Page 8 of If All Else Sails
I don’tfeelso good. My stomach churns again, and a spike of pain drives through my head. I don’t need my nursing degree to tell me what this is: dehydration mixed with overheating. Standard summer fare when you’re left in the back of a closed vehicle for ten minutes and it’s nearing one hundred degrees out.
But knowing what it is doesn’t slow the effects, and my vision goes hazy. Turns out, knowing is not half the battle. Or if it is, it’s not the important half.
My mouth feels dry, my tongue thick as I try to speak. “I think I...”
My words slur, then trail off altogether as I slump, the black dots returning like an angry swarm of bats.
I’m going to pass out, I realize, half a second before the bats fully block out the sun. The last thing I’m aware of is Wyatt’s voice, closer than it should be, as strong hands grab my shoulders to break my fall.
Chapter4
Vengeance upon Your Children’s Children
Josie
When I come back to the world again, I’m staring at the slow-moving blades of a ceiling fan so out of date it’s probably about to come back in style. Too bad it looks like it might fall out of the ceiling first.
I blink a few times, taking stock. Of my surroundings. Of myself.
I don’t immediately know where I am.
I feel...not great. Nauseated, a headache forming at the top of my skull, and hot.
Hot.This sensation brings the afternoon’s events back in a jumbled mess of memories.
Handcuffs in the back of a cop car.
The oystershell driveway crunching under my flip-flops.
A gorgeous white sailboat at the end of a splintery dock.
Jacob’s text and the drive to Kilmarnock and—
Wyatt.
The man responsible for me being in handcuffs. The one who called the cops on me, then let me sit in a hot car while he signed autographs before finally changing his mind and decidingnotto press charges for trespassing.
And now it appears that I’m inside his tiny murder cottage underneath his wobbly murder-cottage fan.
And if I’m inside, someone carried me. The cops, I assume, since Wyatt was on crutches. The idea of being touched like that by men I barely know, especially while I’m unconscious, makes my stomach riot.
It was just to bring you inside, I tell myself, but squirming, dark feelings have my heart racing. I draw in a slow breath.
“You’re awake,” a voice says.
Even without seeing his face, I know the voice belongs to Wyatt. I’m not sure why I recognize it at all, but it is lodged inside me like a piece of shrapnel. The timbre of it is deep and throaty with the slightest bit of roughness. The kind of voice I’d love to hear narrating audiobooks—if it weren’t actuallyWyattreading them.
He actually sounds relieved. Surprising.
I don’t turn my head. I need to collect myself a little more before facing the beast. “Sorry to say, your plan to kill me failed.”
“I wasn’t trying to kill you.” I can hear the frown in his voice.
“Right—you just wanted me arrested and left in the back of a hot car. The cops are gone?”
“Yes. How do you feel?”
“Somewhere between flame broiled and blackened,” I say.
