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I drop another. And then that one goes down.
There’s movement near the edge just as I pull the trigger again. I swing the barrel to watch, just in time to see Hope fly into the air over Lucky’s head and plummet into the water.
Her arms and legs were bound.
I don’t care about the wolves. I don’t care about the people.
My crosshairs are focused on the spot where she disappeared.
Five. Six. Seven seconds go by. The bubbles start to dissipate where she went under.
Forty. Forty-one.
Where are you baby?
Panic starts to grow in my chest. How long can she stay under?
Reducing the magnification on the scope opens my field of view. Maybe she’s swimming already.
Brown streaks bound out of the left side as Lucky and one other beast manage to escape.
He certainly lives up to his name.
One hundred.
Hope. You need to come up now.
The smooth plane of the water is all I can see. Not a ripple marks where she went in.
When the first human peers over the side, I knock the scope back tighter and take a few quick shots to drive them away.
I don’t know if I hit any of them, but the last thing I want is them grabbing her when she comes back up.
Two hundred.
Shit. Why aren’t you up?
A bubble of air pulses up a few feet closer than where she went in.
Glancing over the edge of the rock I’m on, there’s nothing but boulders beneath me a long ways down. I can’t jump.
If I started running right now, I might hit the edge of the lake in four minutes. But, to swim out to her would take me…an hour?
Fuck.
Hope.
I need you.
Five hundred.
Pain tightens like a clamp around my chest. She can’t have gone through all of that to drown? Can she?
She’s my only happiness. The candle in the darkness.
My one in a billion.
One thousand.