Chapter Sixteen
Petra
To Petra, it was like she was sitting in a movie theater as she watched the wave rolling in from the horizon.
She expected someone to cue the music, and at any moment, the symphony would play the ominous chords designed to get the audience’s blood thrumming, wondering how the hero could survive.
For sure, that was exactly what she was wondering.
And in this scene, she was the unfortunate hero.
On this terrain, running anywhere was impossible.
Petra’s brain flashed to the rip currents and wondered if that had fed into the enormity of this wave.
Right now, everything played in slow motion except for her thoughts.
Petra’s brain flailed for her best next action—a means of survival.
She had nothing until she had something.
Suddenly, Petra was moving, leaping, grabbing—not back toward the cliff but southward toward a massive boulder.
As she found a wedge for her foot, Petra cleared her hands by shoving her phone down the neckline of her dress and under her breast into her bikini top.
She grabbed at the jagged protrusions, hugging her body to the surface as the wave crashed, sending a spray of water showering down on her.
The pull of the receding water dragged at Petra’s legs.
She strained against it, tensing her muscles and white-knuckle gripping the stone.
With a heart filled with gratitude that she was high enough in the rocks that the water only came to her thighs.
Suddenly, she was suffused by terror.
The children!
Petra turned toward where the group that had been on the cliff wall, edging back toward their vehicles to return to the hotel.
Blinking past the burn of salt water, Petra thought it looked like the turn of events stunned the others from the tidepool, but they were untouched.
Lucky hollered, “Miss Armstrong, another wave! It’s coming!”
Petra turned her face to the rock, put her head down, and gripped the surface in preparation.
Again, the wave reached over and around the boulder, tugging hungrily at her legs, trying to loosen her from her perch and steal her away like a pirate with his treasure box of gold.
Panting, Petra turned her head toward the cliff, searching for her best route for escape.
Beans and Lucky were helping the last of the tidal pool revelers onto the path. Both stayed on the cliff as Beans pointed and called out. “Miss Armstrong! Wave!”
How many?
How long would this go on?
Already, she was exhausted from the fight.
This third wave was the highest yet, the water coming to her chest. Her eye—stinging from yesterday’s wonkiness—was on fire from the salinity of the spray.
Her grip slipped, and the sheer power of the tidal force shoved Petra to the side, onto her knees amongst the foam.
Scrambling to find something new to hold, or at least get her feet out in front of her so she wasn’t tumbling headfirst into the line of boulders, Petra was suddenly jerked backward, held on the land by her hair.
A hand landed on her arm, then released to grab her wrist, and she was hauled back onto her feet.
Lucky.
Lucky had leaped forward and grabbed the only part of her available, protecting her from a treacherous outcome.
His eyes held wide and unblinking with fear and disbelief.
Beans called from the cliff. “That was all. No more waves. No more big waves. I’ll watch. But hurry.”
No one needed to tell Petra twice. Her sunglasses and flip flops out to sea, Petra’s dress wrapped her thighs as she reached for the hand Lucky extended to her.
“My lucky day to have such a brave guy watching out for me.” Petra tried for light as she tapped her boob to make sure her phone in its waterproof case was still in place.
Lucky looked traumatized as he pointed toward Beans and the cliff wall and started back.
Poor kid needed a stiff drink.
On bare feet, picking her way painfully over the sharp rocks, Petra froze when she heard a second scream.
This one was a different beast.
The first scream was fear and shock. It was the warning that Petra needed to stay safe from the initial rogue wave.
This scream was the anguished cry that goes up when a loved one is pronounced dead. A call to the Heavens.
It sent a wave of horror through Petra’s system, making her gag as she tried to vomit the sensation out of her gut.
But body and mind were at cross purposes.
Petra turned and flew over the rocks toward the screams, Lucky following behind.
Hunching over to place their hands for balance, they were crabs skittering along the edge of a wave.
Around an outcropping, they found a young woman standing in hiking clothes, soaked head to foot.
With hands clutching chunks of hair, she looked out to sea.
Her chest heaved as she forced air into her lungs like a bellow, oxygenating a fire.
Then she tipped her head back, and her scream ripped the air, vibrating Petra’s skeleton until she could feel the tug on her tendons.
“Hey!” Petra shouted as she approached. “Hey!” Her voice was loud and commanding, but the woman didn’t notice.
Here were the bellows heating.
There was the scream.
Petra and Lucky turned toward the sea, scanning to see if they could decipher what was happening.
Petra stilled.
What was that?
Cocking her ear, focusing hard, she listened.
Could that be an echo?
No, the pitch wasn’t a lament but pain and terror.
And it was male.
Petra gripped Lucky’s arm and tapped her ear. They had to wait for a wave to come in—the normal kind of wave that she’d seen from the time they’d arrived.
It receded.
And nothing.
The woman was huffing again, and Petra folded a hand to her chest and swung it wide, backhanding the woman’s arm in a sting that brought her to her senses, pulling her out of whatever survival reaction her limbic had conjured.
“Be quiet,” Petra hissed. “I’m trying to hear.”
Another wave came and went.
There it was again. This time, instead of a scream, Petra heard, “Help! Help!”
She squeezed Lucky’s arm harder.
He was still wide-eyed, in shock from making his earlier save.
Understandably so.
Petra couldn’t imagine the bravery it took for this kid to leap from the safety of the cliff into the swell of the angry waters to grab a stranger by the hair and drag her back from the clasp of a hungry sea.
But Petra needed someone to snap out of it and help her figure out where that man could possibly be.
Petra saw nothing and no one who could be in danger.
The woman turned to them. “My fiancé. He was here. The wave.” She flung her arms. “He pushed me.” She pointed at the boulder, much like the one Petra had used to save herself.
This next wave was receding, and Petra held a finger to her lips and pointed another into the sky.
“Help! Help!” This time, it was weaker.
“We were holding hands,” the woman whispered. “Then we weren’t. I saw him pulled out, and then he went under.” She pointed toward the horizon where no heads bobbled in the surf.
Petra turned to Lucky. “You heard that?”
Lucky shook his head. “I hear nothing but surf and wind.”
Beans scrambled down beside them.
“It sounds like the call for help is bouncing off the rock. Is there someplace like a cave? Someplace where if the first wave dragged a guy out, that the second, or maybe the third wave, could have pushed him in?” When she said that, fear iced her system.
All four turned, with stiff fingers shielding their eyes to scan the horizon.
“Carlos is watching,” Beans said. “He’ll give us a warning if more waves come.” He punched Lucky’s shoulder. “The blowhole?”
Lucky was looking at Petra when he said, “It’s very dangerous. We warn everyone away from swimming near it.”
“Here somewhere?” Petra asked as the next wave receded. And she jabbed a finger into the air and again cocking her head to the side to focus on sounds.
“Agh!”
Petra pointed at Lucky, asking with her gesture if he heard the cry.
Lucky shook his head.
But Beans was moving north along the rocks. “The blowhole is over here. Here and up. And then you can look down.”
Petra raced after Beans as she heard a strangulated cry for “Help!”