She vomited the salt water onto the land. The pungent taste of brine burned her lungs; the smell caused her eyes to well blindly. Caleb said it only took a couple tablespoons to drowned a man, Jo wouldn't hazard to guess how much she'd swallowed, then expelled, but the warm solid earth under collapsed palms and knees never felt so forgiving.
Shit.
Jo's mind few over the who's, where's and when's of the day but, it all seem disjointed fragments, none of it made sense. Tired, battered, and pinned, how had she escaped the bar? Or was she...
Wondering had taken a back seat to survival. Hearing the muffled noise of something moving across the surrounding sand, she peered out from beneath the wet tresses, brown eyes scan the beach. The crashing roar of the surf, the cry of the gulls, echoed louder in the stillness broken by the momentarily shuffle of footfalls and her heartbeat thundering in ear. Jo swallows hard, blinking one, twice, focusing on the watery figure approaching then stop. Shivering and huddled over her father's knife, Jo’s hands instinctively tightened around the handle, raw knuckles crack in preparation, ready to take a biting swing at whatever would emerged from the sunlight. Then she saw him.
Subtle hands secured the blade back to its hiding place. The wind across bare skin bit fierce as limply rose, sending cascading water streaming down to pool at her feet. The certain weight of a familiar knife was cold comfort. Everything burned from the skin to bone and every muscle in between screamed out in agony, but at least she was standing.