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“ALEX,” I SAID AS I moved closer to him. “Can you hear me? Can you talk?”
His hand squeezed around mine, but he didn’t speak. Could he hear me clearly? His eyes were open and blinking up at the clutch of palm trees shaking in the wind above us. His skin and his clothes were soaked, and it appeared to me that the blood stain at his throat was spreading through Tank’s shirt, which worried me to no end.
“In fact, don’t speak,” I said. “You have a gash at your throat.”
“I’m here,” he said in a voice that was so rough, I didn’t recognize it. “But I don’t know for how much longer. I love you, Jennifer. I’m so sorry.”
“You can come through this. Do you hear me? You can beat this.”
“I don’t want to die.”
“Then don’t. Not if you love me. Don’t you dare die on me.”
He took a breath and closed his eyes. “Then I won’t. I’ll fight.”
“That’s what I want to hear.”
“Our baby,” he said. “Did we lose it?”
The question cut through me like a blade held long over a searing fire. I wasn’t sure whether I’d miscarried, but in my heart, I felt that I might have, and it devastated me.
Still, right now, I needed to give this man hope, so I didn’t mention the severe cramping I’d experienced after the crash, and was still feeling now to a lesser degree. “We need to hope for the best,” I said. “We need to pray for our child. We need to be well and healthy to protect it. So, no more talking. We need to conserve our strength. Tank is helping Barbara and Alexa now. Cutter is trying to get whatever supplies he can off the plane in case it explodes. That’s all you need to know. There is a black box on that plane that will save us. It’s sending out signals right now letting people know that we’ve crashed, and where we’ve crashed. You know that. Help is on the way. So rest. Not another word.”
Not that one was coming. With his hand still in mine, Alex drifted off—but he wasn’t gone. I could feel his pulse beating in my palm. I leaned over, kissed him on the lips, told him that I loved him, and then sat up and took in my surroundings.
It was daytime, but with the storm raging, the sky was dim with the hail of rain sweeping across the beach in front of me. The ocean was to my right. The plane was to my left, a smashed shell of its former self. I could see the long, deep rut in the sand where we’d crashed, which led straight to the jungle that had stopped our momentum. Though we were sheltered from the worst of the rain, a good deal of it was still beating down on us, but at least it was warm. I lifted a hand to my eyes and looked at the tail end of the plane, which had lost its right wing just at the edge of the beach. The left wing was intact, but the engine was still active, smoking, and sending its high-pitched whine like a curse of dread into the air.
I prayed for Cutter at that moment. I shut my eyes tight and prayed to God that he would leave the plane unharmed and come back to us.
“What’s going to happen to us?” Daniella asked. “What’s going to happen to Mom? To Alexa?”
She was farther off to my right, just beyond Alex, and when I turned to her, I saw that she was cradling Lisa’s head in her lap.
“How is she?” I asked.
“She’s breathing. I think she’ll be OK. She stirred a moment ago. But what about Mom and Alexa? They aren’t moving, Jennifer. Tank has been working on them for five minutes now. Why aren’t they awake?”
“All we can do is pray that they’ll make it, Daniella. We hit the ground hard. I saw something strike your mother’s head when we were going down, so she might just be unconscious. So pray with me. Pray that somehow all of us escape this. Tank is doing his best. He’s trained for just this sort of situation. Are you all right?”
“My head hurts.”
“How is your vision?”
“As clear as the weather.”
Her sarcasm alone told me all I needed to know about Daniella. She was one of the lucky ones. For now, at least, she was going to live. I looked over at Tank, who was kneeling between Blackwell and Alexa. With his shirt off, his back was bright and gleaming in the rain. He didn’t appear to be doing anything to help them, which gave me a start.
“Are they all right?” I asked him.
Before he could answer, there was a rushing sound in the jungle behind us. Immediately, Tank stood and faced the sound.
“What the fuck was that?” Daniella said.
“Quiet,” Tank whispered. He looked around him, found a heavy branch next to Alexa, and picked it up with one hand. It must have been four-feet-long, and yet he did it with such ease, it was as if it weighed nothing. With haste, he stripped away the smaller twigs as if they were matchsticks, quickly whittling the larger branch down into something that resembled a club. Or a massive baseball bat.
A weapon...
He stood completely still and listened over the piercing sounds coming from the plane’s engine to what the jungle had to say to us. The look on his face was focused. Intense. It looked as if he was preparing himself for a fight. What in the hell was near us? Were there people on this island? Was it some sort of animal?
My answer came at once when something rumbled in our direction and unleashed one ferocious mother of a squeal.
