“You didn’t freeze.” He slid the training knife back into his belt. “That’s the fight.”
She tipped her head to the side as she absorbed that.
“Most people never get past it.” He studied her—the stubborn set of her jaw, the way she held her ground despite being winded. “You adapted. Used the environment. Created space instead of trying to overpower. You bought yourself time.”
Something like pride in her warmed Zach’s chest. Unwelcome. Dangerous.
She smiled, and her shoulders straightened a little.
He looked away toward the water. “Same time tomorrow.”
“I was just getting the hang of it.”
“You learned what you needed for today.” He turned and started back up the beach.
“Zach.”
He stopped. Didn’t turn.
“Thank you,” Emma said quietly.
Zach nodded once and kept walking.
Behind him, the sand held their footprints. Crossed paths. Circles. Evidence of movement, contact, separation.
He didn’t look back.
The storm was five days out. He had a feeling that real trouble would arrive first.
Chapter 17
Invisible Currents
Emma sether tablet on the wrought-iron table, the screen reflecting the mid-morning sunlight spilling across the veranda. Beyond, waves rolled against the rocky shoreline in a rhythm she’d grown accustomed to over the past few weeks of living on the island—steady, patient, eternal. She chose this spot with care: open air, natural light, a setting to put interviewees at ease while still maintaining professional boundaries.
Her notebook lay open beside the tablet, a printed job description paper clipped to the left page.Cultural Liaison & Childcare Coordinator.The position had been Zach’s idea—one of his rare moments of thinking beyond threat assessments.‘If we’re bringing families to a remote island, we need someone the kids can trust. A local who knows the island’s hidden dangers.’
She’d almost had to come without the notebook. It hadn’t been on the corner of her desk where it belonged. She always put her interview items in the same place, but this morning, she'd found it on the other side of her desk, under the staff schedules.
She shifted uneasily. She must have moved it without thinking. How else could it have gotten there?
Maybe she should work from the cottage more. Perhaps when Morgan wasn’t around and she was by herself in the office.
Footsteps whispered against stone.
Emma looked up, and Ana-Luz was simplythere, as if she’d materialized from the dappled shadows beneath the colonnade. No announcement, no hesitation. Just presence.
“Ms. Rivera.” Emma rose with an automatic smile. “Thank you for meeting with me.”
“Ana-Luz, please.” The woman’s voice carried the texture of sea-worn driftwood—smooth, aged, shaped by elements she couldn’t name. She moved with unhurried grace, the kind that suggested she’d never rushed for anything in her life. Deep lines mapped her face, not with age alone but with something else. Knowledge, perhaps. Or patience.
But it was her eyes that made Emma’s professional smile falter for half a second.
They studied her the way one studies the ocean before a storm—assessing, measuring, peering beneath the surface for currents invisible to the naked eye.
Emma gestured to the chair across from her. “Please sit. Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee?”
“I am comfortable,gracias.” Ana-Luz settled into the chair with a quiet finality, tweaking the deep indigo shawl draped around her shoulders before folding her hands in her lap. Waiting.
