Shielding Instinct, page 12
Looking over his shoulder to ensure he was in line with the wave, Hawkeye watched as the boat righted itself, just as the jet ski came down and hit.
There was an explosion. Flames shot out of the wheelhouse.
Shrieks of horror sounded from shore to sea.
Hawkeye held onto the surfboard with an iron grip.
And as the wave lifted and thrust them toward the sky, Roy blacked the hell out.
Chapter Sixteen
Petra
To Petra, it was like she was sitting in a movie theater as she watched the wave rolling in from the horizon.
She expected someone to cue the music, and at any moment, the symphony would play the ominous chords designed to get the audience’s blood thrumming, wondering how the hero could survive.
For sure, that was exactly what she was wondering.
And in this scene, she was the unfortunate hero.
On this terrain, running anywhere was impossible.
Petra’s brain flashed to the rip currents and wondered if that had fed into the enormity of this wave.
Right now, everything played in slow motion except for her thoughts.
Petra’s brain flailed for her best next action—a means of survival.
She had nothing until she had something.
Suddenly, Petra was moving, leaping, grabbing—not back toward the cliff but southward toward a massive boulder.
As she found a wedge for her foot, Petra cleared her hands by shoving her phone down the neckline of her dress and under her breast into her bikini top.
She grabbed at the jagged protrusions, hugging her body to the surface as the wave crashed, sending a spray of water showering down on her.
The pull of the receding water dragged at Petra’s legs.
She strained against it, tensing her muscles and white-knuckle gripping the stone.
With a heart filled with gratitude that she was high enough in the rocks that the water only came to her thighs.
Suddenly, she was suffused by terror.
The children!
Petra turned toward where the group that had been on the cliff wall, edging back toward their vehicles to return to the hotel.
Blinking past the burn of salt water, Petra thought it looked like the turn of events stunned the others from the tidepool, but they were untouched.
Lucky hollered, “Miss Armstrong, another wave! It’s coming!”
Petra turned her face to the rock, put her head down, and gripped the surface in preparation.
Again, the wave reached over and around the boulder, tugging hungrily at her legs, trying to loosen her from her perch and steal her away like a pirate with his treasure box of gold.
Panting, Petra turned her head toward the cliff, searching for her best route for escape.
Beans and Lucky were helping the last of the tidal pool revelers onto the path. Both stayed on the cliff as Beans pointed and called out. “Miss Armstrong! Wave!”
How many?
How long would this go on?
Already, she was exhausted from the fight.
This third wave was the highest yet, the water coming to her chest. Her eye—stinging from yesterday’s wonkiness—was on fire from the salinity of the spray.
Her grip slipped, and the sheer power of the tidal force shoved Petra to the side, onto her knees amongst the foam.
Scrambling to find something new to hold, or at least get her feet out in front of her so she wasn’t tumbling headfirst into the line of boulders, Petra was suddenly jerked backward, held on the land by her hair.
A hand landed on her arm, then released to grab her wrist, and she was hauled back onto her feet.
Lucky.
Lucky had leaped forward and grabbed the only part of her available, protecting her from a treacherous outcome.
His eyes held wide and unblinking with fear and disbelief.
Beans called from the cliff. “That was all. No more waves. No more big waves. I’ll watch. But hurry.”
No one needed to tell Petra twice. Her sunglasses and flip flops out to sea, Petra’s dress wrapped her thighs as she reached for the hand Lucky extended to her.
“My lucky day to have such a brave guy watching out for me.” Petra tried for light as she tapped her boob to make sure her phone in its waterproof case was still in place.
Lucky looked traumatized as he pointed toward Beans and the cliff wall and started back.
Poor kid needed a stiff drink.
On bare feet, picking her way painfully over the sharp rocks, Petra froze when she heard a second scream.
This one was a different beast.
The first scream was fear and shock. It was the warning that Petra needed to stay safe from the initial rogue wave.
This scream was the anguished cry that goes up when a loved one is pronounced dead. A call to the Heavens.
It sent a wave of horror through Petra’s system, making her gag as she tried to vomit the sensation out of her gut.
But body and mind were at cross purposes.
Petra turned and flew over the rocks toward the screams, Lucky following behind.
Hunching over to place their hands for balance, they were crabs skittering along the edge of a wave.
Around an outcropping, they found a young woman standing in hiking clothes, soaked head to foot.
With hands clutching chunks of hair, she looked out to sea.
Her chest heaved as she forced air into her lungs like a bellow, oxygenating a fire.
Then she tipped her head back, and her scream ripped the air, vibrating Petra’s skeleton until she could feel the tug on her tendons.
“Hey!” Petra shouted as she approached. “Hey!” Her voice was loud and commanding, but the woman didn’t notice.
Here were the bellows heating.
There was the scream.
Petra and Lucky turned toward the sea, scanning to see if they could decipher what was happening.
Petra stilled.
What was that?
Cocking her ear, focusing hard, she listened.
Could that be an echo?
No, the pitch wasn’t a lament but pain and terror.
And it was male.
Petra gripped Lucky’s arm and tapped her ear. They had to wait for a wave to come in—the normal kind of wave that she’d seen from the time they’d arrived.
It receded.
And nothing.
The woman was huffing again, and Petra folded a hand to her chest and swung it wide, backhanding the woman’s arm in a sting that brought her to her senses, pulling her out of whatever survival reaction her limbic had conjured.
“Be quiet,” Petra hissed. “I’m trying to hear.”
Another wave came and went.
There it was again. This time, instead of a scream, Petra heard, “Help! Help!”
She squeezed Lucky’s arm harder.
He was still wide-eyed, in shock from making his earlier save.
Understandably so.
Petra couldn’t imagine the bravery it took for this kid to leap from the safety of the cliff into the swell of the angry waters to grab a stranger by the hair and drag her back from the clasp of a hungry sea.
But Petra needed someone to snap out of it and help her figure out where that man could possibly be.
Petra saw nothing and no one who could be in danger.
The woman turned to them. “My fiancé. He was here. The wave.” She flung her arms. “He pushed me.” She pointed at the boulder, much like the one Petra had used to save herself.
This next wave was receding, and Petra held a finger to her lips and pointed another into the sky.
“Help! Help!” This time, it was weaker.
“We were holding hands,” the woman whispered. “Then we weren’t. I saw him pulled out, and then he went under.” She pointed toward the horizon where no heads bobbled in the surf.
Petra turned to Lucky. “You heard that?”
Lucky shook his head. “I hear nothing but surf and wind.”
Beans scrambled down beside them.
“It sounds like the call for help is bouncing off the rock. Is there someplace like a cave? Someplace where if the first wave dragged a guy out, that the second, or maybe the third wave, could have pushed him in?” When she said that, fear iced her system.
All four turned, with stiff fingers shielding their eyes to scan the horizon.
“Carlos is watching,” Beans said. “He’ll give us a warning if more waves come.” He punched Lucky’s shoulder. “The blowhole?”
Lucky was looking at Petra when he said, “It’s very dangerous. We warn everyone away from swimming near it.”
“Here somewhere?” Petra asked as the next wave receded. And she jabbed a finger into the air and again cocking her head to the side to focus on sounds.
“Agh!”
Petra pointed at Lucky, asking with her gesture if he heard the cry.
Lucky shook his head.
But Beans was moving north along the rocks. “The blowhole is over here. Here and up. And then you can look down.”
Petra raced after Beans as she heard a strangulated cry for “Help!”
Chapter Seventeen
Petra
Realizing there was an emergency, others who had been at the tidal pool were finding their way to the scene.
Carlos maintained a wave lookout.
Beans threw himself down on a boulder and looked into a round hole that looked like an old-fashioned well. A bit wider. Certainly, large enough for even as big a man as Hawkeye to go in.
Looking over the lip, watching the water rush in, Petra formed a picture of what had happened.
The man wasn’t in the chimney. He sounded like he was further under the rock. If he were trying to get out, the waves would keep pushing him in.
These waves weren’t as big as the three rogue waves. But the horse guy that morning at the hotel, while she was waiting for her tidal pool adventure ride to show up, had talked about how difficult the current was and that he had suggested not risking the disappointment of a failed attempt at snorkeling.
Petra imagined that the man had been pushed into a small cave.
At least there would be oxygen between waves.
Possibly.
Probably.
But she remembered being a child on the beach body surfing and what happened when a wave hit, and she was rolled without any power against it. She imagined the guy getting battered against the rocks, then using what time he had to suck in air and cry for help.
He needed to stop using his energy to signal.
“We’re here,” Petra called into the opening. “We’re affecting a rescue. You’re not alone.” Petra got all that out before the next wave hit.
The tourists huddled in one group. The locals stood closer, looking prepared to leap into action.
“Who drove down here?” Petra asked. “Not people in the car, but the person who had their hands on the steering wheel. Can you step forward?”
The men gathered.
Men—these were probably teens still in high school trying to earn a few bucks on the weekend, making the tourists scream and laugh with an adventure that was just an everyday drive for them.
“Okay, guys, in a minute, I need you to go through your vehicles for anything helpful you might have—ropes, blankets, first aid kits, carabiners, climbing gear, tow webbing. I need you to think outside of the box. Something to use as a splint for broken bones. Be imaginative. Just make sure you can bring it back without injuring yourself. One crisis is enough for today. I need those things here so we can figure out what resources we have to try to help this guy.” Petra turned to the woman. “What’s his name?”
“Terry,” she whispered, clasping her hands together and holding them to her chest.
“And you are?”
“M-m-m-melissa.”
The wave was going out. “Terry,” Petra hollered into the hole, “Melissa is safe. We’re working on getting you out. Try to reserve your energy. Your goal is to keep breathing deeply.”
There were no cries for help since she’d told Terry they were on the scene.
That might be a good thing.
Or it could bode very badly.
Petra pulled her phone from her bikini top.
No bars.
“Anyone have connectivity?” she asked, holding her phone aloft.
“No one does,” Beans said. “We don’t get cell reception until we’re up on the road.”
Petra scowled. “How far up?”
Beans cast his gaze back toward the vehicles. “At The Social Club with the drinking pig.”
“Far then. I need someone who has a vehicle that hasn’t been breaking down every five minutes like ours was. You all know each other. I need the person with the most reliable vehicle to get to a place where they can make emergency calls.” She was using the voice her instructors taught her at Quantico, speaking from the chest. It was an authoritative sound that convinced people to comply. The one that made everyone aware that she was in charge.
Did she want to be an authority and in charge?
Honestly, no.
This wasn’t a television show. There were no guarantees. There was a man who could very well die in the next few minutes, and it could well be that there was nothing anyone could do.
But if that did happen, everyone would have a better psychological outcome if they knew they had participated in a rescue attempt.
One of the young men half-raised his hand as if he were in class. “My car is solid. I can drive out and get help.”
“Okay, good. What’s your name?”
“Bobby.”
Petra reached out her hand. “Can you give me your phone, Bobby?”
Petra tried to come up with the right message to send to 9-1-1 when it occurred to her that if those crazy waves hit the entire coast, Terry wouldn’t be the only person in dire straits today.
Desperate calls could well be overwhelming emergency services.
Petra was going to reach out to Cerberus. If they didn’t have the right equipment, at least they’d have the expertise and the brawn needed to attempt the rescue.
Closing her eyes momentarily, she recalled the number Hawkeye had put into her contacts that morning before heading out to surf with Cooper.
What a grand time they must be having.
But she was sure that if she sent Hawkeye an SOS, he and his merry band of brothers would drop their surfboards and head her way.
Still, it was a long shot.
Could Terry hold on that long?
As Petra typed out her message, she said. “Bobby, first call 9-1-1.” She continued to tap. “This is a message to a rescuer friend of mine.” She handed him the phone. “I’ve pressed send, but it won’t go out until it’s in range of a cell tower. You have to get it in range, and then you need to wait there. I’ve put in a code to pull up your GPS location. My friends will follow the signal to you. And you need to bring them here. They can’t find me if they don’t find you.”
“Got it.”
“Can you do that?” Petra looked up, locking her gaze on this young man’s.
His body swelled with purpose. “Get into cell range, wait for the rescuers. I bring them here.”
“Don’t forget to call 9-1-1,” she reminded him. “Go!”
Bobby raced away on long, thin legs, bounding up the side of a cliff, an athletic blur of motion.
“Okay, those with cars, go gather supplies and come right back here.” She reached out. “Beans.”
He turned back to her.
“I’m taking the cord from your hoodie. Does anyone else have a cord? Shoelaces? Anything I can use to make a line?”
Very quickly, the group was in motion. Those who weren’t given a task moved out of the way, poised and ready to act.
What Petra needed now were facts. Data.
The way to get that? Eyes-on. Well, camera-on.
With the video recording, Petra tied together a make-do line of anything that could be grafted into a length that might reach Terry.
Slowly, she lowered her phone.
Even though she had a watertight case, she didn’t want the waves to batter her phone against the rocks, rendering it useless, so she waited for a wave to come in as she started lowering to give herself as long as possible in the hole when the wave receded.
Holding the string steady so it wasn’t spinning and collecting a dizzying whir of images was paramount.
Petra moved—slow and steady—to get as much information as she could.
Even so, what she got was mostly an image of a rock wall.
Over and over, Petra lowered the camera down the blow hole.
Every time she did, Melissa became more agitated. “What are you doing? How is this helping? Terry could be drowning.”
Before Petra said something sharp to the distraught woman, the drivers were back with an array of gear.
She spread the items out and came up with a plan.
The phone was probably a good idea. But it hadn’t panned out.
She needed to go down herself to understand the situation. And with the climbing gear that the guys had produced, she felt like it was doable, if not safe.
Petra held up the bike helmets. “Whoever brought these, you are a genius. Kudos.” She strapped one on.
She arranged the people to hold the rope, then tied herself into a hasty—the kind of quick and dirty way someone can get a rope on for a climb.
Was it weird in her sundress?
Only in that the rope between her legs was against her flesh, and she was going to come out of this with some severe abrasions.
Did she care?
Hell to the no.
She strapped the helmet in place, taking the time to adjust it properly—Petra wasn’t interested in having her brains bashed against the rocks.
“Listen up,” she bellowed over the wind and surf. “When I have information, I’ll communicate it to you. You are not to call down there asking for updates. You’ll break my concentration. I don’t want to hear anything from you unless you’re warning me about another giant wave or that there’s a rescue crew on site. Not within sight. On site, ready to act. Okay?” She looked around the circle. “Is everyone in agreement? Are we all on the same page?”
