THE GROUNDS AROUND WHITE ROCK HOUSE WERE a muddy mess that sucked at Meg’s boots as she trekked across the yard. It felt as if she were slogging through ankle-deep sand, and it took twice as much strength as usual to put one foot in front of the other. The wind was even more brutal than it had been the night before, gusting across the island, trying to uproot every tree and topple every structure in its path. Towering Douglas firs cowered before the tempest, and though Meg should have been able to hear the shuddering branches and the waves crashing against the rocks below, the only sound in her ears was the relentless, howling wind.
Meg struggled to keep up with T.J. He was at least six inches taller than she was, and his star-football-player legs had no trouble driving through the muck of the yard. He reached the tree line a full thirty seconds before she did and hardly seemed to notice when she plodded up behind him.
He stared off to the right and Meg followed his eye. Cutting through the forest was a series of wooden walkways leading down the side of the hill. They were the same kind as the footbridge that had been washed off the isthmus. The beams were rough and water-damaged, their once-brown wood now grayed and pitted with age. T.J. stepped on the first deck and tested his weight against its solidity. The walkway bounced a little, but it appeared sturdy and sound.
“Should be okay,” T.J. shouted through a wall of rain. He grabbed her hand and led her down through the trees.
The walkways were slanted and uneven—some took ten steps to traverse, others took three—and even the rubber grip on the bottom of Meg’s boots had a difficult time retaining traction on the waterlogged planks. Meg tried not to let her eyes stray over the side of the hill, where a steep drop-off ended on the jagged rocks below.
Maybe this trip to the boathouse wasn’t such a good idea. Rickety wooden land bridge? Check. Storm of the century? Check. Certain death at the hand of the rocks on the beach? Check and mate. Just like Nathan’s painfully racist joke last night: This was how horror movies started.
Up ahead, the walkways turned abruptly. The path was slanted at a precarious angle, and Meg watched T.J. hydroplane a few inches before he caught his balance. “Careful,” he shouted. “It’s a bit—”
Too late. As soon as Meg’s rain boots hit the slanted planks, they lost their grip on the wood. Meg slid down the walkway, totally out of control, and pitched forward toward the rail. She saw a flash of the hillside barreling toward her and pictured her body careening headfirst down the cliff. She reached her hands out to brace herself against the railing, and prayed the rickety wood would stop her. No such luck. The wooden railing gave way and Meg squeezed her eyes shut. This was it.
But instead of falling, Meg felt a strong arm around her waist. With a grunt, T.J. hauled her body away from the edge and spun around, pulling them both back to safety. They slid against the large tree that supported the walkway on the inside of the hill, and Meg leaned her body into his as they stood there panting.
“You okay?” he asked. His arms were still around her waist.
“Yeah,” Meg said. Her heart pounded in her chest, though whether it was from the near-death experience or from feeling T.J.’s body pressed against her own she wasn’t entirely sure.
“That was close.” He gazed over her shoulder toward the bend in the path. “Someone should really fix that.”
Meg didn’t even want to think about what would have happened if T.J. hadn’t been there.
With his arm still around her, T.J. eased her down to the next platform that wound back around the hillside. Slowly, carefully, they continued on toward the boathouse, until T.J. suddenly paused.
“Shit,” he said.
Meg looked up at him. “What?”
“There were some flashlights by the patio door,” he said. “I forgot to grab them.” He looked down toward the boathouse, then back up to the house past the dangerous bend in the path as if weighing his options. “Shit,” he said again. “We’ll need them. Stay here?”
Stay on a hillside by herself in the middle of nowhere? After almost plummeting to her death? Um, no. She started to protest, but T.J. didn’t give her the opportunity. Faster than Meg could react, he reached down and gave her a quick kiss on the lips, then whirled around and headed back up the hill.
Meg felt dizzy. Had he just kissed her? Had T. J. Fletcher just kissed her?
Several thoughts filled Meg’s head simultaneously.
Number one—she was quite possibly going to pass out from joy.
Number two—had he meant to kiss her? Had it been a mistake? No, that was silly. How could it possibly have been a mistake unless he was trying to lick something off her face?
Number three—was there any way Minnie might have seen them?
The last was the most disturbing. Meg blinked through the onslaught of rain and craned her head to try and get a view of the house. She could just make out the line of windows along the enclosed patio, and even then it was just a glimpse of glittering white through the trees. No, she was safe. Unless Minnie had followed them to the boathouse. Meg stepped up to the higher walkway and tried to follow the path back to the house, but the angle of the hillside and the thickening trees made it impossible to see more than a hundred feet behind her.
Good. If she couldn’t see the house, Minnie couldn’t see her.
Meg leaned back against a tree for support. The rain was falling in sheets, so fast and so heavy that she couldn’t differentiate the individual drops anymore. Every few seconds the wind would shift, giving Meg a face full of rain. The storm was fierce, unrelenting, and Meg could barely keep her eyes open in the face of its violence.
She squinted down at the rocks below. The waves crashed against the rocky island so viciously she could feel their impact, though oddly, she couldn’t hear them. She couldn’t hear any individual sounds, actually. The wind and the rain created a kind of white noise backdrop that drowned everything else out. Meg opened her mouth and yelled into the storm, then laughed to herself. She could barely hear her own voice.
Meg quickly realized it wasn’t funny. No one could hear her scream. That was the truth. As she stood, lashed by rain and straining against the wind to even stand upright, the whole island took on a more sinister feel.
Meg shivered. How long had T.J. been gone? Surely long enough to run back up to the house and get back to her. Still, she didn’t want him to rush. One misstep on those slippery wooden walkways and he’d go crashing headfirst onto the rocks below. Why would anyone build such a dangerous path? It was almost as if—
A hand grabbed Meg’s shoulder. She screamed, her heart leaping to her throat, and spun around to find T.J.
“You okay?” he yelled through the rain. He had two orange-handled flashlights sticking out of each of his coat pockets. He wasn’t smiling.
Meg nodded.
“Your teeth are chattering,” he said.
“They are?” Meg took mental stock of herself. She was drenched from head to foot and yes, her teeth were indeed chattering. She was so lost in T.J.’s kiss and the weird ambiance of the island that she hadn’t even noticed.
“Come on,” T.J. said.
Meg blindly stumbled behind him. Just above the rocky shore, the walkway stopped at a set of steep wooden stairs. The railing was wobbly, but T.J. took the steps one at a time, slow and careful. Then together they pushed open the rickety door of the Lawrences’ boathouse.