Page 2 of Sexy as Sin
Until she dropped onto her board again and saw the bloke on the shore, wearing, for some bizarre reason, a dress shirt and tie, waving his arms overhead like he’d gone mad.
He was pointing, too. Pointing, shouting, and running into shallow water, despite his clothes. She couldn’t hear him, not over the surf, but somehow, her breath was coming short. What she saw was alarm. Or worse. Fear.
Nothing in front of her. Where was he pointing? She looked over her shoulder, beyond the little blond, and saw it.
Gray. Triangular. And closing in on the girl’s board.
A fin.A big one.
A shadow in the water, much bigger.
Shark.
She moved faster than she ever had in her life.
She got to the back of the girl’s board the same time the shark did, stared into a gaping, meter-wide mouth at three rows of triangular teeth, and time froze.
The shark bit straight into the end of the surfboard, centimeters from the girl’s feet, and Willow felt the heavy, dullthunkof it like a truck had jumped the curb and slammed into a bakery. Just as shocking. Just as out of place.
The girl screamed. Willow heard her, but only dimly. She had nothing to hit with. Nothing but the ragged end of a surfboard, which the shark had spat out again, but she grabbed that anddidhit. She bashed the shark in the nose, and then she bashed it again. The foam-and-fiberglass piece broke, useless, and she tossed it and hit the shark’s nose with her fist. Twice. Three times.
She was looking down at herself from above, somehow. Taking in great gasps of air, sobbing them out. Pulling herself closer to the shark, not farther away.
Too late to run. Time to fight.
Stab the eyes.The shark’s eye was cold, staring, and black. She sent all four of her fingers straight into it, and the shark retreated. Not gone for long, surely. Gone for a second.
It doesn’t want us. It doesn’t like us. We don’t taste good.She was thinking it, and she was grabbing the girl’s surfboard. Thankfully, she’d had the courage and wits to hold tight and hadn’t fallen off.
“Paddle,” Willow told her fiercely. “Paddle hard. Straight to shore.” She kept hold of the girl’s board, paddled with her free hand, anddidn’tlook back.
Oh, no.The others.There was a boy out here who couldn’t be more than seven. And Amber Hawkins, who’d finished her chemo a month before and still didn’t have hair. Amber had two kids.
She gave the girl’s board a hard shove towards shore, saw the bloke in the tie wading out, and shouted, “Paddle!” Then she turned around and moved towards the group of surfers with her arms going like windmills.
Some were heading in. They’d seen, then. Others, though, farther out, hadn’t. She levered herself up with one palm flat on her board, waved the other over her head, and shouted, “Shark!Shark! Shark!”
Heads turned. She kept waving, kept shouting. The few people on shore were running and shouting, too. The man in the tie was beckoning them on, urging them into action. They had their arms waving over their heads, were yelling, calling.
The surfers came in fast, paddling like their lives depended on it, and Willow thought,Eleven attacks in four years between here and Ballina. Three deaths.Thirty kilometers of coastline, and too many great whites.
Everyone was going in, she saw with relief that made her temporarily weak, her arms threatening to shake. A man had hold of the young boy’s board, was paddling him in, and the bloke in the tie was in water to his waist, reaching for him, hauling him out. Willow saw it in a glance, but a look the other way showed her something else. Amber Hawkins, paddling in the other direction, off to catch the next wave. She hadn’t heard.
Willow hesitated for an awful moment. Going back out there felt like stepping straight into those jaws. But... Amber’s younger girl, Charity. Five years old. When Willow had catered Amber’s “Kicking Cancer’s Bum” celebration at the end of her chemo, Charity had taken her back to her bedroom to show off her new school uniform, a green-and-black-plaid dress, and told her, “Mummy says she won’t be sick anymore, so she can take me. We’re going to have a photo on the first day. Me and Grace and Mummy, all together. We’re the Three Nusketeers.”
She didn’t realize she was doing it until she actually was. She was paddling out. Paddling to Amber, expecting that cold eye at any moment. It was the eye, not the teeth. It was theeye.
Her dad’s voice. Nearly twenty years ago now. Looking up from his papers on a hot African night, rubbing a hand over his closed eyes, under his unfashionable black glasses, squeezing the bridge of his beaky nose. She’d been on the couch, reading a book. Trying to be ignored, so nobody would order her off to bed.
“He’s taking a hell of a risk,” he’d said quietly. Talking to himself. “But what good is living if you don’t live right?”
She paddled on grimly, and, finally, Amber turned. Willow raised her arm again, waved it, and pointed to the beach. Amber stared—at Willow, at the empty sea, at the mayhem on shore—then started paddling in, closing the gap fast, like a woman with two kids at home who needed their mum. And, at last, Willow turned and headed in, too. Knowing that jaw was opening. Knowing the teeth were coming. Planning to kick. Planning to fight.
It’s not over until you’re dead, and you’re not dead.
Never surrender.
She paddled, and she kept paddling. She saw Amber reach the shallows, be pulled in by a dozen willing hands. Safe. And then the man in the tie, his trousers soaked and his shirt just as bad, was wading out, reaching Willow’s board and pulling it backwards, running through the dragging surf with it.
