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THE HEAVY WATER bottle met the side of Conor’s head with a crack that sent his skull jerking to one side, and then, before he could do more than turn towards her, his face blank with shock, Zana hit him again, this time swinging the heavy bottle into his gut.
He tumbled backwards, and before I had fully processed what had happened, there was an almighty splash, water spraying up and over the jetty. Conor had fallen into the water.
Desperately, doggedly, I tried to force my limbs to work, tried to drag some air back into my lungs, tried to make myself turn and get to my knees and stagger towards the water. Because one thing I was sure of, if Conor made it out of the water, we were dead. We were all dead.
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t seem to do more than roll onto my side, holding my ribs and gasping against the tearing pain in my bruised throat.
Through blurred tears, I could see Zana standing on the edge of the jetty. She had her eyes closed and she looked like she was praying. Her lips were moving, but I couldn’t make out what she was saying.
And then she jumped.
God knows what it cost her. I had seen her trembling in fear enough times as we simply sat at the edge of the veranda. I remembered her words, that first day. I always think there might be something down there, waiting. In the darkness. Waiting to… grab me.
To force herself into that black, choppy water, with Conor thrashing and gasping… that took a kind of courage I knew I didn’t have. But Zana did it.
There was a splash, and I saw her swimming through the waves towards Conor. For a moment I honestly didn’t know what she was going to do. Was she trying to save him? To drag him back to the jetty? It was only when she reached him, when she stretched out her arms towards him, that I knew.
She put both hands on the top of his skull and pushed his head underwater.
She was trying to drown him.
But it was clear it wasn’t going to be that simple.
Conor, in the darkness, was fighting back. I couldn’t make out much, but I could hear Zana’s sobbing, panting breaths, see Conor’s limbs thrashing the surface. Once, he broke the waves and let out a great shout of fury, and Zana pushed him back down with a cry that was half anger and half a kind of desperate, tearing grief.
They were fighting, and it was increasingly clear they were fighting to the death.
I had dragged myself to kneeling now, and I was trying to figure out what to do. Inside the villa was Santana, lying in a pool of her own blood, possibly hanging between life and death, for all I knew.
But in front of me was Zana, fighting for her life with a man who would certainly kill her if he got the upper hand. A man she was trying to kill to save us. But I wasn’t sure if I could help her, physically. My breath was still rattling in my throat. My legs would barely let me crawl. I wasn’t sure if I could walk, let alone swim. But I had to try.
Slowly, painfully, I dragged myself to the edge of the jetty and then, knowing I was possibly doing something very stupid, I lowered myself into the water and began trying to swim to where Zana was still wrestling with Conor. He had stopped breaking the surface now. He was still fighting. I could see Zana struggling, her head going under the waves, as he pulled her down, and then resurfacing with a gasp. They seemed to be getting farther and farther away. Was Conor trying to swim away from Zana?
I wasn’t sure. But either way, he was losing strength. Whether it was the blow to the head or the insulin starting to take effect, I couldn’t tell. But Zana was winning.
There was just one problem, and I realized it when I looked back over my shoulder to the villa, now surprisingly far back.
They were being pulled out to sea. They were in the rip. And if I swam any farther, I would be too.
“Zana,” I yelled, but my voice was so hoarse that it came out as barely a croaky whisper, and she didn’t hear me. “Zana, let him go.”
She was being pulled out, away from the shore, and I would never catch up with her unless I swam into the current too.
I’m not a religious person; I never have been. But if I had been, I would have prayed in that moment.
Instead, I took a deep breath, and gave myself up to the rip.
At first it was strangely calming. The sea in the rip current was noticeably less choppy, the waves more subdued, and I could see why people swam for them, as Joel had said, mistaking them for calmer waters.
It was only when I glanced over my shoulder at the shore and saw how terrifyingly far it was that I began to panic. If we got pulled out beyond the reef, where the sharks were, where the waves battered onto the coral, pulverizing everything it carried into a bloody mess, all bets would be off. “Zana!” I called again, when I was closer, and this time my voice was stronger. Zana’s head turned, and I saw her surprise turn to shock as she registered two things—me, and the distance we’d come from the shore. “Zana, we’re in the rip. You have to swim sideways. Along the shoreline.”
I pointed with a shaking arm, and saw Zana nod. I was feeling increasingly exhausted, and now I began to wonder what I had done, whether there was any way out of this, for either of us.
Conor was no longer fighting, he was drifting, a dark shape in the waves, and for a moment I saw Zana close her eyes, gather him to her, and I thought for a second she was going to try to drag him back to the beach. But then she let go and began to strike out sideways, along the shore.
WE SWAM. WE swam and we swam, until my arms ached and my breath tore in my bruised throat. And finally, we were out of the riptide and drifting in the ocean, but terrifyingly, incomprehensibly far out, with waves that were far larger than I had ever swum in.
Zana trod water for a few minutes, watching me, then called out, “Are you okay?” Her face was white, and I saw the way she kept glancing down at the dark waters beneath us, but she was holding up. Better than I was, if I was being honest.
