”
The light moved down, then away.
“No! Come back!”
It disappeared off the roof.
A rock fell through Jenny’s chest. Okay. What had she learned climbing Denali last summer? That God showed up, even when things felt impossible.
“I’m going to get help,” Jenny said.
“Oh no, not this again.” Harley shook his head. “Really?”
“Yes. There are a ton of boats out there. I just need to find something to float on, find a paddle and get out to one of those lights.”
“Jenny—”
“I can’t sit here one more second!” She schooled her voice. “Listen, Harley, if you want, you can come with me—”
“Oh, thanks.”
“But if not—”
“I’m going. Sheesh.” He followed her to the stairwell, but she stopped at the top.
“Yikes, that’s dark. Once we’re down in the coffee shop—”
“We were there. We remember what it looks like, right?” Harley said. “A bar to our left, the door in the center—”
“And lots of broken glass.”
“What about this?” Angie ran up to them, holding her phone. “There’s not a lot of juice left, but maybe enough to get you out of the building.”
The light shone from the tiny spot on her phone.
Jenny took it. “Are you sure? What if you need it to call home, or—”
“This is more important. When I need to call, I’ll find something. Go get help.”
Jenny shined it down the stairwell. The light scattered the darkness.
“Let’s go,” she said and started down, Harley behind her. “Where are you guys from, anyway?”
“All over. We go to a Bible college in Amsterdam, but we’re taking the fall semester off to tour Europe and share the gospel.”
“And climb volcanoes.”
“We’re rethinking that day trip,” Harley said.
“So, Mr. Bible, where is God in all this mess?” Jenny rounded the second floor and shined her light onto the water.
“Right here. In this stairwell.”
“I know what you meant. Can’t he stop the volcanoes, the earthquakes, the tsunamis? Yes. But this is also the natural order of the world. Tragedies happen. People get hurt. People hurt other people. But it’s in suffering—as well as joy—that we find our faith. In times of trouble, we either draw near, or we run.”
She reached the bottom, shining light across the darkness. No boats. “And if we run?”
“Then God chases after us. That’s the thing about God. We might give up on him, but he never gives up on us.”
Harley pointed to a door floating in the water near the entrance.
“You remember the Titanic, right?” she said.
“Jack could have totally gotten on that door,” he said and plunged into the water.
She held the light on him, and he rolled onto the door. It wobbled but held him. “C’mon.”
Jenny hid a gasp as she stepped out into the cold water and waded over to him. On the way, she picked up a couple floating serving trays. She put the phone in her mouth as he helped her onto the door.
She crawled to the front and handed him one of the serving trays.
He dug in on his side and nearly swamped them.
She pulled the phone from her mouth. “Stop! We need to be coordinated!”
He waited. “Ready?”
She flicked off the phone, and the night settled around them, the smells of the dank water ripe and rancid.
“You hold the light. I’ll paddle,” Harley said.
She flicked it back on. “Just don’t swamp us.”
He leaned over the side and began to move them through the water. They bumped past cars and wood and wreckage of boats. The current played with them, moving the door around in circles.
“We’re not going anywhere,” she said. “I’m getting out and swimming.”
“Have you lost your mind? The water is full of disease and wreckage and—”
She just stared at him, and maybe it was something on her face because he stopped paddling. “What if that was your boyfriend on the roof?”
She shook her head.
“What if he’s still alive?”
“Stop.”
“You don’t know for sure, Jenny. And risking your life to prove something to—who?—isn’t going to make you feel better.”
“It might! Maybe I help rescue Marcello and somehow I live with myself instead of regretting not banging down Orion’s door and telling him I loved him. That yes, I would marry him! That I was a fool to believe that . . . that . . .”
“That he couldn’t forgive you.”
She swallowed.
“He, as in Orion? Or he, as in God?” Harley said.
Her breath caught.
“He can, and he does, you know. In fact, he grieves for you and your pain. He can do that—forgive you and hurt for you.”
“What if he’s punishing me?”
“Well, thank you very much, then, because I didn’t do anything to deserve being in a tsunami-slash-volcano eruption.”
She stared at him.
“God isn’t punishing any of us, Jenny. But he does want you to trust him when he says he loves you. That he has a good plan for you. That there is therefore no condemnation for you, if you’ve been forgiven.” He put down his serving platter, his face half in shadow. “Have you asked for forgiveness?”
“Too many times to count.”
“Once is enough. Leave it behind. He has.”
She drew in a long breath.
“God doesn’t write tragedies. He’s all about the happy ending. We just have to stick with him through the story, right?”
A motor sounded in the darkness. Harley heard it too.
She shined her light down the street and realized the current had taken them way past the coffee shop, to a flattened area.
Tugging them out to sea.
“We have to paddle back!” She tucked the phone in her shirt and picked up a serving platter. Harley turned around, and the door nearly went over.
“Harley!”
“Sorry!”
They paddled together. A spotlight shone at the end of the street, near the coffee shop entrance, and she didn’t have to say anything to Harley to have him speed up.
“We’re leaking here, Jenny.” Harley pointed to a spot under him. “I think my knee went through.”
“Keep paddling.”
The spotlight grew larger, and then, just like that, it winked out.
What?
“No—no—they have to stay. They have to get Marcello!”
“Jenny!”
But they were only thirty yards away, and with her eyes adjusted to the darkness she could make out a dinghy, with people.
“I’m going in—”
“No, you’re not!” Then, just like that, Harley was in the water. He grabbed the edge of the door and started to drag it along. She paddled with him, the door sinking fast.
Oh, this was stupid. They were so close she could see two people sitting in the dinghy, and one wore a life jacket.
“Hey!” She waved.
In a second she was under the water, the chill closing in over her. But she kicked, and her feet touched something solid, and in a second she surfaced.
Harley grabbed her. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Swim!”
The dinghy was tied to the entrance, too big to get through the door, and as she came up to it, she recognized the concierge.
“Jacopo!”
He reached out for her. And something inside her gave a hard tug.
Hope.
“God chases after us.”
She let go of Jacopo and swam through the coffee shop, hit the stairs, and slogged her way out of the water.
Then, sprinted.
Please, please—
He was standing in the middle of the roof, his back to her, with a bigger man who turned at her shout and blinded her with his headlamp.
She threw her hand up to shield her eyes.
But she heard his voice. Orion’s sweet, thunderous voice that could find its way under her skin to turn her entire body from frigid to hot.
“Jenny!”
The light moved away just in time for her to see Orion, his clothes sodden, his handsome face grimy, his eyes gritty and red, sprint toward her.
Then she was in his arms. Caught up, her breath lost as he held her. As he wept.
She wrapped her arms around his amazing shoulders, her legs around his hips, her entire body clinging to him, unable to let go, unable, really, to restart her heart.
“Oh, oh—” She pressed her face into his shoulder and sobbed.
So, yes, they were a mess. Orion finally set her down, took her face in his hands, and glued her with those beautiful green eyes. “I thought you were dead. I couldn’t even find the hotel—”
“I thought you were in the hotel—I went out for coffee. I wanted to get you one, and I was going to tell you I’m sorry—”
“No. I’m sorry. I was such a jerk to you. I love you and I don’t have to marry you—we can just . . . whatever you want.”
Oh, Ry. “I want you. Yes, I will marry you—we just have to talk and then, maybe you ask me again—”
“Yes. Whenever, always.” Then he kissed her. He was reining it in for their audience, but she could still taste his desperation, the all-out passion that was Orion. He dug his hands into her hair, pressed his forehead to hers. “Yes, I believe in miracles.”
She frowned, but he grinned, nodding.
“And that ends tonight’s edition of Survivor,” Harley said, breathing hard, sopping wet. “Jenny and Orion are voted off the island.”
Jenny looked over at him. Harley winked at her. “Happy endings.”
She closed her eyes and listened to Orion’s beating heart.
Oh, she hoped so.
She finally pushed away from him. “We have to get Marcello to a hospital. And then . . . have you heard from Ham?”
Orion shook his head. “Last time I saw him . . . he was on the roof.”
No.
“But so was Nori, and she made it off, so . . .”
“Nori?”
Orion took her hand. “The waitress at the terrace cafe. She’s in the dinghy.”
“With Jacopo.”
Harley and the others had started to gather around Marcello, maybe to lift him.
“What’s wrong with him?” Orion said, letting go of her hand.
“I think he’s having a mild heart attack.” She walked over to Gio. “This is Gio, his grandson.”
“Hey, kid,” Orion said, and tousled his hair.
Oh, he’d make such a great father. She’d have to figure out how to drop her bombshell into his life.
No condemnation.
“Oh my!” Angie’s voice made Orion look up, and in his eyes, Jenny could see the reflection.
Flames fractured the darkness from a building down the street. Just one more in the many that flanked the horizon, but this one was close enough to hear it roar.
Then, as they watched, a terrible boom shook the air and a fireball burst from inside the inferno, rolling out into the sky. Gasps, and a couple people ducked.
“Wowza,” Gio said. “I think that was Angelis Pizza Parlor.”
“I hope it was empty,” Orion said. “C’mon, let’s get Marcello into the boat. We’ll send help for the rest of you.”
Then he turned to Jenny. “But not you, sweetheart. You’re coming with me.”