Gray's Domain: Purgatorium Series, Book Two (22 page)

“They went fishing together?” Daphne asked Dr. Reynolds.

“Yep.
Take a look.”

“This isn’t so bad, now is it, Sharon?” her dad said.

“No, it’s not, but you promised I wouldn’t have to touch a fish,” her mother said smiling.

“What do you think, Joey?” her dad asked. “We used to have a rule that when you reached a certain age, you had to take off your own fish.”

“Well, you already baited the hook for her and broke one rule,” Joey said. “You may as well break another.”

Daphne was surprised by how relaxed and easy-going her brother sounded. His face showed emotion, like it used to in the old days.

“Good point,” Joe said.

“Isn’t this a beautiful place?” Sharon asked. “You know I never liked the beach much—I don’t like getting sand all over me and in my clothes, but the island and wildlife around here are amazing to look at. In fact, look over there.” Sharon pointed to something out of the view of the camera.

“Where?” Joe asked.

Sharon stood up in the boat. “Right over there. See it?
Ahh!” Just then, Sharon lost her balance and fell over the side of the boat.

“Mom?”
Joey leaned over, searching for her.

“She’s not wearing her life jacket, son. Can you help her?”

Daphne realized her mother’s “fall” was part of an exercise because her father was a terrible actor, but Joey just might be new enough to the island to not suspect anything. With his life vest on, he leapt over the boat. The angle of the camera didn’t allow a good view of what happened next because the boat was in the way, but soon Joey was helping their mother over the edge of the boat while their father held on to the dock to keep the boat from tipping over.

Once they were safe inside the boat, her mother—not much better at acting than her father—said, “You saved my life, Joey! My leg got caught in a bed of kelp and I couldn’t swim. I panicked. Oh my God, Joey. What would I have done without you?”

Sharon hugged Joey as she cried real tears. The camera zoomed in on Joey’s stunned face. His fingers trembled, but there was an unmistakable twinkle in his eyes, which were welling with tears. Daphne realized she, too, was crying, even though she knew it was all an act.

The screen went blank. Daphne wiped her eyes and removed the headphones. She was glad that Joey was able to play the hero, but not sure if she agreed with deceit and manipulation as a form of therapy. Was lying to him really a good way to help him?

“So tell me what my family is doing now.” She had to admit that in spite of her reservations she was surprised to see Dr. Gray’s therapy working magic on her brother.

Dr. Reynolds removed the headphones, leaned back in his chair, and pointed to a screen closer to him. “You see that cabin?”

It was a small wooden structure that reminded her of the tiny cabins at a little resort in Colorado—just four walls, only big enough for bunkbeds and a table that converted into a third bed. She couldn’t see the inside of this particular cabin, but she did see it was on a cement slab much larger than the cabin, creating a wrap-around patio cut into the side of a hill.

“Yeah, so?”

“Our crew just rebuilt that cabin. I don’t know how many times we’ve rebuilt it. Dozens, I guess.”

“Why do you have to keep rebuilding it?” Daphne felt uneasy.

“You remember that day you went on the trail ride with Kelly for the first time?”

“Yeah?”

“Remember the smoke you saw?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, that smoke was part of a regular exercise we run on the island at that cabin.”

Daphne rubbed the pain in her forehead. “What do you mean? You don’t set the cabin on fire.”

“As a matter of fact, we do. We burn it to the ground.”

Chapter Eighteen: Restraint

Daphne found it hard to navigate in the cloudy night with no moon and stars to guide them. It was tricky enough to find her way around the island in the daytime with the sun for a compass, but this was nuts. Roger had driven her and Brock around the canyon ridge, through Central Valley, to the base of Sierra Blanca, to a fork in the road. The sign at the fork pointed right to Chumash Ruins/Christy Ranch and left to Sierra Blanca. Roger had told them to follow the trail up the mountain to the cabin. He refused to drive them farther or to give them flashlights because he was afraid they would ruin the exercise.

“Keep outta sight,” he had warned them. “And don’t intervene. You’re watchers. You aren’t to enter the game. Let Stan and the others handle it.”

Daphne was grateful that he and Dr. Reynolds had allowed her to come, so she hadn’t argued. But now, as she and Brock plowed carefully through the tall, itchy grass growing on either side of the trail in the near-pitch dark, she worried they’d never find the cabin in time.

“This is ridiculous,” Brock complained. “What are we doing?”

“I’m afraid for my family,” Daphne said.

“Roger sent us on a wild goose chase.”

“He didn’t want flashlights to ruin anything,” she said.

“He should have guided us on foot.”

A circle of light on the ground brought Daphne to a halt. “What’s that?”

“A manhole?”

At that moment, Stan’s head emerged with a light attached to his cap.

“Hey, guys,” Stan said. “Come on in.”

Daphne glanced at Brock and then back at Stan. She did
not
want to climb into the ground. “Where’s the cabin?”

“It’s up the mountain,” Stan said. “You can get to it easier from down here. Come on, we don’t have all night.”

Stan’s head disappeared, but the glow of his light illuminated the steel ladder leading down a circular tube about three feet in diameter.

“It’s okay,” Brock told her. “You can do this. If it gets to be too much for you, we can always come back up.”

Brock descended first. Daphne’s stomach was in knots, but if this was the way to help her family, she would do it. She climbed down the cold steel ladder about fifteen feet to the ground, where she landed on a smooth rock floor.

“What is this place?” she asked.

“It was built during World War Two,” Stan explained. “It tunnels beneath the mountain all the way to Punta Arena. Follow me.”

With weak knees, Daphne held tightly to Brock’s hand and followed, even though a voice inside her head begged her not to. Stan led them through the three-foot-by-seven-foot tunnel at a gentle incline for about a hundred feet. Along the way, Daphne noticed hatch doors, like one would find on a submarine, lining the wall of the tunnel every ten yards or so. When she had asked where they led to, Stan had shrugged and had simply said they hadn’t been used since the war.

Eventually they came to a larger chamber, which resembled the surveillance room adjacent to Dr. Gray’s office. A grid of monitors hung on one wall. There were desks and chairs, two of which were occupied by Dave and Vince. Except for a small desk lamp, the only light in the room came from the monitors.

“How’s it hanging?” Dave said chuckling.

“Hey,” Brock greeted him.

Stan closed the hatch door they had just entered.

“Do you have to do that?” Daphne asked, feeling like she was suffocating.

“Sorry, kiddo,” Stan said. “I really do.”

“Why?” she asked. “There’s no one out there.”

“I’m not worried about people getting in,” Stan said.

Daphne’s heart picked up speed. “What, then?”

“We can’t risk you ruining the exercise for Joey,” Stan explained.

Daphne looked at the faces around her for some sign, some explanation, because Stan didn’t make sense. “Are you saying I’m a prisoner?”

“Not exactly,” Stan said.

“Geez. Calm down.” Dave added with a giggle.

“Then what
are
you saying?” Brock demanded.

“Look,” Stan said. “Dr. Gray knew you would try to find this place on your own if she didn’t let you come out here, but she also knew you would enter the game if she didn’t stop you.”

“So she ordered us to keep you here until the exercise was over,” Dave said.

“What?” Daphne shouted, near panic.

“But you can watch it all on the screen,” Vince said.

“And we are literally right under the cabin,” Stan added. “If anything goes wrong, the guys and I can easily intervene.”

“Why? Is there a secret entrance from down here?” Brock asked.

“Yeah, but don’t expect directions to it,” Dave said.

He and Vince chuckled.

“Look, kiddo,” Stan said. “I promise no one will get hurt.”

“You can’t promise that!” Daphne cried. “It’s impossible!”

“The fire is contained,” Stan said. “There is nothing flammable around the cabin. We have a sprinkler system installed, which we control from down here.”

The mention of sprinklers calmed Daphne down a bit and made her less terrified for her family. “Fires spread quickly,” she said. “I’m just sayin’.”

“We’ve done this, like, fifty times,” Vince said.

“You get to see your big brother play the hero,” Dave said.

“And if he doesn’t?” Daphne asked, fearing the worst. “What if he runs for his life and leaves my parents behind?” His illness made him unpredictable. There was no way of knowing how he would react.

“He won’t,” Stan said.

Daphne wasn’t so sure. She turned to Brock. “I’m scared.”

Brock squeezed her good hand and kissed her forehead. “I’ve got your back,” he whispered.

“This could really help Joey,” Stan said. “Let’s give it a chance to work.”

Daphne glanced at the monitors behind Stan and saw her parents and Joey making s’mores on the patio outside of the cabin. A lantern added to the soft glow emanating from the fire pit, which her family sat around in lounging chairs. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she could see by the smiles on their faces that they were happy.

Stan noticed where her gaze had gone.
“Ready to sit down and listen?”

Daphne nodded and took a chair behind one of the desks where a set of headphones awaited her. Brock sat beside her, and Stan handed a set to him, too.

“Look. The clouds have moved on,” her father said over the headphones. “You can see the stars again.”

Joey brought a mostly burnt marshmallow on the end of a steel skewer up from the fire pit and then handed it over to their mom.

“You like them burnt, right?” he asked her.

He wasn’t kidding. Their mom really did like them that way. Sharon smiled at him and took the marshmallow between two pieces of graham cracker. “
Thanks, honey.”

“My good friend, Judge William Clark, told me that the North Koreans could be invading any day,” Joey said.

Daphne frowned. Joey sounded like his usual self. He always talked about his good friend Judge William Clark, but, as far as anyone knew, no such person existed.

“The CIA probably has something in place to deflect any attack,” Joey said. “But, but, I don’t think they’ll be recruiting me anymore. Maybe they never recruited me.
Right? Maybe they never recruited me.”

“I don’t think so,” their mother said.

“I’m sorry, son,” Joe added.

As Joey held the skewer over the flame to burn off the rest of the gooey marshmallow residue, he asked, “When do you think Daphne will wake up?”

Daphne’s hand moved to her heart. She exchanged a glance with Brock, who winked at her.

“Dr. Gray says tomorrow,” Joe said.

Once Sharon had swallowed down her bite of the s’more, she added, “She’ll be so happy to see you.”

“Hmm,” Joey said.

“Aren’t
you
happy?” their mother asked. “Happy to be here with us?”

Joey looked around, as though considering his answer.
“Almost.”

“Why almost?” their father asked.

“For the same reason as you,” he said. “It’s the most we can ever expect to be, don’t you think? We’ll—all of us—only ever be
almost
happy.”

Daphne’s hand moved to her lips.

Joe shook his head. “I disagree. I’ve made peace with the past. I know Kara is waiting for me in heaven, and right now, at this moment, I am completely happy.”

Daphne couldn’t prevent the tears from spilling down her cheeks and the frown from taking over her face.

“I won’t tell you what my friend Judge William Clark says about heaven,” Joey said.

“Even if there isn’t a heaven,” her father said. “I’m still at peace. We loved Kara and gave her a good life. We did the best we knew how to do.”

“That’s wonderful, Joe.” Sharon patted her husband’s hand.

“What about you?” Joe asked Sharon.