Aquamarine (20 page)

Once again something rustled in the bushes. Shea froze, holding her breath and listening intently, but all she heard were the normal night sounds. Insects. The subdued mutter of a boat motor echoing across the lake.

Dammit. She was as jittery as a grasshopper in a henhouse.

Digging through the box, she found a spade and, as an afterthought, added a pair of heavy gardening gloves to her equipment. Then she put the box back where she’d found it and closed the door in the lattice.

Teague watched Shea’s shadowy figure dart around the end of the pool and disappear behind the deck. What the hell was she up to? He’d told her to sit tight, but he might have known she wouldn’t. Dammit, he’d lost her!

No, there she was, following the bobbing circle of her flashlight up the path that led back across the island. Where the hell was she going?

Shea was thankful for the flashlight. It was pitch dark under the trees. No moonlight penetrated the heavy can
opy of old-growth timber. Every few yards or so she surprised another small nocturnal creature, its bewildered eyes reflecting an eerie luminescent red in the glare of the powerful flashlight. No skunks or porcupines, though, for which she was grateful.

She made good time up the main path, but when she paused at the crest of the trail to catch her breath, she saw a flicker of movement on the path behind her. Quickly she switched off her light and ducked behind a patch of huckleberry bushes. She lay prone, hardly daring to move, all her attention trained on the path.

She had almost convinced herself that she was worrying about nothing when a large figure detached itself from the shadows and came racing up the trail. Teague Harris.

Cold sweat broke out across her forehead as she recognized his familiar form. Her stomach gave a warning heave, then she tasted bile.

He loped past her position, swearing under his breath. He must have been following her light, then panicked when it disappeared.

And that meant she had five minutes, tops. As soon as he realized she wasn’t up ahead, the first thing he would do was backtrack to the spot where he’d lost her. This spot. Therefore, the sensible thing to do was to put as much ground as possible between herself and this clump of huckleberry bushes.

She fled down the path, back the way she had come. Did he know where she was headed? Probably not, she reasoned. Otherwise he wouldn’t have acted so upset at losing her.

Fortunately, there was more than one way to approach the old cabin site. Rather than take the path
through the woods, she could follow the shore. It would be a tricky journey in the dark, but she didn’t dare use the flashlight again; the glow would betray her whereabouts and she had to avoid Teague at all costs.

Just trying to negotiate the slippery path without taking a serious spill took so much concentration, she had little attention to spare for worrying. It wasn’t until she reached the scrubby growth along the perimeter of the alder thicket that the familiar dread hit her full force, curdling her stomach like the sudden onset of food poisoning.

She sniffed the air cautiously. No trace of putrescence remained, yet the place was still steeped in a brooding, ominous atmosphere. If a vampire had suddenly appeared to requisition a couple pints of her Type A positive, she wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.

“What the hell brought you out here, McKenzie?” The sound of her own voice sent shivers running down her spine.

Why
had
she come all this way in the dark? Shea wasn’t quite sure. Because of a bad dream? Or because a dead woman had planted the suggestion in her head?

She circled the copse cautiously until she stumbled across the entrance to a mazelike path she hadn’t realized existed, then slipped soundlessly down it, following the comforting cone of light blazing from the end of her powerful flashlight.

The cabin was just as forlorn and depressing as she remembered from her previous visit. If anything, it was even less appealing in the dark. She set the flashlight down on a rock—the same rock where Kirsten had been sitting in her dream—and pulled on the gardening
gloves. Shuddering, she remembered the cobwebs curtaining the cabin’s doorway.

What do you think you’re doing?
she asked herself. Dread twisted her gut.
You aren’t really planning to venture inside that filthy hovel, are you?

Evidently she was, because the next thing she knew, she was ducking her head to avoid hanging spiderwebs and brandishing spade and flashlight as if they were weapons, not tools.

It stank inside, not of decayed flesh, but of dust and age and the stale popcorn odor of mice.

She tested the floorboards carefully, but they felt solid despite their seeming state of decrepitude. Once inside, she used the spade to knock away heavy ropes of cobwebs, then explored the interior methodically. It didn’t take long. Even the shelves were gone now. Aside from years of accumulated filth, the room was empty.

So what was the big secret? Why had both Kirsten and Beelzebub been attacked there?

Hold on
, her skeptical side cautioned.
You don’t know for a fact that either one was ambushed here. Beelzebub could have been killed anywhere on the island before being buried here, and you don’t know what happened to Kirsten
.

But she did know. The certainty had been growing ever since she woke up. Her nightmare had been a rerun of Kirsten’s final memories. Kirsten hadn’t run away, and she certainly hadn’t been kidnapped. Someone had bashed her over the head as she sat outside in the sunshine waiting for Teague. Shea knew it as surely as she knew her own name.

What she didn’t know was what had happened to the body. Was Kirsten in a watery resting place at the bottom
of Crescent Lake? Or had she met Beelzebub’s fate, buried in a shallow grave somewhere in the clearing?

Bright rodent eyes peered mockingly at her from the corner. Shea, who loathed mice, spun around in near panic, heading for the door. But as she started to bolt, the floor beneath her feet gave a warning creak that halted her in her tracks.

Her heart thumping in her ears, she angled the beam of the flashlight down, then sighed in relief to discover that she wasn’t poised on a weak floorboard that was about to send her plunging down into the earth-walled cellar. What she’d discovered instead was a trapdoor.

She moved aside to study it. The door was a rough square that lay flush with the rest of the floor. A notch cut in one end obviously served as the handle.

Shea swore fluently under her breath as she considered her alternatives. She had faced up to the challenge of the thicket at night; she’d even drummed up the requisite courage to brave the cabin’s interior, but she was damned if she was going to climb willingly into some dark, damp hole in the ground. “Forget it!” she muttered, but nevertheless proceeded to raise the trapdoor, grunting with the effort. The door was heavier than it looked.

Her nose twitched at the rush of damp air. The cellar smelled like worms and mold and dirt. She trained her flashlight into the opening, but all she could see was a small area of the packed-earth floor. A crude homemade ladder led down into the shadows below. Shea moved the light around, trying to make out details. There were none. Just more dirt floor. If she were going to do a thorough search, she would have to venture down the ladder.

You know how much you hate small, enclosed places
, warned the coward inside.

On the other hand, since she’d come this far …

She started down the ladder, telling herself it really wasn’t that bad. One foot after another—that’s all it took. Gritting her teeth, she descended into the darkness.

The spade she’d tucked under her arm shifted and she nearly lost her grip on the ladder. “Dammit!” She let the shovel drop. Trying to cling to the ladder and handle the flashlight at the same time was a sufficiently tricky juggling act.

No sooner had the thought passed through her mind than her right foot met emptiness. A broken rung. Caught off-balance, she fell the last few feet. She landed with a jarring thump that left her shaken, but not hurt.
And for my next stunt …
Shea giggled weakly. She was crazy. No doubt about it.

Overhead, the floorboards creaked. Quickly she switched her light off, but the darkness was not complete. Through the opening in the floor above, she watched the glow of the intruder’s flashlight grow brighter.

“Shea? Are you down there?” The whisper chilled her blood.

Teague. Why did it have to be Teague? She blinked away from the sudden glare of his flashlight.

“Shea? Are you all right? What are you doing wandering around out here in the middle of the night? I told you to lock yourself in the house.”

“Why are you on Massacre Island?” she challenged. His face was a goblin mask of light and shadow in the backwash of the flashlight.

“Trying to protect you,” he said in the same raspy
voice she had grown to love. Only now it raised goose-flesh on her arms.

“Protect me from what?” Shea peered up at him beseechingly, wanting to hear an explanation she could accept as truth.

Teague stared at her in silence.

“Protect me from what?” she repeated.

“From me.” A second, shadowy figure loomed up behind Teague. Shea heard a heavy
thunk.
Then Teague dropped his flashlight into the hole. It bounced against a rung and ricocheted off in a wide arc. An inauspicious tinkle of breaking glass marked its landing, and the scene was plunged into darkness. Shea took an instinctive step backward just as a body came hurtling down to land with a sickening thud at her feet.

“Kevin!” she screamed. “What are you doing?”

The sound of his chuckle floated eerily out of the darkness just before the trapdoor crashed closed.

“Kevin! Have you lost your mind? You can’t leave us here!”

Kevin didn’t argue with her. Apparently he had his own agenda. The hammering lasted ten minutes or so. And then there was silence.

Dear God, she realized, they were buried alive.

The pounding dragged Teague back to full consciousness, each thump of Kevin’s hammer like a blow to Teague’s aching head. When silence descended at last and he could think again, he groped in the darkness for his flashlight, finding Shea’s ankle instead.

She squealed in surprise, then turned her own flashlight full in his face.

He groaned, squinting against the glare.

“Sorry,” she said, moving the light out of his eyes. “You scared me.” Though her voice was breathy with the panic that surrounded her in a near-visible fog, she knelt beside him, putting concern for him ahead of her fears. “Lie still. You may have a concussion. Let me check your head.” She tugged off her gloves and ran her hands over his skull.

“Ouch!” he protested when her fingers pressed a tender spot on the back of his head. “That hurts.”

“The skin’s not broken.”

“Yeah, but what about the bone? What happened? I’m a little fuzzy on the details.”

“Kevin bonked you over the head with the traditional blunt object, shoved you into the cellar, and nailed the trapdoor shut.”

Teague swore. “He shoved you in too?” He squinted at her, trying hard to focus.

“No. I was dumb enough to climb down on my own,” she said, disgust edging her words.

“Why?”

“I had another Kirsten episode this evening. I think this is where she died. I came here to look for some evidence that might tell me who killed her and why.”

“I can tell you who. Kevin,” he said, “though God knows why or how, for that matter. He was only twelve.”

Shea sighed. “Doesn’t matter now, anyway. We need to concentrate on escaping from this oversize tomb.” She stuffed the flashlight into Teague’s hands. “Here. Hold this.”

“What are you doing?”

“I’m going to try to break out of this dungeon before my claustrophobia kicks in and/or you die of internal injuries. You look like hell.”

He felt worse. “Kevin nailed the door shut, Shea.”

“I know, but maybe the wood is rotten. Or maybe he doesn’t pound nails any better than he drives cars.” She mounted the ladder, then pressed one shoulder to the trapdoor. “Cross your fingers and pray for dry rot or termites.” She hit the trapdoor with her shoulder. It didn’t budge. “If at first and all that.” She hit it again and groaned.

“Shea, quit before you hurt yourself.”

“Too late.” She stumbled back down the ladder, nursing a bruised shoulder.

He shot her an encouraging grin as she plopped down on the ground beside him. “Give me a few minutes to pull myself together and I’ll try.”

But his bravado didn’t fool her for a second. He read fear in her eyes. “No, Teague, I don’t think so. You’re hurt. Hurt bad. Truth is, we’re never going to get out of here, are we? Not alive, anyway.” She huddled in her sweatshirt, hugging her knees. “And it’s all my fault. You wouldn’t be in this mess if you hadn’t been worried about me. I’m sorry, Teague, sorry about that and sorry about distrusting you too.”

“You might have been more disposed to give me the benefit of the doubt if I hadn’t called you Kirsten.”

“Your timing was unfortunate.” She stared at her clenched hands, never once glancing at him.

“Shea, do you remember what else I said? I never felt anything close to that before. Not with Kirsten. Not with anyone but you. I may have confused the names, but not the women.”

“I wish I could believe that.”

“Believe it. I was crazy about Kirsten, but I don’t think our marriage would have lasted. Neither one of us was mature enough to handle a long-term relationship.”

“But mature enough to make a baby.”

“There was no baby, Shea. Kirsten lied about being pregnant, lied to her father and to me.”

Shea shot him a startled glance.

“When I found out, we fought about it. I insisted that she tell her father the truth. She refused. She wanted that stupid wedding more, I think, than she ever wanted me.”

“Teague, I’m sorry.”

“So am I. If I had discussed the matter like a rational human being instead of ranting like a madman, Kirsten never would have run home to Daddy. My temper drove her into harm’s way.”