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Utterly unaware of the emotional maelstrom slowly picking up speed in his heart, Evie sighed contentedly.
‘I’m so happy I saw this,’ she sighed, and he gritted his teeth together to hold back the hurt so that she could be happy in her achievement.
But when she lifted her head from his shoulder, he sensed the shift in her mood.
‘What is it?’ he asked.
‘The water,’ she said, rising up to stand. He looked and it appeared that the tide was much stronger than it had been only moments before. ‘I’m not sure that there should be a tide here, if—’
Whatever she was about to say was cut off as the ground beneath them seemed to groan. Alarm shot through him, and in her gaze he saw a stark fear that nearly stopped his heart. He was about to say something when the rocks cracked and screamed as the ground shook.
‘Earthquake,’ they said simultaneously.
They lurched to their feet, awkward as the sand shifted even where they stood. Evie went to run to the chamber, but he caught her round the waist, practically lifting her off her feet, just as a jagged crack formed in the rocks above the wooden hut.
‘Evie, you can’t. It’s too late,’ he shouted over the terrible grinding noise of rock grating against rock. She screamed as if it were her being cut open rather than the rocks, raining down and smashing the final resting place of Isabella and her husband. Mateo looked back to the opening they had come through and knew that they couldn’t risk even trying to climb back out the way they had come. He looked out into the pool, the crystalline blue darkening at the back of the cave speaking to a depth he could only hope was achievable.
‘Evie, can you swim?’ he demanded, but she was still lost, staring between the sailing ship and the wooden hut. He shook her firmly, needing to get her to focus immediately. ‘Evie!’
‘Yes! Yes, I can swim,’ she replied, her quick mind catching up and reaching for her pack. ‘We need to find where the water is getting into the cave,’ she said, speaking his exact thoughts. ‘And we need to do it now. Right now.’
He nodded, glad he didn’t need to prompt her further. He kicked off his shoes, thankful to see her doing the same. They stripped out of clothes they didn’t need and would weigh them down, even as the stalactites hanging from the ceiling began to tremble and fall.
He cursed as they waded into the pool, fear making their movements jerky and their breaths impossibly fast. He grabbed Evie, hauling her round to face him. There was so much he wanted to say, so much that he saw in her eyes. She kissed him then. Swift, harsh, but enough. It had to be enough.
He followed after her as she ploughed through the water with strong strokes, aiming for the back of the cave. He tried to peer through the surface of the water, searching for any kind of sight of where it was coming in, of where they could possibly escape, but the water was so torn up by the earthquake there was no way of knowing.
They reached the far end of the cave and stopped to tread water.
‘We have no other option,’ Evie said to him.
‘It will be there,’ he told her with a confidence he didn’t feel but knew they both needed to hear.
Together they deepened their breathing, readying their lungs to take in as much oxygen as possible, and with one last look, one last inhalation, they dived beneath the surface of the water.
What had once been a shallow, smooth pool was now awash with an unnatural tide. Peering through the murky depths, he felt salt water sting his eyes but it was the only way to find out where water was entering the cave. Just beyond his reach, Evie seemed to be heading for an area with purpose. With absolute faith, he followed her to where the rock wall arched and a blessed blue filled the darkness. With a glance back at him and his nod to her, they powered through the gap and out into the open sea, emerging from the depths with desperate gasps of air.
From outside of the cave and further back from the island, they could see the damage the quake was wreaking on the small, uninhabited island. In shock, they stared as rocks broke away from the craggy shoreline they’d stood atop only hours before, crashing down into the sea below.
They needed to swim further out. Evie drew the rucksack from her back and, treading water, searched for something inside.
‘We need to get further away,’ Mateo called out to her.
‘Yes, but we also need this,’ she said, pulling out the orange emergency flare gun, and fired into the sky. He watched it shoot upwards into an arc and, glowing a bright red, flare and spark before slowly falling back into the sea.
‘Are you okay?’ he demanded, resisting the urge to grab her, to hold on to her, knowing that they needed their strength.
‘No. Not even remotely,’ she replied truthfully. ‘Are you?’
He shook his head, unable to confess that he feared he might never be the same again. He was exhausted, every limb impossibly heavy. Consciously, he knew much of that would have been adrenaline and shock. It was a miracle that neither had been hurt by more than scratches and scrapes as they’d passed under the jagged rock, but he wouldn’t be okay until the captain of the yacht came to find them. He wouldn’t be okay until Evie was as far from harm as she could physically be. And even then, he wasn’t sure he’d be okay.
Evie had stripped the wet, salty clothes from her body and thrust herself in a shower the moment they returned to the yacht, desperate to wash off the fear and the sadness. Consciously she knew she was probably in shock, not just from the earthquake but from everything that had passed before that too; finding the cave, finding Isabella. But also, there was a creeping sense of wrongness between her and Mateo since they had been rescued and she scrubbed her skin harder and harder to try and remove that more than the rest of it.
The captain had brought the yacht to where he had seen the flare and found them what felt like hours after they had emerged from the cave, but which had probably only been minutes. He’d explained that it wasn’t a particularly bad earthquake and might not have even been felt on the main islands, but the cave would have suffered so many tremors and quakes, it was a miracle that it was still standing.
He’d asked them if they wanted to go back, if there was anything left to find. Mateo’s steady gaze had held hers as she’d said ‘no’, letting Isabella, her husband and their treasure finally find peace. And that was the last time she’d felt his eyes on her. Mateo wasn’t ignoring her. He would answer questions, he would even smile, but he had retreated, emotionally and physically.
Even now as she looked across the cabin of the small plane that had met them from the private landing strip of the island where she and Mateo had spent the night, he felt almost a world away. She tried to tell herself that she was wrong, that she was imagining it. That after everything they’d shared, the connection between them was stronger than ever. And perhaps if she said it enough times, she’d actually start to believe it.
