The Perfect Accident (pulse-pounding)

prologue

I churn frantically beneath the freezing, coal-black water. I can’t see anything. I can’t even tell which way is up.

A sharp pain blooms at the top of my lungs, spreading downwards and inwards. My terror is so intense I’m unable to think. I’m trapped underwater in the dark and there’s no way out and I can’t breathe I can’t breathe I can’t breathe.

Reality hits me like a freight train.

I’m drowning.

And it’s not the peaceful death of urban legend. It’s a gurgling, shocking, brutal, pitiless fight for every single second of life.

My elbow slams into something hard as I thrash. I gasp in pain, swallowing a lungful of oily water. For the briefest moment I stop moving – and in that split second, I experience a fleeting sensation of buoyancy.

Air rises.

Air rises!

My lungs burn unbearably as I kick in the direction instinct tells me is up, and suddenly my head breaks the surface and I suck in a deep breath of foetid air, coughing and choking as I vomit the water I’ve swallowed.

I grope in the claustrophobic blackness above my head. I’m still trapped, caught beneath something cold and smooth to the touch: the boat hull.

There’s air, yes: eight inches of air. But the water is rapidly rising as the boat fills; those eight inches have already shrunk to six. I have minutes, perhaps only seconds, to find a way out—

And then I’m yanked back below the surface.

The hand around my ankle belongs to someone I love, someone who until this moment I thought I’d give my life to protect. Someone whose desperate fight for survival is threatening mine.

I kick out hard, again and again and again.

And the hand lets go.