She’d have time to tell her that, and so much more. Of course she would. Please, just give her the time. She tried Alexis. What’s happening? Helicopter down?

She didn’t expect an answer from her sister, either, but she still hoped. Still willed the words to form. All good. But none came. The silence filled her head with a roar of panic. She couldn’t just wait, pretending her world wasn’t shattering.

Jettisoning her shovel and half-filled sandbag, she trotted over to Emily. “I have to go back to the center. Something’s going on out there, there’s been an accident of some kind. I need to see the news.”

“Go. You’ve been out here all night anyhow.”

“We need to pull everyone in. Soon.”

“I know. I’ll talk to the FEMA guys. I’ll take care of it. Go.”

Gem pulled her phone out and checked again for a text as she ran.

Nothing.

Chapter Twenty-six

The frigid shock took Austin’s breath away. One instant she was underwater, the next she tumbled headfirst through empty air, tossed from the crest of one angry wave into the adjacent trough before catapulting up and over another wall of water again. Clutching the extra PFD, she spat out salty water and blinked furiously each time she surfaced, searching in the endless black for the tiny figures she’d seen drop into the sea. The only sound was the crash of wind and waves. If the launch was nearby, she couldn’t hear it. If anyone shouted for help, their words were lost in the roar of Norma’s fury.

She kicked and flailed, beating back against the pummeling waves, her only goal to keep her head up long enough to spot the survivors and to keep from drowning in the process. Finally she caught sight of a thin beam of light lancing down from the sky. Not thinking, driven by instinct alone, she struggled toward it, tossed and turned and upended every few feet. She’d never realized the ocean packed the punch of a battering ram, and understood how the shore surrendered in the face of such an onslaught, receding inland, releasing its tenuous grip on the divide between sea and earth. She wasn’t giving up. And she damn well wasn’t going to let Norma win. She fought her way toward the arrow of light.

A wave carried her up like a giant’s insignificant plaything and tossed her down again. When she kicked to the surface, light blinded her for an instant, and there, an arm’s breadth away, two pale white ovals bobbed and sank beneath the surface.

Faces.

She kicked again, one arm through the PFD, the other reaching, and touched flesh. Cold, immobile, fragile, and fleeting.

“Help,” a reedy male voice called.

Closer now, Austin saw he was dragging another form, a listless body with arms outspread.

“I’ll get him,” Austin yelled, doubting her words carried even the short distance between them. She kicked closer, looped an arm around the inert form, and shoved the PFD at the flailing man beside her. “Hold on to this. No matter what, don’t let go!”

“I won’t,” he croaked.

Austin squinted up into the sky and saw nothing. Her lifeless burden dragged her down and she kicked with legs rapidly turning to stone to stay above the surface.

“Stay in the light,” she yelled to the man.

The body in her arms jerked alive with a strangled scream. Arms and legs flailed. A towering wave crashed down on them, and she went under again, her grip on the survivor slipping. With numb fingers, she clutched a fistful of fabric and battled for the surface again. Her lungs ached, her limbs now too sluggish to move, her blood so cold her mind was blank.

The light dimmed and time slowed.

❖

Gem sprinted the half mile to the center, pushed through the doors, and raced down the hall. A half dozen people ringed the small television set.

“What’s happening?” She pushed forward. “Sorry, sorry. What are they saying?”

“Local news is reporting a helicopter down in the area of the burn,” a voice she recognized answered.

Gem glanced to her left. Claudia Spencer, her face set with worry, nodded to her. “Do we know who?”

“That’s it right now. No details.”

“Have you heard from Austin?”

Claudia shook her head. “No, not for a few hours.”

“Was she in the air?”

“I don’t know. The captain was relaying my updates to her. Last I heard she was heading out in the launch boat.”

Gem focused on the television screen, grasping at the fragments of information. The launch, not the helicopter. Not Austin. A grainy image on the TV came into sharp focus. Two ships, the flaming sea, and a ring of smaller vessels.

“The NBC News helicopter is no longer visible,” a male reporter announced, a tremor of excitement in his voice, “but we were able to capture this dramatic footage just before the craft disappeared.”

The image cut to another grainy clip of tiny figures, antlike, falling from the dot of the helicopter into the vast sea. At the bottom of the frame, a launch arrowed toward the rapidly disappearing helicopter.

“We don’t know the occupants of the launch,” the reporter continued, “that arrived on scene just before search and rescue. We believe at least one of the occupants attempted to reach the survivors. We have lost sight of all of them.”

The image on the TV screen tilted and jittered.

“Conditions here have deteriorated as Norma bears down on us. GOP has apparently suspended operations to contain the oil spill at this time.”

“As if that matters now,” Claudia muttered.

“The launch…it’s GOP’s, isn’t it,” Gem said, a leaden sense of foreboding gripping her.

“Has to be,” Claudia said. “No one else is out there.”

“You don’t think—”

Claudia cut her a sympathetic look. “There are hundreds of crewmembers out there, a lot of them in launches supervising the burn. There’s no way to know.”

For the first time, Gem registered the drumming of rain on the roof. “They have to hurry.”

“In two hours,” Claudia said, “this whole area will be experiencing hundred-plus mile an hour winds and storm-surge surf. Did you pull your people out?”

“Under way,” Gem said, eyes riveted to the screen. The news feed switched back to the local station desk, where a cheery young man assured everyone News 6 would stay on the scene for up-to-the-minute updates. “What are you doing here?”

“The Gulls Inn wireless leaves something to be desired. I’ve been monitoring the storm course from here.” Claudia handed her a key. “You ought to take this.”

Gem glanced at her. “Sorry?”

Claudia smiled. “Austin’s room key. I think she’d much rather bunk with you when she gets in.”

“I…” Gem swallowed around the panic. “Yes, thanks. If you hear from her first…”

“I won’t, but if anyone else has word, I’ll let you know.” Claudia reached into the briefcase by her side and handed Gem a sheet of paper. “This is yours too. Sorry, I picked it up by mistake.”

Images of her, far more beautiful than in life, drawn in Austin’s bold hand. Sketches filled with Austin’s passion and desire for her, and so much more she’d been trying to pretend she didn’t want, didn’t need. Gem’s eyes filled, and she carefully folded the paper and tucked it inside her jacket to keep it safe. “I am such a fool.”

“Doesn’t look that way to me,” Claudia murmured.

The on-scene reporter broke in on the studio news anchor, and the camera cut away to a shaky, out-of-focus live view of the ocean. “A Coast Guard search-and-rescue helicopter has just arrived. Still no sight of survivors.”

“That’s my sister,” Gem said, knowing it in her bones. “If there’s anyone out there alive, she’ll get them.”

“I can believe it.” Claudia gave Gem’s hand a squeeze. “You should too.”

Chapter Twenty-seven

Rain pounded the roof, the clatter on tin the only sound in the room. No one spoke. Even the reporter’s tones were eerily hushed. Gaze fixed on the small screen, Gem barely breathed. They were out there, they had to be. If they weren’t, she’d have heard from them by now. Besides, neither of them would want to be anywhere else. The big Coast Guard search-and-rescue helicopter hovered, bouncing and buffeted, above the black ocean. Tiny figures dropped on nearly invisible cables toward the roiling water and disappeared in the waves.

One of those fragile figures was her sister, exposed and vulnerable and all too human despite the superhuman actions. She wanted that to be Alex, if it was Austin in the water—no matter who was in the water. But she didn’t want it to be Alex, either. She’d rather Alex spend her time onshore behind a desk, but that wasn’t her sister. That wasn’t Austin, either. She was an artist, but she would never be totally happy tethered to a desk. She was an adventurer at heart, and risk was part of it.

“Where are the ones in the water?” someone asked, nerves making his voice high and thin.

“They’ll get them, they’ll get them,” Gem muttered.

“Look,” Claudia said, pointing as everyone leaned forward, closing the circle around the TV, unconsciously bonding. “There’s one. They have one!”

The coastguardsman’s red jacket and PFD were easy to follow as he emerged from the water towing another person beside him. They rose, swinging in the air toward the belly of the helicopter, to where a long narrow toboggan-like basket hung from one of the skids. The coastguardsman guided the victim into it. The camera panned back down to the water, and another figure emerged with a second survivor in tow.

“How many? How many are there?” Gem said.

“I think there were three in the helicopter,” someone said.

Two safe then, and two more. The rescue officers dropped down again.

“They’re so small,” Gem said. How could they find anyone in all that vast ocean. Helplessly, heart pounding painfully, she waited for word from the two most important people in her life while Norma drove toward land.