Annie followed Maeve’s horrified gaze out past the struggling men, to where a wave was steadily and stealthily building in height and girth. The air whooshed out of her lungs. There was nothing she could do. There was nothing anyone could do but watch the horror slowly unfolding before them. The wave began to pick up speed, growing still higher as it slid toward the struggling men.

“Swim!” Annie screamed. “Swim faster!”

Gemma began to sob. Maeve’s face was frozen in angst.

John looked up as the wave towered over them, a great foaming mouth of water, and then its jaws snapped shut, swallowing them whole, and they were gone.

It didn’t seem real; it couldn’t be.

Annie felt trapped in a nightmare, a horrifying, gut-wrenching nightmare, but she was awake. She felt emptied, as though the waves had dragged her insides out to sea too.

Chapter 81

All three women were drenched as the water gushed furiously past where they stood, transfixed, their breaths held as they desperately clung to their hopes. The seconds ticked by, but neither John’s nor Alfred’s head broke the dark surface of the water. Maeve began waving and pointing, and Annie was vaguely aware of the orange helm of a lifeboat bouncing across the waves from the other direction. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away from the water; she swung her torch uselessly this way and that, hoping to catch sight of a hand or head. She reasoned that the wave could have sent them off course, it could even have propelled them forward toward the shore. The boat slowed as it reached the peninsula and powerful flashlights began sweeping the sea. Annie followed the streams of light on the water. But water was all they illuminated; miles and miles of water and no sign of John or Alfred.

Annie could hear someone crying quietly, and it took her a moment to realize it was her. She began to shiver then, the full force of the cold coming home to her. Her sodden clothes hung heavily; her feet, swimming in cold seawater inside her boots, didn’t feel like they belonged to her at all. Tears stung her windburned cheeks and her nose was running. She fumbled in her pocket and found a damp tissue, blowing her nose with fingers so stiff with cold they could barely obey her commands.

Across the way, Gemma was sobbing uncontrollably into Maeve’s shoulder; Maeve held her tightly and though she made soothing noises, her face was grim, staring out to sea. Annie shook herself mentally. She wouldn’t believe they had drowned. She wouldn’t. Until the lifeboat found a body, there was hope.