The Paper Swan(20)

He wasn’t dead. He’d passed out and I’d been too busy to notice when he’d come around. He was like a ten-headed hydra. You cut off one head and he just keeps coming. I should have flattened his face into a bloody pancake.

I fled out the other door. I was still faster than he was. He plodded after me, clutching his head. I climbed the ladder to the roof of the deckhouse. If I could launch the rubber dinghy off it, I could get to shore. It was secured to some kind of pole and bolted down with ropes and hooks. I started tugging on one of hooks. It was halfway unlatched when I saw Damian’s fingers grasp the top rung of the ladder. I tugged harder.

His head cleared the top.

I was almost there. But even if I managed to free the dinghy before Damian caught up to me, the cover was stretched tight across, and I had no idea how to start the engine.

Damian hoisted himself over the ladder.

I was out of time. I ran to the edge of the roof. We were closer to the piece of land jutting out in the horizon.

I was a strong swimmer.

I could make it.

I heard the thud of Damian’s foot as he climbed on the roof.

I took a deep breath and dived into the water.

The salt water set my severed finger on fire. I came up, gasping for air. Damian was looking down at me from the boat, an ominous shadow against the backdrop of white clouds—an unsteady ominous shadow. He was struggling to stay on his feet.

Good. I got him good.

I oriented myself with the horizon and started swimming towards land. The water was much colder than I anticipated, but it was calm and the adrenaline was pumping through my veins with each breath I took. I had gone a good distance before I looked back.

The boat was in the same spot and Damian was nowhere in sight. Maybe he’d figured it best to let me go. Maybe it was enough that my father had really experienced my death, felt it, suffered. Whatever his reason, Damian chose not to follow me.

I resumed my strokes. 1, 2, 3, breathe. 1, 2, 3, breathe. I paused after what felt like an eternity, and looked up. I didn’t seem to be any closer to the shoreline. Distances are tricky in the water—what seems like a short distance can take hours. I kicked off my pants, and kept swimming and breathing and swimming and breathing. When the pain in my finger started to subside, I realized my extremities were going numb. I stopped to catch my breath.

The boat was still visible and Damian had now resumed fishing.

Un-f*cking-believable. Shouldn’t he be bleeding out from a concussion or fleeing for safety? My father was going to unleash the hounds of hell on him.

I had gone a few more paces when I froze. There was something in the water, a few feet away. It broke through the surface and I caught sight of a black fin. It disappeared, but I could feel its dark form circling around me.

Fuck.

No wonder Damian hadn’t bothered coming after me. We were in shark-infested waters, and I had jumped in with a bandage soaked with blood.

I had single-handedly solved his dilemma of what to do with me.

An hour ago, I’d wanted to drown myself, but I really, really didn’t want to go this way, ripped to pieces by a sea monster with conveyor-belt rows of sharp, pointy teeth.

“Damian!” I started waving my arms. “Damian!”

I didn’t know why I was calling for him. Maybe it’s just basic human instinct to turn to the only person around. Maybe a part of me sensed that somewhere, deep inside, he still held a shred of humanity.

I felt something brush against my feet, something cold and hard. I probably shouldn’t be moving or making so much noise, but I didn’t know how else to get his attention. I removed my waterlogged, bloody bandage and tossed it as far away from me as possible.

“Damian. Help!” I screamed.

I saw him get up and peer into the water. Then he went to the deckhouse and brought out binoculars. I waved frantically while he looked through the lens. The damn thing was circling me openly now, preparing for the kill.

Damian looked a little longer. Then he dropped the binoculars and sat back down. I could see him reach into his tackle box and pull out something.

Yes. A gun. A sniper rifle. A mother-f*cking harpoon.

He retrieved something I couldn’t make out, put his feet up and popped something in his mouth.

I choked on a lungful of seawater.

He was eating peanuts while he watched, as if it was time for popcorn and a matinee.

I coughed and flailed around. How could I have even entertained the notion that he would jump to my aid? So he hadn’t killed me. And he’d stopped me from killing myself. But he wasn’t opposed to letting me go this way. The hot blond in shark movies always gets ripped to shreds.