Redwood

by Janie Crouch

  Things were going to change after this weekend, so she might as well enjoy every minute she could.

  She reached over and saw the note from him.

  Girls are having a spa day. Wavy says to stop kissing me and join them. Terrible plan, in my opinion, but I hope you have fun.

  She clutched the note against her chest, breathing deeply. She couldn’t let herself think past today, past this weekend. Couldn’t let herself think of all she was probably still going to lose.

  She needed the water. Alone. No need to talk. No need to think. The spa with the girls would have to wait for another day, if that day ever came.

  It didn’t take her long to find the snorkel hut out near the beach, and she was soon outfitted with a wetsuit, snorkel gear, and a tiny boat that would allow her to get to the south side of the island more easily. She felt bad about assuring the resort worker that she wouldn’t be out alone, since that was an outright lie. But she’d be following the other safety protocols and was experienced enough not to get in trouble.

  Plus, there was no way her makeup was going to stay on in the water with the mask and snorkel, so going alone was her only option. She’d take it.

  She couldn’t stop her grin as the little raft putzed her along the island’s edge. It wasn’t very fast, and the motor seemed persnickety at best, but she loved the feel of the wind in her face, the sun beaming down. She easily found the place the snorkel shop had suggested, thanks to an odd rock formation on the south side of San Amado that formed a cave close to the shore.

  She anchored her raft in about fifteen feet of water maybe fifty yards offshore. She already had her full-body wetsuit on over the bottom half of her bathing suit, so she slipped her arms into the sleeves and zipped it up. The suit would provide enough buoyancy to keep her on the surface. She attached the tiny air tank to a hook on the wetsuit to be used if she wanted to dive a little farther down. She placed the mask over her face and let herself tip backward out of the boat and into the water.

  The water was cold, but her wetsuit made it bearable. She let herself float in the water face up for a minute before putting the snorkel into her mouth and turning over. Now, it was just her and the sea life and the quiet. No one to hurt her, no one to judge her. Floating here, weightless, she could almost forget she was the villain in her own story.

  She could just breathe. Even if it was through a plastic tube.

  She loved the schools of fish swarming around and darting off. There wasn’t much to see in terms of coral—not like some of the other places she’d snorkeled—but it was interesting enough. At one point, she glanced up and saw two women walking along the rocky shore. They went into the cave the snorkel guy had warned her about. He’d told her not to go in there—the tide could come in fast and trap someone there. Evidently, some kid had drowned there a few years ago.

  She kept an eye out in between dives, but she didn’t see them come back out. After thirty minutes, the women hadn’t come out. The water had risen significantly, enough that her original location wasn’t a great place for her to snorkel anymore. Maybe they didn’t know about the dangers. She should swim in and make sure they were okay.

  She got the raft up as close as she could before dropping her anchor again. The waves were rushing into the cave at too fast a rate for her to take it inside. She jumped back into the water and swam the rest of the way.

  Once inside, she realized the cave wasn’t truly a cave at all. The entire top was open to the sky, but the cliff walls ran vertically for about thirty feet.

  Lexi spotted the two women immediately over near one of the rocky edges. Something was wrong. She spit the snorkel out of her mouth. “Hey, are you guys all right?”

  “Lexi?” one of the women called back to her.

  Anne?

  She was suspended at a strange angle, her foot stuck up between some rocks, but her body was hanging down. The other woman was propping her up as best she could.

  Lexi swam the rest of the way over to them. “What happened?”

  Anne’s voice shook. “My foot is jammed, and the tide is coming in.”

  The other woman nodded frantically. “The rock trapping her leg is too big for us to move. Can you get back to your raft and go get help?”

  Lexi looked from Anne to the other woman to the water coming into the cave at an alarming rate. Her eyes grew wide.

  Anne was going to drown if they didn’t get help.

  “Yeah, absolutely, yeah. And here.” She handed the other woman the mini scuba tank still attached to the strap on her wetsuit. Thank God she hadn’t used any of it. It would give them a little more time once the water got higher. “This will buy you ten, maybe fifteen minutes.”

  “We’re going to need every one of them,” the other woman said. “Hurry. This isn’t good.”

  “I can hear you two, you know, Marilyn,” Annie said.

  Marilyn. Gavin had talked about her. His cousin’s girlfriend who had survived the abusive ex.

  Lexi didn’t waste time introducing herself. She swam as hard as she could against the waves back out to her raft. She kicked off her flippers, then reached back to pull the starter chain on the engine. She let out a low curse when the motor stalled.

  “Come on. You can’t do this to me right now.” Even with the oxygen tank, Anne wouldn’t have enough time if the boat stalled out now. Lexi had to get back and get help.

  She yanked on the cord again and let out a little laugh when it started. She put the boat in full throttle and headed back toward the resort.

  She wasn’t checking out any of the scenery this time, so the trip back was much quicker than it had been on the way out. But when the motor began sputtering again still almost a mile away from the resort, cold dread froze her insides.

  “Come on, baby,” she muttered. “Just a couple more minutes.”

  The engine motor stalled.

  “No. No, no, no.”

  She yanked the cord and it started, only to stall out again a few seconds later.

  She yanked it again, and when it started, she pointed the boat toward land. She would have to run it ashore, then go the rest of the way on foot.

  The tiny boat motor stalled again. She yanked at the cord but when nothing happened, she jumped overboard and swam as hard as she could for the shore. The incoming tide helped her, but once she was on the rocky beach she realized she didn’t have any shoes.

  She ran anyway. Her feet would heal. Anne being trapped under that rising water would not.

  She ignored the pain of the rocks slicing into her feet as best she could, focusing on saving Anne. But it got harder as she went farther—every step agony. She wasn’t sure how far she’d gone—halfway?—when she slid on a wet rock, falling hard on her knee, cutting through the neoprene of the wetsuit.

  She pushed herself back up, but when her hand came up with blood on it, she realized the rock was wet from her bleeding feet. She forced back a sob. Her feet were cut. So what? She needed to keep going.

  She tested her knee. It was fine, just a scrape, so she began running again.

  “Come on, Lexi. For once in your life, do something worthwhile.”

  One foot in front of the other. One foot in front of the other.

  She tried to make herself move as fast as possible, but the agony with each step made her slow and bumbling. Way slower than she should be.

  She finally reached the edge of the rocks where it started to give way to sand. All the Linear guys were down on the beach. She waved her arms, yelling for them. Yelling for anyone.

  “Help! Please, help!” Her voice was hoarse, but she got their attention. She kept moving toward them, much more slowly, as they ran toward her. She tried to get her sobbing breathing under control. She wasn’t important. Anne was important.

  She saw Zac first, reached an arm out toward him. “Anne and Marilyn. Trapped in a cave with tide.”

  She was surrounded by people now—all the Linear guys. Some hotel staff were running over too. Gavin slippe
d an arm around her. “Your knee is bleeding. Are you okay?”

  “Not me, Anne. She’s trapped.” God, her feet hurt so bad, she couldn’t stop the sobs from boiling up inside her. “The cave.”

  “What cave?” Zac demanded. “Anne is supposed to be getting a massage.”

  She recognized the guy who’d rented her the snorkel equipment among the hotel staff. She pointed at him. “Two people trapped in the cave you warned me about. Anne’s foot is stuck in a rock and the tide—”

  The man let out a curse, finally understanding how serious the situation was. Zac turned his attention to him since Lexi wasn’t proving very useful with information.

  “There is a partial cave at the south side of the island,” snorkel guy said. “We tell guests not to go near there because the tide can come in fast. If someone is trapped there—”

  “Yes! That’s what I’m saying. They have my tiny air tank, but—”

  Zac grabbed the man by his collar. “Shortest, fastest way there. Now.”

  The man nodded frantically, but it was an older man next to him who answered. “The tide is in, so we’ll need to go in from the top. The resort trucks have winches—”

  Zac and the Linear guys took off in the middle of the man’s sentence, dragging him with them. Only Gavin stayed behind. “Are you sure you’re okay? Your knee?”

  She was about to tell him that it was her feet, and ask him to carry her once again like he had last night, when he reached out to touch her face. “You look totally different.”

  Oh God. All her makeup was gone. She dropped her head so her hair would hide her face. “You should go with them, in case they need your help.”

  “Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “Yeah,” she lied. “Anne and Marilyn need your help.”

  “Shit. Marilyn? That’s my cousin’s almost-fiancée.” He looked at her again, tilting his head to the side. “You don’t look like you.”

  She forced a smile and pushed him. “Go be a hero.”

  31

  Gavin had to force his thoughts away from Lexi as the resort’s Jeep flew at a reckless pace along the winding dirt road leading to the south side of the island.

  For the first time, he understood what everyone meant when they’d said she seemed familiar to them. But why would that be the case if she’d looked so different than she normally did?

  “We need to know everything there is to know about this cave we’re headed to,” Finn demanded.

  He was driving after having literally yanked the snorkel hut employee out of the driver seat. It didn’t matter how well the employee knew the terrain. Finn had defensive driving skills the other man was never going to have.

  Zac and Noah were in the vehicle ahead of them, Zac at the wheel and driving just as aggressively.

  “I-I—”

  The guy was obviously terrified. Gavin could hardly blame him. The laid-back, good-natured guests they’d been the past day and a half were gone. Soldiers, very definitely trained to kill, had taken their place.

  “What’s your name, man?” Gavin asked from the back seat next to Gabe Collingwood. If they were going to get information from this guy, they were going to need him to calm down.

  “Alfred.”

  “Okay, Alfred. My friends and I have some pretty unique skills. Probably skills most of your guests don’t have. The women in that cave mean everything to us, and we’re going to get them out. We need you to provide as many details as possible so we can do that.”

  Alfred nodded. “Maybe we should call for the boats. The only way to get to them the way we’re going is by using ropes. Climbing down. I don’t know how to do that.”

  “We do,” Gavin, Finn, and Gabe all said at the same time.

  That seemed to calm Alfred down a little since he wouldn’t be the one expected to do the actual rescuing.

  Finn’s hands clenched on the steering wheel. He wanted to demand more info from Alfred but was holding himself back. One point of contact when you were dealing with a witness or an interrogation was generally best. Gavin had become that point of contact.

  “Okay, Alfred, you don’t have to worry about the ropes. All you need to worry about is getting us as much information as possible. How long is it going to take us to get there?”

  “At this speed?” The man’s voice was tight. “About five minutes.”

  “Then you’ve got five minutes to give us as much information as you can so that we can help them immediately once we get there. How big is the cave?”

  “It’s a rock formation where a chunk collapsed a few hundred years ago. Makes it very unique from the top and the bottom.”

  “Okay, how far from the top to the bottom.?

  “Maybe thirty feet?”

  Gavin nodded. Thirty feet was very doable. Any of them could rappel that distance in under a minute, even without the correct equipment.

  “We stopped telling guests about it when a child drowned there a few years ago. The tide comes in deceptively quickly because of where the cave is located. It only takes a few minutes for the water to fill it.”

  “Is the tide too strong to swim against?” Gabe asked. As a Navy SEAL, he had more water experience than the rest of them.

  Alfred shook his head. “I don’t think so. It would be a hard swim, not impossible.”

  So Marilyn was there to help stay with Anne who was stuck. Not because she couldn’t swim out herself.

  “It’s going to be all about where they’re trapped,” Finn muttered.

  “There are cranks on the back of both these Jeeps,” Gabe said. “We’re going to have to move fast as soon as we get there.”

  They all nodded, but they all knew they could already be too late.

  Less than a minute later, the Jeeps came to a dusty halt, both parties spun around backward so the cranks and ropes were facing the top of the cave. Evidently, Zac and Noah had gotten the same information from the older hotel employee in their vehicle that they’d gotten from Alfred.

  Everyone was out of the Jeeps almost before they stopped.

  Noah dashed toward the mouth of the cave, unconcerned for his own safety. “Marilyn!”

  The garbled response was barely audible over the sound of the water. But it was a response.

  “Fuck. She’s going under,” Noah yelled.

  The rest of them reached the edge. Marilyn’s hand was lifting through the water, letting them know where she was.

  Gabe and Aiden were already tying foothold knots into the ropes. Ten seconds later, Noah was on his way down one rope, Zac the other. Halfway down, they both jumped into the water. Everyone waited, shoes kicked off, prepared to go down themselves—or to do whatever else was needed—praying to God this was still a rescue mission and not a body recovery for Anne.

  A few seconds later, Noah burst through the water, Marilyn in his arms.

  Zac didn’t resurface.

  “We need people down here, stat!” Noah yelled. “And the extra oxygen tanks. It’s deep enough. Just clear the rocks.”

  Gabe launched himself over the edge, oxygen tank in hand, a moment later.

  Noah swam Marilyn over to the ropes, getting his foot latched and then holding her against him as he signaled for them to pull him and Marilyn up. Gavin helped haul them up while Finn and Aiden went into the water with a crowbar to get Anne’s foot unjammed from the rock.

  A couple minutes later, they all breathed a silent sigh of relief when Zac came back through the water with Anne, the scuba oxygen mask pushed over her face. Her coughs were painful to hear, but they meant she was alive. Survival was always the most important thing.

  More hotel vehicles showed up. Staff with towels, blankets, hot beverages for the two women who had been in the water for so long. Both of them were chilled, but smiling. The doctor on the scene took a look at Anne’s ankle. The good news was the same cold water that had almost killed them had been the best remedy for a sprained ankle, keeping the swelling down. They were going to have it x-rayed, but An
ne didn’t think it was broken and was already insisting the wedding would be held tomorrow as scheduled.

  Gavin watched as Zac came over and cupped Marilyn’s cheeks in his hands. He whispered something to her no one else could hear but everyone could figure out without knowing the words.

  Marilyn had saved Anne’s life. Staying in that frigid water, holding the oxygen mask over her face while Anne was unconscious. If Marilyn hadn’t done it, Anne would be dead now. It was the absolute height of bravery. Gavin knew Marilyn sometimes thought herself a coward for having stayed with an abusive spouse for so long, but that was complete bullshit.

  He hoped Noah would continue the proposal he’d been in the middle of setting up when Lexi had strolled onto the beach to get their attention.

  It had been a very close call. Why hadn’t she been moving with a little more urgency? Her knee had been scraped up, but Jesus, they’d been only a minute or two away from losing Anne forever.

  Nothing about seeing Lexi today was sitting right with him. Now that the crisis was over, he couldn’t get her face, and how different her features had looked, out of his mind.

  It was more than just water. He’d showered with her a couple of times over the past few weeks, and he’d never felt like he was staring at a stranger. He tried to think back to those exact times and stiffened.

  Both times he could think of when they’d showered together, she’d turned the lights down in his bathroom and lit candles. He’d thought it was for ambience. Romance.

  But now, he had no idea what the fuck was going on.

  He was in a daze all the way back to the resort. Noah and Marilyn were in the vehicle with him, Marilyn perched in Noah’s lap, mostly caught up in each other.

  Gavin was still in a daze when they made it back to the same beach they’d been at when Lexi had shown up, this time so Noah could finish the proposal they’d been helping him set up before the day had almost ended in tragedy.

  When Marilyn said yes in her soft, gentle way, everyone cheered. Gavin should cheer too. Two people who’d thought they’d never find happiness had found one another against all odds and were going to spend forever together. Gavin should be ecstatic for them.