One Summer

by David Baldacci

  always be a family, right?” They both nodded. “We’ll get your bags. Liam, go get Mikki. I’m sure you want to say good-bye to her. They need to get on the road before the storm gets any worse.”

  Sammy and Jack carried the bags out to the car, and Jack strapped Jackie in while Cory buckled up next to him. When Jack looked back up at the porch, he knew something was wrong. Liam was standing there, his face pale and his expression wild.

  Bonnie had seen this too. Despite the wind and rain, she got out of the car.

  “What is it?” said Jack as he ran up to Liam.

  “I can’t find Mikki.”

  Jack and the others raced into the house. It took only ten minutes to search the place. His daughter was gone.

  A quarter mile down the beach, Mikki was stumbling along, crying hard. The wind and rain battered her, but she kept going, leaning into the gusts swarming off the ocean. She kept weaving away from the waterline as the storm pushed the Atlantic farther landward. As upset as she was, Mikki didn’t see the palmetto tree toppling over until it was almost too late. At the last possible instant, she lunged out of the way, but dodging the tree carried her too close to the waterline and in the path of a huge wave that crashed over her. Mikki didn’t even have time to scream before the receding wave swept her out.

  65

  Jack stared out at the darkened sky from the front room of the Palace. The rain was coming down even harder. Liam had quickly driven home to see if Mikki had gone there, but he’d called to say she wasn’t at his house.

  Bonnie said, “Jack, what do we do? What do we do?” Her voice was hysterical.

  Jack turned to her and said sharply, “The first thing we do is not panic.”

  One of the Social Services personnel said, “We should call the police. The sheriff drove off before this happened, but I’m sure we can get him back.”

  Jack shook his head and said in a crisp, take-charge manner, “There’s only Tammie and one deputy, and they’ll be preoccupied with the storm. We can call them, but we can’t just sit around and wait for them to start looking for her. We have to start searching the area. We need to split up. Search by street and also the beach.” He pointed to Fred. “Fred, you and Bonnie drive west in your car. Go slow, look for Mikki that way.” He turned to the pair from Social Services. “You go east in your car and do the same thing. Let’s exchange cell phone numbers. Whoever finds her calls the others. Sammy and I will take opposite directions on the beach.” He turned to Cory. “Cor, can you be a real big guy for me and stay here with Jackie? Go to the lower level and stay away from the windows.”

  Cory swallowed and looked terrified at his dad. “Mikki’s coming back, right?”

  “She absolutely is. I bet she shows up here any minute. And we need someone to be here when she does, okay?”

  “Okay, Dad.”

  Jack headed right on the beach while Sammy went left. The rain was being pushed nearly sideways by the wind, and most of the sand was underwater. Jack swung his flashlight in wide arcs, but it barely penetrated the darkness. It finally caught on one object, and when Jack saw what it was, his heart thudded in his chest and a cold dread settled over him.

  It was Mikki’s sneaker floating in a pool of shallow water. He looked in all directions for his daughter but could see nothing. He called out her name, but the only thing he heard in response was the scream of the wind. He raced on to check backyards and behind dunes, but found nothing.

  “I can’t see a damn thing,” he said to himself. He stared out at the angry ocean, engorged and rendered infinitely more dangerous by the strength of the storm pushing it against the coast. He turned and jogged back, his gaze toggling between land and sea. He had to bend forward to keep from being blown back by the powerful winds. Every ten seconds he screamed out her name. Near the Palace he met Sammy, who reported similar failure.

  Jack showed him the sneaker.

  “That is not good, Jack,” said Sammy.

  “We’re running out of time. The storm is just about to really hit.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  “We need to be able to see a big swath of land and water.”

  “No way you can get a chopper with a searchlight up in these conditions.”

  At this remark, Jack started and looked up at the lighthouse. He turned and ran toward it, Sammy on his heels. He kicked open the lower door and took the steps two at a time. He reached the top and hoisted himself through the access door. Sammy poked his head through a few seconds later, breathing hard.

  “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Getting a light.”

  “Jack, this damn thing doesn’t work.”

  “It’s going to work tonight! Because I’m going to find my daughter,” Jack shouted back at him. He ripped open his toolbox, which he’d left in the corner, snatched some wrenches, grabbed the old schematic, and began to analyze it, his gaze flitting up and down its complex drawings. While Sammy held the paper, Jack worked on section after section of the mechanism, his ability to repair it having assumed a whole new level of urgency.

  As Sammy watched him work, he said, “But we need a searchlight, not something that’s going to—”

  “There’s a manual feature,” Jack snapped as he squeezed his body into a narrow crevice to check the wiring there. “The light path can be manipulated by hand.”

  He pulled himself out of the space and hit the power switch.

  “Damn it!” Jack flung his wrench down.

  He peered out into the darkness, where his little girl was… somewhere.

  He involuntarily shuddered.

  No. I will not lose my daughter.

  A burst of lightning that speared the water was followed by a boom of thunder as the storm reached its peak. Footsteps came from below, and first Jenna’s and then Liam’s faces appeared at the opening to the room. They were both soaked through.

  “We’ve been searching the street and beach on our end, but there’s no sign of Mikki,” Jenna said to Sammy as she looked at Jack’s back.

  “We were trying to power up the light,” Sammy explained, “but no luck.”

  Sammy said, “Bonnie called. And so did the other people. They found nothing either.” He held up Mikki’s soaked shoe. Jenna and Liam paled when they saw it. All three instinctively looked out to the frothing ocean.

  Jack remained frozen against the glass, staring out into the darkness. The electricity to the lighthouse flickered, went out, and then sputtered back on. Jack was still staring at the darkness when he saw it. At first he thought it was another bolt of lightning lancing into the water, but there was no boom of thunder following it. Yet it had been a jagged edge of current; he’d seen it! Jack suddenly realized that in that second of darkness, what he’d seen had been reflected in the glass, only to become invisible when the power came back on and the lights were restored.

  He whirled around and leapt toward the machinery. “Turn the light off, Sammy,” he screamed.

  “What?”

  “Turn it off. Off!”

  Sammy hit the switch, plunging them all into darkness.

  Jack, his chest heaving with dread because he knew this was his last chance, stared at the machinery with an intensity he didn’t know he even had. He could hear nothing, not the storm, not Sammy’s or Jenna’s or Liam’s breathing, not even his own. There was nothing else in the world; only him and this metal beast that had confounded him all summer. And if he couldn’t figure it out right now, his daughter was lost to him.

  “Turn the lights back on.”

  Sammy hit the switch.

  And Jack saw the beautiful arc of electrical current nearly buried between two pieces of metal in a gap so narrow he didn’t even know it was there. That was what had been reflected in the window.

  He dropped to his knees, scuttled forward, and hit the gap with his flashlight. Two wires were revealed. They were less than a centimeter apart, but not touching.

  “Sammy, get me electrical tape and a wi
re nut and then turn the main power off.”

  Sammy grabbed the tape from the box, tossed the roll and red wire nut to Jack, and then turned off the power. While Jenna held the flashlight for him, he slid his hands in the gap, pieced the two wires together using the wire nut, and then wound tape around it.

  Jack stood and called out, “Turn the power back on, and then hit the switch. Everyone look away from the light.”

  Sammy turned on the power and flicked the switch. At first nothing happened. Then, as if it was awakening from years of sleep, the light began to come on, building in energy until, with a burst of power, it came fully to life. If Jack hadn’t told them to look away, they would have been blinded. The powerful beam illuminated the beach and ocean to an astonishing degree as it started to whirl around the top of the lighthouse.

  Jack raced around to the back of the equipment, hit a button, and grabbed a slide lever. The light immediately stopped swirling across the landscape and became a focused beam that he could maneuver.

  “Sammy, take control of this. Start from the north and move it slowly southward in three-second stages.”

  While Sammy guided the light, Liam, Jack, and Jenna stayed glued to the window, looking at the suddenly lightened nightscape.

  Jenna spotted her first. “There! There!”

  “Steady on the beam, Sammy,” screamed Jack. “Hold right there.”

  Jack threw himself through the opening and took the steps three at a time. He nearly flattened Bonnie, who was coming up the stairs.

  “What is—”

  Jack didn’t bother to answer.

  He ran on.

  The light had revealed Mikki’s location. She was in deep water, clinging to a piece of driftwood as ten-foot-high waves pounded her. She looked to be caught in the seesaw grip of the storm. She might have only a few minutes left to live.

  Then so do I, thought Jack.

  66

  Jack Armstrong ran that night like he had never run before. Not on the football field, and not even on the battlefield when his very life depended on sheer speed. He high-stepped through four-foot waves that were nearly up to the rocks the lighthouse was perched on. A towering breaker ripped out of the darkness and knocked him down. He struck his head on a piece of timber thrown up on the sand by the storm. Dazed, he struggled to his feet and kept slogging on. He saw the light, a pinpoint beam. But he couldn’t see Mikki. Frantic, he ran toward the illumination.

  “Mikki! Mikki!”

  Another wave crushed him. He got back up, vomiting salt-water driven deeply down his throat. He ran on, fighting rain driven so hard by turbocharged wind that it felt like the sting of a million yellow jackets.

  “Mikki!”

  “Daddy!”

  It was faint, but Jack saw the light shift to the left. And then he saw it: a head bobbing in even deeper water. Mikki was being pulled inexorably out to sea.

  “Daddy. Help me.”

  Like a charging rhino, Jack ran headlong toward the brunt of the storm. An oncoming wave rose up far taller than he was, but he avoided most of its energy by diving under it at the last possible second. He emerged in water over his head. The normal riptide was multiplied tenfold by the power of the storm, but Jack fought through it, going under and coming up and yelling, “Mikki.” Each time she called back, and Jack swam with all his might toward the sound of her voice.

  The lightning and thunder blasted and boomed above them. A spear of lightning hit so close that Jack felt the hairs on his arms and neck stand. He snatched a breath and went under again as another foaming wave crashed down on him. He came up. “Mikki!”

  This time there was no answer.

  “Mikki!”

  Nothing.

  “Michelle!”

  A second later he heard a faint “Daddy.”

  Jack redoubled his efforts. She was getting weak. It was a miracle she was still alive. If that piece of driftwood got ripped from her, it would all be over. And then he saw her. The sturdy beam of light was tethered to the teenager like a golden string. Mikki was managing to stay afloat by using the driftwood she’d snagged somehow, but there was no way she could keep that up much longer. Jack swam as hard as he could, fighting through wave after wave and cursing when one threw him off course, costing him precious seconds. But the whole time he kept his eyes on his daughter.

  And yet he realized that as each second passed, she was moving farther from him. It was the storm, the riptide, the wind, everything. He swam harder. But now he was fifty feet away instead of forty. He took a deep breath and slid under the water to see if he could make better time. But it was pitch-dark even just below the surface, and the current was just as strong.

  When he came back up, he couldn’t see her and cursed himself for taking his eyes off his daughter. His limbs and lungs were so heavy. Jack looked to the shore and then at the angry sky. He was being pulled out too now. And he wasn’t sure he had the strength to get back in. It didn’t matter.

  I’m not going back without her.

  Jack treaded water, looking in all directions as the storm bore down with all its weight on the South Carolina coast.

  He shook with anger and fear and… loss.

  I’m sorry, Lizzie. I’m so sorry.

  What if I just stop swimming? What if I just stop?

  He would sink to the bottom. He looked at the shore. He could see the lights. His family—what was left of it—was there. Bonnie would raise the boys. He and Mikki would go to join Lizzie.

  He looked to the sky again. When a bolt of lightning speared down and lighted the sky, he thought he could see Lizzie’s face, her hand reaching out, beckoning to him. He could just stop swimming right now. Right now.

  “Daddy!”

  Jack turned in the water.

  Mikki was barely twenty feet from him. This time the movement of the water had carried him toward her.

  Finding a reserve of strength he didn’t think he had, Jack exploded through the water. The ocean pushed back at him, throwing up wall after wall of frothing sea to keep him from her. He swam harder and harder, his arms slicing through the water as he fought every counterattack the storm threw at him.

  A yard. A foot. Six inches. Every muscle Jack had was screaming in exhaustion, but he fought through the pain.

  “Daddy!” She reached out to him.

  “Mikki!”

  He lunged so hard he nearly came fully out of the water. His hand closed like a vise around her wrist, and he pulled his daughter to him.

  She hugged him. “I’m sorry, Daddy, I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s okay, baby. I’ve got you. Just lie on your back.”

  She did so, and he put his arms under hers and kicked off toward land.

  Now all I’ve got to do is get us back, thought Jack.

  The problem was that when Jack tried to ride a wave in, the undertow snatched him back before he could gain traction on the shore. Then a huge wave forced them both underwater, before Jack brought them back, coughing and half-strangled. Jack was very strong, and as a ranger he’d swum miles in all sorts of awful conditions. But not in the middle of what was now likely a category 1 hurricane with someone else hanging on to him. He was caught in a pendulum, and he couldn’t keep it up much longer. He might be able to get to shore by himself, but he was prepared to die with his daughter.

  “Jack!”

  He looked toward the beach. Liam and Sammy were standing there with a long coil of rope and screaming at him. Tied to the end of the rope was a red buoy. He nodded to show he understood. Sammy