The Purgatorium

Chapter Sixteen

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?