Chapter Three
Jake
Fiftypush-ups.Onehundredsit-ups. A two-minute plank. Twenty-five single-leg squats on his good leg, and a half hour of massage and physical therapy exercises for his bad leg.
Then two eggs over easy, half an avocado on top of a slice of whole grain toast, and a glass of orange juice. Followed by dishes and email. And a one-mile walk on the beach.
That had been Jake’s routine every single morning for the last five years. Rain or shine. Summer warmth or winter chill. Or, like this morning, rainandpre-winter chill.
It was still cold, just like the night before, and the fog had lifted but given way to a heavy cloud layer that had been dumping rain on the region since sometime in the middle of the night. So he brought an umbrella and dressed in layers—a sweatshirt over his T-shirt, his puffy black raincoat, and his old burgundy Stanford beanie. His leg ached enough—partly thanks to the weather—that he opted to bring his cane with him as well. He usually didn’t need it, but going up and down the steps to the beach was challenging for him on a normal day, and with the rain making the old wooden stairs just a little bit slick, he didn’t want to take any chances.
Jake stepped outside onto the patio, still under the overhang, and closed the patio door behind him. Then he paused and stared out over the water. God, this view. It was incredible, even with the clouds and rain. Actually, maybe it was even more incredible because of the rain. It made the ocean seem wilder than normal. Wilder and untamed andvast.
He closed his eyes and just listened. The rhythmic roar of the waves below him seemed to collide with the steady drone of the rain, and despite the awe and power of both forces—the storm and the ocean—Jake felt a deep comfort from it, as he always had.
Whenever his sister questioned him wanting to live out here alone, he wished he could show this to her. He wished she couldfeelthis feeling he had. She loved the ocean, but he lived for it. He needed it. He craved it.
With a small smile, Jake scanned the ocean one more time, then opened up his umbrella and stepped out from under the overhang. Of course, his leg gave him trouble right away, the dull ache turning into a more insistent throb with each step, and by the time he reached the stairs leading down his little section of cliff to the beach, his jaw was clenched tightly and he was having to rely much too much on his cane. He paused at the top of the stairway just long enough to take a breath and then started on his way down—carefully.
Despite how much he’d teased his sister about climbing onto the roof yesterday, he had no intention of doing anything even potentially dangerous, and that included taking the stairs too quickly. The last thing he needed was to injure himselfmore.
One accident like his was enough for an entire lifetime.
So he went slowly, making good use of his cane. There were fifty-three steps in all, and the stairway was steep and narrow. Several of the steps—numbers eighteen and thirty-seven—were in disrepair and needed some TLC. At some point, maybe, he’d do something about it. Have his buddy Steve come up from San Jose and help him fix them up. But for now, he’d just go slowly.
The ache only grew more as he got closer to the beach, and he’d fully expected that.
“Don’t push it. If it hurts too much, it’s okay to take a day off.”
If he wasn’t so stubborn, he’d probably listen to his physical therapist’s advice. But he was just stubborn and prideful enough that he refused to give up this one last piece of himself. He refused to let the accident take this from him.
He paused at step forty-three and closed his eyes for a minute, remembering what it had been like to be pain-free and healthy and active before that day that had taken so much from him. He was lucky to be alive, and he also felt extremely lucky that he’d been the only one of the crew injured. But it had been touch and go for a while, and there’d been a time when the doctors hadn’t been able to tell him or his family that he’d ever walk again.
Hehadwalked, of course, and several weeks sooner than the timeline even the most optimistic of his doctors had laid out. Because he’d been ridiculously stubborn about it.
His eyes opened again, and he took a deep breath in as he scanned the horizon. Then he finished his walk down the steps, set his cane up against the rocks at the end of the stairway, and turned left to head down the coastline.
And he froze in place.
“Shit,” he cursed, and he dropped his umbrella and started hobbling as fast as he could along the curved beach toward a rocky outcrop where the ocean waves were just lapping up against the cliff face as the tide came in. Lying next to the cliff was a small figure dressed in dark clothing—or maybe it was just dirty, wet clothing, Jake realized as he approached. Yeah, a dirty gray sweatshirt, tattered and frayed at the hem, and pants that looked like they might have been blue at one point, but were now smudged black and brown, one leg ripped halfway up. No shoes. Or hat. Or coat or gloves.
And it was damn cold and raining, and the water was almost up at the person’s feet now, the crashing waves coming much too close for Jake’s comfort.
“Hey! Hey there, are you okay?” he called, still about fifty feet or so away. When the person didn’t move or react, Jake’s stomach dropped, and he pushed himself into a lopsided jog, his injured leg now throbbing.
The rain continued falling down hard, and by the time he reached the cliff where the person was, he was soaking wet, layers or not. Regardless, and ignoring the sharp pains shooting through his leg, he dropped to his knees next to the person.
It was bad. He knew that immediately, before he even made any real assessments.
The person looked like a young man, probably at least several years younger than Jake’s twenty-eight, but he was in poor, poor shape. His cheeks were sunken, and his skin was pale, his lips tinged blue. There was a nasty gash on the man’s cheek, and it was surrounded by redness and bruising. And he wasn’t moving. At all.
“Please, please, please,” Jake mumbled to himself, and he leaned forward until his cheek was just inches from the man’s mouth and nose. He felt a weak warmth on his skin as the man took a shallow breath, then another one, and Jake closed his eyes as relief hit him. Not that they were out of the woods. Not even close. But at least the man was alive right now.
Alive but barely breathing and probably close to being hypothermic.
“Dammit.” Jake reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, hunching over it to keep it from getting too wet, but a quick glance at the screen showed he had no service, as he expected. Service was spotty out here, even though he usually had decent enough reception at his house. But that didn’t help him right now.
“Hey, man, wake up!” he said, and he shoved the phone back into his pocket, set his hand on the man’s shoulder gently, and then squeezed.
