“God…” Ajax tried to make his body unclench. “I’m so hungry. Isn’t that dumb?”
“I’m hungry too.”
“What would you eat?” Ajax asked. “What I wouldn’t give for an In-N-Out burger right now. Fries and a shake. I swear I can hear my stomach growl… Sounds like a—”
“Wait—” Dmytro blinked. “Wait.Hush!”
He didn’t dare look to the sky.
Didn’tdarebecause if he was wrong—if this was his mind playing tricks on him—he would die of heart failure right there, and he’d be no use to anyone.
“Oh my God!” Ajax began waving his arms wildly as a helicopter flew toward them. “Ohmygod, we’re here! Dmytro, quick, grab some cans or something shiny.”
Dmytro’d thought he was insane, but they’d tried to keep a few cans close by. They did seem to reflect the small amount of sunlight that still reached them through the clouds.
A chopper hovered over them. Wash from its rotors made it impossible to hear whatever the mechanical bullhorn voice had to say. A rope dropped out, and down came a man in a harness wearing a rescue diver’s uniform.
After that, it was hard to say what Dmytro remembered and what he imagined.
Even though he argued they should take Ajax first, he was the first one they pulled to safety. Ajax arguedhehad a life vest and Dmytro was wounded. How did he still have energy to argue? Dmytro recognized shock when he saw it.
They really were fools in love.
Once they released him from the harness, he got a good look at the other passengers—the pilot, who hovered skillfully while the diver brought up Ajax, more medics, andBartosz, whose pale face and bandaged shoulder told Dmytro exactly how they’d been found.
“Your timing could have been better.” Dmytro sagged with relief.
Bartosz looked haggard. “Sorry I couldn’t come sooner. I was detained by an ER nurse with a passion for her job.”
Dmytro wasn’t about to cry. Not in front of strangers. But he gripped Bartosz’s good hand in both of his and held on tight. “Glad you made it, brother.”
Dmytro closed his eyes and waited anxiously while they pulled up Ajax, but once they got him on board, something strange began to happen. He felt—quite suddenly—ten times colder than he’d been during the time they’d spent in the water.
Every nerve ending in his skin woke up, sending agonizing pain to his brain. His body shivered so violently Bartosz had to pile blankets on him. The medic got a line going in his arm, andthings blurred even more after that. The other medic tended to Ajax.
He wanted to ask questions, to speak to Ajax, but he no longer had the strength.
The helicopter gave a sickening tilt and whirled away from the site of their brush with death.
Dmytro didn’t know where they were going. He only knew that when Bartosz showed him some pictures he’d taken from the helicopter with his phone, they showed large, dark shapes moving beneath them in the water.
Ajax blacked out first.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ajax
Ajax woke in a hospital bed.Mom sat on one side of the cot and Dad sat on the other. His “uncle” Zhenya hovered by the doorway. He said he was splitting his time between Ajax’s room and the ER.
“Your quick thinking saved Dmytro’s life,” said Zhenya. “I can’t decide whether to hire you or refund your parents’ money.”
“Couldn’t you do both?” Violet Fairchild asked coolly.
Zhenya flushed. “Of course, Violet.”
“I’m kidding.” Violet’s sense of humor didn’t track for most people. She was too serious—too dangerous—for anyone to laugh at her jokes. Maybe that’s what Ajax saw in Dmytro. Love and danger in equal measure. She held her hand out to him. “Once again, you saved my baby. I can’t thank you enough.”
Zhenya came forward to hug her. Jackson Fairchild looked on benignly. He turned every so often to read the numbers on the many machines silently scanning Ajax’s vitals.
