Behind him, the teenagers had come back toward the dock. Andy was right at the edge of the dock shouting his mother’s name over and over with a cracking, desperate quality in his voice that Ace felt in his own chest. Grace was right behind him, one hand pressed over her mouth.
“Grace.” Ace’s voice came out sharp and clear over it all. “Grace, I need you to step up right now.”
She turned to him, eyes streaming, chest heaving.
“I’m going in after your mother,” Ace told her. He pointed to his pack. “Andy, take my pack.” He looked at Grace again. “Grace, you’re in charge now. You need to take everyone past the camp to grab only the necessary supplies; you know the drill. Your father taught you, remember?” Grace nodded. “Then head to the cave.” He held her eyes. “You remember where it is, right?”
“I can’t—” Grace’s voice broke. “I can’t just leave Mom, she’s out there?—”
“You’re not leaving her,” Ace reasoned. “I’m going to get her. But I need you and everyone else off this dock and moving inland before I go in, because I can’t save your mother and worry that you’re not listening to me. Do you understand me?”
Grace stared at him. Her chin was shaking.
“Grace.” He held her eyes. “Your father trained you for exactly this. You know he did. I need you to do as I’ve asked and right now.”
Something moved across Grace’s face that was not calm. It was something harder than calm. Something that cost her emotionally as she nodded and turned toward the group.
“Tyler,” Grace said, taking control, her voice only fracturing once on the single syllable before she pulled it back. “You fall back to ensure everyone moves in line.” Her eyes scanned the group. “Everyone else stays behind me and in front of Tyler.” The group nodded. “Okay, let’s move. You heard what Ace said.”
Tyler was already lining up the group, his pack on, his face pale but set in that contained way of his that Ace had come to recognize as the Dillinger version of holding it together.
Ace didn’t waste another moment and moved to the edge of the dock, reading the water, tracking the current direction, and the wave sets and the position where he had last seen Willa. The rip was running east-northeast, which was going to work against him on the way out and with him on the way back if he played it right. The chop was short and steep, driven by wind rather than swell, which meant it was going to be exhausting rather than dangerous in the way a long ocean swell was dangerous. But Ace could work with that and dove into the water.
The cold hit him like a door slamming. Not the pleasant cool of an afternoon swim but the sharp, shocking cold of water that had been churned up from below, and the salt taste was in his mouth immediately. The noise of the surface vanished into the underwater rush and roar of a sea that was nowhere near calm. Ace surfaced fast, blew the water clear, and started swimming.
The current was strong.
It pushed at him sideways as he fought through the chop, and every wave that came through tried to turn him off the line he was holding. Ace kept his head up between strokes, scanning ahead each time he broke the surface, looking for Willa. The foam and the debris made it harder. The light had gone gray and flat, and the contrast between the water and anything floating in it was reduced to almost nothing.
Ace kept going.
“Willa!” The wind took his voice and tore it to pieces. Ace shouted again anyway. “Willa!”
Willa
The water was pulling her in three directions at once.
That was the first thing Willa understood when she surfaced, sputtering and fighting for air, the wave that had taken her still moving around and through her with a force that made up and down feel like suggestions rather than certainties. Willa had gone under once, maybe twice, she couldn’t be sure, and her body had done the thing it was trained to do before her mind had fully caught up, orienting toward light, not fighting the pull but moving with it until she had enough control to surface.
Willa broke through and breathed.
Salt water went with the air, and she coughed it out hard and breathed again. The island was behind her and getting farther away. The dock was visible but smaller than she wanted it to be. The current had her moving east, and Willa let it for two strokes, then three, conserving what she had and reading the water around her before she started to fight.
Willa turned herself sideways to the rip the way she had learned decades ago from a water safety instructor she had never properly thanked.
Don’t fight it straight on. Move across it. Exhaust it before it exhausts you.
The waves came through in irregular sets, and Willa rode two of them and let the third push her sideways toward calmer water. Her arms burned. Her boots were full of water and heavy, and she considered working them off, but the effort would cost her more than the weight, so Willa left them.
She could hear her name, faint and intermittent, shredded by the wind.
She turned toward it.
“Ace!” Willa’s voice came out weaker than she intended, roughened by saltwater and exertion. She pulled in a full breath and tried again. “Ace, over here!”
Then there was nothing for a moment. Just wind and water and the drum of her own heartbeat.
Then, closer than she expected, Ace’s voice suddenly cut through all the noise: “Willa! Keep talking!”
