“It’s okay. I’ve got this.” Waverly hoped her bravado eased the agony Archer was likely suffering while listening in on this conversation.

If she was going to have any hope of surviving this, shit was about to get even more fucked up than it already was. Before giving Ted too much time to consider what she might be up to, she lashed out with her right hand, grabbing for the gun.

BANG!

Waverly had never been shot before.

It hurt like a motherfucker.

Nothing like in the movies. Adrenaline didn’t do shit to numb the blinding pain. Fortunately, it appeared that the bullet had hit her upper left arm. She didn’t need that to clobber Ted, who seemed stunned by the reverberations of the deafening blast in such a small space.

More good news, she wasn’t dead.

Waverly lashed out, fueled by pure rage and indignation. She punched him where it would hurt most—in the stab wound he’d given himself. Judging by the amount of blood on the bandage, he might have done a better job of that than he’d intended.

Which might have been why he didn’t react fast enough to stop her.

With an oomph, he dropped the gun.

Waverly didn’t pause to think about what she was doing. Survival instincts and her military training kicked in. She snatched the gun, put her finger on the trigger, pointed it straight between Ted’s eyes, and squeezed. Twice.

To be honest, she didn’t even feel bad about his brains splattered on the window.

If it was her or him, she knew which one she would pick. All day long.

Unfortunately, the gunshots had damaged more than her flesh.

When she tried to radio the Divemaster to let Archer know she was okay and about to come home, the damn thing wouldn’t work. In the next few seconds, instruments started going dark. Fuck. One of their bullets, or maybe bits of all three, had clipped some important shit.

If it wasn’t for the storm, which seemed to have intensified, she might have tried to find her way to the Divemaster without some of those tools. Over open ocean, with nowhere to put down quickly, and—oh, yeah—blood slicking her arm, there was no way she was risking it.

Waverly groaned as the pain intensified. She scrunched her eyes closed a few times, trying to see better. In range, a blip of an island with a wide, flat beach beckoned her. It was going to have to do.

It was her worst landing ever.

Later, she couldn’t even recall most of it. Though she wasn’t really a religious person, she might have believed she had a guardian angel helping out.

But when she turned off the engine, she was down in mostly one piece.

For a while she just sat there and stared. Thanked every power in the universe for helping her save herself. Then she prepared to rough it for a while. No one was going to be able to reach her tonight.

She debated sleeping in the helicopter, but it was pretty exposed on the beach and if it toppled, or sank into the sand as the tides changed, she could be trapped and drown. Given the state of her arm, she couldn’t wrestle Ted’s body out anyway. The thought of sharing the space with him all night long…

So much nope. Not happening.

Waverly tried to get the radio going one more time without success. So she grabbed the first aid kit and her backpack, then jumped out of the pilot’s seat.

She trudged up the beach far enough to huddle at the base of a thick copse of trees. First she treated herself as best she could, using strips of bandages and thick gauze pads—thank you, Ted—to put pressure on her wound without going full-on tourniquet. Her military days had made her aware that she could do permanent damage if she left one of those on for longer than two hours, and it was going to be several times that before help arrived.

They couldn’t reach her, never mind find her, in these conditions.

She didn’t think her arm was bleeding enough to be life-threatening. Then again, if she passed out and couldn’t make a tourniquet once it turned for the worse, saving her arm wouldn’t really matter, now would it?

Hard decisions.

After she’d patched it up as best she could and applied the most pressure she felt comfortable with leaving on long-term, she took the Mylar thermal survival blanket out of the first aid kit and wrapped it around herself. A fire was out of the question given the rain and wind, but it wasn’t particularly cold out. This would do.

Comfortable? Not especially.

Survivable? Hell yes.

To keep herself from throwing a pity party, she used her teeth to tear open a pack of dried fruit then chugged an entire bottle of water, hoping her body got busy replacing some of her lost blood pretty damn quick.

She estimated she’d been out there less than an hour when she wondered how she would survive an entire night without going bonkers.

Waverly used her good arm to collect the fallen palm fronds she could reach without jostling her injury too much and began to stack them up. She wasn’t cold, but it made her feel more secure to have some barrier, however flimsy, between herself and the storm.

When she’d run out of resources, she rested up against the tree trunk that formed one support for her lean-to shelter and wondered how she’d pass the rest of the time. Maybe she could write Archer love letters in the sand. Or draw pictures of positions she wanted to try fucking in once she had healed.

Before she could, a light glinted in her eyes.

Something painfully bright after the deep midnight she had gotten used to.

It was only there for a second, then gone.

Then it came back. And stuck.

Could it be a searchlight?

Holy shit!

Waverly stood up, using the Mylar around her as a reflector. She ran toward the surf then, making it about halfway before a familiar gray rigid hull inflatable boat beached itself on the sand with a landing nearly as poor as hers had been in the helicopter.

She gave it a four out of ten, at best. It was the most wonderful thing she’d ever seen.

Until Archer came flying over the side, tearing up the beach toward her.

Then that was the most wonderful thing she’d ever seen.

She supposed they could have cried, flung themselves at each other, or any other number of things. Instead, they stood there, about a foot apart, wind whipping their clothes and hair, grinning like fools.

“Imagine meeting you here,” Archer said before his face darkened. “Ted?”

She shook her head. “Dead.”

Then he closed the gap between them and crushed her to him.

“I’ve never been so relieved in my entire life to see someone,” he said. “It might be best if I never let you go again.”

She was good with that, too. Except just then his arm knocked into hers, right over her bullet wound.

Waverly cried out, wishing she could take it back when worry rushed back to his face. “Arm. Ouchy.”

She tried to smile as she winced, probably looking totally weird.

“Is it broken?” he asked. In the meantime, he checked out the helicopter. It perched on the beach, a little wonky, but obviously not crashed.

She knew he was estimating the likelihood she had internal injuries. “No. Shot.”

“What?” he yelled.

“Shot.”

“And you’re just now mentioning it?” He tore the thermal blanket off her as if he was making sure she didn’t have any other new holes. “Jesus, woman.”

There was more blood there than she’d realized. Yikes.

Miguel and Tosin hauled the boat toward them, out of reach of the waves and wind. Exhausted, and stumbling, they began to set it down, even as they told her over and over how glad they were to see her. Tosin used his shoulder and upper arm to wipe moisture from his face. Probably just spray from the ocean. That had to have been an uncomfortable ride.

“I have a camp started over there.” She pointed with her good arm, so they angled toward her spot. Archer wasn’t having any of that. He plucked her from the beach and carried her. Resting her head on his shoulder, she admitted to herself that she was grateful for the lift.

As they neared the tree line and the wind and rain subsided, she shouted over the crashing waves, “I can’t believe you got in that thing with the ocean looking like that! Are you fucking crazy?”

“Well, I had something to say to you that couldn’t wait until morning.”

“What’s that?” She blinked up at him.

“I love you, too, Waverly.”

And that was the thing that broke her. Tears rolled down her cheeks as he set her on the ground between his best friends. He kissed her with the barest brushes of his lips while Miguel and Tosin propped the boat up on its side, using the wind itself to hold it in place, making a very effective wall against the storm.

With that done, Miguel started pulling things from inside it.

He combined their first aid kits, taking a needle and thread, some topical anesthetic, and a packet of antibiotics from inside. Tosin handed Archer the waterproof radio. “Why don’t you do the honors?”

The four of them huddled around the communications device.

“Banks!” Archer shouted.

“Archie! Are you okay?” he asked.

“Yes. We’ve got her. Waverly’s here. She’s alive! We’ve got her!” He beamed at her as if he couldn’t believe how lucky they’d gotten.

A riot of claps, whistles, and cheers came over the radio, making Waverly shed a few more fat tears before dashing them away with the back of her hand. To know that she’d gone from being absolutely alone in the world to having this incredible group of people who loved her…

It was everything.

With these guys, she wasn’t afraid to let her feelings loose either. They wouldn’t judge her or take advantage of her temporary weakness.

Tosin piped up then, his sandy hair looking crazier than she’d ever seen it. “No, she’s not just alive. She’s sitting here under a palm frond shelter living it up while we all worried about her. Might as well have happened upon her sipping a piña colada.”

“Is she wounded?” Captain Alex asked.

“Yup,” Miguel confirmed. “Took a bullet to the arm. No biggie, according to her. Honestly, it does look like a flesh wound. We’re about to see if I can stitch it up without passing out.”

It was crazy how a few near death experiences made these things seem inconsequential. Except… “Guys. Someone else is shot, and this time I did do it. I killed Ted.”

“You protected yourself,” Archer corrected her.

Nobody contradicted him.

She sighed.

“We’ll be there as soon as we can get the ship closer or dispatch another helicopter from somewhere,” Captain Alex assured them. “The worst of the storm should be past now. Will you be okay until morning?”

“Absolutely,” Waverly answered.

“As long as I have her, I’m good.” Archer didn’t care if it made him sound like a pussy. It was true.