He didn’t trust the water behind him, not even when it stilled. Every few seconds he jerked his head toward the horizon, half-expecting the water to rise again. The adrenaline drained slowly, leaving him shivering.
His palms still smelled faintly of oil, the kind you wiped from a bilge pump or an engine block. He rubbed them against the sand, trying to scrub it away, but the metallic tang lingered. It made no sense. The sea didn’t smell like that.