“You’re kidding.” Danny runs a hand over the top of his now-smooth ponytail as he glances around us. “Do you think someone stole them?”
“I don’t know how.” I continue to move the crap in my purse around for a few moments before I abandon my efforts with a frustrated huff. “But it’s definitely not in here.”
I shake my head again, meeting Danny’s mystified look with one of my own, ignoring the guilt niggling at the back of my brain. “How could this have happened? I didn’t even set my purse down when I went to the bathroom. It’s been right next to me since we got off the plane.”
Danny curses, “I don’t know, but I’m going to have to hit a payphone as soon as we get through customs and let Caitlin and Gabe know my phone got snatched. Caitlin is supposed to have the baby any day, and I told Gabe to call as soon as they headed to the hospital.”
“Maybe we can get one of those pay as you go phones,” I say. “Just to use for however long we decide to stay. That way we won’t miss the baby news.”
“That’ll probably work,” Danny says. “But we need to call and report our phones stolen, too. I have no idea what kind of information I have saved on mine. All my banking stuff for the business is on there and the login pages for the scheduling portal…”
He pulls in a deep breath. “I am seriously screwed if I have any passwords saved, and I only have a handful of phone numbers memorized. I’m going to have to call Pete and have him pull my client contacts from the computer at the office.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, meaning it.
I hate that I’m causing Danny stress, no matter how necessary it was to ditch our phones.
“It’s not your fault.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders. “And hey, at least we still have our passports and our wallets. Could have been much worse.”
His choice of words makes me smile as I lean into him. “You’re right. It could have been.”
Things could have been so much worse, but they aren’t.
I made it out of the country before the shit hit the fan and have eliminated the first threat to our new beginning. I’m not stupid or naïve enough to believe everything will be clear sailing from here on out, but so far it seems like the fates are with me.
Or at least not totally against me, and for now that’s good enough.
Chapter Six
Danny
Three Years Earlier
“There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and the music in its roar.”
-Lord Byron
* * *
Some days the ocean is the best friend you’ll ever have. Some days, the ocean is out for your blood, and you never know what kind of day it’s going to be until it’s too late to make a damn bit of difference.
No matter how good a swimmer you are, how savvy you get at reading the waves, or how careful you try to be, the ocean is better, savvier, hungrier. Mother Ocean will give you joy, hope, and comfort, but she will also drag you low, strip you bare, and make all your nightmares real.
The ocean is where all the oldest nightmares were born, and where they still live, washing in and out on the tide, waiting for humans to drop their guard and step into the water…
* * *
I learned about the ocean’s dark side my first year on the island, when I got smacked in the head by a surfboard, got so dizzy I didn’t know which way was up, and nearly drowned. If Sam hadn’t been there to tow me to shore, I might not have lived to see my fourteenth birthday.
The violence of the ocean shouldn’t take me by surprise, but when I look up from the book I’m reading—a mystery about aliens taking over the earth I wouldn’t have touched if Sam hadn’t put it in my hands but that now I can’t get enough of—to see Sam struggling against the current a few hundred feet from shore, I can’t believe she’s really in trouble.
But she’s the strongest swimmer I know, flits through my head even though I know that doesn’t mean anything.
The ocean doesn’t care if you’re Hercules with a side of Thor. If the ocean’s decided to fight you, the best you can hope for is to live long enough for it to lose interest.
I know this, but still I sit on my ass for a good thirty seconds after I see her, some stupid part of my brain refusing to process that Sam is fighting like hell to get back to the beach in between sets of punishing waves that toss her farther out to sea every time they roll her under. By the time I throw my book to the towel and surge to my feet, she’s already ten feet farther out.