The Contestant

She’d spent her life on the water and camping on various islands. Her mother had been Australian and had loved the outdoors, so they’d often vacationed on islands in the South Pacific. From an early age, her mother had taught Talia how to fish with her hands, make a fire, make shelter and stay away from deadly predators.

“A few weeks on a remote island competing against seven people who you know you can beat doing something you love to do…to save my very life. Is that so much to ask?”

As an added push, he’d reminded her that she wasn’t having much luck finding a job in her chosen profession and that a little extra pocket cash might help to tide her over. Granted his reason for her failure to land a job was ridiculous. He’d said it was because no one interviewing her would ever believe she was an accountant.

But she was. Or at least she wanted to be. It was what her degree read.

She even believed that being a former Olympian might give her an edge when it came to finding an entry position in an accounting firm, but now she was seriously considering removing it from her résumé. Each time she went in for an interview, the human-resource person would start asking about her hand—as if after four-and-a-half years it might still hurt—and end it with the question: “Are you really sure you would be satisfied with a job where you do nothing but sit in a cubicle all day working on a computer?”

Yes! That was exactly what she wanted. She wanted to wear business suits instead of bathing suits. She wanted to walk in pumps instead of bare feet. She wanted to have a normal job, in a normal company and have a normal apartment that didn’t rock when the wind picked up.

It was during those moments of rejection that she wished her mother was still alive. Because as much as her father didn’t understand her need to be taken seriously as a smart businesswoman, she knew her mother would have. Her mother may have married a dreamer, but she had been all about hard work and getting the job done whatever the cost.

But instead of being on another interview right now, here Talia was with her father’s life in jeopardy, back to wearing a bikini and cutoff jean shorts, riding in a boat with a camera, en route to an island with a bunch of people who were all after the same prize. There was nothing normal about this.

She absolutely was going to kill her father when she got back.

For now there was nothing to do but play the game. She sat quietly on the bench seat with three of the other players while a second speedboat, being piloted by a crewman who worked for the show, was behind them carrying the other cameraman, Dino—a short, stout, bald man with a round face—plus the other four contenders for Ultimate Endurance.

Ultimate Endurance? They had to be kidding.

Two of the contestants were well over fifty—Iris and Gus. One was a grandmother, the other a former military officer who looked gritty, but would that translate to real toughness on a deserted island? Then there was Sam, a soft-looking marketing executive who liked to smile and tell stories and who, Talia suspected, was closer to fifty than he let on.

Also appealing to the fortysomething demographic was Nancy. She was a last-minute replacement for the other fortysomething housewife who had dropped out. It was just luck that Nancy had decided to take a vacation to Hawaii and was available when the show needed her. A sweet-faced, overweight divorcée, from the moment she’d stepped on the yacht she’d alternated between some form of sheer ecstasy for having made it on to the show or wrenching tears at being separated from her children. The woman was an emotional roller coaster and liked to gather sympathy by telling everyone how her rotten ex-husband had dumped her for a younger, more adventurous woman.

However, Talia couldn’t help but feel protective of Nancy. The divorcée was so far out of her element, Talia didn’t know how she was still functioning. And it was only going to get worse.

Until this point they had been cruising on a luxury yacht from Hawaii to the remote destination in the South Pacific just past the Vanuatu Islands in the Melanesian chain. Now they were on their way to the island they would be calling home, and Talia believed that the reality of the situation was finally beginning to settle in with everyone, especially Nancy, who had been suspiciously quiet during the trip.

Or she could have been seasick. It was a tough call.

Still, Talia had to be grateful that she wasn’t sharing the short excursion with Marlie. An impossibly young, ridiculously skinny—especially since she was about to go at least a few days without a regular meal—wanna-be starlet, Marlie was clearly more interested in fame than the million-dollar prize. She had spent the entire journey sucking up to—if not actually sucking off—Dino, so that when filming began he would always try to catch her from the right. It was her best side.

When she asked Talia what her best side was, Talia had named her backside. The others who had been nearby when she made this declaration had chuckled. It wasn’t completely a joke. She had a pretty firm butt.

Sam, Marlie and Gus were on the second boat with Tommy. Another slim young gun with a lot of attitude and eyes that instantly made Talia think of a snake. He’d carried a blue backpack with him wherever he went on the yacht, claiming he wanted to be prepared in case the host planned a surprise drop-off. Since for most of the trip they were at least a hundred miles from any inkling of land, Talia thought that idea unlikely.

She suspected he had something in that backpack he didn’t want anyone to know about, so he refused to let it out of his sight. Considering they were about to take part on a survival show, that probably meant he’d stocked food.

Not that Evan seemed to care a whole lot about the rules. His hosting duties didn’t seem to extend that far. Also a late addition to the show, he obviously was struggling to learn all the nuances of the game himself, as he’d been useless at answering any of the questions from the group.

Tommy didn’t worry her though. Cheaters rarely did. No, if there was one person in this group she needed to be worried about beating, it was the man sitting across from her.

Reuben Serrano was strong, with lean muscles along his body that didn’t bulge but were defined well enough to suggest significant strength. He carried a little thickness in his middle, although she suspected that he’d packed on some of those pounds for the game. Not that the extra weight made him look fat or soft. Just more substantial.

From the beginning, he’d worn a stone-faced expression giving everyone around him the impression that he was someone who would fight dirty should the occasion call for it. And then there were the eight thousand other silent signals he’d sent out that said don’t get close and you won’t get hurt.

Except with her.

Getting close was all he seemed to want to do with her. Each night at dinner, he sat next to her. Each time the group gathered, he was at her side. Even if they were all sitting by the poolside or watching a movie or having a drink at the bar, it was a good bet where she was, he wasn’t far behind.

Added to that was the way he watched her…. It wasn’t sexual so much as it was predatory. Either he had guessed that she was his biggest competition and was plotting how to eliminate her or he was planning on knocking her over the head and dragging her off to the nearest cave to ravish her as soon as they got to the island.

Given that hint of primitiveness she detected in him, she couldn’t help but wonder what type of woman in this millennium could handle dating such a caveman. Not that she knew if he even had a girlfriend, or a wife for that matter. He’d said nothing about his past, his job, where he came from or who he was. He talked only about the game and about winning.

Actually, it wasn’t a bad strategy. Talia had decided early to take her cue from him. She’d never been a social butterfly—although she imagined she could give Reuben lessons on congeniality—but she knew it was smarter to play a little quieter than she normally would have. The less sharing on a game like this, with a group like this, the better. With each story that the others told, there was always a weakness to be found and possibly exploited.

To her surprise, Evan hadn’t said anything about her past Olympic experience. Maybe he was waiting for the most dramatic moment, maybe he forgot or maybe he didn’t know. He’d barely managed everyone’s names when they had first come onboard. And since no one had mentioned anything about it, she’d said nothing about it, either. Nor had she told anybody about her life growing up on a boat or her experience with fishing.

Her father had gotten her into this because he needed the money. It was important that she not lose sight of that. If she was going to put herself, her face, her whole life in the spotlight again, then it was damn well going to pay off. To the tune of one million dollars.

“Joe, the camera seemed to be slipping a bit toward the end of that. Are you sure you still had me in the frame?”

Joe, the veteran of the two cameramen, gave his boss a dirty look.

“How long have I been doing this?” It was clearly a rhetorical question.

“Fine. Whatever. Just checking,” Evan said and waved him off.

Talia tugged a bit at the constraints of her life jacket. She hadn’t been forced to wear one since she’d learned how to swim shortly after her fourth birthday. For someone as comfortable in the water as out of it, she felt ridiculous wearing the bulky equipment. That and it rubbed against her shoulders that had been left bare by the bikini top.

Nancy, however, who was sitting next to her on the bench, in a T-shirt and baggy shorts that did everything they could to conceal her chubby body, was hugging the orange preserver close to her chest.

“Do you think we’re going to have to swim?”

Talia considered the question. They were going to be stranded on an island surrounded by water for an unknown amount of time. It was a pretty good bet they were going to have to swim. But she knew that what Nancy was truly worrying about was the swim to the island. Talia tried to smile reassuringly. “Probably not too far. You can swim though, right?”

“Oh, definitely,” Nancy answered. “I’ve been taking lessons at my local Y for months now. Just to get ready for this.”

Months. Talia smiled, but didn’t say anything and thought about the likelihood of Nancy being able to swim more than a mile to shore. Often Talia had been called upon to watch over casual sport fishermen, who liked to drink hard under a hot sun only to want a relaxing swim after a day of fishing. She couldn’t count the number of times she’d had to pull one of those guys from the water or at least hold their heads up until her father could come to the rescue. So she was reasonably sure she could get Nancy to shore, but then she glanced at Iris, the grandmother, and considered the odds of getting both of them to safely to the island.

“What about you, Iris? You a swimmer?”

The older woman gave an affirmative nod. “All my life. One mile a day. Don’t you worry about me. I’ll get there in one piece.”

Talia sighed inwardly with relief. Until she realized Reuben’s intense focus was directed at her. She raised her eyes and met his stare, a silent dare for him to speak up.

“Hey, Pollyanna, the game is called Ultimate Endurance not Love Thy Neighbor.”

“So you’re saying we shouldn’t count on you for help. I hope I’m not hurting your feelings when I tell you I had already reached that conclusion. No wait. I take that back. I know I’m not hurting your feelings.”

His lips twitched. “All I’m saying is that it’s not a team sport. Every man…and woman…is on his own.”

There it was again. Something in his expression, the way he seemed to single her out, had the hair rising on the back of her neck. It was ridiculous. He was wearing dark sunglasses over his eyes; she didn’t really know that he was looking at her. But she swore that she could feel the heat of his gaze through his shades. This guy was dangerous. She just wasn’t sure in how many ways.

“I can take care of myself,” Nancy proclaimed, apparently sensing that she was the weak link. She was right.

Talia reached out to pat her hand gently and caught Reuben’s smirk. It didn’t matter. The future was looming in the shape of an island that was growing larger on the horizon. It seemed to explode out of the clear aqua water, and Talia figured since it was probably nothing more than a big volcano island, that’s exactly what it had done a couple of hundred years ago.

“Okay, Joe. Get ready.”

Talia heard the host’s commands and tensed. They were still a good mile or so from the shore. The water was shallowing out underneath the boat and she could see clear through it to the shadows of the coral reef below. She considered the predators, moray eels, gray reef sharks, tiger sharks and a sundry of fish that could bite hard enough to take a chunk out of a person. Not to mention the coral itself. If someone fell out of the boat the wrong way and impacted with the reef, it could rip flesh open, spilling blood into the water. Which would serve only to attract the predators they all very much needed to avoid.

“Are you sure this is safe?” Talia questioned Evan as the boat slowed to a bob in the water.

The host smiled, his stupid teeth practically gleaming in the sun. “Of course it is. If anything happens we can always pull you back on the boat. Don’t forget the cameras will be watching you the whole time.”

Talia wanted to ask who would be watching out for trouble in the water, but she figured Nancy was currently bumping up against a panic attack and there was no reason to suggest anything that might trigger it.

“What’s the matter, Pollyanna?” Reuben jibed. “Getting scared?”

“What do you think?”

He didn’t answer right away. Instead he smiled. “No, I don’t think you’re scared. Of the water, anyway.”

His smile widened. It was the first time she’d seen his teeth since the trip began. They were almost as white and as straight as Evan’s. Only Reuben’s smile wasn’t so much fake as it was menacing…and perversely exciting.

The second boat moved alongside and everyone nodded to each other, their expressions cautious, but also anticipatory. Both cameramen sprang into action, focusing in on the contestants one at a time. Talia did her best not to look away.

“Okay folks, here’s how it’s going to work. For the first part of this game we will be separating you into two teams. Not randomly though. This is going to be Darwinism at its purest. The first four that make it to the island, thereby the strongest, will be one team. The final four will be on the other. Once everyone gets to the island I’ll explain how the first few days are going to work. Until then, this is a race and I’m the starter. Ready. Set. Go.”

Everyone scrambled for the single backpacks that they were allowed to bring. They were only supposed to have contained some basic clothing, sneakers and, for the women, some feminine products. But the way Tommy was clutching his made Talia wonder if he hadn’t included gold along with his illegal ration of food.

It didn’t matter. It was time to focus on getting everyone safely to the island. She watched as the group from the second boat jumped overboard and began to swim. When she didn’t see any lingering signs of a brownish fluid floating to the top of the water, she assumed that they had made it safely over the reef.

Nancy was about to fall backward into the ocean, when Talia stopped her. “No. You’ve got to watch what you’re doing,” she said pointing to the shadows underneath the surface. “Check out the other side.”

Nancy bobbed her head and scrambled for the other side of the boat, while Talia stripped off her life jacket. Reuben had already stashed his glasses in his sack and dumped the jacket in the boat, but she could see he was cautiously assessing the situation rather than diving right in. Iris was also still searching for a safe spot.

“You need to the move the boat in farther,” she told Evan. “We’re sitting on top of a chunk of coral reef. It’s too dangerous.”

“This game isn’t about making it easier for you,” he stated heavily.

“Idiot,” she cursed under her breath. He was trying to make it seem dramatic, when the truth was if anyone got cut open, they would be in serious danger, if not from predators then certainly from an infection.

“There’s a clear spot here,” Reuben called to them, already in the water and treading in a way that told her there was enough depth for them to jump. Then he was off, swimming toward the shore.

Knowing she couldn’t play the game as ruthlessly, leaving her competitors to fend for themselves, she helped Iris into the water, and then turned to Nancy.

“Let’s go.”

“Maybe I should take off the jacket, too.”

“No, I think you’ll feel more comfortable with it on.” The woman had no idea the physical strength it would require swimming such a long distance in the ocean. She’d been practicing in a pool. It was the difference between driving on a highway versus racing a car in the Indy 500.

“But don’t you think it will slow me down? This is a race.”

A race that Talia had already given up the idea of winning. Someone was going to need to stay with the older woman for the duration to make sure she got to the beach. The fact that Nancy didn’t understand that she needed help wasn’t good, either. The last thing Talia needed to deal with was ego, as well as the trials of getting them both to the shore.

“Sometimes slow and steady wins it,” Talia told her encouragingly. “Let’s go.”

She got Nancy over the side and into the water. Then she hooked the woman’s backpack over one shoulder and her own over the other. The weight in both was trivial and Talia was easily able to manage them. She waited a moment as Nancy tried to acclimate herself and then jumped in behind her.

The ocean was warm and buoyant and for Talia it was like putting on a cozy sweater. She allowed herself to enjoy the feeling of floating, practically weightlessly in the salty surroundings. Swimming wasn’t as much fun as diving. But it was a close second—head and shoulders above walking or running.

Why anyone chose another method of exercise that involved panting, sweating and pain, when swimming was all about being fluid, comfortable and relaxed, she would never know. But this wasn’t a vacation. It was time for her to get to work.

Using a breaststroke helped Talia to keep the packs on her shoulders, as well as giving her a nice, easy stroke to conserve energy. She also was able to continually survey the group in front of her. She swam up next to Nancy, who was working her arms in a modified freestroke form. The divorcée was doing a lot of splashing, but she wasn’t going very far.

Splashing wasn’t as problematic as blood, but they definitely could do with less of it.

“Take it easy. We’ve got a long way to go. Just kick your legs nice and easy, not too deep, and move your arms like this.”

In an exaggerated motion, Talia showed her the move she wanted her to emulate.

“O-k-k-kay,” Nancy chattered with what only could be nerves as the water was a balmy temperature.

Together they moved, making slow but steady progress to shore. Talia used the time to study her opponents. Iris, as she’d indicated, was a sound swimmer. Seemingly in no hurry, she moved at an easy pace, lopping one arm over the other, her head twisting out of the water with each stroke to take in air. Currently, Tommy was the closest to the shore. He was doing a lot of splashing, too, but his momentum was carrying him forward at a fast clip.

Gus was swimming along behind him, but Talia could see that the former military man was keeping an eye on Marlie, who was basically dog-paddling her way to the beach. Sam was a few feet behind Marlie and struggling. He had chosen to leave his life jacket on, too, which was a good thing considering his uncoordinated moves. Fortunately, he was kicking strongly, propelling himself forward.

Not surprising, Reuben was the strongest swimmer. Maybe even as strong as she was. He was eating up the ocean stroke after stroke as cleanly as a hot knife cutting through an ice-cream cake. The thought made her mouth water slightly…the ice cream, not the man.

“How you doing, Nancy?” Talia called over her shoulder. The woman was a few feet back, but she was kicking her legs consistently. Not waiting for an answer, Talia dipped her head below the surface, eyes open as she surveyed the blurry perimeter. She could see the movement of creatures beneath the surface, not too clearly, but clear enough to make out the basic shape of the fish. Small fish. So far so good, she thought.

The sound of the small motorboats trailing them greeted her ears as she came up for air. Turning on her back to tread water, she watched the two cameramen focusing in on their natural prey—dramatic humans. Purposefully, she dipped beneath the water again when she saw Dino turn her way. Below the surface, she rolled her body over.

That’s when she saw it. Out of the corner of her eye. A large shadow moving so gracefully, it would have made her gasp had she seen it safely from the boat.

Actually, it made her gasp anyway.

Purposefully, she kept her movements fluid as she surfaced for air. Raising her hand she tried to get the attention of one of the boats, but both were too far off in either direction to notice. Evan was steering Joe toward Tommy, who was going to be the first to reach the shore, and the crewman who had piloted the other boat was a few yards behind Reuben about thirty feet off to the right.

The shadow loomed to her left, but didn’t seem to come any closer. There were no deliberate moves to indicate any sort of intent to attack so, theoretically, there was no need to worry. The trick was going to be alerting Nancy without panicking her.

Talia moved back and came up beside the older woman who was still making progress. “Not too much farther. Think you can pick it up a step?” she calmly suggested.

“Oh, I don’t think I could go faster,” she panted. “But you don’t have to wait for me. You’re going to lose the race.”

“That’s okay,” Talia said casually, her eyes searching for trouble. The shadow was out of view, but that wasn’t a good sign. She would have much preferred having a bead on the big fish the entire way to the beach.

To keep the woman calm, and herself for that matter, Talia swam around Nancy a few times, checking the perimeter and chattering about her fellow contestants. “Looks like Tommy and Marlie are going to win. I don’t mind if I’m not on that team. Too much talking, if you ask me.”

The veracity of the statement made the older woman attempt a smile despite her evident unease. No one could deny that Marlie and Tommy loved to talk, mostly about themselves. They were perfect candidates for a show such as this as they believed they were worthy of having every word and every event in their lives filmed for the benefit of others’ entertainment.

Glancing up again, Talia saw that Tommy had, in fact, reached the shore first. He’d had a pretty good head start. Then he walked backed into the water and tugged Marlie up to the beach with him, leaving Gus to fend for himself. But Gus was close enough, and so was Sam, that Talia didn’t have to worry about either of them. Iris, too, was now standing in the shallow water and, even though it was a well-known fact that shark attacks often occurred close to shore, Talia figured there was enough interest in the deeper water to keep the big fish occupied.

Taking another dip, Talia studied the sea in front of her but saw nothing. When she popped her head up, she could see that Reuben hadn’t made it to the island yet, which was strange given his previous pace. He should have overtaken at least Gus and certainly Sam. Then she saw where his gaze was pinned. He started shouting for the boat, but it didn’t seem as if the crewman could hear what he was saying.

“Oh! Oh, my goodness!”