Dead Heat (35 page)

Flopping back in the raft, she leaned against the tube and closed her eyes.

She awoke when something hit her. It came from beneath, and struck her full on her thighs. She catapulted to her knees in
shock, her vision blurred. She tore the entrance open. White glare all around. Her heart was pounding in shock.

Blinking, scanning the emptiness of water, she saw a fin break the surface of the sea to the left of the raft. Georgia scrambled
to the side, squinting hard. Please, not a shark, she prayed, not a shark.

Nothing. No fin, no shape in the water.

Still she scanned, terror sitting like a sack of stones in her stomach.

There! A slice of fin, cutting cleanly through blue. A rush of relief. It was a bonito. A fish.

Georgia sank back in the raft, suddenly exhausted. The sun was at its zenith and thumped down like a massive pile driver.
Her tongue had thickened, and her lips were already sore and swollen. She took another sip of water. This time she couldn’t
resist it, and she found herself on her third blissful liquid roll-of-the-mouth before sanity kicked in.

They might not come. They might miss me. I might be way off course. I have to save water. This is just the second day. There
might be more.

She pushed the water out of sight and lay in the sauna of raft and canopy. Drifted and dreamed. A vague awareness of heat
lessening. Night drew in, and as she began to shiver she realized Sunday was over. Had the Chens killed her mother? Huddled
on the floor of cold rubber, she tried not to think about Jason Chen’s pruning shears, or Sergeant Tatts lying on a garbage
dump bleeding to death.

She didn’t want to cry. Not when she needed every drop of water to remain in her body. And she knew her mother would be exhorting
her not to cry too, to hold tight until she was safe, but she couldn’t help the tears trickling from her eyes. She scooped
them carefully with her fingertips and licked them. The gesture steadied her. Her tears dried up.

Another endless night spent shivering with stars speckled above. The floor of the raft like chilled putty. Skin cold as marble.
Shivering. Shaking in a little rubber cave on an ocean of nothing.

Day three, another dawn. Same dawn. Same soft cotton-wool blue melting into identical, relentless sun and heat. She decided
there wasn’t any point in using the remaining night-and-day flares unless she actually saw another craft.

Taking off her bandage, Georgia inspected her stump. In the heat it had puckered and was tight and dry and clean-looking.
To avoid it sweating, she left it unbandaged. The wound in the pad of her palm from the air crash was a raised pink worm,
and she wondered what a forensics department would say about her scarred and damaged hand should her body end up on a beach
somewhere.

The sun rose, and she started to sweat. More water torment. She was violently hungry, but all she could think about was water.
Water in Evian bottles. Water running from a tap. She’d stick her head down a toilet to drink the water, no problem. Cookie
would do just that if she were as thirsty.

A day of remorseless discipline. She wondered where it came from. Why not drink every drop from the tin, then take whatever
came as it may? Was her survival instinct so strong? Why? Why not just gorge for an instant, then let go?

She sank into a disturbed sleep, her hips and knees rubbed raw from the soaking salt-caress of rubber.

Midafternoon, Georgia struggled to survey the gleaming hard blue water. A haze hung in the distance and she concentrated on
it, wondering if it heralded land, and as she stared, a tiny white dot appeared on the horizon. For a second she thought it
might be a giant ray flipping out of the sea, showing its white underbelly like a big square handkerchief, but after she had
blinked a couple of times, it hadn’t dived back into the ocean. It was still there.

She squinted at it, waiting for it to vanish. When it didn’t, she set off a night-and-day flare, holding it high so the smoke
poured skyward. Heart pumping, she watched the little white dot, but it didn’t seem to move.

With a small sputter, her flare died, but the white dot remained.

She knew it could be nothing, or a supertanker, perhaps, barreling past with its crew absorbed in watching videos down below,
or a fishing boat heading in the opposite direction, nets full.

Georgia looked around at the expanse of hard white sky and endless eye-creasing ocean and decided to go for broke.

She lit her last flare.

The white dot remained on the horizon, and eventually her flare spluttered out and died.

She couldn’t be sure, but she thought the white dot was growing. Slowly, tantalizingly, it was getting bigger. Georgia lay
at the entrance of the raft and watched it gradually expand into a triangle that she realized was a mainsail. For a second,
she couldn’t believe her eyes. It was a yacht.

Rocketing to her feet, she nearly overbalanced into the sea when the rubber of the floor dipped violently. The yacht was heading
straight for her! Whooping out loud, she jigged on the spot. She was saved!

Grabbing the tin of water, she took a huge gulp. She desperately wanted to drink the lot but didn’t dare, not until she was
absolutely
sure
she was rescued.

The yacht was closing fast, and she had taken another gulp of water and was grinning. The sores on her lips had cracked and
she tasted blood in her mouth, but she couldn’t stop grinning, hopping up and down and whooping like a madwoman, willing the
yacht closer with every breath.

The yacht gave a blast of its horn.

This time she didn’t hesitate. She upended the tin and swallowed the remaining water straight down, half spluttering and gasping
in her haste as she watched the yacht creaming through the water. It was big, an oceangoing yacht, about ten yards and broad,
with a blue stripe from bow to stern. One man stood on the bow, another at the helm. Both wore matching shorts and T-shirts.
Just a hundred yards away now. She could hear the hiss of the sea against the hull. The helmsman was shouting. She stood up
and waved her arms furiously above her head.

Both of them waved back, just as furiously.

She was crying in elation and joy and relief.
I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it! I’m going to live!

T
he yacht was nearly upon Georgia when the man at the helm yelled and the man on the bow leaped into action. Sails snapping,
ratchets grinding, the yacht slid effortlessly to rest beside the raft.

Two brawny, fit-looking men looked anxiously at her.

“Hello,” she rasped.

“My God,” said the man from the helm. He had a red baseball cap with “Fireball” stitched on it in yellow, and wraparound sunglasses.

Nobody moved for a few seconds, or said anything. Finally Mr. Fireball said, “You don’t happen to be Georgia Parish, do you?”

“Yes! That’s me. I’m her.”

“Bugger me,” he said, looking lost for words. “You wiped out
Micky’s Dream,
then vanished. They’ve been going crazy looking for you. The coast guard,
Micky’s
crew, and some reporter who’s been doing her nut on the telly, radio, whatever, and here you are.”

“Here I am,” she agreed.

“Can we take you ashore?”

“Yes, oh, yes, please.”

Mr. Fireball uncurled a length of rope and dropped it inside the raft. She grabbed the rope and wound it around her arm and
let them gently pull and guide her to the yacht’s stern. Gentle, careful hands lifted her inside. They looked appalled, and
spoke in hushed tones as though a loud voice might shatter her.

“I’m okay, honestly,” she said.

“Of course you are,” Mr. Fireball said, trying not to stare at her stump.

“Thank you so much.”

“Thank Stevo, he was the one who spotted you.” He introduced her to a blond man with reddish stubble and freckles, adding,
“I’m Des. Des Bailey.”

Des and Stevo. Her saviors.

“I can’t believe I’m here.”

They grinned broadly at her. “We can’t either,” said Stevo. “It’s not often we get to rescue shipwreck survivors.”

“You bloody trouper,” Des said, and shook his head admiringly. “Bloody good on yer.”

“There’s someone else out there,” she said. “You’ve got to find him.”

Des listened intently as she told him about Daniel. She could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t think Daniel would
have survived.

“Last we heard, he hadn’t been picked up. That reporter woman grabbed a chopper and started looking for you straightaway,
but the search didn’t start officially till some of
Songtao
’s planking turned up on Kee Beach.”

He looked at her raft. “You’re nowhere near where everyone’s been looking for you, though. The storm came from the southeast,
and they reckoned you’d be swept along with it, back to Nulgarra, but you obviously hit a rip, maybe an ocean current or something,
cos you’re way south of where they’ve been searching. I’ll radio in and get the score and organize another search for your
friend round here, pronto.”

She was so grateful she found it hard to speak. “Thank you.”

As Des stepped across the cockpit and for the radio, she said, “Wait.”

He turned and looked at her.

“You can’t tell anyone I’m alive. Can you report you’ve found the raft, but not me?”

Des looked shocked, so she explained as much as she could about the Chens sabotaging
Songtao
and wanting to get hold of her, not to mention the dirty cop called Spider, who, the instant he heard she had survived, would
send the Chens after her.

“You’ve got to tell the coast guard you found the life raft empty.
Find Daniel
but without telling anyone I’m alive.”

Stevo rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Jeez. This is unreal. Like we’re in a movie or something.”

Small pause, then Des said, “I’m not sure . . .”

Georgia held his gaze, willing him to believe her, take her side.

“Okay,” he relented. “I’ll report the life raft and organize the search. I won’t mention we’ve found you.”

“Des, thanks,” said Georgia, relieved. “You’re wonderful.”

Small pause.

“Let’s get you something to eat,” he said.

Within an hour she had showered, eaten one and a half beef-and-mustard sandwiches—she couldn’t manage any more, as her stomach
had shrunk to the size of a walnut after her recent abysmal diet, which had faded into zero in the life raft—and was wearing
a pair of Stevo’s shorts and a sweatshirt with “Fireball” across her chest. She sprawled facedown on the fore cabin’s bed,
feeling so drained that she wondered how she could still find the energy to breathe. She relished the dark cool that felt
like satin on her skin. Four liters of mineral water stood on the carpeted deck beside her. She hadn’t been able to settle
with less. She was still looking at the bottles when she succumbed to exhaustion and closed her eyes.

She refused to think of Daniel still out there in the scorching, relentless ocean. If she did, she thought she might go mad
with rage and grief and fear.

So she didn’t think about him at all.

She simply took a breath, exhaled, buried her face in a clean, soft white pillow, and fell asleep.

“You’ve got to be checked out.”

Des was looking worried, Stevo uncomfortable.

“All I need is a few hours of undisturbed sleep and I’ll be fine, okay?”

“But what if you’re in some sort of shock?”

“Do I look as though I’m in shock?” Georgia pressured them. “Thanks to you guys, I’m not shocked at all and I’m alive and
I am
fine.
”

Neither of them appeared to believe her. They were at
Fireball
’s helm and sailing past Pilgrim Sands Holiday Park, just north of Cape Tribulation and its rugged, jungle-covered mountains.
They were about twenty-five miles south of Nulgarra, and Des was following the coastline as he headed from Cape Trib’s ranger
station, the life raft chugging on the wake behind them.

“Please, love,” said Des. “We need to know you’re all right.”

Georgia reached across and squeezed his arm. “Des, what more do you need than me sitting here, grateful and glad and loving
you for saving me?”

“I’d just feel happier, that’s all, to hear you’re okay.”

She raised her left hand a little and immediately they both looked away.

The skin over her scalp tightened at their reaction. Bloody hell, she thought, looking at her stump for the first time in
an age. I feel ugly as sin. Ugly, ugly, ugly.

Forcing her left hand high, she said, “They did this to me, the Chen family. They cut it off with a pair of pruning shears.”

She ignored the way Stevo’s skin blanched and continued. “Guys,
please.
I can’t go to hospital because it’ll be in the newspapers in two seconds and they’ll be after me and I’ll be killed before
you can say, ‘Two Fosters, please.’ They want to chop off
all
my fingers and toes until I’m dead.
Dead.
”

Georgia leaned forward, her tone earnest.

“I don’t need a hospital. I just need to get ashore, and so long as you keep quiet about finding me for a week or so, I’ll
have everything sorted. I promise.”

Stevo rubbed his face as though his skin had numbed and he was trying to stimulate it into life. He kept looking at her stump
then away. Eventually he said, “How about I drop you and Des off here, at Cape Trib, and get you run up to Nulgarra? The coast
road’s in pretty good shape at the moment, shouldn’t take too long. I won’t say we found you,” he added, “not until you let
us know when it’s okay.”

“Stevo, thanks,” said Georgia, relieved. “You’re brilliant.”

“You need somewhere safe to stay in Nulgarra,” Stevo continued, the color gradually returning to his face. “Des’ll sort you,
won’t you, mate? You’ve somewhere where nobody’d think of looking, eh? She’s a nurse, too, remember?”

Des groaned. “Please, tell me you don’t mean Margey?”

“Safest place I can think of,” Stevo insisted. “You know another?”

“She’ll brain me.”