In an instant, Cardamone plunged his knife into Franklin’s side. Franklin staggered backward and sat down, fell over the gunwale and into the water. Surfaced, his face a mask of shock.
At the same moment, Cyril erupted from the water on the opposite side, pulling Cardamone’s legs out from under him—just as Jolie shot again.
She’d hit Cardamone, but not in the head as she’d expected. Cardamone grabbed at his chest—Kevlar—and he kicked backwards at the same time, catching Cyril in the jaw. Kicked again, connecting hard, Cyril slipping back, sinking into the water, clawing for the boat with the bad arm still wrapped in duct tape. Zoe tried to clamber back to the safety of the dock, but the skiff surged backwards as Cardamone hit reverse. The dock line grew taut, and the boat heeled around in an unexpected shallow turn, the engine revving to a loud mosquito whine.
Cyril climbed up again, hoisting himself over the gunwale, and Cardamone hit him hard across the face with the paddle. Cyril fell backward into the water, and Jolie saw with horror he was too near the boat’s propellers. She couldn’t see, couldn’t tell what was happening in the churning water. But she could hear his yell. Like the teeth of an electric saw, it tore through her and kept her bolted to the ground. Jolie had a clear shot now, but when she squeezed the trigger the magazine was empty.
Cardamone grabbed the dock line and started sawing through it with his knife, one hand on the wheel, pulling the boat in a circle that Jolie didn’t think was entirely planned. She rushed the boat just as it pulled away, the water churning up silt and bark and foam, the engine screaming now. “Zoe!” she yelled. “Jump.”
Zoe struggled in Cardamone’s grip, her face a mask of pain. Blood leaked from her wound. Using her good hand, she pulled herself to a standing position just as the boat pulled the line free and catapulted forward, as if by slingshot. Zoe fell across the gunwale, her broken arm flopping like a ragdoll’s. Jolie could see the protruding bone.
The boat shot out into the bay.
Jolie heard Franklin yelling, turned to look at him.
He was still holding his side, blood blotting through, his face pale. But he sat at the stern of the family’s old skiff, hand on the tiller, ready to pull away from the dock. Jolie got into the boat. “Head them off at an angle,” she shouted, and they took off.
Spray hit Jolie in the face as she tried to see through the rain and her wind-driven tears. They hit the Carolina skiff’s wake, a thumping, punishing washboard, but Franklin’s steering was steady despite his obvious pain.
Wounded himself, Cardamone was having trouble keeping the boat steady, running a zigzag course taking him back in the direction of the island—only fifty yards out.
Then he seemed to straighten out. It looked like he would get past them, but abruptly he veered back in their direction. Jolie saw why—Zoe was fighting him at the console, her good arm fighting for the wheel, and now the boat was right in their path.
Cardamone tried to turn again, but Franklin held steady until the last moment, when he turned slightly— clipping the Carolina skiff a glancing blow. Little more than a kiss, but Cardamone overcorrected, and the boat leaped in midair, coming down hard.
Everything happened in slow motion, as accidents do. Cardamone seemed to fly up like a jack-in-the-box, smashing against the console with a smack before cartwheeling into the water. Zoe was gone.
Franklin heeled the boat in a tight circle.
Jolie scanned the water, straining for any sign of Zoe.
“Anything?” Franklin’s voice carried the thin edge of panic.
Twenty yards away, Zoe resurfaced, clinging to the flotation cushion. “There she is!”
They needed to get as close to her as possible to see if they could pull her into the boat. Jolie needed to be ready to go in.
As their skiff made another tight circle, Jolie pulled off her shoes and stripped down to her underwear. “You okay, Frank?”
“I’m okay,” he said, although he spoke through gritted teeth. “But where’d she go?”
The cushion was there, but Zoe was gone.
Then she heard thrashing. It was Cardamone, holding on to a life preserver at ten o’clock. His face was a bloody mess.
As she watched, he dropped from view.
Pulled under?
She thought she’d seen—later she would come to believe it was just her imagination—something distinctly un-shark-like in the instant before Cardamone disappeared.
Jolie thought she saw an arm, a dull silver arm, wrapped around Cardamone’s neck.
Cardamone’s head bobbed up once more, his mouth wide open as he screamed. He was yanked under the whitecaps in a bloody froth. He did not resurface.
But Cyril was dead; she’d seen him go under the propellers.
Joe scanned the water again. “Frank, I think she’s over there.” She pointed in the direction they’d drifted from.
Then she spotted her—just a glimpse before the waves closed over her head, not twenty yards away.
Frank maneuvered the boat closer. Jolie stepped on the gunwale and launched herself off the boat.
As Jolie hit the water, panic seized her. She thought about the pond outside her house. In that moment, she was plunged into darkness—terrified. But a calm part of her mind instructed:
And yet she froze. For one terrifying moment, she could not move. She sank like a stone. Her mind told her to kick, to push herself up, but instead, she floundered.
And then Jolie heard the commotion nearby. She could barely see Zoe, but knew that the girl would die if she didn’t come to her rescue. Jolie was a certified lifeguard. She had gone through training at the academy. There was no one else between Zoe and death—just her.
This galvanized her. Jolie kicked hard with her legs and used her arms to push to the surface, broke through, and breathed.
She had no swim goggles to see underwater, and the rain was coming down hard. But she had to get to Zoe.
Zoe was farther away—thirty yards?—gasping as she tried to stay above the waves. Jolie’s training took over. She swam toward Zoe, amazed and heartened by the way her body cleaved the waves, her stroke as economical as a thresher.
Her fear of water gone.
When she reached Zoe, the girl grabbed hold of her neck and shoulders and pushed her downwards, her panic-driven strength amazing. She was a fear machine, desperate to stay above the water, to breathe, and would use any leverage she could to do it. Jolie managed to slip out of her grasp and propel herself downward, coming up to grab the girl from behind. This time she had her in the crook of her elbow, forearm pressed against Zoe’s throat. She scissor-kicked, pulling Zoe in the direction of the boat.
The boat was now only yards away. Careful to keep Zoe faceup out of the water, Jolie fought her way through the swells.
But Zoe still seemed determined to sink them both. Wounded as she was, useless as one of her arms was, she had the strength of a determined wrestler.
Gulping salty water, Jolie spoke in a stern, strong voice. “Hold on to the flotation cushion. We’re going to get you into the boat.” That seemed to shock Zoe out of her battle mode. Her good arm grabbed harder to the cushion.
Frank bent forward and hauled Zoe into the boat. Jolie clung to the gunwale until Frank could bring her up, too.
She was too tired to do it herself.
All her energy was gone. Her arms started to shake.
Jolie watched Frank cover Zoe with his own jacket, and she said a prayer of thanks.
62
Landry drifted. In the downpour, he was in no danger of being seen. Rain splashed into his face and eyes
