Halden had never imagined he could feel as terrified as he was at that moment. The girl had left the island sooner than what everyone had planned and, because of that, he had to improvise. He hated improvising—because improvising meant something had gone wrong and at any moment anything could happen, and he was never good at dealing with surprises.
The moment the girl left, he followed her to the other side, competing against time to make it back before she drowned in that freezing water. The plan was that she was supposed to stay behind on the island longer than he did, ensuring that he had enough time to pull her out of the ocean before she came back, but they had never anticipated that she would have a panic attack—or that Alec would go against his orders and triggered it.
