Beach Thriller(100)
One was unquestionably Jade. Was she moving? Was she alive? Holly couldn’t say. She lay peacefully on her side, as though asleep. A second figure, female, with long, dark hair, had her back to the door. She huddled behind Jade, pressed up against her inert body, one arm draped across her waist. She was bleeding heavily.
Ethan didn’t hesitate. He went straight for Jade, hoisting her off the floor like she weighed nothing. He heaved her over his shoulder while backing into the landing. “Drag the other woman out,” he yelled to Holly. “I’ll be right back to help.”
As if in a dream, Holly reached for the second victim, grabbing under her arms and trying to avoid the raw wound on the woman’s shoulder.
When she turned the woman over, Holly’s world came to a stop.
Until that moment, she believed she had words for everything. She had built her life around words. But now Holly found herself both speechless and numb, as though she had dissociated from her body.
It’s the trauma. The gas. I’m hallucinating.
The face before her was so familiar, so deeply carved into her memory, so very much … like her own.
Anna.
Chapter 64
Jade
I’m certain I’m floating—up, up, up I go. I’m weightless. But I’m not going into the light. Instead, I’m bouncing up and down, almost like I’m riding on a carousel.
As if by magic I’m suddenly outside. And then it hits me—oxygen, real, pure, glorious oxygen. I’m bathed in the stuff. Swimming in an ocean of it. I inhale so deeply, with such desperation, it’s as if I’m sucking the entire night down. My lungs fill too fast. I gag, coughing so violently I fear my ribs might shatter.
I hear a man’s voice telling me it’s going to be okay—I will live.
Yes, I would like that very much. In fact, I want nothing more in this entire universe than one more day of life. Walking, breathing, being me. All of me—gangly, badass, book-loving, messed-up, utterly crazy me.
So many things hit me in this one moment—first my parents, may I never see them again: the drunk and the coward, yelling at me because they’ve grown tired of screaming at each other. Days when there was nothing but stale bread and vodka in the cabinets. Christmases with a tree so brittle it would have made Charlie Brown cry, and hardly anything wrapped underneath.
The moments that brought me here stitch together like a tapestry—the car I stole, Big Sally in Baby Jail, the necklace that set me off on my mission, the lies I told along the way … and the friends I made, too—especially the one I want to see most of all. Who took me into her home, sheltered me under her wing, and made me feel like I belonged somewhere.
Chapter 65
Holly
There was no time to think or process the shock. Shock? No, it’s more than that. You’re a writer, Hol. Find a better word: stupefied? astounded? She paused for a moment, but nothing seemed big enough—nothing fit the enormity of the moment.
Anna.
Holly got her hands under her sister’s arms and pulled with all her might. It wasn’t nearly as taxing as she thought it would be to drag her out of the room. She used her foot to close the door on the noxious fumes still filling the wine cellar.
Thankfully, Ethan reappeared, his arrival perfectly timed. There was no way for Holly to carry Anna up and out, and she didn’t have the strength or the voice to tell Ethan who he was slinging over his shoulder.
“Jade is alive,” he called out while rushing up the stairs. “I don’t know how bad off she is, but I sent a cop to find Dr. Hill and we’ve called for an ambulance.”
Holly kept pace behind him, still reeling. Was it all in her mind, a hallucination like the one she’d had with the woman on the boardwalk?
It wasn’t long before they reached the safety of fresh air. There Holly found Jade, sprawled out on the lawn, moving slightly, which was a wonderful sign.
“Stay still, Jade,” Ethan instructed. “Your body needs to conserve oxygen right now.”
A small crowd of partygoers dressed in their beachy attire had gathered around, gawking but offering no real help.
Ethan gently laid Anna on the grass beside Jade. Holly approached cautiously, unsure and unsteady, half expecting the fresh air to have shattered the illusion. When Ethan stepped aside, Holly had a clearer view of the face looking up at the night sky. There was no doubt who this was—Anna’s face was forever imprinted on Holly’s mind. Time couldn’t erase it.
For Holly, writing was painting with words. The page was her canvas, her prose her brushstrokes. The end result was a story that made sense. But right now nothing was making sense. Holly felt trapped inside a dream.
Kneeling beside her sister, Holly grasped Anna’s hand, which felt cool to the touch. She was still unconscious and couldn’t speak. Blood seeped from the cut on her shoulder.
Dr. Hill hurried across the lawn. He carried a first-aid kit, which would be useful for treating Anna’s wound, but what she and Jade needed most was supplemental oxygen. With Ethan tending to Jade—he was a volunteer firefighter, after all—Dr. Hill triaged Anna. Holly stepped aside to let them work. She became an observer like the others. A profound helplessness overwhelmed her. The two people who mattered to her most might be on the precipice of death, and she could do nothing more.