Crystal Cove (Friday Harbor 4)

The day was overcast, the wind brisk, a light chop to the water. A low-pressure system was moving in, which might result in light rain and stronger winds. Having managed those conditions easily in the past, Justine wasn’t worried.

“I wouldn’t stay out for long, if I was you,” a boater at the Roche Harbor dock said, while Justine folded up her kayak dolly and stowed it. The elderly man was standing with a cup of coffee in one hand and a doughnut in the other. “Front’s coming in.”

Justine gestured with her phone before zipping it into a dry bag. “My weather app says it’s going to be okay.”

“App,” he scoffed, and ate another bite of his doughnut. “Clouds yesterday looked like mackerel scales. That means a storm’s coming. See those gulls coming in, flying low? See all the smelt feeding at the surface? All signs. Mother Nature’s the app I’ve used for fifty years, and she’s never wrong.”

“Those smelt haven’t checked the local Doppler,” Justine said with a grin. “The forecast is fine.”

He shook his head in the manner of a seasoned mariner who was rarely heeded by impudent youngsters. “Forecasts and dead fish: Both of ’em go bad quick.”

After fastening her life jacket, Justine set out with efficient forward strokes of her paddle, pacing herself for the hour-long trip. The wind cut through the warmth of the day and kept her comfortable. Gripping her paddle, she concentrated on planting the blades behind each successive oncoming wave.

The wind changed, forcing Justine to zigzag from her original heading. Bending low to lessen the wind resistance, she grabbed and pulled water with the paddle. It was a high-intensity workout. Her momentum was broken by the constant bracing necessary to keep the kayak from broaching and turning parallel to the waves.

The wind gusts, now needled with rain, hit with escalating force. Quartering winds pushed her in one direction while the water pushed her in another. The fetch of the waves lengthened, energy rising in foamy liquid hills. Squinting at the sky, Justine was startled by how dark and thick the cloud cover had become, the leading edge thick and abnormally tall.

It was happening too fast. It didn’t make sense.

This isn’t natural, she thought with a stab of fear.

“Don’t try to bluff fate,” Rosemary had once warned her.

She had been paddling for at least an hour—she should have reached Cauldron Island by now. As she tried to get a fix on her position, she was stunned to realize that the fifty-foot bluff of Cauldron Island was still at least a mile away, and the current had pushed her well off course. If she didn’t make headway fast, she was going to find herself tossed like a child’s toy in the rough-and-tumble of Haro Strait.

Waves broke hard over the bow, knocking out items she had tucked beneath the elastic deck line … a bottle of Gatorade, her signal kit.

Her heart was slamming with effort. If she’d had a free hand, she would have shaken a fist at the sky. Attacking the water with renewed fury, she muscled her way through roller-coaster swells. In a couple of minutes, better sense prevailed and she tried to spare her aching arms by keeping the paddle strokes low and using her trunk muscles. The only thoughts left were those connected to survival.

The entire world was water. Rain and ocean, above and below, spraying and roiling, pushing and tossing.

Billows shoved the kayak parallel and broadsided her. She leaned into each oncoming surge to keep from capsizing, and paddled to turn the bow of the kayak into the whitecaps. Another wave hit, but she couldn’t react fast enough.

The kayak flipped.

Eleven

Burning-cold blackness. Pain everywhere, all at once, as if she’d been set on fire. She tried to complete an Eskimo roll, but the kayak had capsized toward her weaker rolling side, and she couldn’t carry the movement through. Suspended upside down, disoriented by the cold shock, she grappled for the fastening loop of the waterproof spray skirt that held her into the cockpit of the kayak. The cold had already begun to mix her up; she couldn’t find the loop and panic was taking over.

She managed to fight her way sideways until her face broke the surface for the split second necessary to drag in a quick breath. Going back under, she searched for the loop and found it. A frantic tug, and the spray skirt came off. She fought her way out of the kayak. Coming to the surface, she grabbed the overturned craft and filled her lungs before another wave broke.

It was unbelievably cold. Her skin and flesh were numb, her blood pressure ratcheting furiously. The kayak paddle bobbed a few feet away, still tethered to the bow on a leash fastened with nylon snap hooks. Panting, she maneuvered to the bow, gripping the elastic deck to maintain her hold on the kayak. Gripping the leash, she tugged until the paddle was in reach. It was hard to make her hand close around the handle.

She had to get out of the water. Her fine motor skills were gone. In about ten minutes, blood flow to nonessential muscles would shut off.

Reaching under the kayak, she found the foam paddle float stored beneath the bungee cord on the deck, and pulled it free. She needed the paddle float to climb back into the kayak. Her hands were as clumsy as if they were encased in pot holders. She worked to slide one end of her paddle into the nylon pocket on the back of the float.

Before she had finished, a wave slammed into her. It was like running into a concrete wall, the impact nearly knocking her out. Wheezing, choking, she saw that the foam paddle float had been carried away. Her fist gripped the paddle handle, its leash still fastened to the kayak.

She made her way back to the kayak, grateful for the buoyancy of her life jacket.

With the paddle float gone, the only option was to flip the kayak right side up and try to climb onto the stern in a ladder-crawl maneuver. As she grappled for the deck line, however, she found she barely had any grip strength left.

It was happening too fast. The cold knifed deeper, her muscles stiffening as if she were turning to stone. She was scared, but that was a good sign; it was when you stopped feeling scared, when you stopped caring, that you were in the worst danger.

She tried to think of a spell, a prayer, anything that made sense, but words floated at the top of her head like the letters in a bowl of alphabet soup.

The yellow plastic surface of the kayak bumped against her head, galvanizing her.

The choice was simple: Get back in, and live. Stay in the water, and die.

Panting, grunting with effort, she flipped the kayak over and worked her way to the stern. The water shunted her in violent surges, up, down, sideways.

Every movement required intense will and focus. She knew what to do: Stow the paddle in the rigging. Push the stern down with your body weight. Kick your feet to launch yourself onto the stern decking. Crawl to the cockpit.

But Justine wasn’t sure if she was actually doing those things or merely thinking them. No, she was still in the water. The bow of the kayak had risen; she must have pushed the stern down. She couldn’t tell if her legs were moving, if she would be able to execute a strong enough kick to launch herself onto the craft. If she screwed up, there wouldn’t be another chance.

In a moment she found herself sprawled on the stern, her legs straddled on either side of the kayak. Thank you, spirits. Fighting to keep the craft balanced, she began to crawl toward the center.

But another wave was coming. A five-foot wall of water rolled directly toward the side of the kayak. Justine watched it approach with a strange sense of resignation, understanding that she was going to capsize again. It was over. She closed her eyes and held her breath as the world spun. The kayak and the paddle were ripped away from her, and she was submerged in a hell of churning coldness. The life jacket buoyed her to the milk-froth surface.

She could barely see or hear in the chaos, but a thunderous roar descended as if the entire sky were caving in. Shuddering, she turned to see a massive white shape upwind of her, rising and falling on the tumult. It took a long time for her disoriented brain to register that it was a boat. She was at the point of not caring about anything at all, not even whether she was rescued.

Someone was shouting. She couldn’t make out the words, but from the sound of his voice, he was probably cursing a blue streak. She felt another wave strike. Coughing up a mouthful of salt water, she tried to push a wet curtain of hair out of her eyes, but there was no feeling left in her hands. More shouting. A bright orange bag with a loop landed directly in front of her.

Her thought process had been dismantled. She stared at it dumbly, her brain slow to process what her reaction should be, her limbs and torso shuddering violently.

Furious commands shot through the air, willing her into action. She knew the sounds were words, but they made no sense. Although she didn’t understand what she was supposed to do, her body took over. She found herself making clumsy pounces for the bag, like a puppy playing with a ball. The second time she tried, she managed to close her arms around the orange foam shape. She held it to her chest. Immediately she was towed through the punishing water.

Her thoughts kept disintegrating before she could attach meaning to them. It didn’t matter, although some distant part of her brain knew that it should matter. The whole world was water, above and below, water dragging at her feet, urging her to sink into the feeling and go to sleep where it was dark and calm, far beneath the waves.

Instead, she was hauled upward with stunning force. Consciousness jolted through her as she was dumped onto a padded bench in the back of the boat. Shivering too hard to speak or think, she lay on a bench, looking up at a man whose face was familiar but whose name she couldn’t recall. He stripped off his Windbreaker and wrapped it around her. Lightning split the sky with long branches as the man went to the helm station.

It was a recreational boat with a removable bow cover, unsuited to heavy open seas. The outboard engine snarled as the man threw it into gear. Since the waves were too high to put the boat into planing mode, he was forced to go slowly.

Jason. The recognition curled through the vapor of exhaustion, and with it, she felt the faintest flicker of emotion. She couldn’t fathom how he had come to be there. No sane person would put his life at risk for a woman he barely knew.

He worked methodically at the helm, taking ninety-degree turns, fighting waves that attacked the boat from all sides. It took experience and skill to do what he was doing, riding each crest at an angle, reducing power on each downward slope to keep from burying the bow. The boat rolled up and down, yawing, while the water’s energy threatened to push the stern sideways. Justine expected the boat to capsize in a trough at any moment.

She huddled inside the thin carapace of the waterproof jacket while her circulation made a cautious attempt to restore itself. Continuous full-body shivers made her teeth clack until her skull vibrated. Stiffening against the tremors could make them stop for a second, but they resumed instantly. Time faltered like a badly edited video. Her hands were entirely numb but she felt tack-hammer pulses at the insides of her elbows.

Justine closed her eyes, steeling herself to endure every upswing and dizzying descent, every smack of cold water coming over the side. Although she wasn’t watching Jason, she was aware of his struggle against every shift and jolt of the boat to adjust their course.

Eventually it seemed that the waves weren’t as rough. The engine was running slower. Raising her head, Justine cast a bleary glance toward the bow and recognized the lighthouse on its familiar bluff. He had gotten them to Cauldron Island. She couldn’t believe it.

Jason flipped the boat’s starboard bumpers to the outside of the hull. They approached the dock at an angle with the engine in neutral. As soon as the boat lined up, he shifted the engine in reverse, causing the stern to swing neatly toward the dock.

After cutting the engine, he proceeded to tie the lines. Seeing Justine struggling to sit upward, he pointed a finger at her and snarled a couple of words. Although she couldn’t hear him over the storm, it was clear that he didn’t want her to move yet. With despair, she saw the towering line of narrow stairs leading to the top of the bluff. The climb was a challenge even on good days. She wasn’t going to be able to make it.

When Jason had finished tying the lines to the dock cleats, he reached down into the boat for Justine. She gave him her stiff white hand and did her best to help as he pulled her out. As soon as her feet touched the dock, she found herself being lifted over Jason’s shoulder. Her body collapsed like a folding chair. He carried her fireman-style up the steps, one arm locked behind her knees, the other gripping the stair railing at intervals.

She tried to stiffen against the shivering, knowing the involuntary movements weren’t helping. But Jason’s hold on her was hard and secure. He ascended with astonishing ease, taking some of the stairs two at a time. As they reached the top, his breathing was labored but steady. He could have carried her twice as far without stopping.

Taking Justine to the front door of the limestone house, Jason banged on it with the side of his fist.

In a matter of seconds, the door opened. Justine heard anxious cries from both Rosemary and Sage … “Mother of Earth!” and “For Hades’ sake…”

Jason didn’t stop to ask or answer questions. He carried Justine into the main living area and started to issue commands before he had even deposited her on the sofa.

“Get blankets. Start a bath. Warm, not hot. And make some tea with sugar or honey.”

“What happened?” Rosemary asked, opening the storage ottoman beside the sofa and pulling out quilted blankets.

“Kayak capsized,” Jason said brusquely, bending over Justine’s shuddering form. He tugged off her wet neoprene boots. His voice was low and ferocious as he continued. “Did it occur to you to take five fu**ing minutes to listen to the weather radio, Justine? Ever hear of a small-craft advisory?”

Stung, she tried to explain that no advisories had been in effect when she’d set out, but she could only manage a few incoherent sounds through the chattering of her teeth.

“Shut up,” he told her roughly, and yanked off her socks.

Rosemary, who wasn’t generally fond of men to begin with, shot him an affronted glance.

Sage laid a gently restraining hand on her arm. “Start the bathwater. I’ll make tea.”

“Did you hear the way he—”

“He’s just a bit frazzled,” Sage murmured. “Let it be.”

Jason wasn’t frazzled, Justine wanted to tell her. He was furious, and sky-high on adrenaline. And she didn’t especially want to be left alone with him in this mood.

As both women exited the room, Jason began the difficult task of removing Justine’s neoprene pants. The insulated fabric clung stubbornly to her legs despite the nylon facing inside. Jason’s breath came in harsh bursts as he pulled the pants free, the neoprene actually ripping in his brutal grip. Justine lay with her fists clenched, her body shaking until it felt as if the flesh were about to rattle loose from her bones.