CHAPTER 34

  

I wasn’t cut out for Scottish weather. Bundled in three layers of clothing, I shivered as we stood inside the cave. The storm hadn’t yet materialized, but strong winds toyed with the clouds. A large moon hovered above us, lighting up the coast. At first this seemed fortunate, because it meant we could see better. Then we realized it also meant someone approaching wouldn’t need a flashlight. They would be more difficult to spot. The crashing waves would also drown out the sound of approaching footsteps. Lane and I had to pay close attention.

Earlier that night I’d asked Douglas Black for a flask of whisky. I helped myself to it in an attempt to take the edge off.

“You do realize that doesn’t actually make your body any warmer,” Lane whispered.

“I thought summer in San Francisco was cold,” I whispered back through chattering teeth, slipping the flask back into my bag. “I don’t think my body temperature ever adjusted to leaving Goa.”

Lane’s face was partially hidden in shadow from our concealed position, but my eyes had adjusted and I could see him clearly. Our eyes met.

“This will work better,” he said, unbuttoning his coat.

He pulled me toward him, but in a way that was completely different than I imagined—rather, completely differently than I would have imagined if I had imagined any such thing. Which I certainly hadn’t.

He spun me around and pulled me backwards against the open coat so that my back rested against the sweater on his chest. He wrapped the coat around me, and his arms curled around my midsection. His chin rested on top of my head.

“You should feel warmer in a minute,” he said quietly.

His breath was warm against my hair. We stood in silence, looking out at the sand and the sea. I never saw a thing before I heard the noise.

I had been paying attention. I truly had been. I didn’t see anyone approaching from the stretch of shore in front of us. The noise came from behind.

Lane heard it, too. He let go of me instantly. The motion was so quick that I nearly lost my balance. He hurried around the corner and vanished into the back of the cave. I rushed after him. When I got there, Lane was already on his way through the back opening of the cavern.

I heard him swear above the sound of the crashing waves. His voice was faint in the midst of the other sounds at the water’s edge. I didn’t think he would rush headlong into darkness without knowing what was beyond. But if he’d acted without thinking....

I climbed through the hole. I expected to find Lane at the same lookout point. But he was nowhere to be seen.

I scrambled to the edge, fearing he had been swept out to sea. There was no sign of him. The sea was pitch black under the night sky, and the waves pounded fiercely. He could have been right below me but I wouldn’t be able to see or hear him.

I was about to call out when he appeared.

“There’s a hidden path,” he said, stepping onto the rock from what I had thought was a sheer drop below it.

“But—”

“It blends into the rock face,” he said, “before it hits the coast on the other side. There’s no way you could have seen it when you were exploring before.”

“How did you find it then?”

Lane didn’t answer. Instead, he took my hand and pulled me sharply away from the edge, into the small opening and back into the cave.

“I thought I saw—” he began, but then stopped. He stood looking out through the jagged rock opening.

“You thought you saw who?”

“Not who,” Lane said. “What.”

I could barely make out his face in the shadow of the cave, but his voice was slightly unsteady. He shook it off with a forced laugh.

“The stories of the locals must be getting to me,” he said, shaking his head. “And this Gothic setting. At the base of a cliff in the moonlight with the crashing waves…it’s ridiculous, really. I saw a person running away. That’s all. Whoever our mysterious cave digger is.”

“But what did you think you saw?”

“The figure. It was small and pale. Almost familiar.” He shook his head. “For a second, I thought it was the bean nighe.”

I almost laughed. One look at Lane’s face and I thought better of it. Instead I did what I should have done in the first place. I broke into a run. Lane followed.

In the darkness, the seaside path was too dark to follow. We hurried along the main path, hoping we might reach the top of the cliff with him—or her? or it?—in sight.

We scrambled up the steep path. Once we reached high ground, we kept up our pace for a few minutes. But the landscape was empty. Whoever had been there was gone.

  

We let ourselves into the inn. I insisted on waiting downstairs with the weak hope that the person had taken a roundabout way back to their lodgings—if these were indeed their lodgings. We decided the best place to wait would be the middle of the stairs, where we would be hidden from both the upstairs rooms and the main door, but could see and hear both.

“Why didn’t we think of doing this in the first place?” Lane whispered after several minutes of silent waiting.

“People could be doing all sorts of things in the night.”

“Let’s go,” he said. “We didn’t beat him back here.”

“Whoever it was didn’t necessarily beat us back here,” I said once we were safely inside the room. “We were assuming it was someone on the dig. But Rupert said he was going to go after the treasure, too.”

Lane swore under his breath.

“This whole thing is a complete farce,” he said.

“I thought he was too injured to do much of anything,” I said, “but if he was doing better, he could be here.”

“And not contacting you?” Lane tore off his jacket angrily, and instinctively reached for his pack of cigarettes. “I don’t know how you could have ever been involved with such a—”

“What?”

“No one should be able to do that to you.”

“No one has done anything to me,” I said crossly. “I can handle myself.”

Lane threw down his cigarettes and scooped me up in his arms. “Jones,” he said, “I know you can. What I wonder is if you can handle me, too.” He lifted me onto my tiptoes before tilting my head back and enveloping me in a kiss.

I wasn’t sure if my feet left the ground or if it only felt as if they did. He lowered me onto the small, lumpy bed. At that moment, nothing had ever felt so soft.

My head hit my bag, so I pushed it over—right as my phone buzzed in my ear. I’d turned the ringer to vibrate while we were on our stakeout, but next to my ear the noise was jarring. Lane swore under his breath and let go of me.

“You better get it,” he said. “It might finally be your ex.”

“Sanjay,” I said into the receiver, out of breath from Lane’s kiss. “Now isn’t really a good time.” A light on my phone was blinking, indicating other messages. “Sorry I didn’t call you back earlier.”

“I never should have let you go on your own,” Sanjay said.

Lane frowned as he watched me. From the volume of Sanjay’s voice, Lane could hear him.

“He’s not—” I began to whisper to Lane with my hand over the receiver.

“Are you talking to someone else?” Sanjay asked. “Isn’t it almost midnight there?”

“Television.”

Lane gave me a sharp look before slipping out of the room. Great. Lane was jealous of Sanjay, the person who was more like a brother than my own brother.

“Was that a door slamming?” Sanjay asked. “What’s going on over there?”

I was alone and wide awake in the closet-size room, so I took the time to fill in Sanjay about what was going on with Rupert not being killed after all, and everything going on at the dig and the inn. Well, not quite everything. But I hoped Sanjay might catch something I was missing. He was good at that sort of thing.

“It sounds like you need to force Knox to tell you what he knows,” Sanjay said.

“That’s what I was thinking, but it’s not easy to get him alone.”

Sanjay grumbled something under his breath. “You don’t want him alone. He might have tried to kill his friend, remember? You need him to give you information in a way that isn’t dangerous. Is he in his own room, or with his girlfriend?”

“His own room.”

“That’s easy, then. Leave him a note under his door. Tell him you know what’s going on and he better stay late after breakfast to talk to you if he knows what’s good for him. The innkeepers will be there. You’ll be safe.”

In spite of Sanjay’s melodramatic framing, his suggestion was better than any of the ideas I’d had that day. After I hung up with Sanjay, I slipped a note under Knox’s door.

  

When I woke up in the morning after a fitful night’s sleep, I was alone. My cell phone light was still blinking. I was about to delete the messages, since I was sure they were from Sanjay, when I saw that two new phone numbers also appeared on my call log, both from the UK. My body tensed. How could I have been so stupid to assume all my missed calls were from Sanjay?

“Christ, Jaya,” Rupert’s voicemail began. “Don’t you ever answer your bloody phone? I didn’t want to tell you this in a message, but since you’re not picking up, you’ve got to believe what I’m going to tell you. I’m so sorry to have gotten you involved in this, love. You have to get out of there. You’re in danger. Lane is one of them.”