as he reached the woman—Kim, Lily had said—she went under. Ignoring his own growing exhaustion, he grabbed her arm and pulled her up, noting when she surfaced that her skin was the color of snow. Her eyes fluttered. Good sign. She wasn’t unconscious yet.
“Kim, I’m here to take you in,” Seth told her in a firm, calm voice. “Do exactly what I say, okay?”
She nodded sluggishly.
He wrapped an arm around her narrow shoulders. “We’re going to swim parallel to the shore to escape the rip, and then swim in, all right?”
Another nod, more feeble this time. She was clearly worn out. He’d arrived in the nick of time.
Seth moved his other hand beneath her arm, grasping her body in a more efficient hold. He began to swim, pulling her with him as best he could. To her credit, she made an attempt to swim with him, but she obviously didn’t have any gas left, and she wasn’t much help.
Neither was the riptide; he could feel the force of it swirling beneath them like a living being, pulling with a grip of steel that surprised even him. He’d always respected the power of the ocean, but this…this was unlike anything he’d ever imagined.
He sent up a prayer for the first time in ages.
God, let me be strong enough to do this.
Focusing on moving forward with each stroke, Seth tried not to notice how his hands and feet were growing numb. He did his best not to fight the current—that was a battle he would not win. He had to outsmart the deadly undertow.
Drawing on reserves of strength he didn’t know he possessed, his movements aligned with the shore, he waited for the current to loosen its grip. His strength ebbed out of him with every moment that passed.
Seth kept swimming, hoping God would listen to a man who had a distant relationship with Him. A few long moments later, the pulling current eased a bit, but he swam about fifteen feet farther to be sure they were out of the rip—yes! Finally.
His breath burning in his lungs, his legs and arms aching with effort, he turned at a ninety degree angle and swam for shore. Which, at the moment, looked as if it were about a hundred miles away.
Was he close enough to make it?
Just as his strength was almost spent and he could barely lift his arms or kick his legs, he tentatively put his foot down to feel for the sandy bottom.
And felt sand.
Wow. For once, his prayer had been heard. And answered.
Groaning with effort, Seth put both feet down. “Hang on to my back,” he managed to shout to Kim through tight lips. “I’m gonna walk us in.”
She obeyed and wrapped her ice-cold arms around his neck and hung on, piggyback style. With the last of his waning strength, he hauled her to shore.
Just as he was making headway, he stubbed his toe on a rock hidden in the surf. Pain streaked up his foot. He paused, looking for more rocks, but he couldn’t see beneath the churning water. So he felt around with his other foot, hoping for safe sand.
But instead his foot encountered another rock. And another. He was surrounded. He looked to the shore and could see people congregated there, a frantic-looking Lily among them. If he could just make it a little farther…
Seth inched along, trying to avoid the rocks, his legs now completely numb. The rocks spread out a bit and gave way to more sand, and he thought he was home free, especially when he saw someone—he wasn’t sure who—splash into the water, running toward them.
Thinking they’d cleared the rocks, he forced himself to move forward without feeling the terrain first with his feet. He took a step, staggered and struggled to catch himself.
All at once, out of nowhere, a bed of rocks rose in front of him as the tide swelled out. He couldn’t avoid the first black and green mass and he ran his shins right into the thing. Feeling as if his legs didn’t belong to him, he toppled over into the thigh-deep water like a fallen tree, Kim going with him.
As he hit the water, and what was hidden below, pain exploded in his head. And then a glacial blackness engulfed him and he knew no more.
Kim Hampton blinked her burning eyes, the taste of seawater in her mouth, her skin as cold as ice. She was surprised to see blue sky above her.
Was she in heaven?
If she was, the place looked an awful lot like earth….
An older man with a round face, curly brown hair and kind blue eyes came into her line of sight as he hovered above her. “Miss,” he said. “I’m a paramedic. We’re going to give you some oxygen, so just lie back and try to relax, all right?” He slowly covered her mouth and nose with the plastic apparatus he held.
Definitely not heaven.
She breathed deep and the oxygen flooded her tired lungs. Instantly, her brain cleared and reality kicked in. She felt the hard, cool sand beneath her, smelled the ocean.
Joy spread through her.
Thank You, Lord, for not making Dylan motherless! Her precious son had already essentially lost his dad when her ex had walked out on them a year ago; at age seven, losing her would be more, she was sure, than Dylan could ever hope to deal with.
The enormity of what had almost happened to her, of what she’d almost lost, began to sink in and she started to shake.
Someone took her hand and squeezed it. Kim shifted her gaze and saw her new friend Lily seated on the sand on her other side, a fleece blanket covering her shoulders, her eyes red rimmed from crying.
“Oh, my goodness,” Lily said. “I’m so glad you’re all right.”
Kim couldn’t speak with her mouth and nose covered, so she just nodded. She was very tired. And so cold her veins felt frozen.
As if reading her thoughts, someone covered her with a soft, warm blanket. Yes, that was better.
Unbidden, memories of her harrowing time in the water flooded her mind. The brutal riptide. The cold ocean overtaking her. Her feeling of total helplessness. She’d been sure she was going to drown.
But God had heard her call for help. A man had arrived just as her body had almost been overcome with exhaustion. And he’d saved her.
Gratitude poured through her—for the man, and for the Lord.
Buoyant with relief, she removed the oxygen mask. “Where’s the guy who saved me?” she asked Lily, her voice raw and trembling. “I need to see him, thank him.”
Lily pressed her lips together and shook her head slightly.
Dread filled Kim. “What?” she pressed. “What happened to him?” Was he dead because of her impetuousness? She had to know what had happened, even though she’d shrivel up and die if she were responsible for another person’s death.
“Seth managed the rip perfectly,” Lily said.
“But?”
“But…he was completely played out when he got close to shore. He…um, fell and hit his head on a rock.”
A chill from deep within spread through Kim’s whole body, adding another layer of cold to her soul. “Is he all right?”
“He was unconscious very briefly, and the paramedics are working on him.”
Caustic regret knifed Kim in the chest. She shouldn’t have been out in those waves, shouldn’t have put another person in danger. Lily had told her to be careful.
Granted, Kim was from Los Angeles, and she wasn’t used to the dangerous currents that swirled around the waters of the Washington coast. Even so, she should have been smarter. More cautious.
Kim put the mask back over her nose and sucked in a huge swig of oxygen to fortify herself, then pulled the mask off. She had to see the