Page 3 of Meet Me In The Dark

After a pause, Micah held out his hand to Kara.

“Gun,” he said. She handed it to him. The water was almost up to her shoulders now, and Luke still wasn’t moving.

“Baby girl, if this doesn’t work…” Micah warned.

“It’s going to work,” she said.

It had to.

Micah shot the gun at the windshield, once, twice, three times. With a crack and crash, the windshield gave, shattering into pieces. Kara pulled her soaked dress over her head and handed it silently to Micah, who used it to clear out the glass.

Oh god, they were going to make it.

Except Conor was gritting his teeth as he tried to undo Luke’s seatbelt.

“Stuck,” he said. “And he won’t wake up.”

Her brain screamed a denial, but Micah and Conor were having some silent conversation and then Conor was lifting her out of the water and pushing her through the left rear window. The front of the car was bobbing in the waves.

“Swim to shore!” Micah yelled at her.

She ignored him. He could go to hell—but only if he took her with him.

Taking a deep breath, she swam around to the passenger-side, pulling on Luke’s door.

Conor glared at her from the other side of the backseat. She ignored him. He must have said something to Micah, who shook his head. And then Conor was ripping at Luke’s seatbelt with his teeth and hands, and then finally,finally, Luke was free.

The next moments were a dreamlike haze; Micah and Conor dragging Luke through the broken windshield, thecar flipping moments after and sinking down, down, down, and that could have been them,that could have been them, but there was no time for that, no time to think about that, only to swim, swim, swim until her body wanted to give out. As they swam, her arms and legs slicing through the water, it was like the water resisted, the ocean fighting to keep them and swallow them whole like it had their rental car.

Finally, she spotted land ahead of them: a tiny sliver of beach broken up by large rocks jutting out of the sand and water. Waves crashed onto the rocks, spraying them with white mist.

“There,” she tried to say, swallowing a mouthful of cold saltwater in the process and gagging.

There was an arm around her waist—Micah’s—and then he was pulling her along to shore, Conor swimming next to him dragging Luke along. When they reached the strip of beach, Micah released Kara, and all three carefully pulled Luke toward the shallows and laid him out on a flat rock, before collapsing beside him.

Unable to help herself, she crawled over Conor to check Luke’s pulse.

Steady.

Strong.

Alive.

And then he was conscious and coughing.

Thank god.

She helped roll him to his side.

“Kara, sweetheart, why are you crying?” Luke coughed.

“You almost died,” she explained, she thought matter-of-factly, but it came out as a sob.

Conor was helping him sit up. “We don’t have time for this,” he said. “They must be watching. They’ll be downhere at any moment to finish off the job. We’re sitting ducks right now.”

Luke scanned the area, quickly figuring out the situation.

“Micah, take her and run. We’ll distract them,” he said, coughing up more water.

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