Death Runs Adrift (The Gray Whale Inn Mysteries) by Karen MacInerney Page A

to keep her afloat. I glanced around for the other life jacket; it was a few yards away, on the open water side of the skiff. What was left of the skiff, anyway. Beryl was making panicked noises, and only an inch of the craft was visible above the waterline. Smuggler’s Cove had not been kind to the Little Marian , I thought; twice now, it had sunk her.
    And me.
    But it wasn’t only me. There was Beryl—and Agnes, whom I was struggling to keep from sinking again. My jacket wasn’t enough to support the two of us.
    Lying on my back with Agnes’s head on my chest, I kicked toward the life jacket, reaching one arm back to grab it. I glanced toward Beryl, who had not yet abandoned the boat, but appeared to be up to her knees in water. “You okay?” I called.
    “I’m scared.” Her voice sounded young, childlike.
    “Can you swim?”
    She nodded.
    “You’ll be okay, then.” My words sounded reassuring, but I glanced toward shore, estimating how far we’d have to swim. Most of this coastline consisted of sheer cliffs. There was a beach not far from Smuggler’s Cove, but it was impossible to access from land. The other option was to go into Smuggler’s Cove itself and wait for the next low tide to get out. But without the skiff, we’d end up in the same boat, so to speak: stranded with no transportation and unable to do anything but swim for land.
    If I didn’t get that third life jacket, though, none of that would matter. Agnes and I would never make it anywhere.
    I kicked hard, but the tide and the current—not to mention the weight of an unconscious woman—were against me.
    “Beryl!” I called. “Can you swim to get that other jacket?”
    She was up to her waist now, and looking lost—until I asked for help. Something shifted in her. Her shoulders straightened, and I could hear it in her voice. “I’m on it,” she yelled, and before I could respond, dove headfirst into the icy depths.
    She hadn’t been lying when she said she knew how to swim. Despite the jacket she’d neglected to remove, her arms sliced through the water, propelling her quickly toward the floating jacket. In less than a minute, she had reached it and was swimming toward Agnes and me. I felt for the unconscious woman’s pulse as I waited, relieved to feel the flutter of a heartbeat under my fingertips. There was no blood—at least none that I could see—and no sign of obvious trauma. Good news. I hoped.
    It wasn’t long before Beryl had reached us. Together, she and I fitted the life jacket around Agnes’s neck and belted it around her waist. My fingers were going numb from the cold. If we were going to head for land, we’d have to do it soon. It might be summer, but the water was still cold—somewhere in the vicinity of 50 degrees—and I was losing energy fast.
    Beryl was obviously thinking the same thing. “Where do we go from here?” she asked, pushing wet hair out of her eyes. Mascara streaked down her cheeks, and although she’d only been in the water a few minutes, her teeth were chattering.
    I looked behind her at the sheer cliffs, and then beyond at the impossibly distant gray-shingled inn, nestled into the green hillside. We’d never make it back without a boat. Our only chance was to swim for the little sliver of beach where the black-chinned terns nested and hail a boat—or attempt to climb the cliff.
    “Let’s head for the beach,” I said, nodding to where several birds whirled in the breeze. “We’ll figure it out from there.”
    “Got it. I’ll take this side of the jacket and you take the other.”
    Together we swam toward the little strip of sand. My skin was stinging from the cold by now, and my fingers were so numb I had to look back to make sure I was still holding onto Agnes’s jacket. Beryl’s strength pulled me along, though, and together we inched toward the shore. Despite the effort, questions kept bubbling up in my mind. What would we do when we got there? Would anyone find us? Was Agnes