Chapter 38
Retreating Tide
Darkness. Pressure. Something distant and roaring.
The sounds reached him first—disconnected, meaningless—echoing through the fog in his mind. Wind. Rain. Thunder, maybe. Or his own blood pounding in his ears.
Zach couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak. Couldn’t force his eyes open.
But his mind—that came back first.
Awareness. Vague sensations.
He lay on his back. Hard surface beneath him. Cold seeped through his clothes. Rain soaked his face. The storm overhead, close enough that he could feel the vibration of thunder through the ground.
Cold? That didn’t fit. Wasn’t he on Isla Nocturna? Wind. Rain. The hurricane. He must be out in it. Why? He pushed the question away for the moment.
Assessment.
His body wasn’t responding. Paralysis. No—not complete. His fingers twitched when he thought about moving them. His chest rose and fell. Breathing. Heartbeat steady but sluggish.
Poison.
The memory crashed over him like an icy wave. The assassin. The knife. Emma hauling him out of the cave while his legs gave out, and the world tilted sideways.
He’d been compromised. Vulnerable. Useless.
Full sensation slammed into him.
Pain.
Not the sharp, immediate kind. This was deeper. A slow burn radiating through his muscles, settling into his bones. His nervous system was trying to reboot itself while whatever toxin flooded his veins gradually loosened its grip.
Zach focused on that sensation. Catalogued it. The burning was… fading. Not gone, but receding like a tide pulling back from the shore. The heaviness in his limbs—still there, but lifting. Degree by degree.
He could feel his fingers now. His toes. The connection between thought and movement reestablishing itself in fragments.
His Guardian healing was fighting back.
Emma did something.
The realization surfaced slowly, pulling memories with it.
Emma’s voice. Calm. Steady. Telling him to stay still, that she had him.
Her hands on his skin, warm despite the rain. Pressing something against his cut—cloth? No. Leaves. Crushed vegetation, sharp and bitter in the air.
The scent came back to him now. Earthy. Astringent. Mixed with rain and that faint trace of sandalwood vanilla that he would always associate with her presence.
A poultice.
She’d made him a damned poultice in the middle of a storm, after seeing him kill a man, and somehow it had worked.
…one bomb, there might be more. Yo, Zach, I’ll let you handle bomb disposal.
David’s thought crashed into Zach’s mind. Bomb? David? Nick? He tried to send back, but his mind was too fuzzy to concentrate properly.
Zach forced his eyes open.
The world swam. Gray sky, darker clouds, rain falling in sheets. He blinked, trying to clear his vision. His head turned—sluggish, uncoordinated, but it turned—and he registered his surroundings.
Shelter. Rock outcrop. He was still where she’d dragged him.
Alone.
His pulse spiked. Zach shifted, craning his neck, searching the immediate area.
Empty.
Where—
Movement dragged his eye up. Further along the cliff face.
Emma.
She was climbing the path that led to higher ground; her figure small against the massive rock formations. The storm battered her with every step. Even from here, he could see her struggling—hand braced against stone, body angled into the wind.
Unsteady. Exposed. Alone.
“Emma—”
The word tore out of him, raw and desperate. His voice cracked halfway through, swallowed instantly by the howling wind.
She didn’t stop. Didn’t turn. Kept climbing.
Awe flooded through him. She could have stayed here with him, semi-protected from the wind. Instead, she’d chosen to climb a cliff in the middle of a storm. She did it for him, to get help of some kind. She’d chosen him over her own safety—was risking her life for him.
No.
Zach planted his palm against the stone and pushed.
His arm shook. His shoulder screamed. The world tilted violently to the left, and he collapsed back onto the ground, gasping.
Not good enough.
He tried again.
This time he made it to his side. Then his elbow. His vision grayed at the edges, but he kept moving, forcing his body to obey. Knees under him. One hand. Then the other.
The ground swayed. Or maybe that was him.
Zach braced himself against the rock face and dragged himself upright. His legs buckled immediately. He locked his knees, gripping the stone so hard his knuckles went white, and waited for the world to stop spinning.
It didn’t. Not completely. But it steadied enough.
He looked up again. Emma was further away now. Higher, almost to the top. The path she’d taken wound around the cliff face toward the northern point—the highest overlook on this part of the island.
She shouldn’t be alone.
The thought came with absolute certainty. Not just tactical assessment, though that was part of it. This was deeper. Instinctive.
She shouldn’t be out there. Not now. Not like this.
And beneath that—colder, sharper—the realization that made his blood turn to ice.
What if Marcus was here?
If Marcus were here—and every tactical fiber in Zach’s being said he was—then Emma climbing alone to an isolated position was exactly what the bastard would want.
Exposed. Vulnerable. Easy to stage as an accident in a storm. He had to help her. But could he?
He wasn’t at full capacity. Not even half. He could lose, leaving Emma unprotected. Most likely would lose. Didn’t matter.
Zach pushed off from the rock.
His first step almost sent him sprawling. His balance was fucked. Reflexes still slow. He caught himself on another outcropping. He’d never make it to the top this way, not in his current physical condition.
He dropped to his knees, forced his legs to move, and started climbing. Well, crawling.
The path Emma had taken wasn’t difficult under normal circumstances. Steep, yes. Narrow in places. But manageable.
Now, with his body still fighting off the poison, every step was a negotiation.
His boot slipped on wet stone. He grabbed for a handhold, caught it late, his fingers closing on rock that should have been easy to grip. His other foot found purchase, but his leg trembled with the effort of holding his weight.
Move.
Zach hauled himself up. One step. Another. The wind hit him full force as he cleared the shelter of the overhang, driving rain into his face hard enough to sting. He blinked it away and kept climbing.
This was wrong. All of it.
He was never slow. Never uncoordinated. His body was a weapon he’d honed for two decades, and it always obeyed.
Not now.
Now he was climbing like a civilian. Struggling for balance. Compensating for muscles that fired a split-second too late.
If he had to fight—if Marcus was up there and Zach had to engage—he wasn’t sure he could win.
But he was sure as hell going to try.
The thought of Emma facing Marcus alone, with Zach too compromised to protect her—
No, he couldn’t lose her.
He climbed faster. Pushed through the weakness, the lingering burn in his system, the way his vision still blurred at the edges. Ignored all of it.
She’d saved his life. Made a poultice from island plants she shouldn’t have known about, stayed with him when she could have run, kept him breathing through the worst of it.
The least he could do was make sure she lived through the next ten minutes.
Clean. Rest of the system’s clear.
Zach sighed in relief. Whatever his brothers were facing, they had handled it. They were okay. Nick, can you hear me?
Nothing. Fuck. He still wasn’t sending.
He pulled himself over a rocky ledge and paused, breathing hard. The exertion shouldn’t have winded him. Another reminder of how far from baseline he was.
But he was higher now. Close to where the path leveled out before reaching the overlook.
And something was… different.
He felt it before he could articulate what it was. That same pull from before. The one he’d experienced earlier had led him to the cave and Emma. An instinctive awareness that had nothing to do with his training and everything to do with something older.
The artifact. Except this time, the pull wasn’t vague. It was focused. Sharp. Pointing ahead of him like a compass needle. Toward Emma.
It was tugging him forward again.
Emma needed him.
Zach forced himself to move more carefully now. Used the wind and rain as cover, staying low as he approached the tree line that bordered the overlook. The vegetation here was sparse—wind-bent palms and hardy scrub that offered some concealment but not much. The rain beating down would help too.
He reached the edge and stopped.
The overlook spread before him. A wide, flat expanse of land that jutted out over the ocean. No railings. No barriers. Just rock and ground and sky— and a sheer drop to churning water below.
Emma stood to his right side in just shorts and a sports bra. Her back was to him, hair whipping in the wind.
And from the opposite tree line—
Movement.
Zach froze.
Marcus stepped out of the shadows like he’d been waiting there for hours. He started toward Emma.
Calm. Unhurried. His posture relaxed, arms loose, gun in his hand. He looked exactly like a man who had complete control of the situation.
Because he did.
Marcus was ten meters from Emma. Zach was thirteen meters from Marcus. The overlook offered no cover. If Zach tried to cross that open space, Marcus would see him coming.
And in his current state—slower, weaker, still fighting off the poison—Zach couldn’t close that distance before Marcus made his move.
Zach’s mind snapped into gear.
The bomb—it had been a calculated move to drive people out of shelter into the storm where deaths could be hidden, explained away as accidents.
And the poisoned blades? That had been to remove him specifically, to take the primary defense off the board. Another tragic casualty of the hurricane.
Emma. Marcus was using her to finish it. If Emma hadn’t treated the venom—if she’d panicked, or run—Zach would still be paralyzed under that overhang.
And she hadn't seen Marcus yet.
The cold fury that swept through him was familiar. Welcome, even. Zach channeled it, used it to push past the lingering weakness in his limbs.
Marcus ambled toward Emma like he was out for a Sunday stroll.
Zach, if you can hear this, respond.
Nick! Can you hear me?
Zach, where are you?
Had Nick heard him? Nick! We’re on the cliffs—Emma needs help. Marcus is here.
Nothing. Nick still couldn’t hear him.
He had to move. Had to get to Emma before—
Marcus continued forward. He was only about three meters from Emma now. She shifted, turned slightly. Stopped. Good. She saw him.
Zach’s muscles coiled. He pushed off from his concealment, forcing his body into motion even though every instinct screamed that he was too slow, too compromised, that this was going to go wrong—
His boot hit wet stone, and his leg nearly folded. He caught himself, corrected, kept moving. But it cost him.
Two seconds.
Maybe three.
Three seconds that might as well have been an eternity.
Emma turned fully to face Marcus. Zach could see her profile, the tension in her shoulders, the way she stood her ground despite being alone and exposed on a windswept cliff.
Marcus said something. The wind tore the words away before Zach could hear them.
He pushed harder. Cleared the vegetation. Crossed onto the open stone.
Marcus glanced his way. The bastard’s expression didn’t change. Didn’t show surprise or concern. Just… acknowledgment. Like he’d expected Zach to come. Like he’d calculated this too.
And maybe he had. Maybe Marcus had known the poison wouldn’t kill Zach, only slow him down. Slow him enough that he’d be compromised, desperate, fighting his own body while trying to protect someone he—
The thought cut off.
Because Emma was looking at him now, eyes wide, rain streaming down her face.
And Zach knew—with absolute, crystalline certainty—that he could not reach her in time.
I’m too late.