And yet, if a boat could be landed, a person could climb up the back of that rock slide to the top of the cliff.
The engine caught and missed several strokes, sending a shudder through the hull.
Tyrell cursed furiously and said, “I knew it, I knew it!”
The boat kept moving toward the gap. The engine died. The boat lost way.
It drifted and the opening fell slowly away.
Only twenty feet. So close.
Then thirty feet.
Forty.
Caine turned cold eyes on his little crew. He stretched out his hand and Penny rose from her place in the boat. He flung her toward shore. She flew, tumbling and yelling through the air and landed with a splash just feet from the nearest of the tumbled boulders.
No time to see whether she made it. Caine reached and threw Bug, who disappeared halfway through his flight but created a splash so close to the rocks Diana wondered if he had smashed his head.
The boat kept drifting.
What was Caine’s range for throwing a fifty-or seventy-five-or one-hundred-pound person with any accuracy? Diana wondered. That most be close to his limit.
Diana’s eyes met Caine’s.
“Protect your head,” he warned.
Diana locked her fingers together behind her neck and squeezed her arms in tight, covering her temples.
Diana felt a giant, invisible hand squeeze her tight and then she was hurtling through the air.
She didn’t cry out. Not even as the rocks rushed toward her. She would hit them head on, no way would she survive. But then gravity had its way and her straight line became a down-turned arc.
The rocks, the foamy water, all in the same blink of an eye, and the plunge. Deep and cold, the water filled her mouth with salt.
There was a hard sharp pain as her shoulder hit rock. She kicked her legs and her knees scraped against an almost-vertical wet slurry of gravel.
Her clothing weighed her down, wrapped tight around her, seized her arms and legs. Diana struggled, surprised by how hard she struggled, how much she wanted to reach the bright, sunlit surface, which was a hundred million miles away.
She came up, was caught by the soft swell, and tossed like a doll against a lichen-slicked boulder. She scrabbled with both hands as she choked. Fingernails on rock. Feet plowing crumbling pebbles beneath her.
Suddenly she was up and out of the water from the waist up. On a little shelf of rock, gasping for air.
She waited there for a moment, catching her breath. Then, she pushed on, oblivious to scrapes and rips, to a drier spot. She stopped there, all energy spent.
Caine had already reached shore. He slumped, exhausted, wet, but at the same time, triumphant.
Diana heard voices crying his name.
She blinked water and tried to focus on the boat. It was already so far away. Tyrell and Paint, standing up in it and yelling, “Get me! Get me!”
“Caine, you can’t leave us out here!”
“Can you reach them?” Diana asked in a hoarse croak.
Caine shook his head. “Too far. Anyway…”
Diana knew the “anyway.” Tyrell and Paint had no powers. They would do nothing useful for Caine. They were just two more mouths to feed, two more whiny voices to heed.
“We better start climbing,” Caine said. “I can help at the rough spots. We’ll make it.”
“And there will be food and everything up there?” Penny asked, gazing wistfully up the cliff.
“We had better hope there is,” Diana said. “We have nowhere else to go. And no way to get there.”
THIRTY-TWO
8 HOURS, 11 MINUTES
ASTRID HAD GONE to look at the burn zone. Doing the right thing.
Kids had yelled at her. Demanded to know why she had let it happen. Demanded to know where Sam was. Deluged her with complaints and worries and crazy theories until she had retreated.
She’d hidden out after that. She’d refused to answer the door when kids knocked. She had not gone to her office. It would be the same there.
But through the day it had eaten at her. This feeling of uselessness. A feeling of uselessness made so much worse by the growing realization that she needed Sam. Not because they were up against some threat. The threat was mostly past now.
She needed Sam because no one had any respect for her. There was only one person right now who could get a crowd of anxious kids to settle down and do what needed to be done.
She had wanted to believe that she could do that. But she had tried. And they hadn’t listened.
But Sam was still nowhere to be seen. So despite everything it was still on her shoulders. The thought of it made her sick. It made her want to scream.
“We have to go out, Petey. Walkie, walkie. Let’s go,” Astrid said.
Little Pete did not respond or react.
“Petey. Walkie, walkie. Come with me.”
Little Pete looked at her like she might be there and might not. Then he went back to his game.
“Petey. Listen to me!”
Nothing.
Astrid took two steps, grabbed Little Pete by the shoulders, and shook him.
The game player went flying across the carpet.
Little Pete looked up. Now he was sure she was there. Now he was paying attention.
“Oh, my God, Petey, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” Astrid cried and reached to draw him close. She had never, ever shaken him before. It had happened so suddenly, like some animal in her brain had seized control of her and suddenly she was moving and suddenly she’d grabbed him.
“Ahhh ahhhh ahhhh ahhhh!” Little Pete began shrieking.
“No, no, no, Petey, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to do it.”