Ten minutes later, the pills had started to kick in.
They were both feeling better.
“So what’s the plan?” said Julia.
“We’re going to go out with a bang.”
“A bang?”
“Yeah. We don’t have that much longer left. So we’re going to do what we do best.”
“And what’s that?”
“We’re going to have fun.”
“With who? We’ve already been with everyone else here hundreds of times. It’s lost its luster, you know? And no offense, Liam, but there’s nothing new if it’s just the two of us.”
Liam nodded. “Don’t worry, kid. We’re thinking along exactly the same lines.”
“So who is it then?”
“Who? Who better than that attractive pair that visited us earlier today.”
“They didn’t seem interested.”
“We’re going to have to make them interested. After all, it’s a new world. That means new rules.”
13
It was almost a full minute before Jim got a grip on himself. The pain was still there. Throbbing. But it wasn’t as all-encompassing and overpowering as it had been.
He was still sinking.
The water was cold and dark.
He fought against the pain and moved his left foot first.
Then his right.
Now his arms.
He kicked with his feet and churned with his arms.
He was rising, rising towards the surface of the lake.
The air had been knocked out of his lungs when the paddle had hit him.
But he was going to make it to the surface before he suffocated.
He knew he could do it.
He didn’t know how or why.
Or why he was continuing. It was if there was some resolve burning deep down inside him that couldn’t be snuffed out no matter what his body went through.
Jim felt the burning in his chest. It was intolerably painful.
He knew he didn’t have much longer.
He had to reach the surface soon. His lungs needed air. His body needed oxygen.
Jim had read about what it felt like to drown. They’d been horrible descriptions that were painful to read. But at the time he’d read them, they’d just been mere words on a page. Black and white text. Nothing more. No reality to them.
What he’d read had said that the body knows not to breathe underwater. The reflexes are so strong that a drowning person won’t automatically take a breath until right before they’re about to fall unconscious.
Knowing this, Jim was watchful for his own reflexes.
He felt it starting. He felt the yearning in his lungs and his throat and his mouth. He felt his body wanting to open his mouth.
But his mind knew that it was just water he’d be taking in, that he’d just die sooner.
The fact that the yearning was coming on now meant he wasn’t far from drowning.
He was kicking with everything he had. Pulling with his arms.
His muscles burned with an intensity he’d never felt before.
Suddenly, it was over.
All over.
His hand punched through the surface of the water. He felt the air on his hand before his mouth reached it.
His head broke through the surface. His mouth was already opening reflexively, water pouring into it.
He gasped and sputtered.
He tasted the air pouring in.
There wasn’t any time to think about whether he was about to be shot. Whether Andy was there in his boat, waiting for him to reappear.
If he was shot, he was shot. And that was it. His body was on the edge of death.
It wasn’t just that he couldn’t think about getting shot. It was that there was simply nothing that he could do about it.
Jim’s muscles continued to burn. The pain wouldn’t leave them as he tread water.
The seconds passed slowly. They turned into minutes.
Time was moving as slow as molasses.
As the minutes passed, Jim slowly started to feel calmer. His mind was no longer ringing like an alarm, sending him every signal it could to tell him he was almost at the point of death.
His heart rate slowed.
His muscles were still exhausted.
He was freezing cold.
But he was alive.
He could breathe. There was oxygen in his blood and his brain.
And he hadn’t been shot.
Jim had to force himself to take stock of his surroundings, to scan the water around him.
The boat was gone.
And he couldn’t see the shore.
His head still throbbed in pain from the blow.
Jim reached for his Ruger instinctively, checking to see if it was there.
It wasn’t.
But it had to be there.
His holster was a good one.
Jim reached again, felt around, mental alarms going wild.
It was definitely gone, probably resting now on the bottom of the lake. Completely irretrievable.
Jim took a deep breath, trying to calm his panicking mind.
Panic wasn’t bad in and of itself.
You just had to know what to do with it.
Jim knew he couldn’t let it overtake him.
He couldn’t let himself become mentally defeated.
He knew he had to go on.
They desperately needed what Andy had stolen.
And Jim wasn’t about to give up.
He could deal with extreme exhaustion. He could deal with a blow to the head.
He’d figure out a way to deal without his sidearm. He’d improvise. On the shore, there’d be all sorts of things that could become weapons. It was just a matter of using them correctly.
Now all he had to do was find the shore.
If he couldn’t see it, he’d have to guess and just start swimming.
There was always a way forward. Always a path to survival.
It was just a matter of keeping the mind strong, fortified against self-doubt and weakness of all types.
14
Jessica woke up with the worst headache of her life. Her mind and memory felt foggy.
Her surroundings were swimming around her, refusing to come into focus.
There were diffuse blobs somewhere in front of her. There was a source of light coming from somewhere.
It was like she was looking at the world through a dirty piece of thick glass.
Her eyes closed again. Her eyelids simply felt too heavy. And somehow painful. She couldn’t help herself.
It was a strange sensation, losing the little visual contact she had just briefly established with the world.
She must have been hit on the head. She was sure of that much, even though it took her minutes to figure it out.
She was putting the pieces together slowly. Not of what happened. But of what was going on now.
Her body seemed to be coming back online. System by system.
With her eyes closed, sound became more important.
There were rough male voices nearby. Talking raucously. Laughing.
Jessica was pretty sure they were speaking English. But she didn’t understand what they were saying. Her brain felt too slow to string the words together.
Slowly, the memories started coming back.
She’d been in the driveway of the lake house.
There’d been the men on the motorcycles.
Something had happened. Had she fought them?
What about the others? Jim? Rob?
Had they been hurt?
She couldn’t remember.
Her memory was a fog that she couldn’t break through.
All she really knew was that she’d been hit on the head. Hard.
And that she wasn’t at the lake house.
And that the voices around her weren’t voices she recognized.
The most likely scenario? She’d been kidnapped. Taken somewhere against her will.