Page 9 of Escape to Lighthouse Cove

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’dknownit 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… itwasn’tdark. 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,andonto 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 thatsomeonewas 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 todiehere, 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 todo?

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.