Chapter 23
WELLER
Ikeep both hands locked around the deck railing until Bianca disappears beyond the dunes.
She looks back once. Neither of us follows her down the boardwalk. She asked for a little air, and I’m going to give it to her even if every instinct in my body is screaming while I watch her go.
The empty stretch between the house and the trees bothers me the second she’s gone.
Tristan has a phone in one hand and takes up a position at the other end of the deck, where he can see the boardwalk and our portion of the beach through the dunes.
Two minutes pass. Then five.
Tristan walks to the top of the steps and stops. His thumb moves over Bianca’s name on his screen without calling it.
“She asked for air,” I remind him.
“I’m aware. But a little light stalking couldn’t hurt.”
He must think better of it because he comes back to the railing. Thirty seconds later, he’s at the steps again.
Giving her space felt possible when she was close enough to touch. Now every gust of wind brings salt, wet sand, and the faint remains of her scent.
I check the time again. It’s only been eight minutes.
“Twenty minutes, and then we go after her.”
Tristan looks at me. “That’s twelve minutes too long.”
He’s right, but Bianca is struggling. She’s accustomed to a level of freedom we can’t allow. Downtown is fifteen minutes on foot, and she may not even be going that far. I can give her twenty minutes.
I make it to nineteen, and something tears through the bond so hard my grip slips on the railing.
Her fear.
Tristan is already running.
I snatch my phone from the table and race down the deck steps behind him. My feet hit sand, then boards. Tristan throws one look over his shoulder without slowing.
“Can you tell where she is?”
“No.” The wind is making it hard to track her.
I drag in another breath while we run. Salt. Tristan. No Bianca.
My phone vibrates in my hand, and I see missed calls from Owen.
There’s a message from Bianca.
Havershams in the village.
“Go to the village,” I shout to Tristan. “The Havershams found her.”
Tristan changes direction and runs ahead of me. I try Bianca’s number. No answer.
Missed calls are piling up from Owen on the screen before the first roofs appear through the trees. I call him back.
I can tell immediately that something is off. He’s agitated and loud. When he mentions her and that they have the location, my heart drops and I push myself to run even faster. Did our fathers set Bianca up?
Tristan has reached the brick path ahead of me. People move slowly around him with coffee cups and shopping bags, annoyed when he cuts between them until they see his face and get out of his way. He stops outside the souvenir shop, head turning as he pulls the air into his lungs.
The woman behind the register is standing in the open back door.
“If you’re looking for a girl with long blonde hair, she ran that way. There were some men - acted like they knew her.”
Tristan is already through the door.
“Weller.”
Tristan stands where the alley meets the trees, staring down the boardwalk. His nostrils flare once. We run.
“Bianca!” Tristan’s voice tears through the trees.
He shouts Bianca’s name again. Then I do.
She doesn’t answer.
The boardwalk bends around a live oak. Tristan clears it first, then stops so abruptly I nearly run into his back. A scuffed patch cuts through the sand beside the boards. Palmetto fronds have been bent inward, and blood marks the base of one in a thin wet line.
This blood smells like her.
I go over the side. Sand gives beneath my shoes. There’s a torn strip of dark fabric hanging from a broken branch, and several strands of Bianca’s hair stuck in leaves.
Tristan turns toward the ocean.
“She’s bleeding.”
“She’s going into heat.”
Her scent reaches me a second later, but fear has turned it sharp.
The trail in front of me drops through thick brush, but every broken frond gives me a direction. The surf is louder to our right, and Bianca’s scent is stronger there, but the dunes hide the beach. We have no idea where she broke through.
Tristan looks at the blood, then toward the water. His whole body pitches that way before his feet move.
“You go that way,” I tell him. “I’ll go this way.”
He runs for the nearest beach access, and I follow Bianca’s blood into the trees.
Tristan
Bianca’s fear disappears before I reach the bottom of the dune.
It doesn’t ease. One second it’s ripping through the bond, and the next there is nothing where she should be.
I stumble once I hit the soft sand. There’s a dark golf cart sitting crooked across the access. Blood streaks are visible on the passenger seat.
But there’s no one here, and I can’t see anyone on the beach.
I search the water while my lungs hunt for her scent, trying to pinpoint where she is. It’s strong near the edge.
A head appears beyond the break. Then another.
Farther downshore, another man surfaces long enough to shout. A wave breaks over his face and cuts him off.
I can’t see Bianca.
I run into the surf.
Cold water hits my knees, then my waist. The bottom drops out beneath my next step, and the current catches me before I can dive. I go with it long enough to clear the breaking waves and cut hard across instead of wasting strength fighting.
One of the men sees me. He raises a hand, and for half a second relief loosens his face.
“Help—help me.”
I swim past him.
His fingers tug at my shirt. I twist and kick him away. He tries again, wild enough now to climb on top of anything that floats. My elbow catches him beneath the mouth, and his head snaps back. He lets me go and I don’t look back.
Bianca was wearing a pale shirt.
I search for that instead of her face. A sleeve. Her hair. The flash of one pink nail above the surface. Anything.
Another of the men is floating on his back until a wave folds over him. He comes up on his stomach, arms slapping at the water.
I dive.
The water beneath the surface is full of sand. My eyes burn when I open them, but I can’t see anything. I kick up, pull in half a breath between waves, and dive again farther downcurrent.
Then I see a familiar shape, not moving.
I kick hard until I’m right on top of her and can grab hold of her shirt.
Bianca rolls when I pull at her, no resistance, one arm drifting above her head.
Her eyes are closed. Her mouth is open, and her hair covers half her face, floating around her as the current carries both of us farther from shore.
No.
No.
This is not fucking happening.
My body finds the hold before my head does - one arm across her chest, her back against me, my legs driving us up.
Her face breaks the surface against my shoulder. She doesn’t cough. She doesn’t move. I wipe the hair from her mouth and hook my hand beneath her jaw, keeping her head above the water while I turn us parallel to the beach.
“Come on, sweetheart. I’ve got you. Cough for me.”
The words shake in my mouth. She’s eerily still.
Every swell tries to snatch her out of my grip. I tighten my arm until her back is sealed to my chest and keep swimming as hard as I can.
Someone shouts behind me, but I don’t even look.
The bond gives one weak pulse beneath my ribs. A hard pull burns through my shoulder on the next stroke. I push through and keep going. Bianca’s head slips when a wave lifts us, and I catch her chin again before her mouth goes under. Her skin is cold against my wrist.
“Breathe,” I tell her. “You don’t get to leave me again.”
A quiet Bianca is the worst kind of Bianca.
The pull on my legs finally loosens. I angle us back toward shore, swimming until the beach stops sliding sideways and starts coming closer.
Sand finds my foot without warning. I push down and miss it the first time.
On the second, my toes drag bottom. I turn, get both feet beneath me, and stagger toward shore with Bianca in my arms.
Weller comes out of the trees at a run. Blood streaks one side of his pants where the palmettos tore through, and his face changes when he sees her hanging against me.
He is in the water before I can call him.
“She’s not breathing.”
His hand presses beneath her jaw. Then to the side of her throat.
“She has a pulse.”
“We need to lay her down.”
He helps me carry her, and we lower her onto the wet sand. Weller keeps two fingers against her neck while I drop beside her and tip her head back. My hands know where to go. My head can’t process that Bianca’s mouth is open and no air is moving through it.
I clear her mouth, pinch her nose, and seal my lips over hers. The first breath doesn’t lift her chest.
I reposition her jaw and try again. Her chest rises beneath my palm, then falls and stays still.
Six seconds. I breathe for her again.
I count another six. They drilled the timing into me through junior lifeguards in middle school and every high school summer I worked a chair. I used to think that was excessive.
I breathe into her mouth again. Her chest rises. Falls.
“Bianca.” My hand closes around the back of her neck. Her skin is too cold. “Open your eyes. Please.”
I count to six and give her another breath.
Her chest jumps beneath my hand. She coughs against my mouth, a small wet sound that breaks into another before I can move. Weller and I roll her onto her side. I hold her shoulders while seawater and spit run over my hand and into the sand.
She drags in a thin, ugly breath, then another.
The bond comes back in a rush of pain, cold, and a confusion so heavy it nearly puts me on my knees.
“That’s it.” I push the wet hair off her cheek. “Again.”
She coughs until the sound turns raw, then opens her eyes. They move over the sky and Weller before finding me. Her fingers close weakly around my wrist.
“We’re here,” I tell her.
Her mouth moves, but another cough takes whatever she meant to say. She stays awake through it, shivering between us. A scrape has opened across her shoulder beneath the torn shirt. Blood and sand coat one shin. Red marks curve around her ribs.
Weller sees them when I do.
He takes off his shirt and wraps it around her. “We need to get her warm.”
I slide one arm beneath her knees and the other behind her back. Her head falls against my shoulder. The small puffs of warm air I feel against my neck are faint but steady enough to calm me.
“Did you see any of them leave the water?” Weller asks, his voice tight and angry.
“No.”
He pulls out his phone when he has service again and calls Owen.
“We have her,” he says. His voice is calm enough that someone who doesn’t know him might believe it. His hand hasn’t left Bianca once. “She’s okay.”
He ends the call before Owen can ask anything else, and it immediately starts ringing again.
Bianca’s fingers twitch against my chest as we climb the boardwalk. I bend my head until my mouth is against her wet hair, and keep counting each breath all the way home.