In Too Deep (Wildfire Lake) Read online

  In Too Deep

  Wildfire Lake

  Skye Jordan

  Copyright © 2020 by Skye Jordan

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in encouraging piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Epilogue

  Also by Skye Jordan

  About the Author

  Prologue

  This was one big fucking mistake.

  The last four days have easily been the longest of my life. And I see six more of the same flowing out in front of me like molasses.

  “Breathe deep.” Chloe’s serene voice breaks into my thoughts.

  Eyes closed, I obey, pulling in a long, slow, deep breath. I’ve taken in so much air in the last few days, I should be a balloon by now. The retreat brochure promised cleansing of the soul, cultivation of self-awareness, and expansion of the spirit. I’m four days in, and I still don’t know what the hell any of that means, but I’m beginning to realize what I need isn’t serenity, but rather an exorcism of my pleaser personality.

  If I ever do this again—highly doubtful—I’ll be looking for a retreat with seminars like “How to escape the expectations of your overachieving parents” and “Fuck what anyone else thinks of you” and “How to say ‘thanks, but no thanks’ to the misplaced demands of others.”

  And, hey, maybe I ought to just create that retreat myself. I can’t be the only person suffocating beneath the weight of my parents’ hopes and dreams. Right?

  “And release.” Chloe’s directive makes me realize I’m no longer following along. But this is supposed to be “an individual journey of the spirit,” and my spirit is ready to get the hell off this freaking island.

  The earlier breeze has developed into a definite wind. It’s warm and wet, heavy with tropical moisture and the scent of the sea. That, at least, does bring relaxation. But the lush palm fronds topping the hundred-foot trees batter together, transitioning from an irritated kerfuffle to a pissed-off rant. I wonder if I’m absorbing the palms’ negative energy and instantly drop down a rabbit hole of contemplation on the theory of humans and trees connecting spiritually.

  I shake off that bizarre thought and pull my focus back to the meditation. I’m already stuck here; may as well hunt peace, awareness, and enlightenment down like dogs and drag the little bastards into the light, kicking and screaming.

  “Breathe in.” Chloe’s voice is calm, but I seriously can’t focus with all the racket above my head.

  I crack one eyelid and survey the group without moving. Chloe, one of the retreat’s spiritual instructors, is the kind of woman other women love to hate—beautiful, strong, smart. I know everyone has their own issues, and no one’s life is as perfect as it seems from the outside looking in, but Chloe couldn’t appear any more gifted or together.

  She sits directly across from me, her blonde hair up in a messy bun like ninety percent of the other three dozen women on this retreat, her slim legs bent and tucked, resembling a pretzel.

  My mind takes a detour, to the pretzel vendor who sets up shop on the corner I pass every day on my walk to work in Los Angeles. A memory of the yeasty scent and salty taste floods my senses. I’d kill for a belly full of gluten right now.

  “Breathe out.”

  I side-eye the empty pillow on my right. Still no KT. I, along with seven other women in the circle, emulate Chloe’s posture, spine straight, shoulders down, chin up, hands resting at the bend of the knees, palms to the sky. The other twenty-eight women participating in this spiritual retreat broke up into small groups like this one and scattered throughout the resort. We are seaside on a bluff set back from the South Pacific.

  “Bring up an image of the person with whom you’ve been harboring resentment,” Chloe says.

  My parents come to mind instantly. And, yeah, that makes guilt flash, quick and hot. They bring up a lot of mixed emotions.

  “Accept any feelings coming up,” she says. “Just breathe into the feeling and let it go.”

  I really should give this meditation my all. It’s an attachment release visualization I’ve been looking forward to. I desperately want to slice through the web of expectations my parents started spinning around me the moment I was born, layers and layers of expectations for everything from achievement to manners. But I also want to distract myself from the work, because, no joke, it’s hard AF.

  My gaze is drawn by the sea. The waves have doubled in size in the last twenty minutes, and the wind slams the sea against the island’s cliff walls.

  Unease stirs in the pit of my stomach. The mantra I learned here, “your intuition is your guardian angel whispering in your ear,” pops to mind, but that idea makes me wonder if all my problems aren’t self-inflicted. My issues are a crazy complicated mess from years spent striving for acceptance from my parents. True unconditional love I’ve never received. The work I’ve done here has brought up a dozen thorny problems I know can’t be solved in this short retreat, and I’m beginning to think I’m going to need therapy after this. Or, I guess I should say, more therapy.

  The wind gusts, pulling my hair from my messy bun and throwing it across my face. It’s annoying as hell, and I have no idea how the other women manage to ignore it. I use both hands to pull the strands back and openly look around the circle. Everyone appears deep in meditation as Chloe guides the visualization of allowing your unhealthy attachments to dissolve.

  I can’t stop looking at the ocean, willing KT to appear. I saw her head toward the water earlier this morning carrying scuba gear. I don’t know the woman any more than I do anyone else on the retreat. She is quietly intense, and despite her athletic female figure and sweet, pixie-like looks, she strikes me as someone who would identify well with men and fit in as just another one of the guys. For a reason I can’t quite identify, she is the first person I would look to for direction in a disaster, which might be why her absence is bothering me.

  Another gust whips off the ocean, and the trunks of the palm trees lining the tide pools bow.

  “As you see this person sitting across from you,” Chloe says, apparently utterly unconcerned with the uptick in the storm, “collect all your frustration, anger, and hurt into a glowing orange ball.” A long pause allows the image to form in the mind. “Now offer that sizzling globe up to your inner guide.”

  I really don’t want to interrupt, but I can’t remain silent. I clear my throat as softly as possible. “Excuse me, Chloe.”

  She stops talking mid-sentence, and one of her long-lashed, bright blue eyes pops open, tossing a dagger my way.

  “This is more than a tropical storm, and it feels much
closer to us than the experts predicted.” When Chloe remains intensely still and silent, the other women open their eyes and glance between me and Chloe. “My, um, intuition is telling me I’m not safe out here in the elements.”

  I end the sentence with an uptick in my voice, indicating more of a question then a statement. Not my usual style, but then this isn’t my normal environment either. I’m so far out of my kitten-heeled, pencil-skirted, 90210ed comfort zone, I could be sitting on another planet.

  A tense pause expands inside the group. The realization that I can intuit that shift in energy makes me think I might actually be learning something here after all.

  An angry gust of wind picks up a wicker chair from the deck of the main resort and tosses it over the railing. A collective gasp zips through the group.

  “Yep, you’re right.” In an abrupt turnabout, Chloe stands and grabs her meditation pillow. “Let’s head inside.”

  I’ll laugh about Chloe’s personality shift from Mandela to Bezos at some point today, but now, I stand, picking up both my pillow and the missing woman’s. Holding one against my chest, the other dangling from my hand, I scan the surging water.

  “Laiyla.”

  I glance over my shoulder at Chloe, who’s giving me a what-are-you-waiting-for look.

  “Come on.”

  “Do you know where the other woman is? KT?” I ask. “Is she sick or something?”

  Another gust tips me off-balance and rips the elastic band from my bun. My hair whips and spirals around my head like something out of The Exorcist. I hold both pillows to my chest and pull my hair from my face just as the sky opens up with a torrent of warm rain.

  “She probably decided to join another group.” Chloe yells to be heard over the wind. I’m struck by how quickly the morning’s light breeze and blue skies have turned devilish, smothering the sun with thick charcoal clouds, and turning raindrops into blades.

  I stare out at the ocean, yelling, “I saw her head down to the tidepools with scuba gear half an hour before our session started.”

  This island, Nieu, is smack in the middle of the South Pacific, west of New Zealand. My pre-travel research exposed June as the beginning of cyclone season in the tropics, but this storm didn’t show up on experts’ radar until the retreat was underway a full day. Sketchy cell and internet service kept us from closely monitoring the path of the storm, but just this morning at our hippie-dippie, vegan, organic, wholly unsatisfying breakfast of chickpea flour mini frittatas—chickpea flour? Seriously?—the resort manager had assured everyone that this was a tropical storm that would not develop into a level one cyclone.

  But, yeah—cyclone. It’s one of those words you can’t unhear.

  Chloe appears at my side, one hand holding her pillow, the other grasping her now-loose, long, buttery blonde strands into a ponytail. For a moment, we take in the sight of the surf pounding the hell out of the tidepool shelf.

  Chloe releases her hair and takes my hand. “Come on. We need to get inside.”

  My stomach squeezes. I can’t bear the thought of the other woman somewhere under the ocean. I don’t know what happens underwater in a storm like this, but even if it’s relatively sedate down there, I can’t imagine how she will get through the violent surf to land.

  “Have you ever been diving?” I ask Chloe. “How long will her air tank last? Long enough to ride out whatever this is?”

  “I’ve been, but I can’t remember how long a tank of air lasts.”

  A piercing alarm wails, making me jump and wedging my heart into my throat.

  “This is a severe storm warning.” The tinny, mechanical voice comes between siren calls. “Return to the resort and shelter in place.”

  Another round of siren wails drives into my ears, and I relent to Chloe’s insistence, feeling helpless.

  Something catches the corner of my eye, and I’m three steps up the steep stairway toward the resort before I glance back. Despite my iron grip on the handrail at my side, the wind catches me like a kite, and I squeeze my eyes closed against the gust.

  When I open my eyes again, I watch the sea lift a wall of water and dump it on the tide pools with as much care as someone bailing out a sinking boat. When the wave retreats, something dark is left behind. My stomach flips. It’s KT, still in her scuba gear, missing her mask.

  “Chloe,” I yell to the woman a dozen steps ahead. “She’s here.”

  I start back down the stairs. On the rock shelf, KT rips her fins from her feet, pushes up on her knees, and stays in a low crouch as she makes her way along the treacherous tide pools. Another giant wave crests behind her, and terror rises in my chest.

  “Look out!” My scream is swallowed by the wind, and I can’t do anything but watch the impending horror of a furious Mother Nature against all of man and womankind on this little island.

  My whole body tenses, my fingers bloodless around the railing. Just before the wave hits, KT tucks her head, covers it with both arms, and rolls into a ball. A scream vibrates in my throat, but I can’t hear anything above the wind and surf.

  The wave swallows the woman and tosses her like a beach ball in a whiplash of seawater. She hits the rock shelf again, bouncing violently, tumbling a little closer to the resort. I assess her location in relation to mine. I want to haul her to safe ground the way I did with Brianna Asher six years before, after the girl took a hard fall waterskiing on Wildfire Lake. God, the mind could be a wicked thing, drawing the strangest parallels where none exist. This is an entirely different situation, one well outside my abilities.

  I can’t imagine how KT could still be alive after this beating, but as soon as the wave recedes, the woman scrambles a little closer to the resort like a hermit crab scaling rock, veering toward the stairway. When I realize she has a chance to get within reach, I drop the pillows I didn’t realize I was still holding and make my way down the staircase, gripping onto the rail with both hands.

  A millisecond before the next wave slams KT and drags her into the melee again, the woman lunges. I see her in slow motion, her wet suit-encased body sailing parallel to the tide pools, arms outstretched the way a baseball player dives for home plate. The sea carries her toward me, and without thinking, I reach for her, but she’s nowhere near my grasp. The wave crashes, thundering in my head and rattling my teeth. But this time, when I dare look again, the wave recedes, leaving KT clinging to the last metal stairway post.

  I race down the steps separating us and grab hold of the pole with one hand and fist the shoulder of KT’s wet suit in the other. The woman is bloodied and battered and weak, but she looks up at me and screams, “Lock your arm around the post and brace.” When I do, she twines her arms through mine, then around the pole. “Hold on through the next wave, then run like hell.”

  The last word is barely out of her mouth when the water hits. Even with the pole locked in the crook of my arm, I’m unprepared for the sheer, raw force of the ocean. It hits me like a cement wall, stealing my air and tossing my body. I become a terrorized flag, sailing behind the pole in the water.

  I swear my brain lights up with snapshots of my childhood, and I wonder if this is what they mean by having your life flash before your eyes. Unable to hold my breath even one millisecond longer, I grapple with the concept of drowning. But before I can give up, the warm salty water slides back into the sea, and I gasp, greedy for air.

  KT and I cling to each other, tripping up the stairs, clawing at the railing until we’re out of the sea’s reach. There, we drop to the cement steps and cleave to a vertical post, which is drilled into the surrounding rock and set with cement. Chloe appears, pulling me up by the arm. Behind me, KT fights to her feet, reaches for the strap across her chest, and releases the oxygen tank on her back.

  Before the metal canister hits the ground, the wind howls past, spinning KT like a top. The tank comes at me like a missile, connecting with the side of my head.

  I don’t remember blacking out, only know that when I return from darkness, KT�
��s on one side of me and Chloe’s on the other, all three of us struggling up the staircase. I couldn’t have been unconscious for long, because we’ve only made it a few steps closer to the resort. But my head is screaming so loud, I don’t even hear the ocean anymore.

  Anything not nailed down sails through the air—branches, stones, umbrellas, tables, chairs. The wind peels shingles off roofs and siding off buildings, shooting the now-lethal weapons through the air. I try to get my feet under me, but my legs are weak, my brain is fuzzy. My vision fluctuates, and my head throbs.

  The other women pause, and we crouch, heads ducked, restoring some strength. When we move again, I’m stronger, less dependent.

  A thundering crack rips through the air behind, and to our left. I turn to look, but my head swims, and all I hear is Chloe’s screech before all my senses are assaulted with what sounds and feels like lightning striking at my feet. Energy crackles through my body, the ground rolls underneath me, debris pummels my head and body. The only grounding force I have is the other women, our arms still intertwined and locked, creating a human chain.

  When I manage to pry my eyes open against the wind, I see one of the century-old banyan trees on the property lying at an angle across the stairway only feet in front of us. We’ve cheated death again.

  “This way.” KT drags us in another direction.

  My mind is so cloudy and confused, I would follow a mermaid into the storm-raging sea. KT serpentines around debris until we stumble across a threshold into some kind of shelter, slam the door and collapse to the floor.

  Inside. We’ve made it inside one of the resort’s studio cottages.