A hand grabbed his arm. “Sir, you cannot go with them. You’re already trespassing. I can’t let you go.”

Nick swiped the Coast Guard officer’s hand off his arm. “You can arrest me, but I’m going. I lost her . . .” Nick choked on a sob. “Let me find her. Now.”

The Coast Guard officer released him. “Okay, man. But I didn’t tell you to go.”

Nick pushed his way through the woods, calling Amy’s name, this time not reaching for a prayer but for the remembered feel of Amy in a sleeping bag next to him.

Chapter Twenty-eight

Chapter Twenty-eight

Something glacial and piercing ran through her forearm. Amy grabbed at it, cried out, tried to lift her hand against an unknown weight. Her eyes popped open and disorientation spread through her with the pain. The room was bright—too bright. She squinted to see the shapes and bulk of what appeared to be a metal room. Industrial mauve curtains hung in pleated folds. A metal pole stood next to her bed, dripping fluid into her arm through an IV with an amber tube. A pink plastic pitcher stood sweating puddles on a metal bedside table.

She groaned as she tried to lift her head, find a focus point. Where was she? It looked like a hospital. The oversized door at the end of the room swung open and Phil walked in, blowing into a Styrofoam cup. He didn’t look up at her. She groaned again, unable to find her voice inside the nebulous and scattered pain of a closed throat.

He looked up, smiled. “Welcome back.” But his eyes did not match his smile. His mouth was tight, tired looking.

“Where am I?” she tried to ask, but a grotesque croak came from her throat.

“Don’t try to talk yet.” Phil placed his cup on the bedside table, sat next to her and clasped her hand. “You’re in Darby Memorial. You’ve been asleep, or out of it at least, for a full day now. You had hypothermia, a broken rib and some pretty bad cuts. You’re gonna be okay.”

He sounded robotic. Her dulled senses could not absorb the information as it came. She stared at him; there was something else wrong, something else. She searched in her fogged mind, lifted her hand, set it back down. Hypothermia . She closed her eyes; her eyelids were like thick cardboard and she didn’t have the strength to keep them open.

Phil rubbed the top of her hand. “Yes, go back to sleep.”

She shook her head no, but kept her eyes closed and searched the abyss of fear hissing at her center. What was it? Cold, she was so cold. Scared. Further back, further—before the cold and fear.

A sleeping bag, dark blue. Dust and scattered light. Legs and arms and hands and mouths. A diamond cross strewn on sand under a full moon.