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Charlie squeezed her eyes shut as she fell facedown through the air. The wind rushing past her ears was deafening. She couldn’t open her mouth and scream, barely able to even breathe as the air snatched the breath from her lungs. With Charlie strapped beneath him, Tyler’s large body above hers felt utterly weightless.
They plummeted, freefall, for only a matter of seconds, before she sensed Tyler move behind her. Suddenly, the straps yanked against her body, painfully jerking her back up. The free fall had stopped and she found herself hanging in the air, the ocean rushing up to meet them.
A moment later, a shock of cold water hit her body and she plunged beneath the waves. Bubbles exploded around her face. Charlie struggled, feeling herself being dragged beneath the water, but she was disoriented, unsure which way was up. The straps hugging her chest suddenly released their grip, and then strong hands grabbed her by the tops of her arms, dragging her to the surface.
Her head broke from the water into bright sunshine, and she gasped for breath. The taste of salt coated the back of her throat and the insides of her nostrils. She coughed and spluttered, more salt stinging her eyes. Her arms flailed, trying to find something to hold onto. Her fingers found traction and, in her panic, she tried to clamber for a surface to climb onto.
His voice broke through to her, “Charlie! Charlie, quit it!”
Rough hands took her by the shoulders and would have shaken her, had it not been for the buoyancy of the water. “You need to calm down.”
Tyler, her mental voice said. Tyler has got you.
She stopped flailing and allowed herself to be pulled onto her back. A broad forearm folded across her chest, crushing her breasts. But she no longer felt like she was going to drown at any moment.
“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” his deep voice said.
Using both their buoyancies, Tyler kept them afloat as they lay on their backs. The waves lifted and dropped them in the ocean. The sky stretched above her, not a single white cloud breaking the expanse of blue. The ocean extended even further, making Charlie aware of them as two tiny people bobbing in the vastness. Gradually, her total panic subsided, though her fear didn’t ebb away. She tried not to think about the unfathomable depth dropping away beneath her and the creatures it contained. At least Tyler’s body beneath hers, as he kicked them through the waves, offered some kind of protection against the ocean.
A wave lifted them high, and then they dropped down into the trough, only for the next wave to break over their heads. The cold water filled her nose and mouth, and adrenaline exploded inside her. Automatically, she started to struggle again, coughing and spluttering.
Tyler’s hold on her tightened. “You need to relax, Charlie. Fighting me isn’t going to help.”
“Where’s the plane?” she managed to say between coughs. “Where are the others? Did they crash?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t hear the plane go down, but it could have crashed a good distance from here. If it landed in the water, it would be harder to hear.”
“Oh, God, poor Agatha.” However much she and her agent wound each other up, she’d never want her to be hurt or frightened, or God forbid, dead. The woman had been the closest thing she’d had to a mother all these years.
“Maybe they landed safely,” she said, having to raise her voice against the waves crashing against their bodies. “They might have made—”
Another wave landed over her face, her mouth filling with salty water. She choked, cutting off her words.
Tyler waited until she’d caught her breath again and said, “Let’s hope so.”
Her hair was soaking wet and plastered to her face. Her legs began to ache in her effort to keep afloat—even with Tyler’s help. The cold worked its way beneath her skin, making her shiver violently.
“It’s okay,” he told her. “Hang in there. We’ll make it to the shore soon.”
She coughed. “What shore? We’re in the middle of the ocean.”
“No, I saw some small islands in the east from the plane before we jumped.”
“East? How do you even know which way is east.”
She felt his chin move against the top of her head as he nodded toward the bright ball of light in the endless blue sky overhead. “The position of the sun. I can track its progress across the sky and work out which direction we’re heading.”
The sun burned down on Charlie’s cheeks and forehead, magnified by the reflection of the water surrounding her. How strange to have one part of my body so cold and another burning, she thought in a distant way. Her limbs grew weak, so she could barely paddle anymore. If it weren’t for Tyler’s relentless strength, she would drop beneath the waves and sink to the bottom. She simply didn’t have any energy left.
She zoned out and lost track of time. The only sensation she was aware of was the hot sun upon her face, the rise and fall of the ocean, and Tyler’s body locked around hers, the back of her head resting on his chest.
They bumped against something, jolting her from her daze. A fresh spurt of adrenaline shot through her body and she went into fight or flight mode, struggling against Tyler’s firm hold on her. But then the backs of her ankles hit a sandy floor.
“It’s okay, Charlie,” came Tyler’s gravelly voice. “We’ve hit dry land.”
All the fight went out of her, relief sweeping over her like a drug. “Oh! Thank God!”
Around her, the water was as clear as glass, and she caught sight of a shoal of tiny fish darting away from them. She realized she’d lost her shoes at some point. They must have grown heavy with water and fallen off. So much for the usefulness of sneakers.
She tried to stand, but her legs gave way beneath her. Tyler reached out and grabbed her before she fell, face down in the shallows. Even though he must have been exhausted himself, he scooped her from the sea and carried her—his arms beneath her back and legs, her arm slung around his neck—out of the water. He made it a couple of steps up the shore and then dropped with her onto the white sand beach.
They lay together, both collapsed on their backs, on the warm, soft sand. Near her head, a couple of tiny hermit crabs hurried along, their shells carried on their backs, their legs causing tiny avalanches. She could still feel the movement of the ocean beneath her, as though the sand were only a thin veil separating her from the sea.
A line of sturdy pine trees and palms, the fronds motionless in the still air, marked the edge of the beach. The sun burned down, beating hot, not a cloud in the sky. Farther up the beach was a line of driftwood, numerous items of beach litter—debris thrown from sides of ships—washed up with it.
At least they’d found land. And where there was land, there must be people. People meant help. But she didn’t have the energy to search for help right now. As the warmth of the sand and the sun above began to dissolve the shakes from her body, her vision began to grey at the edges.
The only thing she was aware of was Tyler’s hand reaching for hers and their fingers entwining.
Charlie allowed the black to claim her.