Page 104 of Hard Luck (Blackstone House)

Cole heaved out a long sigh. “I can’t believe they left us here to die.”

And I couldn’t believe I hadn’t predicted what they were planning and stopped it. Yes, I’d gotten bad vibes from Witt, but I hadn’t realised he was a full-fledged sociopath, a lunatic who’d cause the deaths of two people over a few conch pearls. I mean, that was insane. Really fucking insane. Say they had to open a thousand conchs to find one pearl, and each pearl they found was a good one worth twenty thousand bucks… How many conchs could one man find and open in a day? Three one-hour dives, one conch every two minutes, ninety conchs per day, times three, say three hundred conchs. Those assholes would have to dive three days just to find a single pearl, and then people would start looking for us. Frankie. Yolanda. And they didn’t even know about the Choir.

No, it didn’t make sense.

What was I missing?

“We’re not going to die, trust me. We’re not going to die.”

CHAPTER 37

COLE

Cole was going to die.

The motion sickness had started halfway into the swim with a queasiness in his stomach, then expanded into a headache that left his temples throbbing every time he looked up to take a breath. And the dizziness… Skeleton Cay was there on the horizon, a dark, malevolent blemish against the blue, but reaching it…seemed…impossible.

He stopped to tread water for a moment, willing the nausea to subside, cursing the whitecaps a growing wind had whipped up.

“Hey.” Bella turned onto her back and floated back toward him. “You okay?”

“Just need a minute.”

“Look at the island. Focus on a fixed point.”

This side of the island was a vertical cliff of brown rock jutting toward the sky, and he had no idea how they were going to climb it. A paler lump stuck out near the middle, fuzzy in the twilight, and he locked his gaze on it, trying not to puke. He hadn’t gotten seasick in years, not since those early days at college when he’d gone on field trips aspart of his marine biology studies. By the time he met Gretchen, he’d found his sea legs, but now the churning in his guts was back with a vengeance, and he just fucking knew he was going to embarrass himself in front of the woman he loved.

Yes, he loved Bella. Even with her occasional bitchiness and her tendency to keep secrets, he loved her. And that made him start swimming again.

She kept up with every stroke, slicing easily through the water, and he could swear she was part trevally.Half a mile left to go, he thought. Half a mile until they reached the slippery rocks of Skeleton Cay. If he’d tried this swim without a BCD and fins, he’d be fish food already, and Bella would be alone, and?—

“Turn onto your back.”

“What?” Cole asked, but he was low in the water, and a mouthful went down the wrong way. He coughed and spluttered and finally puked up bile and the remains of lunch as Bella gripped his BCD to hold him steady.

“Let me die. I think I’d prefer it.”

Bella kissed his hair. “When it’s our time, it’s our time, but today isn’t it.”

“You think?”

“Relax.” She slipped a hand under his armpit and began swimming, towing him along. “I did a lifesaving class in high school, and I’ve been dying to try it out. No, not dying. Wrong word. Waiting? Let’s go with waiting. Waiting to try it out.”

How could she still speak coherently?

“I can swim.”

“I know, but this way I’m less likely to get puked on again.”

Cole would have argued further, but he simply didn’t have the strength. When Bella dragged him onto a flattish rock at the base of the cliff, he couldn’t even sit up.

“See? Told you we’d make it.”

“This isn’t much better than the other place.”

“Yes, it is.”

“Now we’re stuck on a smaller rock, and we still don’t have any potable water.”

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