waves.
With every crest he rode, he looked for the blond man with the sunburnt face. With each dip, his chest grew tighter. He couldn’t see him. Which at this point could only mean one thing. He hadn’t resurfaced.
Fuck.
“Have you seen a guy with blond hair out here?” Grub’s shout rose above the roar of adrenaline in Patrick’s ears and he snapped his head to his left, finding the young guard attempting to communicate with a frantic Japanese tourist in a bright yellow Speedo trying to climb onto Grub’s board. “Careful, mate. I’ve—”
“I can’t see him!” Hollywood shouted on Patrick’s right, pulling himself into a sitting position on his board as he studied the churned-up water around him. He shot Patrick a worried look and shook his head. “Where did he—”
He didn’t finish. One of the panicked swimmers knocked him from his board, wailing incoherently as they tried to scramble from the water, fear and shame turning their eyes into bulging discs.
Patrick bit back a curse. He didn’t have time for this. The drowning man didn’t have time. Ignoring the fracas—Grub and Hollywood would have to handle it on their own—he scanned the choppy waves, feeling the rip’s undercurrent pulling at his legs with menacing force. Backpacker’s Express was aptly named. It sucked you out to sea. Fast. If he didn’t find the blond man soon, he wouldn’t. Not until the guy’s body turned up on nearby Bronte Beach, bloated and gray and nibbled on by fish.
No way Patrick was going to let that happen.
Cutting through the waves, he searched the water, tuning out everything but his gut. Nothing existed. No sound. No smell. Just the cool water splashing against his board and body and the tight tug in the pit of his stomach directing his search. The inexplicable instinct he never questioned that helped him save those beyond saving time and again. The enigmatic, uncanny intuition that repeatedly led him to those sinking into the ocean’s cool embrace.
With that strange, tight tugging in his gut, he paddled his board south.
The water grew black beneath him. Deep. Cold.
He moved slowly, the thump thump thump of his heart a soundless tattoo in his chest, a silent beat keeping time with his progress, charting his search. The water sucked at his arms with each stroke he took, the rip reaching for them, hungry and demanding and greedy. He denied the powerful undertow, refusing to be taken in its hold as he stared into the ocean.
Searching. Searching.
His heart slowed, his breath slowed, his existence shrank until it was just him, his board, and the merciless sea around him. Knowing death waited on his shoulder, salivating. Knowing life depended on his instincts. A life waning. Fading.
Heart almost slowed to complete stillness, he searched for the drowning man.
There.
Plunging his right arm into the ocean, he grabbed a fistful of blond hair and pulled, a grunt bursting past his lips as the man’s considerable weight snapped at his shoulder muscles. “Gotcha.”
Counterbalancing himself against the violent jolt, he hauled the limp body further from the sea, changing his grip until he had the older, unconscious man lying face down across the front of his board. “Get ’em in,” he ordered Grub, nodding toward the still-panicking but at the same time gawking tourists bobbing in the swell to his left. “And give ’em a lecture.”
Shifting his position to accommodate the motionless man’s bulk, he began to propel his board back to the beach. His job was far from done and time pressed harder on him. He may have pulled the guy from a wet grave, but the old bugger wasn’t breathing. Until his lungs were cleared of water, the rescued swimmer belonged to death.
Screw that.
Patrick powered through the surf, ignoring the burn in his shoulders and lungs. A distant part of his mind heard Grub and Hollywood barking at the tourists in the water. An even more distant part noted Hollywood sounded right and royally pissed off, but his main focus was the beach. Bluey waited there, defibrillator and oxi-boot ready.
When it came to saving a life, Patrick refused to concede to death. No matter how long an individual had been underwater.
“Move it, move it, move it!” Bluey’s roar reached Patrick before he even made it to the sand. Swimmers, sunbathers, and gawkers alike fell out of the way, mouths agape, eyes wide as the other man barged through the crowd, orange-red hair gleaming in the ruthless sun, face furious, arms cutting a path through the melee. He met