Chapter 5 - The Rescue
The water in the pool was settling back into a flat, mirror-like surface when the side gate of the estate garden clicked open.
It was not Nurse David, nor was it the housekeeper.
It was Mateo Cruz, the nineteen-year-old assistant groundskeeper who usually worked the morning shifts. Mateo had forgotten his wallet in the maintenance shed near the pool house and had returned quietly to retrieve it before catching the evening bus.
As Mateo walked past the pool patio, he noticed the double glass doors of the main house standing wide open in the wind.
"Mr. Vance?" Mateo called out, stepping closer to the patio. "Julian?"
No one answered.
Mateo turned to leave, but something caught his eye in the water—a strange, dark distortion shimmering at the bottom of the deep end.
He walked to the edge of the pool and looked down.
Through the clear blue water, Mateo saw the metallic glint of the submerged wheelchair lying on its side. And just a few feet away from it, floating motionless near the middle of the pool, was the dark outline of a human body.
Mateo’s heart stopped.
"Holy shit! Mr. Vance!"
Mateo didn't hesitate. He kicked off his heavy work boots, shed his thick jacket, and dove headfirst into the freezing pool.
The sudden splash shattered the silence of the patio. Mateo kicked violently down into the cold water, his arms slicing through the depth until he reached Arthur's floating body. He wrapped his arm around Arthur's chest and kicked with all his strength toward the surface.
They broke the surface together, Mateo gasping for air, hauling the heavy, limp body of the patriarch toward the concrete edge.
"Help! Someone help!" Mateo screamed at the top of his lungs as he dragged Arthur onto the flat stone patio.
Arthur was completely unresponsive. His skin was a mottled, ghastly shade of blue-gray. His lips were purple, his eyes half-open and glassy, fixed on the gray sky above. He wasn't breathing. He had no pulse.
Mateo had taken a basic CPR certification course for his groundskeeping job six months earlier. He placed his hands in the center of Arthur's cold chest and began compressions hard and fast.
One, two, three, four, five...
"Come on! Stay with me! Come on!" Mateo yelled, leaning over to clear Arthur's airway and deliver two sharp rescue breaths before resuming compressions.
Six, seven, eight, nine, ten...
For two agonizing minutes, Mateo performed CPR alone on the wet stone, his hands soaked, his muscles burning with exhaustion.
On the thirty-second compression, a violent, wet convulsion shook Arthur’s body.
Arthur coughed violently, vomiting a large volume of pool water and foam onto the stone patio. His chest heaved up and down in desperate, ragged gasps as air rushed back into his starved lungs.
"I've got you! I've got you, Mr. Vance!" Mateo cried out in relief, turning Arthur onto his side to clear his throat.
Arthur lay on the wet stone, gasping, shaking uncontrollably from hypothermia and shock.
His vision was blurry, dark edges framing the world like a tunnel. But inside his chest, his heart was beating with a ferocious, chaotic rhythm.
He was alive.
Mateo grabbed his cell phone from his dry pants on the pool deck and dialed 911 with trembling hands.
"I need an ambulance immediately at the Vance estate!" Mateo shouted into the phone. "An elderly man was drowning in the pool! He's conscious, but he's in severe shock!"
As Mateo spoke to the emergency dispatcher, he knelt beside Arthur, wrapping his dry jacket around the old man's shivering shoulders.
Arthur raised his left hand.
It was not a faint twitch. It was a firm, deliberate movement.
Arthur’s cold, wet fingers reached out and grabbed Mateo’s forearm with surprising strength. His grip was tight, desperate, and unyielding.
Mateo looked down, startled by the strength in the paralyzed man's hand.
Arthur’s eyes were locked onto Mateo’s. The glassy haze was gone, replaced by a cold, sharp, terrifying intelligence.
Arthur slowly turned his head toward the long driveway where Julian’s car had disappeared just minutes before.
He couldn't speak a word. But in the tight grip of his left hand and the burning, murderous fire in his blue eyes, Mateo read a message that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
May you like
It was not fear.
It was a declaration of war.
