“On three,” Flynn said. He kept one hand under Mark’s shoulder and moved to the side. The movement made the water feel even colder. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see one of the bystanders had waded out to corral the Jet Ski and drag it back up to the beach. “One. Two. Three.”
Flynn ducked down slightly, the sand wet and loose under his feet, and steadied Mark’s body as Jessie dunked the stretcher under the water. The hard edge of it caught Flynn in the thigh, and he let Mark’s weight sink down to meet the plastic bed.
The slight motion made Mark yelp. Between the shock and the cold, he couldn’t go any paler, but he managed to look a bit more green around the gills.
“There we go,” Flynn said. “Now we just have to get you back up onto the beach, and you’ll be off to the clinic.”
He kept up a confident, reassuring narration as they floated the stretcher back toward the beach. The paramedics were waiting for them at the ambulance, their sleeves rolled back as though it were warm up there.
Bastards.
Halfway back to shore they had to take the weight of the stretcher out of the water. Flynn adjusted his grip, the pull of it tight across his shoulders, and put the extra bit of push into his stride as they hit the wet, grasping sand at the water’s edge.
Mark groaned, and the muscles in his jaw stood out under his pallid skin as he tried to choke the noise back. With his good hand, he clutched the side of the stretcher and squeezed until the tendons stood out on his wrist.
The people watching from the beach scattered to let them through. Most of them craned their necks to get a good view of Mark’s battered body. A couple of them held their phones up to film it and turned their bodies to follow them to the cracked concrete ramp up to the road where the paramedics were waiting to take over.
“Contusions and abrasions to his left side and face,” Flynn reported as they handed Mark over. “Right arm is broken, dislocated, or both. May have inhaled water.”
“Thanks, Flynn. He was in the water.” The lead paramedic, a square, dour-looking man with thin, mouse-colored hair, sneered. “We could have diagnosed that.”
His partner gave Flynn an apologetic shrug, and then they hauled Mark up the ramp to the waiting bus.
“Dickhead,” Jessie said. She sat down in the sand, collecting it with her wet ass, and pulled her foot onto her knee. Her heel was bleeding, and she pulled a ceramic-sharp bit of shell from the wound. She flicked it up the beach and tilted her head back, with one eye closed against the sun. “Tell me something, Flynn. Is any of the gossip going around about you true?”
He smirked down at her.
“None of it,” he told her. A beat passed, and he shrugged. “Although of course that is what I’d say, right?”
She laughed, and he hauled her back onto her feet. The Cornish blonde had started as a lifeguard on the beach—a summer job while she studied law—but for two years she’d been there during the summer and then flown off to Australia to work in the winter. Flynn wasn’t sure if she was ever going to finish her degree.
“See you at the pub tonight?” she asked as they headed back to their cars. “We can pick up tourists.”
Flynn was about to shrug amaybethat he could ease into anobefore five o’clock swung around, when he remembered he had an actual excuse.
“Actually I’m kind of dating someone,” he said.
Jessie raised her eyebrows at him. “Huh?” she said and jabbed her bony little fist against his shoulder. “Good for you. It’s been… a while… since you and what’s-his-name called it quits.”
“Kier.”
Jessie shrugged a freckled shoulder. “I could have you told you, man,” she said. “Long-distance relationships never work. Love ’em and leave ’em. That’s my motto.”
“He lives twenty miles away.”
“Yeah, but in islander miles? That’s long distance,” Jessie said. “Well, feel free to bring your new man along tonight. I’d love to meet him.”
Flynn grunted his answer, refusing to commit one way or the other, and waved her off as she put-putted her ridiculous, zombie-themed scooter out of the parking lot. Once she was gone, he poked absently at the emotional socket where Kier had been. It didn’t hurt anymore, and that kind of pissed him off.
The last thing he wanted to admit was that Kier had had a point about how quickly they’d get over each other.
He grabbed his phone to text Kenny and let him know he was on his way back. Halfway through theget off your ass, his pager went off again and jittered along the plastic on the dashboard of the car.
Flynn stretched forward and grabbed it. He cursed as he saw the letters scroll over the screen. Another emergency callout, this time up in the hills. It was going to be one of those days.
THE TEXTfrom Nate had said to meet in the Granshire bar at eight.
Flynn was late. He would have had an apology ready, even though the delay bought him time to scrub off the sweat and the salt, but he was supposed to be a bad date. Might as well start as he meant to go on.
