by Eva Pohler
Chapter Sixteen: Surprise on the Beach
Daphne crawled along the bottom of the stream against the current until it became shallow, and she was forced to stand. Crouching, she dashed behind a scrawny shrub, a poor cover, and then zipped up a dusty canyon ridge toward the southeast, stopping behind a boulder to catch her breath. From the safe cover of the boulder to the top of the ridge was nothing but a gravelly slope. Although she couldn’t be seen from Central Valley, anyone on Sierra Blanca could easily spot her if they happened to be looking this way. But time was precious, so she took the risk and dashed up the hill and then flattened herself against the canyon ridge, prone, eyes peeking over the other side, as the ancient Indians who once inhabited the island must have done when strangers docked their boats.
On the other side of the canyon ridge, Willows Anchorage, the private pier of the resort, came into view. Empty of both people and boats, the dock was occupied by a flock of pelicans.
Daphne climbed to her feet and ran down the steep gravelly canyon wall. She slipped and fell on her hip, ripping her shorts, but got up and kept running, even though her skin stung where the rocks had rubbed her raw. If only a boat would come and take her back to the mainland. But Hortense Gray once said this was the private dock of the resort.
She ran past the pier toward the bluffs where she had watched Stan leap into the ocean a few days ago. She still couldn’t believe he could betray her. It was strange, but she felt as betrayed by Stan as she had by Cam even though she hadn’t known Stan long. Cam was her best friend, but she had begun to think of Stan as the big brother she had always wished Joey could be.
The bluffs were steeper from this side than she realized coming down the canyon wall. She reached her out hands and pulled her body up the bluffs.
Scaling the bluffs reminded her of climbing the rock wall at her old gym at Alamo Heights, except here she had no gear and harness supporting her. Yet, as she dug her feet one at a time into shallow ledges, she felt surprisingly elated. Maybe it was because she had made it this far, so close to the resort without having been found.
She reached the top and flattened to her belly, remembering what Cam once said about the watchers: they could see her and Cam down on the beach even if they couldn’t hear them. They might be able to see her up here as well. She crawled like a soldier across the top, her elbows and knees rubbed raw and stinging.
From here the ocean appeared less brutal, and she considered leaping in like Stan had done that morning a few days ago. He had done it repeatedly and had loved it. If he could do it, why couldn’t she?
And if the water slammed her into the stone and killed her, would it matter?
She recalled the glass-bottom pool and how much pleasure she took from swimming a few days ago. While kayaking, too, before the incident with the tide, she had been fascinated and excited and full of a kind of joy. The sea lions and sting rays and the falls, the paintings on the walls, the crystal water reflecting the bright sun, all had made her happy. Being with Cam again had rejuvenated her and made her feel alive. Maybe it was possible to live and be happy as long as she didn’t have to face the people she had let down. Maybe she didn’t need to kill herself. She could run away and start over where no one knew her.
She scooted over the top and gazed down at the pristine beach below. The yellow poppies on the hills opposite her waved to her in the distance. As she soaked in their beauty, hoping for the strength to continue down the other side of the bluffs, a guy on the boardwalk caught her eye.
She wondered why this able-bodied person wasn’t with the rest of the search party. He gazed out over the water and then descended the steps toward the beach. As he neared the coastline, her jaw dropped open and goose bumps popped out all over her arms and legs. The guy looked exactly like Brock.
It couldn’t be!
He slipped off his sandals and put his feet in the water. He glanced up in her direction and she flattened as far down as she could without taking her eyes from him. The look of his face only further confirmed her suspicions. He had the same brown hair and square neck and jaw. He turned the other way, toward the poppies. She quickly scooted to the edge overlooking the ocean and scaled down the bluffs and out of his view. When she was close enough to the water, she dived past the crashing waves out as far as she could reach in the cold water and swam at a diagonal against the current as hard as she could so as not to be slammed back into the bluffs.
When she resurfaced, huffing for breath, she saw the guy running toward her. She stiffened, unable to react. She had hoped to go unnoticed. Where could she go? What should she do? Swim out to sea? She was a strong swimmer, but she was tired and starving and suddenly terrified.
“Daphne, my God. You’re alive!”
It was Brock running toward her through the waves.
He wrapped his arms around her.
She melted into the familiar feel of those strong arms encircling her and for a moment forgot their history. There was only now, this moment, in his arms, and she leaned into him, exhausted and relieved. Tears ran down her face. Then reality set in as she felt the sting of her sunburn, and she pushed herself away from him.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her eyes drawn to his thick, luscious lips.
“I wanted to go search for you with the others, but they said to wait here, in case you made it back.”
“I mean here on the island. We have to get out of here.”
He followed her through the waves toward the shore. “What do you mean?”
“These people are crazy. Why did you come here?”
“Because of the letter.”
She stopped. “What letter?”
“The one you wrote.”
“Brock, I didn’t write you a letter.”
“Not me, your parents.”
“I didn’t write them a letter.”
He looked confused, his brows bent. His blue eyes, deep and endless like the sky, narrowed.
“Follow me,” she said as she took his hand and led him to the poppies. There was a thin strip of beach, now that the tide was low, between the hills and the ocean where she hoped they couldn’t be seen from beyond the boardwalk. Dizzy and light-headed, she sat on a rock. “Now tell me. What letter?”
She hadn’t seen him in months and he looked good—in his snug shirt and plaid shorts, skin tanned and longer hair whipping in the wind all around his bright blue eyes. When he touched her, it burned, but not because she was sunburnt. He burned a charge through her, like jump-starting a dead battery.
He sat opposite her. “They got a letter from you saying you were on this island and someone stole your credit card and you couldn’t leave the hotel without paying fifty thousand dollars in charges, or they’d arrest you, could they send money.”
“I never wrote that.”
“What? Then who…”
“They’re stealing money. That’s what this is really about.” She couldn’t believe it, but she should have known, because everything was always about money.
It occurred to her that Brock could be in on it and the whole bit about the letter and the credit card charges was a lie. What if what Cam had said about her mother sending her here for therapy was true and Brock had been brought in to help?
“Your mom was worried. She asked me to come.”
“Did you just arrive?”
“Wasn’t easy to find this place. Kept getting the run-around.”
“So you got here today?”
“Yeah, this morning. Couldn’t believe it when they didn’t know where you were.”
“What did they say? Who’d you talk to?”
“This black chick named Hortense Gray. Said you went off exploring and hadn’t returned. She took your mom’s check but wouldn’t let me help with the search. In fact, she didn’t seem pleased to see me. Wants me on the first boat out of here.”
“They play strange games here. I was almost killed when a horse threw me.”
“Are you joking?”
She
searched his eyes. “Tell me the truth about what you know. I’m really tired.”
“All I know is what your mother told me. You were almost killed?”
“Yes. And then I had a gun trained on me.”
“A gun? Jesus!”
“We got to get off this island. We’ll have to follow the coastline all the way back to Scorpion Anchorage.”
“That’s toward the mainland, right? We passed that coming in.”
“Yeah. Let’s get going.” Daphne turned to go, but Brock grabbed her arm and turned her to face him. Again, a charge jolted through her from his skin through hers, something more than the sting of her burned skin.
“Wait. When was the last time you ate or drank anything?”
She pulled her arm away. “They’re searching for me as we speak. Come on.”
“The resort is dead except for a few women lounging by the pool. This one chick named Emma started flirting with me till she got my name. She said, ‘Daphne’s Brock?’ I hadn’t heard that in a while.” He gave her a warm smile.
Daphne blushed and lowered her eyes, and the pain of what she had done flooded over her. If only she had gotten out of bed. “Yeah, well…”
“Let me run back and get some food and water and my wallet, so I can get us back home, if you’re sure that’s what we should do.”
“If I’m sure? What did I just tell you? They had a gun on me!”
“And you know they’re connected with the resort?”
“Brock, trust me.”
“You gotta know how freaky it all sounds.”
“I know.”
“Let me get some stuff. I’ll be right back.”
Daphne crossed her arms and thought about this. She might be a sitting duck waiting here for Brock. “I’ll go on ahead another mile or so and wait for you. Don’t stop to talk to anyone if you can avoid it.”
He started to touch her shoulder, but stopped. “You’re so burnt.”
“Listen Brock, there are cameras everywhere. They even had a camera on a fox trained to follow me.” The memory of his little body curled helplessly in her arms made her wince. “I’m telling you this place is crazy, so be careful.”
He stared at her and didn’t say anything.
“Are you listening?”
“Yeah. I’ll catch up with you.”
He touched her hair, then bent and kissed the top of her head. Heat surged through her all the way down to her toes.
“I’ve missed you, Daph.” He turned to go. “I’ll find you. Keep an eye out for me.”
It took her several minutes to recover. She hadn’t seen Brock since New Year’s Day when he came to see her in the hospital. She hadn’t wanted visitors because she was still getting used to the idea that she was alive, but he had come anyway. She wouldn’t look at him, wouldn’t talk to him. He had said he would pray for her and had left.
Before that, it had been November. She had just dropped out of her senior year of high school even though Brock had begged her not to do it.
“You’re so close,” he had said.
But Kara didn’t get to graduate. Joey didn’t get to graduate. Why should she when it was all her fault that they hadn’t? She could have saved Kara’s life had she gotten out of bed. And saving Kara might have stopped Joey from falling off the deep end.
Two weeks after she dropped out, Brock came to say they should take a break. She didn’t see him again until New Year’s Day—the day that wasn’t supposed to come for her.
And today, six months later, he took her in his arms like they were good friends, maybe even boyfriend and girlfriend, like nothing had gone wrong. Had her mother made him feel obligated to come, or had he wanted to see her?
Tears rushed from her eyes as she hiked along the thin strip of beach near the poppies toward the east, weak and dizzy and her hip hurting from where she had fallen and scraped it. A yellowish bruise formed around it.
Why had Brock come?
She laughed at herself, out loud, scaring a gull from its perch on a nearby rock. Here she was being tormented by a bunch of freaks on a remote island and her primary thought was about Brock’s motives?
Come on, Daphne.
But she couldn’t help herself. She had made him miserable with her inability to ever be happy again. She wouldn’t allow herself to be happy and she didn’t want Brock to suffer, so she had begun to shut him out little by little until he couldn’t take it anymore and left her. In another world where Kara was still alive, where Joey hadn’t electrocuted Grandpa and then sunk into psychosis, in that world, Daphne would love Brock like she could love no other and they would live happily ever after.
But this wasn’t that world. So why had he come? He could have told her mother no, if she had indeed asked him to come—whether to bring the check as he had said or to participate in the therapeutic games. Either way, he could have said no and he hadn’t.
