“Cole!” Jo shouted.
She had to stop fighting the river and let the current carry her. Jo turned flat onto her back, her feet pointed downstream. A violent undercurrent would drag her under. She had to find a calmer part of the river and then she could swim at a forty-five-degree angle toward the riverbank, except this was a canyon that would take her all the way to the ocean and spit her out.
And the river never slowed.
Calm never happened.
She’d be washed out to the Pacific. Her limbs were already growing numb.
“Jo!” Cole appeared near her, shouting over the rapids. “We can do this. This will open up into an estuary. Swim out of it. Can you do that?”
“Yes!”Can you?
The river grew wider and more brackish toward the ocean. Only problem was the south side of the river remained an unbreachable ledge, but the north bank openedup. Jo’s limbs were so numb, she couldn’t even be sure she was still swimming as Cole urged her forward.
“We can do this,” he said. “Come on.”
Finally they crawled up onto a sandbar. A little bit farther, they would reach the shore.
Jo rolled onto her back, much like Cole had done on the bridge. The misting rain made sure she stayed wet after crawling from the river. “We have to get out of this, Cole. We both probably have hypothermia. The wind isn’t helping.”
“Okay,” he said. “Give me a minute.”
“How did you know?” she asked.
“How did I know what?”
“Where to find me?”
“I didn’t. But I wasn’t going to sit at the house and do nothing, so I started searching. Detective Sanders put out an APB and closed the roads. Troy Martin only had so many ways out of the Olympic Peninsula. I thought about the R&D and that maybe there was a clue there. I saw it burning as soon as I steered through Forestview. It was a hunch, nothing else, but then the fire sealed it for me. I knew he must have taken you there so he could wait for your father at his old shop. There must have been something there he wanted.”
“Pop’s die-cast collection. He gave Martin the space shuttle. My guess is that it had a small data drive in it. The die-cast models saved my life.”
She thought back to that moment in the shop when Martin had escorted Pop out and left her to burn. Pop had given her his last words to remember something he’d said.
Her body against the concrete, she was face-to-face with those ridiculous model cars. Some crushed underfoot by a madman. Then she knew what Pop wanted her to remember. Something he’d said referencing the modelcars.“Thesmallest details can have the biggest impact.”That was it, then. That phrase defined his life over the last thirty years. Those small details had been ignored and caused a disaster. And that phrase had defined her life, her way out of the burning shop. She’d been able to cut off her ties with the sharp edge of the smashed die-cast Lamborghini.
Cole started to get to his feet, yanking Jo’s attention back to their sandbar.
“I don’t believe it,” he said.
“What?”
“He’s alive. He made it.”
Jo rolled to look in the direction Cole stared. “That’s him limping away, isn’t it?”
“I can’t let him get away, Jo.”
Cole started, but she grabbed him and wouldn’t let him go. “He won’t get away, Cole.”
He stared at her long and hard and then dropped to his knees next to her. “You’re right. Now that the cops know who’s to blame, there’s nowhere he can hide. I just ... I want you to be free to live your life. Free ... to love.”
She sat up. “Thank you for that. Thank you. I’m free now, but ask me what I want. Go ahead.”
He drew closer to her, his face so near. Anguish filled his features. A gust of wind caused the sand to pelt his face, and he squinted to look at her. “I’m almost afraid to ask. But ... what do you want, Jo?”
“I need to know, Cole. Whatelsewere you going to tell me when you explained about being away for so long? You never finished.”
