He felt a tug on his hand, and turned to find the girl enthralled with a puff of sea foam left on the sand. She nudged it with her toe, her lips rounded into a perfect O of wonder.
“Come on,” he said for what seemed the hundredth time. It was like trying to keep the attention of a toddler. “Let’s keep going.”
She instantly snapped to attention and followed him, her gait growing more even and steady, her limbs starting to coordinate. She was constantly on alert, her eyes snapping to every movement as if she were determined not to miss a single thing, but always they returned to Jim. He wondered if she expected him to run off or disappear.
“You know this place, right?” he said, after they’d gone another fifty yards without seeing so much as a spare oar from the boat. “If you know where the boat is, please just tell me.” He stopped walking so that he could look her squarely in the eye.
Her brow furrowed; she seemed almost in pain. “Boat?”
“Yes, boat boat boat—where is it?”
“I . . .” She bit her lip, her hands curling into fists. “I do not know. I do not know boat.” She said the words with great effort, and then beamed at him as if she’d just won a spelling bee.
For a moment, all he could do was gaze at her in exasperation. Then he turned away, gripped his hair in his hands, and kicked savagely at the sand. The plane was out of sight. There was no sign of the boat or, thankfully, Mary and company, though they were no doubt closing in. What they intended to do, Jim had no idea, but he was certain he didn’t want to find out.
“Jim?” the girl asked softly, uncertainly.
“What?” He rounded on her, his pulse pounding in his ears. “What is it? Do you remember where it is now? I’m trying to get you out of here, I really am, but you’re making it so difficult! I just—if I could get to the plane—”
“I . . . I am sorry.”
“Sorry! Ha! Well, if you’re sorry, then why don’t you just swim across the channel and bring the plane over here?”
Immediately he felt regret for lashing out at her, when obviously she was in no position to be blamed, but before he could apologize he realized he’d just hit upon the only possible solution. He took a few steps past her and stared toward the smaller island, just visible to the west. If he could swim the channel and get to the plane, he could taxi across the water to the main island and pick the girl up, and then they’d be on their way. He knew he could do it. All his life, he’d grown up swimming in the Pacific, cliff diving into the sea, snorkeling and scuba diving and exploring underwater caves with his friends. He knew the sea and he knew his own strength. I could do it, he thought. I have to do it—there’s no other choice.
“Listen, I have an idea.” He turned around, but she was gone. “Hey! Where are you?”
He scanned the beach, but there was no sign of her. Had Mary snatched her? Impossible. His back hadn’t been turned that long. He spotted her footprints in the wet sand and followed them. They meandered down the beach, toward the water, and disappeared into the ravenous surf.
Dread unfolding in his stomach, Jim ran into the surf. She was yards ahead of him, floundering in the water. From the looks of it, she couldn’t swim. He caught one glimpse of her pale hand reaching for the sky before she slipped beneath the surface and didn’t reappear.
“Hey!” He yelled as he plunged after her, arcing into a shallow dive that took him under the choppy waves. He swam along the bottom, sending up clouds of sand that blocked his view. When he resurfaced for air, there was no sign of her. Jim treaded water and spun this way and that, desperate for a glimpse of her, but he saw not a single golden hair.
He dove again and scoured the murky water. The floor dropped away beneath him, turning in an instant from clear turquoise to unfathomable dark blue. He finally spotted her, floating listlessly beneath the water, her hair a golden flower blossoming around her face. His lungs screamed for air and his skull burned from the pressure, but he couldn’t go up until he had her. With a few strong strokes he reached her and looped an arm around her middle. Then he bent his knees and planted his feet on the sand and launched them both upward. It seemed to take an eternity to finally break through the surface, and when he did, he gasped in a mixture of air and sea spray, then began stroking toward the shore.
The waves pushed him along, finally dumping them both onto the sand. He pulled her out of the surf while coughing up seawater from his own lungs, then fell immediately into CPR, recalling the lifeguard lessons he’d taken years before.
It took only three pumps on her chest for her to spit out the water she’d swallowed, and she fell into a coughing fit that racked her entire body. He held her as she choked and stroked the hair from her face, murmuring assurances.
At last, she leaned against him, shuddering a little, and he realized the water on her face wasn’t entirely from the sea.
“Hey. Hey, why are you crying? It’s okay, you’re safe now.”
“S-sorry,” she stammered.
“What? Why?”
“Tried . . . to swim . . . get plane for Jim . . .”
“What?” Holding her face in his hands, he gave her a look of bewilderment. “But I didn’t mean for you to actually swim across! Are you crazy? Hey, look here. Don’t cry.”
She gulped and blinked furiously until her tears were gone. Jim’s hands slid down to her shoulders, then her hands, and he gazed at her in astonished confusion. “What did they do to you? Why are you doing this?”
She just stared mournfully at the ground.
“Oh, hey now. Put your chin up. We’ll get out of here.”
She jerked her face upward, tilting her chin to the sky.
An uneasy feeling nibbled at the edges of his thoughts. “Hey . . . stop that. Put your head down.”
She tilted her face downward again. Jim’s skin prickled.
“Um. Clap your hands.”
She started clapping, smiling vacantly all the while.
“Okay, stop.”
Her hands fell into her lap.
Jim stood up and turned away, cracking his knuckles in agitation. The hell is this? He watched the jungle for a moment, his attention divided between the girl—or whatever she was—and the fear that Mary and the others would catch up to them. When he turned around again, she was digging her fingers into the sand.
“Look here,” he said softly, bending down to crouch in front of her. “Why are you doing that? Why are you . . . playing this game, huh? Some kind of Simon Says?”
She blinked at him, as if he’d lost her.
“Why are you doing everything I say?”
A particularly ambitious wave swept up the sand and licked her toes. Her brow drew together; she looked almost in pain from thinking. “You . . . You are . . .”
“What?”
Her face contorted as if she’d eaten something very sour, her cheeks growing red and tears forming in her eyes. Jim grabbed her shoulders. “Hey, calm down. It’s okay. Never mind.”
He sat beside her on the sand as the island seemed to close in around him and the horizon pulled away. Despite the damp, warm air that clung to his skin he felt as if he’d caught a chill he couldn’t shake.
FOURTEEN SOPHIE
After another doctor escorted Constantin Andreyev away, to get him settled in his room, Sophie was left alone with her mother and Victoria Strauss.
She’d learned more truths about her mother in the ten minutes she’d pretended to be her own doppelgänger than she’d learned in seventeen years of being herself, and the irony of this left a bitter taste on her tongue. She felt betrayed, lied to, marginalized more than ever before.