Everyone around me was yelling: Calix and Diya, Frasier at the rescue team, PoisonandCairo at the police.Who the hell knew where Rush was?He wasn’t answering his phone, but he surely had to have caught up to that fucker he had been chasing.
The rescue team lingered by the rocks, flashlights beaming into the ocean.
“It’s too dangerous,” one of the men said.
I gritted my teeth and tugged off my shirt.“I’m going down there.”
Calix snapped his head toward me.“What?”
“She could still be alive,” I said, jumping onto the first rock, the water already soaking my socks.I took them off, too, and tossed them aside.After wiggling out of my jeans, I hopped onto the next rock, almost slipping and landing on my ass.
I wasn’t going to wait for these fuckers to make up their mind whether they were going to try to find her or not.I would.
Frasier grabbed my elbow.“You’re going to break your neck.”
“Then I’ll break my fucking neck,” I said, ripping my arm out of his hold.“Don’t touch me.”
While I expected Cairo to come running over and attempt to stop me, too, he stayed quiet near the police.Everyone watched me take another step.They knew that they couldn’t do anything to stop me, not when it came to her.
Another rock, and I was mid-thigh deep in the water, the waves pushing and pulling me violently.A couple of trained members of the rescue team followed after me, telling me that it was too dangerous, that they’d handle it.
But they had already made their choice.
I’dhandle it.Like I always did.
“Where’d they dump the body?”I shouted over the crashing waves.
“More to your left,” Cairo said.“But the body could be anywhere by now.”
It could be fifty miles out at sea, but I would still fucking find her.Those assholes didn’t have the balls to kill anyone, but it didn’t matter if it was her body or not; I needed to see for myself.I wanted proof.
“Arch,” Cairo said, “you should?—”
“Give me a flashlight,” I shouted, trying to stabilize myself on the rock.
Waves continued to crash against me, rocking me backward.Frasier threw down a flashlight, and I snatched it before it landed in the water.The rescue team searched to the right, where the waves were pulling us toward, telling me that was where she would’ve gone.
After turning on the flashlight, I turned it toward the left, spotting a patch of hair—the same color as Astrid’s—two rocks over.I moved to the next rock, and the waves slammed into me so hard that I lost my footing and slipped into the freezing cold water.
The current pulled me to the right, but I held the flashlight in my teeth and swam toward the body.My heart pounded inside my chest, so loud that it was all I could hear over the crashing waves.
Thud after thud after thud.
That couldn’t be Astrid.It couldn’t.I wouldn’t let it.
The faster I swam against the ocean, the harder it became.I was just treading water, not making it anywhere.If anything, I was heading backward, toward the rescue team.A low, frustrated growl left my mouth, and suddenly, someone grabbed my arm.
Frasier.
He tugged me back toward the rock, and I grasped it with all my might, completely out of breath.I used my grip on the rocks to move myself to the left, desperate to get to the body, to prove to myself that it wasn’t her.
It couldn’t be her.
And then, just as I reached the body, she reached out and grabbed my wrist.
CHAPTEREIGHTY-SIX
ARCH
