Skye’s rough hand against my cheek.
Goodbye, Skye.
The water fills the spaces inside me, and my fight bleeds away.
Goodnight, world.
Chapter Thirty
Skye
The black water is suffocating, but it doesn’t stop me. My second dive is filled with pure fury. Wanting to ring the necks of anyone who put Violet in this position. Who put me in this position.
I kick down, deeper than before, feeling the cold against my hands as I sweep one stroke at a time.
Slow your breathing. It’s endurance training. Nothing more than getting to the bottom of a pool.
My lungs are screaming as the pressure increases. I can’t see or hear, and the crushing weight of failure is heavy with each added foot of depth coming up empty.
There’s muffled noise coming from the surface, and I feel hope that maybe Violet floated up from the bottom of this ravine.
I break through the surface, gasping. Ollie is screaming from the dock as she tends to Cassie, who seems to be coming back into consciousness, “Skye! The light! I have a light!”
A powerful beam cuts through the gloom, piercing maybe five feet into the murky water before dissolving into useless particles. It’s nothing, a child’s toy against the bottomless grave.
“I’m not coming back up until I find her,” I yell up toward the dock, gasping for air between my words. “Send in help when they get here.”
Ollie starts yelling instructions, but I suck in a breath and dive.
This time, I don’t fight the cold. I let it in.
Ice is in my veins. I crush people on it. I set records on it.
And this time, I’m using it to channel everything I have until I reach the bottom, where Violet waits for me.
As long as I’m not too late.
I orient myself by the slimy pilings of the dock, and I swim straight down, following the concrete into the abyss.
Deeper. Past where the light can reach and into the true dark.
The cold is paralyzing. My muscles burn, and my mind flickers. Thoughts that scatter like the bubbles from my lips.
I’m too deep.
It’s too late.
Until my hand sweeps something that isn’t stone or weed.
Fabric. Soft cashmere, like the sweater she had hung over her bag the last time I was in her hotel room.
My heart gives a single violent kick. I claw toward it, my fingers finding an arm, a shoulder, tracing the line of her body. She’s floating, eerily upright. Her hair is a pale cloud around her face.
Just below her, the twin cinder blocks rest on the muddy bottom, the rope holding her in this suspended, drowning pose.
I don’t think. I fumble for the knife I grabbed from Theo when we left Violet’s hotel room. Honestly, I didn’t expect this to come in handy since I thought I was bringing a knife to a gun battle, which I technically did. But now that I have it, Theo has no idea what this means to me.
In one quick motion, I whirl my hand through the water and see the thick, wet rope where it bites into her ankles. The fibers resist, then parts with a final gritty tear.
