The current slams her into the rocks—shoulder first, then hip.
She pushes off, regroups, clawing her way to the drum. The ocean shoves backharder.
She tries again.
Misses.
Another swell rolls through, and the whole underwater world tilts—the cylinder swinging on its wedge, the mother’s limp body shifting. Cole’s lens lurches. He’s getting knocked around as much as she is. But he corrects, finding Sienna in the frame. Doing his job.
She stops, then turns abruptly, her eyes burning straight into the camera, making a hard, unmistakable gesture.
Come here. Help me.
My brain hits with horrible clarity. She needs hands. Not a witness. Not a videographer.
She needs him.
If he keeps filming, we keep the viewers. We keep the hype. If he helps her, the world goes blind, and the campaign fails.
There’s no decision.
Screw the donations. Save the mama.
“Put the camera down, Cole!” I scream at the monitors, my voice useless against the thirty feet of Pacific between us.
And yet, somehow—as if the current has dragged my desperation down to him—he hears me.
The shot lurches, then dips.
He lets go.
The feed spirals, a nauseous blur of bubbles and splintered light. The screen flashes with fragments:
Cole planting his boots on the machine.
Sienna yanking the harness taut.
Their bodies battling the water’s relentless pull.
The signal stutters, cracks as the image erupts into static.
Then—
Black.
“Feed’s gone!” Blaze shouts.
Panic should be ripping through me, but right now, I’m all instinct and execution. My phone slaps into my palm, fingers typing wildly like I’m cheating time itself. The link appears, and I shove the device at Blaze, pressingGo Live.
“We’re live again. Start talking!”
Blaze studies the rigid, unmoving crane cable. His eyes snap to the audience count: twenty-seven.
Shit.
My stomach plummets. A live rescue with twenty-seven viewers. I messed up. I chose the mission over the metrics, sabotaging my promotion.
Blaze pushes whatever goofy, golden-retriever cocaine tornado that usually lives inside him aside. He locks onto his viewers, and his tone shifts.
