Chapter 35
“Emergency flares.” Jack’s voice was hoarse. She pointed diagonally across the deck. “Port side, near the crane—base of the helipad. We’ll have to go around.”
Ivy exhaled through her nose. Other side of the rig? Might as well have been a mile.
She met Jack’s gaze. “Can you make it?”
Jack pushed off the wall, one arm clamped around her ribs. “Can I breathe? No. Can I sit here and freeze to death? Also, no. Let’s go.”
They trudged back out into the storm. The wind punched through Ivy, stealing the air from her lungs. Sleet came sideways—needles of ice finding every gap in her soaked clothes as the deck heaved beneath her boots. And all around them—the sustained death rattle of a structure tearing itself apart.
She locked an arm around Jack’s waist. Jack’s breathing was labored, a wheeze dragged through pain.
“Talk to me,” Ivy shouted over the wind.
“Straight on. Passageway through, up ahead.” Jack’s words merged, her body sagging under the relentless onslaught. Her head drooped.
“Think he was BlackRock?” Ivy yelled.
Jack jerked. “Who?”
“The man who attacked us.”
Ivy’s legs threatened to buckle, and pain ground through her arms. Salty sleet froze her lashes. She blinked hard, fixing on the dark shape of the crane ahead.
“Yeah.” Jack’s laugh was breathless, edged with hysteria. She waved one hand vaguely, encompassing the dying rig. “Wasted his time, didn’t he? Hardly investable now.”
Ivy swallowed a wild laugh of her own. “No kidding.”
The deck bucked and Ivy slipped, catching hold of a safety rail as Jack’s weight nearly pulled them both down. Jack cried out, the sound small and pained.
“Jack?”
“I’m okay.” Her mouth was a determined slash in the yellow light. “Keep going.”
They stumbled down the narrow walkway, following the little red helicopter signs. When they rounded an equipment stack, the helipad rose above them—and at its base, the red emergency locker.
Safety gear. Flares. Life jackets. Hope.
Ivy stopped dead.
No.
The deck had ripped apart where the two modules joined. Not a crack—a jagged gap, three feet wide. Emergency lights from the deck below turned the edges the color of old bone. Water surged and crashed somewhere down there, the sound battling with the wind.
They couldn’t go around. The break ran from the container wall to the safety rail—only one way left.
Across.
“Fuck,” Jack breathed, clinging to her. “I can’t jump that. Not with these ribs.”
Ivy stared at the gap. Three feet. She could make it. Probably. But water geysered from a ruptured pipe on the far side, icing the metal. And beyond that, nothing but railing and a straight drop to the ocean.
I can’t do this. Panic welled thick and choking in her throat.
Ryder. Ellie. Faces she had to see again.
She sniffed, puffed her cheeks.
Be loud, Ivy. Think.
Her gaze swept the deck. Cargo containers, lashed equipment, the crane boom overhead. A fire-hose cabinet ten feet away, its glass front glinting red.
“Jack. Over there.” Ivy pointed to the cabinet. “We’re not done yet.”
They hobbled to it. Ivy shattered the safety glass with the emergency hammer—pain jolting up her arm—but she didn’t pause. She yanked the hose free, canvas rough and damp against her bloodied palms. The brass coupling at the end was bolted to the main feed.
“Jack. Wire cutters.”
“Hold it steady.” Jack fumbled at her belt and drew them out. Her fingers shook.
Ivy braced the hose as Jack positioned the cutters on the brass coupling, jaw clenched.
The metal bit, resisted.
“Come. On,” Jack growled through her teeth.
The coupling shrieked, snapped.
Jack slumped against the bulkhead, gasping. “Fuck me, that was hard.”
Ivy dragged the hose free of its mount and hauled it to the gap, unwinding as she went, wincing as the heavy canvas rasped over her ripped palms.
At the edge, she wrapped it around Jack’s waist, knotted it tight, then looped the other end around herself.
“What’re you doing?” A dent creased between Jack’s eyes.
“Insurance.” Ivy yanked the knots. Solid. “I jump first. If you slip, I’ve got you.”
“And if we both go in?”
“Then at least neither of us dies alone.”
Jack’s mouth twitched. Almost a smile. “Worst fucking pep talk I’ve ever heard.”
Ivy took hold of Jack’s shoulders and hugged her close. Jack smelled of oil and dog. “We can do this.” She pulled back and gave Jack her bravest smile.
Jack nodded once, eyes bright. “Right with you, Duchess.”
Ivy backed up five paces. She took several slow breaths, her pulse slamming like it wanted out.
She ran.
Leaped.
For one weightless second, there was only air and wind and the black gap yawning beneath her.
Her boots hit metal. Ivy skidded, slammed the railing, pain lancing down her leg—but she held on.
Spray from the shattered pipe drenched her in seconds. She gasped, shock blasting the air from her lungs.
Fuck. I made it.
“Ivy?” Jack’s voice was almost drowned by the deluge.
“I’m okay.” Her teeth chattered painfully as she turned to face Jack. “Y-your turn.”
Jack backed up, hands on hips, face pale and set. She ran, limping.
Jumped.
She landed on the edge, arms windmilling. For one horrible second, she teetered—
Ivy threw her weight back and hauled on the hose. Jack crashed into her, both of them toppling in a heap as the ruptured pipe hammered them from above with liquid ice.
Ivy couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t feel her hands or her face.
“Move, Duchess.” Jack’s voice was in her ear. “We have to move.”
Ivy rolled to her side, her hands clawed from the cold, her teeth rattling like loose glass.
She fought with the knots on the fire hose for seconds, but they were jammed too tight to free. She gave up. “Come on.” She helped Jack upright, and they stumbled out of the torrent, still tied together.
At the flare cabinet, she wrenched the door open. Inside—three handheld flares, a flare gun with four cartridges, foil blankets, life jackets.
She helped Jack into a life jacket and then shrugged on her own, zipping it to the throat. It was a small comfort, but something. Ivy grabbed as much as she could carry, shoving the remainder into Jack’s arms.
“Helipad,” she said. “Higher.”
Jack nodded, too spent to speak.
The ladder to the helipad was welded to the exterior wall, rungs treacherous with ice. Ivy went first, testing each one. Her fingers barely curled around the metal; her cheek pressed to the freezing bar as she fought the wind trying to tear her free.
Behind her, Jack climbed slowly, breath rasping.
The helipad was a bare twenty-foot square, exposed to the full fury of the storm. Wind roared like a living thing, trying to pluck them free and toss them into the sea.
Ivy dropped to her knees and tensed against it, fighting a wave of dizziness. She squeezed her eyes shut tight, digging deep for the strength she needed.
Jack collapsed beside her, clutching the flares.
“How do they work?” Ivy took one of the flares. The instructions were barely legible in the dark. Strike cap against rough surface. Easy. If her hands would work.
“Let me.” Jack set the flare gun aside, took the stick. “You set up the gun. Four shots. Make ‘em count.”
Ivy loaded the gun cartridges, fingers clumsy and sore with gummy blood. The gash on her palm was wide and weeping again, raw skin catching on the flare gun’s edge. Every cartridge she loaded was a trial. She dropped the first. Picked it up. Missed the chamber. Loaded again.
Click.
Then another. Click.
Blood slicked the metal. Salt and copper rode the wind.
Beside her, Jack struck the flare.
Nothing.
Again. The striker skidded.
“Come on, you fucker,” Jack hissed. She struck a third time.
Still nothing.
Ivy’s chest seized. They’d come so far—escaped the container, crossed the rig, carved their way here through ice and betrayal. And now the flare wouldn’t light?
No.
“Here.” Ivy left the gun. She wrapped her trembling, bloody fingers around Jack’s. Her palms screamed with pain. “Together. On three.”
Jack nodded.
“One. Two. Three.”
They struck as one.
The flare caught. With a vicious hiss of sparks and heat, it ignited — white-hot light cutting through the dark like salvation. The pain in Ivy’s hands vanished in the blaze of holy hellfire and relief.
The flare stank briefly—cordite and bonfires—before the wind whipped it away into the maw of the storm. Jack wedged it upright into a deck cleat. The flare roared, wind slashing sideways through the flame — but it held, the glare carving harsh shadows on Jack’s face.
They lit two more, crawling on hands and knees together to spread them out.
Then Ivy raised the flare gun, aimed at the sky, and pulled the trigger.
Recoil kicked her flat onto her back.
A red comet tore upward, ripping through the storm. It burst high above, blooming into a slow-falling parachute of fire.
Ivy rolled over, reloaded with shaking, dead fingers.
Fired again.
Another streak. Another burst.
Three flares burned hell-bright on the pad while two parachute flares drifted over the ocean. Five points of defiance screaming into the dark.
Ivy wrapped a foil blanket around Jack, pulled another over her shoulders.
The older woman huddled against Ivy, both of them shaking. Jack’s voice was a bare croak. “We did our best, kid.”
Ivy held her tighter, eyes on the burning sky.
Please. Someone. See us.