good for him, he’ll ditch Brigid and be waiting at the dock for Ayers, smoothie in hand.
Is that what she wants?
She checks her phone despite herself. There are two texts from Mick, but Cash has started sending people into the water. She has to go.
Ayers snorkels with the Dressler boys and encourages two of the middle ones to follow her over to a rocky outcrop of Norman where the spotted eagle rays like to hang out. She can hear the boys oohing and aahing through their snorkels, and as always, this makes her happy. Some things are more important than her romantic trials and tribulations. Things like wonder.
Ayers raises her head and sees everyone heading back to the boat. She lets the boys swim ahead and she brings up the rear, scanning the water for the fluorescent orange tape on the tips of their snorkels.
When she climbs up to the deck, she says, “Everyone accounted for?”
“Yes,” Cash says.
Ayers signals James, who starts the engine, and Cash goes to pull the anchor, which makes his muscles pop in a way that is undeniably attractive. Ayers can’t believe Max isn’t right beside him, taking pictures for her Instagram account: #coldhardcash.
When the anchor is up and they’re moving, Ayers says, “Where’s the barnacle?”
“Wait,” Cash says. “What?”
Panic in the form of absolute stillness seizes Ayers. “Stop the boat!” she yells.
Max is not dead and Max is not lost. Ayers repeats this like a mantra, though for the first thirty seconds after Ayers realizes Max isn’t on the boat (how can she not be on the boat? And why did Cash say everyone was present? Did he not do a head count?), these are Ayers’s prevailing thoughts, that Max is dead or Max is missing and will turn up dead.
James cuts the engines and Ayers races up to the top deck with the binoculars, trying not to exude any sign of the sheer terror she is feeling. But the rest of the guests realize something is wrong. Ayers overhears Cash say, “We’re missing someone, the woman in the green bikini.” Then everyone starts looking. They spread out around the port side and starboard side and the bow. Ayers’s main concern is that Max is under the boat, that they unwittingly ran over her when they lifted anchor and started toward Jost Van Dyke.
Max is not dead and Max is not lost, Ayers tells herself.
Cash appears next to her. “I’m so sorry, I thought—”
“There’s no time for sorry!” Ayers says. She mentally breaks the water into a grid and starts scanning it square foot by square foot. In seven years, she has never lost a swimmer. She has had to do only five rescues—five, in seven years. Today will be her sixth rescue, she tells herself. Today, she will rescue Max.
Someone calls out, “Over there!”
Ayers follows the pointing arm of Mr. Dressler. Yes, she sees a piece of fluorescent tape about two hundred yards away. Before Ayers knows what’s happening, someone dives off the lower deck of the boat and starts swimming toward the snorkeler. It’s the oldest Dressler kid, DJ, Ayers realizes. She strips off her shorts, and, although it’s forbidden, she dives off the top deck, hits the water with so much force that her nose and ears flood with water, and swims after him. A second later, she feels the concussion of someone else plunging in nearby and she envisions everyone on the boat trying to be a hero.
She raises her head in order to get her bearings. Cash goes thrashing past her. He’s moving so fast he nearly catches DJ. Ayers sees DJ and then Cash reach the snorkeler and Ayers hears shouts. She swims closer, and only then does she realize that the snorkeler isn’t a she. The snorkeler isn’t Max. It’s some guy from another boat who has also gone rogue.
“Go back to your boat!” Ayers yells to the other snorkeler. She casts about helplessly. Where is Max?
She hears the air horn and swivels her head to see Captain James on the top deck windmilling his arm to beckon her back.
What? Ayers thinks. We can’t just leave her here. Or…has Max turned up? DJ and Cash are already swimming back to the boat and Ayers puts her head down and powers forward with everything she’s got left, thinking, Please let her be okay, please let her be alive. If she’s injured, they can get her to Schneider Hospital on St. Thomas in half an hour.
When Ayers is only a few