“Good-night. And I’m really sorry.”

Neale fastened the doors and followed his brother out of the room, but though Kelsey slid right into bed again, she couldn’t sleep. She lay awake long after the voices in the next room had stopped, and when the room finally began to lighten, she got up at once. Throwing on shorts and a T-shirt, she crept downstairs and let herself out. If she was going to be stuck here, she might as well see what there was to do.

The beach was deserted at this early hour. Kelsey walked to the water’s edge and stared out over the waves. She didn’t swim anymore since the accident, and a cold hatred had replaced her love of the water. Now, as she turned away from it, she fought back tears and carefully trained her eyes on the sand and its scatterings of shells and driftwood.

A lifeguard station loomed up ahead of her, a dark skeleton against lavender daybreak. She paused for a minute, leaning her head against the stilted legs of the wooden tower, and took a deep breath, listening to the gulls, the rumble of the surf. Strange that there wasn’t another soul on the whole beach…yet somehow, she felt like she wasn’t alone…

Suppressing a shudder, Kelsey hurried on. The sun was higher now, and as the sky paled around her, something in the distance took on sudden shape and substance, separating itself from the gloom and stopping her midstride.

She had seen it yesterday from the jeep window. Only now it was even closer. And even more menacing.

The craggy wall of rock rose steeply against the horizon, clawing ragged holes in the dawn, yet as she stared, Kelsey began to see that it wasn’t a sheer wall at all—rather a mass of sharp cliffs and oversized boulders lumped together, leaning far out into the sea. They seemed so cruel, somehow, as if deep, deep down, below the ugly scars and ridges, there was a mind, slow and cunning, aware of everything. Glancing nervously around, Kelsey went on.

The beach began to disappear. One moment it was clutching the rocks, and then it tapered off, tunneling beneath a low stone overhang as the cliffs swallowed it whole. Kelsey stopped, uncertain. Surely there must be another pathway…

Gasping, she whirled, her eyes darting nervously over the empty beach behind her. Empty…

And yet she’d had that feeling again…that someone was watching her.

Shading her eyes, she scanned the crags above. The sun, inching steadily higher, dissolved the last of the shadows and drenched the rocks golden, and as Kelsey squinted against the glare, she noticed one peak pulling away from the others, standing out from the mass of rocks as if it didn’t really belong. She walked closer, eyes glued to the peculiar shape, and then a smile spread over her face.

“A lighthouse!”

In the sunlight the tall tower stood out easily from its surroundings, and Kelsey’s eyes swept the incline, looking for a way up. She threaded her way behind the dunes, through sparse patches of trees growing back from the sand, skirting the cliffs. To her delight she discovered a narrow road carved into the side of the cliff, leading upwards, disappearing into the jagged spears of rock. A high iron gate had been erected across the entrance—nearly twelve feet tall, she guessed—and the gate was open. Kelsey frowned and went closer. The chain that secured the gate was swinging free, the huge iron padlock unhinged. Taking a deep breath, she squeezed between the gate and the rocks and started up.