Shielding Instinct, page 15
He was ready.
She was ready.
Timing was everything.
Above, they’d weighted the plastic helmet by adding a rock so she could get it past the cave’s lip.
Now, to test the theory.
With the next wave, Petra readied herself. As the wave receded, she dropped the helmet and released it to swing like a pendulum. The helmet skimmed the pool of water and under the lip.
It didn’t come back out.
“You have it, Terry? You’re putting it on?”
She didn’t get a reply. He might have been too focused on the task at hand to hear her.
Or perhaps there was something about the structure that she didn’t understand.
The wave came in.
The wave went out.
There was a hand on the line. An arm. A bright lime green helmet.
Holy shit. There was Terry.
In came the wave. Petra held the line tight. Terry’s head was near her thigh, so his mouth was out of the water.
“Hang on,” Petra encouraged. “We’ve got you.”
He reached for her leg, and Petra swatted him hard. “Don’t touch me. Terry, if you pull me down, no one is coming after us.” She believed that was true. After all, no one else had offered to go back down with the helmet.
Petra lowered the second rope and worked it over his arms in the front.
He was shaking with cold and fear.
Petra kept talking to him about Melissa and how many people were helping, and they just needed to wait for the pull of the tide to go out.
With a quick release of the rope attached to the helmet, Petra could get the lasso down around his chest and tighten the rope under his arms.
Was it the best way to get him out?
Absolutely not.
But it was the way they were going to do it.
“I’m going up. You’ll be right below me. We have you tied in. Here comes another wave.”
Petra had told the team about her fears about Terry grabbing onto her. There was only the breadth in the chimney for a single person to be rescued at a time. And she was on top.
These next few moments were the most dangerous.
“Apple,” she yelled the code word her team had agreed on. She didn’t want Terry to know what was happening next.
As soon as “apple’ left her mouth, she was snatched up the chimney so fast that she thought she was Santa’s elf riding a magical trail.
Not fast enough.
Even though Terry had his own line, a drowning man would pull a loved one under. It was the nature of the beast. This beast grabbed as her feet fell from the wall and extended outward. He clutched at her ankles.
And she kicked hard.
The borrowed tennis shoes came off in Terry’s hands as Petra was dragged from his reach.
She came up hyperventilating. Holy shit!
When they got Terry to the top, Petra saw he was in worse shape than she’d imagined.
His clothes were shredded, his skin abraded. He was slick with blood.
Melissa was bent in two, screaming.
Terry didn’t even look Melissa’s way. He was going into shock. This rescue wasn’t over.
Raw-skinned and broken, he needed to be at the hospital stat.
Petra looked at the cliff and at the people who were ready and willing to help, but how could they get Terry, in his battered state, from here to up there where they had vehicles?
It wasn’t coming to her right away.
What did come was a sense of gratitude that in a crisis, all these people risked being near a turbulent sea in the service of a stranger.
Could she contrive a way for these good people to get Terry to the vehicles?
What she needed was a medevac helicopter.
No, she amended, that spray and the debris storm that came with a helicopter’s downwash might be too much for Terry.
What she needed was the Cerberus team. After Levi had saved his fiancée, they had trained how to move people on steep inclines, and they’d know just what to do in a practiced formation.
Okay, Petra admitted to herself. While all that was true, she realized she just wanted to look into Hawkeye's eyes and know that he was there with her in the crisis because that had felt really good over the last couple of days.
“Hey!” Carlos called from the cliff. “Hey! Incoming!”
Petra whipped her head seaward.
The people here on the plateau couldn’t survive another rogue wave.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Hawkeye
A teen on the cliff had his hand to his mouth yelling, “Incoming!” to let those below him know that their team had arrived.
Levi, Cooper, Mojo, and Hawkeye made out the essence of a path and took it at a speed that wasn’t entirely safe.
Still, it took a long time.
As soon as Hawkeye got eyes on Petra, his stomach dropped.
She was covered in dried blood.
Her blood.
She was crouched over a rock performing first aid. Finishing up by tucking Mylar blankets and beach towels over the prone man.
A woman was wailing to the side, but she looked like a family member and not part of the rescue.
The second Hawkeye got down to her, he swept Petra into his arms and buried his face at her neck. “I can see you're fine. But shit, woman, did you go in the blow hole to pull the guy out?”
She didn’t answer. He didn’t need her to.
She was the only one in wet, ripped clothes.
Even the victim, neatly tucked under a blanket with a jacket supporting his head, looked in better shape. But Hawkeye couldn’t see what was going on for him beyond purple lips and full-body shivering.
Levi was commanding Voodoo and Cooper into place on either side of the guy to offer body heat and keep him from going into shock.
Hawkeye turned back to Petra.
“I’m okay, just a little banged up. Terry’s got broken bones.” She pointed at the man. “Do you have an ETA on the ambulance?” Petra asked, looking past him to the cliff.
Leaving his hands on her shoulders, Hawkeye held her out from him. Her eye was less wonky but still not great. She had cuts and bruises all over her body—she hadn’t sliced herself near her arteries. And the blood seemed to have coagulated. “We’re on our own. Crises are unfolding all over the island.”
The vein in her neck was throbbing, but that was the only sign that she might be stressed.
Safe enough for now.
Hawkeye leaned in to kiss her, then said, “Everyone is pressing the pedal to the floor. That’s why it took me a while to get to you. I’m sorry it took so long.”
“I have no idea how long it took—adrenaline tells me that we were working on saving Terry for five minutes, but also ten hours.”
“That’s about how it works,” Levi said.
Levi moved over to the pile of equipment amassed on a flat rock. It looked like the kinds of things someone might dig out of their hatch—ropes, first aid kits, blankets.
Levi pulled out two Tae Kwon Do long sticks from a black bag. “We’re in business.”
Levi efficiently constructed a stretcher by folding a sheet of plastic around either stick.
When he looked up, he caught Hawkeye’s gaze, silently asking how Petra was doing.
“Good to go. Let’s figure out the path before we load Terry up.” His gaze scanned the bystanders. “Who calls this beach home? Who knows this exact area?”
A teen stepped forward. “Me. Beans.” He put a hand on his chest, then pointed to the guy standing next to him. “Me and Lucky grew up just down the beach about a half mile.”
“Getting Terry up that cliff is going to be a trick,” Hawkeye said. “But that’s where we have our vehicle parked. What’s the safest way to get the litter from here to there?”
After Beans and Hawkeye conferred, the two Cerberus men moved the stretcher next to Terry. All four of his limbs were splinted. The one on the left leg was a traction splint made of walking sticks. That kind of splint was used to ease the pain of a femoral break and help keep bone fragments from cutting inside the leg. It could help prevent the femoral artery from being punctured. That was some advanced wilderness first aid.
He looked up to offer Petra kudos, but she looked too wiped out to care.
Levi and Hawkeye were feeling it, too.
With the boys leading the way and help from the bystanders on the stretcher, they got to the SUV. With the split seats down, Terry could lie fairly flat.
Melissa was in the far back with him. She’d been mum the whole time.
Petra and Voodoo squeezed into one seat on the second row.
Levi was driving, and Cooper was between Hawkeye’s feet as he sat shotgun.
“Twelve minutes,” Levi said. “I’m taking it slow and steady to keep from jostling you too much, Terry.”
Terry was going into shock, so Hawkeye cranked up the heat.
“Hospital knows we’re bringing you in,” Levi finished.
Hawkeye was watching Petra in the side mirror.
She caught his eye. “You were caught up in something, too?” Petra asked.
“The team pulled six from rip currents,” Hawkeye said.
“We had the rip currents near the tide pool. But we could see them, and everyone stayed clear. Then there were these huge waves.” She paused, her nose in the air. “You two smell like smoke and diesel.”
“A boat caught fire. That was our second rescue mission today,” Hawkeye said.
“I’m the third?” Petra asked. “Thank you both. Once I got the first aid wrapped up, there were lots of people who wanted to help, none of them had expertise, and I was getting afraid for—”
She seemed to realize who was in the vehicle and could be listening.
“Given the injuries, my thinking you were en route helped my psychology today. Thank you for coming.”
Hawkeye turned his body so she could look directly into his eyes. “Petra, you sent us a distress signal. Of course, we’re here.”
Levi lifted his chin. “You know, we’re pretty good at making do. But kudos to you. I’ve never heard of a bike helmet extraction before.”
Petra’s face drooped into a frown, and she lowered her voice. “It was riskier than I’d like to dwell on.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice further. “It’s hard to fathom. This poor guy was walking down the shore, having a romantic moment with his fiancée. A wave picked him up and took him out. He’s talking to her one minute and gone the next. Near as I can tell, the ocean pulled him out, then pushed him under and into the blow hole. From romance to being pummeled underground.” She dropped to a whisper. “His initial screams are sounds that will haunt my dreams.”
“You heard him?” Levi asked. “I saw that hole. I heard the roar of the surf. You heard him down there?”
“I have heightened senses. My eyes seek out anomalies. I have the nose and ears of a dog.”
Cooper drew his brows together until they wrinkled together.
“No, Cooper, not as good as yours. You are superior in every way. But you know I can hear things others can’t.”
“Like?” Levi asked.
“Electricity in the walls?
Levi chuckled. “Yup, part canine. I’d say.”
“How is your team?” Petra asked. “Everyone healthy?”
“Reaper was taking Ash to the hospital for smoke inhalation. We’ll meet up with the rest of the team when we get there.”
“Two missions. You got everyone out of the water okay?” She put her hand on Hawkeye’s shoulder.
He liked that she was reaching out for him. And he reached up to cover her hand with his.
“Unfortunately,” Levi said, “we know of one guy who didn’t make it. Ash tried to recover his body from a boat fire. But the smoke and fumes were too much.”
“Swollen air passages from the chemical fumes. Back on the beach, Ash was wheezing and having trouble breathing,” Hawkeye said. “We don’t mess around with that.”
“Of course not. My goodness,” Petra whispered.
“There were a few of our saves that might be touch and go,” Hawkeye added. “Just all around, not a good situation.”
In the far back seat, Melissa had laid her head on Terry’s stomach, crying.
Terry was conked out asleep—not just the exhaustion of survival but the drop in adrenaline sucked the energy right out of his body, Hawkeye guessed.
“Okay, let’s get a plan together,” Hawkeye pointed toward the emergency sign. “Petra, the place is going to be packed. But coral can be dangerous. You’ll need an antibiotic. You go in and get in line with the triage. If it looks like it’ll take too long, we’ll figure something else out.”
“And you guys?” She reached past Hawkeye to scrub her nails behind Cooper’s ear.
“Dogs and hospitals aren’t a sanitary mix. We’ll wait outside. The rest of our team is here. We need to find them and get an update. I can communicate with you via cell phone.”
“Here we go,” Levi flipped on the blinker, pulling up under the emergency awning next to an ambulance.
A nurse was waiting outside with a gurney.
As Levi and Hawkeye helped Terry transfer from the SUV, Hawkeye heard the nurse say, “Back again, huh? Your eye is looking better.”
“Thank you for remembering me,” Petra said.
“Were you involved in this too? You’re going to need an antibiotic. We’re slammed. Crazy day. The hospitals are full. How about you find a seat in the waiting room?” the nurse asked. “I’ll corner a doctor as soon as I can and get you a script. Remind me of your name? Hermione?”
“Yes, Hermione Armstrong.”
“You’ll be in our system. I’ll find you.” She grabbed the end of Terry’s gurney and was racing through the automatic doors. She caught Hawkeye’s gaze and added, “The fewer people inside, the better. It’s a zoo. Do you mind waiting out here?”
Hawkeye leaned down and gave Petra a kiss. “I’ll meet you out here when you’re patched up. Okay?”
Chapter Twenty-Three
Petra
What was it that Tamika said to Petra the morning they were supposed to fly out of D.C.? “A body in motion tends to stay in motion.”
Her time with Hawkeye had been one crisis after another. Was that the kind of chemistry they swirled when they were together?
Petra hated crises, though she thrived in them.
When something terrible was afoot, she was energized from beginning to end.
The problem was that they came to an end, and she always crashed hard.
She thought of past relationships when she’d try to explain it. She wasn’t ghosting them; she was hibernating, trying to recover. But unless someone knew how burnout felt, yeah, it wasn’t something easily imagined.
No, it wasn’t a matter of eating more protein or hitting the gym harder.
It wasn’t a matter of mind over matter or putting the pedal down on her inner drive.
She. Shut. Down.
And the last time she didn’t listen to her body and pushed and pushed, she ended up in bed, unable to do even the rudiments of personal hygiene for months on end.
That was the end of her last long-term relationship.
And probably the end of all long-term relationships.
Petra had adapted herself to the idea of doing life solo.
She was fine with it.
Quasi-fine with it.
Alone had its good points and its bad.
She sure did like the idea today that all she needed to do was put up a bat signal and Hawkeye would be there by her side, helping her to navigate the challenge.
That and he could give a mighty fine kiss.
Petra held her index finger out in front of her face, forcing herself to focus there.
A lot had happened that day—over the last two days.
A lot.
And all her thoughts felt like they were crowding up on each other, pinging into one another.
It was as if she was hunkering in the middle of a swarm, one of which was a killer bee. She needed to find it and keep her eye on it.
Petra’s survival brain had been on overdrive since she landed in St. Croix. It was too long.
Anxiety was a terrible sensation.
Coffee would be good—a generous hit usually helped her regulate her dopamine.
While coffee woke her colleagues up, it made Petra feel like taking a nap.
Coffee would help—but Petra couldn’t motivate herself off her seat to see if she could find a pot somewhere.
Besides, she needed to be here so the nurse could find her and hand her the script. Petra wanted to get home and take a shower, wash the scrapes, and throw away this sundress.
Exhaustion was settling in as adrenaline left her system just like it had for Terry—like it would for any human after a day like today, she reminded herself.
Her thoughts flitted over the day from patch discovery, to doctor, to meeting Lucky and taking a ride over the rutted red earth being smacked in the face by tree limbs as they careened past.
She thought about Herb in the front seat and how her antennae had gone up. The look in his eyes. The tone of his speech. There was something shiny and plastic about him.
Something about him made Petra’s teeth itch.
Petra patted the pocket of her sundress and was surprised to find that the girl’s necklace was still there.
She didn’t pull it out. She’d look at it later.
Petra wondered what happened when the girl’s parents discovered the necklace was missing.
Jenny.
Jenny!
Shoot. Petra had used her connection with Holly Smokes to see if she could gather some information about the design of the pendant.
But now that Petra thought about it, maybe that was a bad idea.
Either way, Petra should definitely give Holly a heads-up.
Petra didn’t have Holly’s contact information with her, and it might be hours before she got back to the hotel and her computer.
Avery was Holly’s editor.
Yeah, Petra’s gut told her not to wait. Pulling her phone out, Petra quickly tapped a message.
Petra: Hey, Avery, are you available for a phone call?
