Chapter 6
Noah couldn’t concentrate. It was annoying, because it wasn’t a problem he normally had.
He could spend eight or ten hours in front of a computer screen, losing himself in facts and figures, the comforting familiarity of them as well as the excitement of their possibility.
Sometimes staring at the stock market live reports was the only respite from the torment of his own mind, his memories.
But today it wasn’t working. He felt like the inside of his brain was itchy, a restlessness coursing through him and making his fingers twitch on the keyboard before, letting out an irritated sigh, he slammed his laptop shut.
This was all Isaiah’s fault. This morning the old man had forwarded him an email about some therapy app he might find helpful.
As if. And then he’d come in at lunchtime, heaving several sighs as he stood in the doorway of Noah’s study and told him that Grace—he called the warden by her first name now, like they were already friends—had been to the office and seemed to be settling in well.
“I saw her walking along the beach with her little boy just now,” he’d said, like that was supposed to mean something to Noah. “Looks like he enjoys searching for sea glass. You remember—”
“Isaiah.” Noah had cut him off with a glower.
Of course he remembered. Jem’s sea glass collection had been legendary, each precious piece polished to an enviable shine, displayed on a shelf in the room he hadn’t yet ventured into, even though he’d been living at Grayhaven for a year and a half. Some things were just too hard.
“Enough,” he’d said, slashing his hand through the air for emphasis, and Isaiah had fallen silent, seeming suitably chastened.
But what he’d said had been bad enough, because now Noah was thinking about things he didn’t want to.
Jem. Sea glass. This unknown woman and her lonely little boy.
A groan escaped him and he lurched out of his chair, spinning away from his desk.
He stood by the window, his eyes clenched shut against the memories that rolled over him, as relentless as the tide sweeping over the beach outside.
Jem, his pale face contorted in anguish.
I can’t do it anymore, Noah. I just can’t. Please, you have to help me…
And he hadn’t listened. Worse, he’d dismissed Jem’s fears, his brother’s consuming anxiety, insisted that everything was fine when deep down he’d known it hadn’t been. The truth was, he’d been riding so high on his own stupid success that he simply hadn’t cared.
A light flickered against Noah’s clenched lids, and he opened his eyes, frowning, because the study window faced the ocean, black and endless under a sky that had already deepened into darkness.
Except… it wasn’t dark. A thin beam of yellow light was flashing right into his face. What the hell…?
Noah leaned closer, his narrowed gaze sweeping the stretch of rocky beach, treacherous in the swiftly rising tide, below the house. A startled gasp escaped him, and then he swore.
There was a person stranded on one of the rocks far below, a woman… and a child. A little boy.
The island’s new warden, he realized, was in serious trouble.
Grace was doing her best to hold on. Hold on to her hope, and onto this wretched rock, which was fast becoming a very precarious place to be.
The tide was continuing to rise, and while she still held a frail hope that the ocean wouldn’t completely cover the rock, she wasn’t willing to count on it.
Which was why, with Jacob clinging to her like a barnacle, she was waving her flashlight, so the beam hit the lit window of Grayhaven high above them, in the desperate hope that someone was there. Someone who could save them.
Jacob’s arms tightened around her neck as Grace held him to her, her other arm aching as she continued to raise and wave it, sending the faint beam of light arcing against the window.
Was it even hitting the glass? She couldn’t tell from this angle.
And what if no one was there? Maybe they just left a light on to make it look like someone was home when nobody was.
Nobody, not Bab or Ned or Isaiah, had indicated that anyone was resident in that big, gloomy castle.
A sob bottled in her throat and she forced it down. She wasn’t going to die here, she told herself. She hadn’t rescued herself and her son from a suffocating and insufferable living situation simply to drown in a swirling sea. No way.
Lowering her arm, Grace glanced around her.
The water was too high to wade through now, and if they tried to swim they’d either freeze to death or be swept out to sea.
If she’d been going to make a run for the cliffs, she realized, she should have done it at least twenty minutes ago. Now she was left with very few choices.
What was she going to do?
Another sob rose in her throat, and this time it slipped out.
She hugged Jacob to her, pressing her cold lips to his hair, her mind frozen and blank.
She’d considered several ideas already, discarding each one almost as soon as she’d thought of it—leave Jacob on the rock while she tried to make it to the cliffs?
No way could she leave her son, ever, anywhere.
Send an SOS text to the Coast Guard? She’d already checked and her phone had no signal.
Besides, one thing she’d read during her brief online search was that the Coast Guard was sixty miles away, in Eastport.
It would take them hours to find her… if they ever did.
“Oh, God…” she whispered, a prayer, the only hope she had left.
Then, to her shock, she heard a shout. She turned, craning her neck to try to see in the approaching dark.
“I’m coming!”
Was she imagining those words, that shout? Hallucinating, in her exhaustion and terror? Grace continued to clutch Jacob to her as she tried to peer through the darkness.
“I’m here!” she shouted, the words ripped from her throat. “I’m here with my son, please…”
Then, to her amazement, she saw a figure striding through the water like a Colossus.
She couldn’t make out his features, only that it was a man, and a tall one at that.
The water would have been up to her neck at least on her five-foot-four frame, but on him it came only to his chest. Each time a wave hit him he rocked back a little and then steadied himself.
Another sob escaped her. She couldn’t believe they might actually be rescued. Be safe…
In the next moment, the man was at the base of the rock, throwing a rope up toward her that she had to lurch forward to catch.
“Tie this around yourself,” he shouted, and she fumbled to obey, her cold hands clumsy, Jacob still clinging to her, making the seemingly simple task much more complicated.
The whipping wind didn’t help, either. As she knotted the rope, the flashlight slipped from her grasp and disappeared into the swirling water, gone forever.
A gasp escaped her and finally the knot in the rope held.
“I’ve… I’ve done it,” she called, and he held out his arms.
“Give me the boy.”
Gulping, barely able to take anything in, Grace peeled Jacob off her.
“This is the only way,” she told him, her voice shaking as she gazed down at him, trying to imbue him with a certainty she was desperate to feel herself, willing him to trust her, as well as the man standing below them.
“So we can be safe,” she whispered, and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
And then, breathing a wordless prayer, she handed her son down to the stranger.
She let out another sob as his arms came around Jacob, holding him securely. Thank God. Then, with the boy settled firmly on his hip, the man reached his arms up to her, the sea swirling about his waist. “You next,” he said, and taking a deep breath, Grace jumped.
In the next moment, the whole world went dark.
Grace woke suddenly, with a gasp, like she’d been jerked out of a nightmare. She blinked in the gloom, breathing in a smell she didn’t recognize. Leather and wood, a hint of pipe smoke and mustiness.
Blinking rapidly, her heart still racing, she scooted herself up onto her elbows and pushed her hair out of her face.
Her head was pounding along with her heart, and it took her a moment to focus on what was in front of her.
A dim room, the bulky shapes of furniture—sofas and chairs, all in heavy dark wood, thick velvet drapes drawn against the night.
She was on some kind of chaise, and, she realized with a blaze of shock, she was naked, covered only by a blanket.
For a few seconds she couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Where was Jacob?
Memories came back to her, like jagged pieces of a puzzle that didn’t quite fit.
The tide, the rock, the fear. The man, striding through the water.
And then darkness, and flashes of memory, like puzzle pieces slotting into place.
Being held in a man’s arms. Going up some stairs.
Her jeans being peeled away while she’d made some mumbled protest. A blanket placed over her.
Holding that blanket up to her naked body, Grace looked around the dimly lit room. She was in some kind of sitting room, an ornate stone fireplace taking up most of one wall. She must be inside Grayhaven, she realized. And Jacob must be here, too.
Relief coursed through her, along with some serious trepidation.
She was completely naked, after all, which was not a state she particularly liked finding herself, especially when she had no idea who had undressed her.
The man who had rescued her, presumably, but who was he?
A Lawrence, or some stranger? Although even if he was a Lawrence, she reflected, he was still a stranger.
And there was definitely something very strange about this situation.
Grace tucked the blanket more securely around her, swinging her legs onto the floor, only to have her head start to swim. She sat there for a moment, taking deep breaths, willing herself onward. She needed to find her son.
She dropped her head into her hands, shocked when she realized she had a gauze bandage covering her left temple. Her head was still swimming. She must have hit her head when she’d come off the rock. The last thing she remembered was handing Jacob down…
The creak of a door opening had her tensing as she hugged the blanket to her body. A man stood there, no more than a looming shadow in the gloom.
“Ah,” he said with a slow nod. “You’re awake.”