Two more breaths. I check for pulse with my fingers pressed to her carotid. There. Weak and thready but present. She's alive. Just not breathing on her own.
I start swimming for shore, one arm locked around her torso to keep her face above water, the other stroking hard. Every few strokes I stop, tread water, and deliver another breath. Swim. Breathe. Swim. Breathe. The rhythm is automatic but exhaustion is setting in. Cold water is leeching heat from my core, and the adrenaline dump from the sprint and dive is leaving my muscles shaky.
One hundred fifty yards. I can hear sirens now, getting closer. Base emergency response is mobilizing. But they're not here yet and Fallon's lips are turning bluer with each passing second.
One hundred yards. My shoulders are burning. My legs feel like lead. But I keep stroking, keep breathing for her, keep dragging us both toward shore.
Seventy-five yards. Fifty.
Her body convulses in my arms.
She coughs once, harsh and wet, and seawater erupts from her mouth. I roll her to her side, supporting her while she coughs and chokes and gasps for air. Her whole body shakes with the effort but she's breathing. On her own. Without my help.
Relief hits me so hard I almost go under myself.
Shallow water now. I get my feet under me and half-carry, half-drag Fallon toward the beach. She's coughing continuously, bringing up seawater with each harsh breath. Her hands clutch at my arm with surprising strength.
We reach the sand and I lower her gently, rolling her to her side in the recovery position. She coughs again, violent and painful, but her color is improving. Less blue, more pale. Her chest rises and falls in ragged gasps but she's breathing.
She's alive.
I'm kneeling beside her in wet sand, one hand on her shoulder to steady her, when her eyes open.
Green. Sea-green with flecks of gray, more vivid up close than I expected from watching her at a distance. They focus on my face with startling intensity, recognition flashing through them even as she struggles to draw breath.
"You," she rasps, voice raw from seawater and coughing. "The runner."
Recognition in those sea-green eyes. Not suspicion like this morning on the beach. Something else entirely.
I should say something professional. Something reassuring. Something that sounds like a SEAL team leader who just executed a textbook water rescue.
Instead, I brush wet auburn hair back from her face and meet those green eyes head-on.
"Yeah," I say. "The runner. And you're going to be fine."
She coughs again, turning her head to spit out more seawater, but her gaze comes back to mine. Questions in those green eyes. Suspicion. The beginning of fear as realization sets in.
She knows it too. That flash of light was too bright, too concentrated. That explosion was too deliberate.
Someone just tried to kill her. And she's looking at me like maybe I'm the threat.
3
FALLON
Voices filter through the fog. Beeping. The antiseptic smell of a hospital mixed with something chemical that burns my nose. My eyelids feel like they've been glued shut, but I force them open anyway.
White ceiling tiles. Fluorescent lights. A blood pressure cuff squeezing my arm.
Not the ocean. Not drowning. Not cold water closing over my head.
I try to sit up and pain explodes through my ribs. A cough tears from my chest, bringing up the taste of seawater and gasoline. My lungs burn like I inhaled fire.
The memory slams back with brutal clarity. The grinding sound beneath my feet getting louder. The moment I realized I'd made a mistake, that I should have turned back. Then the flash of light, impossibly bright. The world tilting as the explosion lifted the bow out of the water. Flying through the air, hitting the surface hard enough to knock the breath from my lungs.
Cold. So cold. Sinking. Tangled in something that pulled me down. Lungs screaming for air I couldn't reach.
Then hands. Strong hands grabbing me, pulling me up. Air forced into my lungs. Storm-gray eyes looking down at me.
