Her lifeless body suspended in the water beneath the surface. My boots weighed me down, but I fought against the current to reach her. To save her. I swam as fast as I could and pulled her against me as I struggled to raise us both to the top. My arm locked around her waist as I swam toward Karlyn. She waded back into the water and helped me bring her to safety.
I laid her on the ground, her body cold and turning blue, and I remembered a line I heard from that stupid medical show she made me watch when I showed up at her house in the dark.
‘You’re not dead until you’re warm and dead.’
“Come on, baby.” My voice was a hoarse whisper to my ears as I tilted her chin up and breathed into her lungs. Karlyn dropped beside us and didn’t hesitate as she started chest compressions.
I focused on the whispered numbers as Karlyn counted out loud with each press on Grace’s chest, and I prayed to a God I hadn’t spoken to since my parents’ death. I silently made deals with both God and the Devil, offering my soul to the first one who brought her back to me.
After what felt like hours, but was likely mere minutes, Grace gasped and coughed. Turning her to her side, she spat out the water that had filled her chest. Sitting back, I sighed with relief and looked around.
“Where is Jackson?” I asked, frowning as I searched for my brother.
“What?” Karlyn’s eyes went wide with fear as she focused on the river behind us.
“He jumped before I did,” I snapped, jumping to my feet, rushing back to the river’s edge to search for him.
“What?” she gasped.
My eyes scanned the water’s edge. I couldn’t lose him, not now. I moved along the shore, and that was when I finally saw him, face down in the water.
“JACKSON!” I roared right before diving back into the water and swimming toward him. My body was cold and tired. I feared I would lose the fight against the current, but I pushed on. Kicking my heavy feet, my arms sloshed through the water as if pulling myself along an invisible rope that tethered me to my little brother.
Karlyn’s scream gave me the push I needed to forge on. The pain and heartache of losing the man that had brought her out of the abyss was what I needed to push myself that little bit more. She needed him as much as I did.
Reaching him, I flipped him onto his back and dragged him back to the shore. Karlyn once more met me in the water and helped carry him out. Her strength was admirable, not only physical, but mental and emotional. I knew what she suffered at the hands of the Death Dogs and Zephyr. But she didn’t let it stop her. She hadn’t curled up in a ball and shut out the world the way Grace was doing now. I could only hope she was in shock from the fall into the cold river. I needed her to come back to me, but I had to save my brother first.
“Jackson!” Karlyn cried beside me.
“Come on, little brother,” I snarled, pressing hard on Jackson’s chest. “You are not dying before me.”
Karlyn pressed her ear close to his face, whispering his name, pleading, bargaining with whatever power might be listening. The same way I had for Grace.
“Fuck!” I cursed, looking down at my hands. They were covered in blood, and I ripped open his shirt. “Fuck!”
Karlyn’s hands covered his heart as she tried desperately to stem the flow of blood, while I looked around helplessly for something, anything I could use to stop the bleeding.
Grace crawled in next to me and pulled Karlyn’s hands away. Without a word, she grabbed some mud and slathered it on my brother’s chest.
“What are you doing?” Karlyn cried. “We need to clean it. He’ll get an infection.”
“He’ll bleed out long before the infection sets in. We need to stop the bleeding.” Grace’s voice was void of emotion. She worked silently to cover Jackson with mud and then struggled to push him over.
“With mud?” I asked, confused as I rolled him to his side. There was no exit wound, which meant the bullet was still inside his chest.
“Yes, there is something in soil that helps the blood clot,” she explained. The robotic sound of her voice terrified me. I wasn’t sure she was really here.
“Grace,” I whispered as I laid Jackson back down.
“No,” she said. “We have to focus on getting out of here.” She reached over and placed two fingers on his neck. “He has a pulse, but it’s weak.” She looked up at me, and the light in her eyes, the twinkle that made her green eyes look like emeralds, had disappeared. “Can you carry him?”
I stared at her, searching for my Grace. Trying to look into her soul, like the hundreds of other times we’d been together. But something had broken inside her.
“Nothing has changed, Grace.”
Her eyes closed and she sighed. The sound of her frustration pulled at my chest. She was in there. Somewhere. Hiding. I’d find her if it was the last fucking thing I did.
“Can you carry him?” she asked again, her eyes focused on Jackson rather than me.
