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“Don’t worry. Don’t worry. Blah, blah, blah,” Ray mocked me, tilting his head from side to side.
I shot him a look of death, but he simply laughed.
Ray Wagner had slaughtered four people in a one-night killing spree in Richmond, Virginia, before getting shot dead in a convenience store parking lot while trying to take out his fifth victim. Normally, I would have done my best to usher him as soon as possible, but since things were all out of whack and the no-ushering policy was in place, he was still here. As were a few other unsavory characters my friends had yet to usher. Lauren had been charged with a white-collar criminal named Piper Molloy, who had swindled dozens of families out of their life savings and rendered them homeless. Bea had a woman who had stepped off the ferry two days ago looking as if she’d come right out of the Stone Age with her scraggly hair, dirty fingernails, and gnarly teeth. Her name was Tess Crowe and she’d murdered her own parents, brother, and sister before being relegated to an insane asylum. Bea currently had her locked up in the attic of the home she shared with two older Lifers. Supposedly Tess kept her hosts up at night screeching and trying to claw her way out.
There had been some talk of locking up the visitors meant for the Shadowlands in the jail beneath the police station, but it was comprised of only two tiny cells and wasn’t equipped to hold them all, so for now, we were each tasked with babysitting them as best we could—making sure they didn’t cause any trouble. Ray was the only one, however, whose sadistic heart had been drawn to today’s devastation. Lucky me.
“Oh god! That hurts!” the man cried out as Joaquin taped his arm to the splint.
“Almost done,” I said as Joaquin used his teeth to rip the tape.
Once he’d secured the arm with four tight circles of tape, we gently maneuvered it into the sling. Then I carefully helped the man sit down on one of the dock’s pylons.
“Thank you,” he said, slumping slightly.
“Just hang out here while we figure out where to take you,” Joaquin said.
“Thanks, you guys,” Krista said, stepping between us with her knees wobbling. “I had no idea what to do.”
“It’s okay,” Joaquin said. “The question is: what next?”
We scanned the water and the beach. Nearby a woman was sobbing next to her bleeding husband. A man staggered past us and collapsed onto the sand, his chest heaving for breath. Joaquin had nailed it. Where were we supposed to start? Then I saw a flash out of the corner of my eye: my sister’s dark hair as she ran for the water. She was wearing nothing but shorts and a tank top and was soaked to the bone. Clearly this was not her first time diving into the bay.
“Darcy!” I shouted. But she didn’t hear me. She plunged beneath the choppy waves, reemerged, and swam straight for a little girl whose arms flailed as she went under, choking. My hands flew up to cover my mouth as Darcy plunged after her. I watched the whitecaps where they’d disappeared, scanning for any sign of them. But I could only see the spot where my sister and the girl had gone under.
Where are the
y? I thought, clenching my jaw.
“There!” Joaquin shouted, startling me. He pointed a good ten feet to the left of where I’d been looking, and there was Darcy, gamely swimming for shore with one arm locked around the little girl’s chest. “She’s okay.” He gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. “They’re both fine.”
“Who’s that?” Krista asked.
A sinewy, strong guy about our age was swimming toward the shore, holding a middle-aged woman tight around her chest, her chin tilted up toward the sky so she could breathe. He placed her on the shore, then raced right back out to the ferry to grab a man who still clung to the doomed ship’s guardrail. Quickly, he pried the panicked man’s fingers from the railing and brought him back to safety, then went out again, cutting through the water like it was nothing to him.
“Where did he come from?” I asked.
“I have no idea,” Joaquin said.
Darcy had just gotten back to the shore and pulled the little girl to safety. I ran to her side, slipping over the rocks until I reached the sand.
“Darcy! Are you guys okay?” I asked, dropping to my knees next to her.
Darcy flung her wet dark hair over her shoulder. She was winded but otherwise seemed fine. The girl, however, was wailing.
“She may have broken her leg, and look at her skin. She’s so pale. I think we should get her to the hospital. Where the hell are the EMTs, already? Or the Coast Guard?”
I swallowed hard. Darcy had no clue about the realities of where we were. As far as she knew, we were still alive, enrolled in the witness protection program thanks to Steven Nell, and about to get a call any day saying he’d been apprehended and we could return to Princeton, to our home and our friends. She didn’t know that a place like Juniper Landing didn’t need any personnel dedicated to saving lives, because no one here had a life to save.
“Um…maybe the weather is screwing things up?”
“Well, we have to get her to a hospital,” Darcy insisted.
Joaquin, who was now tending to a woman nearby, glanced over at me. “We don’t exactly have a hospital,” he said reluctantly.
“No hospital?” We looked up to find Super Swimmer Boy hovering over us, heaving for breath, his jet-black hair dripping water down his square cheekbones. “What do you mean, there’s no hospital?”
His skin was a healthy tan, and he had one blue eye and one brown eye. The whole package was so handsome and startling I found myself staring. Darcy rose to her feet next to me, as speechless and transfixed as me.
