he’d hauled himself to his knees just as a shot took a chunk out of the side of the boat, startling Jane. She flipped over backward into the waves, going under. Breaking the surface a moment later, she looked at him with wide eyes of a color caught between ice blue and silver. She coughed, wet hair clinging in long dark clumps to her cheeks.
Indecision clawed at him. She was his enemy, but she was also a woman, a small woman with a mouth pinched in fear. Without allowing himself to think it over, he stuck an oar over the side, and she grabbed on.
Fighting through pain and the disequilibrium of the rocking boat, he began to pull her in, until another shot furrowed the water so close she lost her grip. Hands flailing, she fought against the current, but it sucked her back toward the rocks. He tumbled out after her, a messy splash into cold that seeped right into his core.
He struck out as best he could in the direction she’d been swept. Without the protection of the boat, there would be nothing stopping Wade from shooting them except perhaps the layer of fog, which had thickened to be almost impenetrable.
His fingers felt something soft, and he grabbed at it. It turned out to be her jacket sleeve. He clung to her wrist and reeled the rest of her body close to his until he’d encircled her in his arms. She was smaller than he’d thought.
She looked up at him with those strange-colored eyes.
The lights from a boat sliced through the water, bouncing off the mist. “Driftwood Police Department,” a voice called. “This is private property, and there is no shooting allowed here.” It was a voice Mitch knew well. Danny Patron, an avid fisherman, hardworking cop and father of three, who was assigned the lonely job of watching the coastline.
“Hey,” he yelled. “Danny! Over here.” He continued to shout as loud as he could, and Jane joined him, but the thrum of the motor indicated the vessel was passing them, unaware of the two victims fighting the waves and buried in fog.
By now Mitch was tiring, the energy seeping out of him as he struggled to tread water. He could not see what had become of the boat, and it took all his reserves to keep them from smashing against the sharp rocks.
He realized Jane had freed herself from his grasp and taken hold of his sleeve. He resisted, but she dug her fingers into his bicep.
“This way.”
Again, he was forced to make a decision—follow a woman he would not even trust with his cowboy boots, or stay put, fighting the tide until he would certainly drown?
“Where...?” he tried, but she did not allow him to utter the rest. He found himself towed along through the icy water, following the woman who’d married the monster.
* * *
Jane felt as though her limbs were carved from a block of ice. She held on to Mitch as long as she could, but he slipped out of her numb grasp at some point, though she could still see his dark head just behind. He shouted a couple of times, but she could not understand over the roar of the surf, nor did she want to. There was only one thing on her mind: getting them out of the freezing grip of the waves before they drowned.
Her knee banged into a submerged ridge, the bottom of the cliff that rose straight from the water like a shark fin. She hauled herself out, gasping as the wind robbed her of any remaining warmth.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Mitch grunted behind her. “If you climb, he’s got an easy target.”
She didn’t respond, fingers clawing as the rocks tore into her flesh. It was here, had to be.
“Hey,” he said, but his words were cut off by a grunt of pain. From his injury or the rocks that surely sliced at him, too.
What if she’d been wrong? Again? What if Mitch was right and there was nothing on this cliff but certain death? No, this would not be the end. This was her only shot at life, real life, one last chance to make things right. Teeth gritted, she hauled herself along the sharp crack, praying that the fog and the police had been enough to frighten Wade away.
But Wade was never scared.
That part of him was missing; instead there was an empty void where human feeling should reside.
She was shivering uncontrollably now. Her legs felt like they were as insubstantial as the fog. Despair gripped its way into her belly. And then she saw it, the cutout that marked the cave she’d spotted on her way into the cove, high enough that the tide would not flood it, or so she hoped.
“Come on,” she ordered him and climbed as quickly as she could until she crawled through the opening. It was a harder squeeze for Mitch, as the guy was broad shouldered and a hulk at somewhere over six feet.
He hunched inside the cave, water streaming from his clothing, eyes ink dark, narrow, suspicious.
“You’re Wade’s wife.”
It was like the executioner pronouncing sentence.
“No. Divorced.”
“Why are you here?” His shirt was stained with blood, and his teeth were chattering as badly as hers.
“Sit down,” she said.
“I don’t take orders from you.”
“Okay then, stand, but when you fall over, try not to hit your head. You probably already have a concussion.”
He did not sit, but she noticed he grabbed an outcropping of rock with one massive palm.
She scanned the cave floor until she found a meager supply of semidry leaves and some driftwood. Piling it onto the driest spot she could find, she pulled the Ziploc bag from her jacket pocket. With trembling fingers, she struck the match. It fizzled as soon as she touched it to the leaves.
“We won’t have to worry that he’ll see the smoke with all this fog,” she said, more to herself than him. I hope. There wasn’t much choice, anyway. They were dangerously close to hypothermia. Cold or bullets? Which one would get them first? She ground her teeth together. Neither, if she had a teaspoon of strength left in her. Patting her pockets, she realized her cell phone was somewhere at the bottom of the cove. At least the small pouch hooked to her belt was still there, for what it was worth. Her driver’s license, ATM card and a soggy ten-dollar bill. Not much, but keeping hold of some small thing helped her feel the tiniest bit less exposed.
Mitch swabbed a sleeve over his face. “Where’d you get the matches?”
“There was a kit in the boat. I grabbed it just before I started the motor. I thought there might be some first-aid supplies.”
He was silent as she struck the second match, which was snuffed just as quickly.
“Here,” he said, dropping to one knee and taking the box of matches from her. He bent close to the debris with a wince and a groan. Slowly, patiently, he held the lit match to the barest edge of the driest clump of pine needles. It kindled orange and smoked. He blew softly, cupping his shaking hand around the needles until they were fully aflame. With more gentleness than she’d thought him capable of, he eased the pine needles back into the pile. She held her breath as the debris grudgingly took.
Fighting back tears of relief, she scooted as close as she could to that small
