It was the last rational thought he had before he kicked off his shoes, tore off his coat, and dived into the sea.

The cold water swallowed him whole, seeping straight through his trousers and shirt to chill him to the bone. It surged all around him, a living, breathing thing with a power and a will of its own.

He’d always been a strong swimmer. A burst of adrenaline made him even more so. He struck out for where he’d seen her. Where he’d thought he had seen her. Far past the women’s bathing machines, and out to where the sea began to churn and pull, a dangerous, primitive force that could easily kill a man.

Or a woman.

But Laura wasn’t there. The silhouette Alex had seen on the water was gone.

Which meant that he’d been mistaken. Or…

That her lungs had filled with water. That she’d sunk beneath the waves and drowned.

He dived deep, the water closing over his head. A flash of memory—Neville’s body sinking into icy darkness—nearly caused him to recoil. But he pressed on, down, down into the murky depths.

It was silent as death under the water, the only sound the rapid pounding of his heart. He swam until his pulse roared in his ears. Until his chest burned for want of air. He needed to breathe. But if he needed air, then so did she. And she must be here somewhere. She must be here.

He felt about with his hands, moving blindly in the water. This is what it had been like to go into the sea after Neville. This feeling of burgeoning panic. Of lungs struggling for breath, and a sob building in his throat, as again and again he dived into watery darkness.

Laura had called him a coward. A spectator standing alongside the road of life. Never risking anything. Never feeling anything.

But he felt something now. It gave him a strength he didn’t have. He prayed it was enough.

He dived deep one last time.

As he reached out, a drooping swathe of wool connected with his hand. And miraculously…there she was. Laura. Suspended in the depths of the water.

For a fraction of a second, he thought he must be hallucinating.

And then he gathered her in his arms and kicked with all of his might toward the sunlight.

They broke the surface together, Alex gasping for air. But unlike the day he’d pulled her from Talbot’s Pond, there was no indignant sputtering from Laura. No calling him a lummox and telling him he was trespassing.

She was lifeless, her face as white as bleached bone.

Cold fear surged through his veins. He made for the shore, swimming halfway on his back, pulling her along with him.