Chad Prescott
On the beach, Chad raced toward what looked to him very much like a dead woman. She lay immobile, her jaw slack, eyes rolled back in her head. From experience he feared there was little he could do for her.
He knelt on the sand and felt for her pulse, felt it flutter under his fingers. Immediately he turned her over onto her chest, placed his hands firmly on her back, and pressed with all his might. Again. And again. Water trickled from her mouth. Then she coughed. A small thing but it meant she was returning to the land of the living. Just. He kept on pressing. A big cough. Then she vomited seawater and he knew she would live.
Standing next to him, the Boss said, “If I were a praying man, I would be praying.”
“Then become one,” Chad said abruptly. “Pray, for fuck’s sake. Just pray she doesn’t die.”
“Not at my party,” the Boss said. “I wouldn’t allow it.”
Shooting him a disbelieving look, Chad saw from his expression the Boss meant it.
Over his shoulder he saw Mirabella, a hand clutched to her throat, a look of horror on her face.
“Tell me she’ll be alright,” Mirabella begged.
He rolled back Verity’s eyelids, noted the dilated pupils, knew she had been drugged. He recalled how she’d appeared drunk at the party, how she’d stumbled as she walked into the house, after which nobody had seen her again. Until now, unconscious in the incoming tide with the waves breaking over her.
“I have to get her to the hospital.” He reached into his pocket for his mobile, to call them. “I’ll drive her there myself, it’ll be quicker than waiting for an ambulance.”
“Wait.” The Boss held up a hand, palm out, to stop him. “We’ll use my helicopter. I’ll call the pilot now. He can be here in five minutes.”
Chad nodded. It was pretty amazing that not only had the Boss rescued the half-drowned girl from the sea, now he was about to save her life a second time, by helicopter. It seemed there was nothing the Boss could not do.
The Boss stared down at the immobile girl, then suddenly covered his eyes with his hands. “Oh God,” he murmured. “How could this happen? At my party? What will my guests think?”
He turned to the Colonel who was also on his phone. “You have to find the culprit. Somebody did this to her, put drugs in her drink the way I’ve heard men do in cheap bars. There’s something they use to make young women unaware of their actions, then they take them home and rape them. I can’t have someone doing things like that, here, in my home.”
Though the Boss did not actually say it, looking at him, larger than life and twice as rich, the Colonel half-expected expected him to say, “Do you know who I am?”
“You have to find the culprit,” the Boss stormed on. He was pacing now, hands clenched. Tension radiated from him. The Colonel respected his concern, his need to do something to help the young woman lying on the beach, more dead than alive. Chad was still pounding on her back. He turned her over, and gave her the kiss of life. The Colonel did not think it was going to work. How had this happened? What was she doing in the sea? Even drunk, even drugged, surely she would have recognize the difference between walking on sand and struggling through waves. It did not make sense.
“We’re not after a ‘culprit,’ sir,” he said to the Boss, who turned to look at him, eyes wide with anger. And with something else. The Colonel wondered if it could it be fear. “This was no accident,” he said. “What we’ll be looking for is a would-be killer.”
The Boss stared back at him, silenced.
Chad attempted to lift the girl, intending to carry her to dry land and the Boss seemed to return to his senses. “No. Wait. I have a stretcher.”
They watched as he hurried back into the bunker. Chad checked Verity’s pulse again. Mirabella sank onto the sand next to him.
“I promise I won’t cry,” she said, despite the fact that tears were already running down her cheeks, along with a great deal of blue-black mascara. “Oh, dear God, please, please, Doctor, save her.”
“I’m afraid I’ve done all I can here.”
The Boss came back from his bunker with a folded lightweight stretcher. Chad glanced at him, surprised. It was not exactly the kind of thing you kept handy. In fact he did not know anyone who had a stretcher in their home. Two burly men accompanied the Boss. Now they helped move Verity onto the stretcher and carried her to the helicopter landing pad. In minutes the six-seater Beechcraft Bonanza G36 clattered overhead. The Boss was as good as his word.
In the stretcher Verity was lifted inside and placed across the seats. Chad and the Boss climbed in behind. The two men sat in back of them.