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Abruptly she surfaced. “You beat me again.”
“Aw, you didn’t even try. You were taking a mental picture of the scene.”
No one knew her as well as Gramma did. Physical photos didn’t matter much to Mila. Her family pictures started when she was eleven, and there wasn’t a lot of happiness in them. Memories were what mattered to her, there in her head where she could call them up whenever she wanted, accompanied by scents and feelings. Where she could treasure them.
“If you beat me back, I’ll treat you to hamburgers and fries at Patriot Grill,” Gramma offered.
“With onions and jalapeños in the fries?”
“Is there any other way to eat them?” Gramma adjusted her goggles. “On the count of three… Three!”
Mila swam a few yards behind her, then flipped onto her back to gaze up at the sky. She had never been to church in her original life; God didn’t escape her parents’ anger any more than anything else did. She’d never learned to pray, beyond the lone prayer Gramma had taught her at five.
But she’d developed her own sort of prayer—gazes, gratitude and fears sent skyward. Life was good. It wasn’t perfect and never would be, but perfect would get boring in no time. Good, though…good was something to be proud of.
So she’d discovered a dead body. Been present at the discovery of a second one. Had her sanctuary violated. Been driven out of her house Thursday night—though she’d slept there again last night with Poppy’s weight comfortably pushing against her.
She was alive. Free. Had her health. Had her gramma. Had met Sam. Had her job and her garden and her whole future ahead of her. Had endless possibilities that intrigued her.
Most of them having to do with Sam.
Life was so very good.
A smile curving her lips, she rolled back to her stomach to finish the swim when something warm and rubbery bumped her arm. A snake was the first thought that came to her mind, and she jerked away, but it wasn’t a snake. Fingers enclosed in a glove curled clawlike around her wrist and dragged her beneath the surface of the creek.
Mila’s involuntary response was to scream, but she cut it off with the first bit of water that dribbled into her mouth. The attacker’s free hand yanked her goggles from her head and let them go. The water stung Mila’s eyes, distorting what she saw in the dim, murky depths. There were hollowed-out logs resting on the bottom, tumbled together, with a warning flag attached on their top side so she knew exactly where they were. All she had to do was break away and shoot to the surface, and someone would be close enough to help her, close enough to scare this crazy person away.
Just break away. If only everything was as easy as it sounded. Her assailant was dressed in black, not a wet suit, just snug-fitting black pants, shirt and gloves. His face was obscured by a dive mask with tinted lens. The image of him in Cedar Creek should have been comical, but his grip was so powerful that it felt as if the bones and tendons in her left wrist were being ground to powder, the pain increasing every minute.
Mila’s lungs were burning. She’d had no opportunity to take a breath before he’d grabbed her, and she desperately needed one now. She used her free hand to attack his, at the same time kicking her feet, finding a spot on a downed tree to push off. Despite the man’s best efforts, her head broke the surface for an instant, long enough to appreciate the sweet fresh air, nowhere near long enough to yell for help. Instead, as he drew her relentlessly back under, she dragged in every particle of air she could.
Kicking and punching underwater was impossible, not with enough force to do any good, so with her stinging eyes barely open, she looked for vulnerabilities. She found a thin gap between one long sleeve and a glove and dug her nails into the skin, scratching, digging, wishing her nails were long enough to do real damage. She twisted in a circle, trying to rotate her wrist away from him, even raised her foot and planted it on his arm to push against the slime-covered surface of the tree. She pulled herself closer and pried her fingers beneath the edge of his mask. He reacted too quickly for her to yank it off, but she had the satisfaction of seeing water bubble where she’d broken its seal.
