—crashing. Sand rains into my mouth. Cold wet grains fill my ears. I spit out the sand and wave my arms like a person drowning in water. I yell. I try to open my eyes, but the sand stings.
And then, it stops.
I hold still. Tasting salt. Grit. Afraid to open my eyes.
“Lanette?” I pry open one eye. Sand weighting down my eyelashes. “Lanette!”
Nothing.
The salty grains grind against my teeth. I spit and shake my head like a wet dog. My eardrums ring. Listening. There is only the far-away sound of waves, the ocean beating against the shoreline. I stand up, dizzy, and try to see over the rim of the hole. The lighthouse throws a shadow across the space. My ankles feel weird. I can still feel those gripping hands.
“Aunt Charlotte?” I ask, even as my mind is saying, She wouldn’t, she couldn’t.
I give my head another shake and fling the grains out of my hair. My eyelids feel like they’re lined with sandpaper. I stamp the ground, trying to form a platform to climb out.
I remember the coffee cup.
I reach down and grope till I find it. Most of the sand’s spilled out. But where’s the sand for all these holes? I scoop up sand and fill the cup again.
With my toe of my Chuck Taylors, I pry footholds in the side of the sand. I set the coffee cup on the beach above. But my shoulders shake as I try to pull myself out. Halfway there, I swing my right leg, land my foot on the beach, and roll forward, heart racing.
The ocean crashes. The wind blows. My ponytail takes wild turns.
And Aunt Charlotte’s bag is gone.
“Lanette!”
Nothing.
I crouch down, squinting into the haze of the lighthouse’s beam. Last Christmas, I found a shoe print that sealed the fate of a really bad person. Ever since, Teddy’s been feeding me info about how geology is used to solve crimes. Shoe prints, foot prints, soil impressions. But this sand? There are too many footprints, shoeprints, all over the place. But something else strikes me. The vehicle treads. They’re not tires. More like tracks. Those teeth marks bulldozers leave behind.
I turn a slow circle, searching. But that one question refuses to leave my mind. Where’s all the dug-up sand?
I yell into the wind, “Lanette!”
My ankles tingle.
But nobody’s here.