Page 84 of Beckett
“Swim!” I grabbed her arm, fighting against the current that wanted to claim us. The riverbank was so close but might as well have been miles away. Every stroke was torture, muscles already seizing from the cold, coordination failing as hypothermia set its teeth into us.
My boots finally scraped bottom. I hauled Audra up, both of us stumbling and slipping on the rocky riverbed. She fell twice before we made it to dry ground, and I fell with her, neither of us able to stand without the other.
We collapsed on the bank, gasping and shaking, our bodies convulsing so violently it felt like we might shake apart at theseams. Water poured from our clothes, from our hair, from our mouths as we coughed up what felt like half the river.
Audra rolled onto her side, retching, her whole body heaving. I wanted to help her but could barely move myself. My hands were claws, fingers locked in curved positions, unable to straighten. I couldn’t feel my feet at all.
We’d made it out of the water. We were alive.
I looked up but saw no sign of the car that had rammed us. Good. No danger on that front, but it didn’t change the fact that we needed to get warm right fucking now. But we had no phone and were on a mostly deserted road. We were going to have to make it to Travis’s house on foot.
“Come on, let’s get moving. We need to get warm.” My words came out stiff and broken. “We’re only about a mile from Travis’s house as a crow flies.”
Audra tried to stand, fell, tried again. I grabbed her arm, hauling us both upright through sheer determination. Every muscle screamed in protest. My boots squelched with each step, the sound obscene in the quiet night. Water still dripped from our clothes, leaving a trail behind us like wounded animals.
The first hundred yards were the worst. Our bodies didn’t want to work right—legs moving in jerky, uncoordinated motions like broken marionettes. Audra stumbled every few steps, and I wasn’t much better. The cold had bitten deep into us now, gnawing through muscle and bone until everything was just varying degrees of agony.
“Talk to me,” I said. I needed to keep her conscious, keep her moving. “Tell me something. Anything.”
“I can’t.” The word came out as barely a whisper.
“Try.” Talking would help her body and mind.
She was silent for so long I thought she’d given up. Then, “Hate…hate Montana rivers.”
A laugh burst out of me, painful and raw. “Fair. Let’s think about hot coffee instead.”
We kept walking. Or stumbling. Or whatever you’d call the graceless forward momentum of two people whose bodies were shutting down one system at a time. I didn’t try to get us back to the road; that wasn’t the most direct route. I was thankful I knew this area well.
We kept moving, each step an epic battle against gravity and hypothermia. We looked like something out of a horror movie—two corpses that didn’t know they were dead yet, shambling through the gathering darkness.
Quarter mile. Half mile. Time lost all meaning. There was only the next step, then the next, then the next. Audra fell again, and this time, it took everything I had to get her back up. My hands wouldn’t close properly, fingers too numb to grip.
“Leave me,” she mumbled.
“Not happening.” I wrapped my arm around her waist, taking most of her weight. “We’re almost there.”
Three-quarters of a mile. I could feel my body starting to shut down, that dangerous warmth creeping in at the edges—the lie your brain tells you right before hypothermia wins. Audra had gone quiet against my side, her feet barely lifting off the ground anymore.
Then—lights. Through the trees, maybe two hundred yards ahead. Travis’s house, lit up like a paranoid Christmas tree with security floods and motion sensors.
I stopped dead, pulling Audra to a halt beside me.
“Travis!” My voice cracked, barely carrying. I sucked in a painful breath and tried again, louder. “Travis! It’s Beckett! Turn it off! Turn everything off!”
Audra lifted her head slightly, confused. “What?—”
“Don’t move.” I kept my arm locked around her, holding us both perfectly still. “Not one step.”
“Travis!” I shouted again, voice shredding. “It’s us! Beckett and Audra! Turn off your systems!”
The silence stretched, broken only by our ragged breathing. I knew Travis had the whole perimeter wired—motion sensors, pressure plates, God knew what else. The man’s paranoia had paranoia. One wrong step and we’d trigger something that would make drowning seem pleasant.
A crackling sound made us both jump. Then Travis’s voice, tinny and distorted, emerged from somewhere to our left. I turned carefully and spotted the speaker wedged between tree branches, painted to match the bark.
“Beckett? What the hell are you doing coming in from the woods? You’re supposed to?—”
“Someone rammed my truck off the bridge,” I cut him off, words tumbling out. “We went into the river. We’re hypothermic. Need out of these wet clothes now. Turn everything off, Travis. Everything.”
