Chapter 15

Thrashing against him she screamed into the icy water. She gripped at his clothes, flailed against his huge hands. He held her down, and she felt the all consuming suffocation of water filling her lungs.

She grabbed at his belt, at his arm and managed to get her head above water for one precious gulp of air. She fought as he pushed her further into the lake. She scratched at his legs as he dragged her deeper and pulled herself up, choking her way to the surface. She grabbed at his face, scraping her nails down his skin, anything to get him to let up.

She felt the black dots before she saw them. They curled at the edges of her vision as the cold started to feel warm, as the water started to feel comforting, as her air started to slip away in tiny bubbles around her face.

And all she could think about was Jon. He’d done everything for her and she repaid him with this. She felt her arms float out, felt the ease of the blanket of darkness. It was soothing. It wouldn’t be a bad way to die.

Her knuckle bumped along something hard. Curious, her fingers slid along the length of it and felt the curve of a blade. Her mind felt thick with the inky blackness of her watery grave, but her fingers curled around it.

Her heart gave a final whump of adrenaline and she screamed into the water pushing it into him.

He let go.

Her brain shrieked for its freedom as she gripped the hilt of the blade and pulled it from his shredded pocket, feeling the sick scrape of bone as she yanked it out of him. She gasped as she broke through the water and brought the blade up high and watched his dark eyes stare blankly at her as she sunk the blade deep into his neck.

She held it there, her knuckles severe white in their grip. His fingers went slack as he started to float, his black eyes empty as his face turned into the water. She heaved out a lungful of lake and gasped for air. It seized her lungs, but she couldn’t drag her eyes away from the thin line of red that seeped from the hole in him. A hole she’d put into him.

The knife looked so small now. The black hilt was stark against the pale blue skin along his jugular then nothing at all. Just the shear glass of the lake swallowing him. She tripped as her feet hit bottom and she felt the pebbles and sand shift and pull at her. He bumped around her and she watched the red trail as he floated to the center of the lake.

She crawled to the beach, unwilling to look back. She shook as she dropped to her hands and knees. Red streaks dripped from her elbows to her wrists and down to her fingers. She dug her fingertips into the sand, gripped the granules as she scrubbed. All she could see was his blood. His blood on her hands.

She scrubbed until the sand was pink.

She scrubbed until he found her.

“Cam.”

She looked up, and the unrelenting horror faded. He was alive. He cradled his arm to his belly as he dropped to the sand. He pressed his hand over both of hers and dragged her in. “Cam,” he groaned as she wrapped her raw arms around him, gripping his torn and bloodied shirt with her equally bloodied fingers and just hung on.