by Dana Cameron
I noticed a faint light bobbing around up on the cliff, illuminating the raindrops, and realized that Tony was now looking for me. I sloshed through the water and hoped the storm’s wrath would cover the sounds of my splashes. Cobbles clattered and rolled in the surf, the tide attempting to suck my feet out from under me. I tripped a half-dozen times trying to cover the minuscule distance between the site of my crash-landing and the relative cover of the staircase, but one of my stumbles brought with it a possible means of escape.
I staggered over the outstretched leg of Billy Griggs, who was now being rolled about by the waves as the water tried to pull him into the main current of the river. Another blast of pain almost knocked the eyes out of my head as I tried to break my fall with both hands, but after wrestling myself out of the snare of legs and lines, my good hand brushed across something hard against the resiliency of Billy’s dry suit.
He had strapped a knife sheath to his leg, whether for show or some practical purpose, I would never know. But now if Markham wanted to get close enough to make my death look like an accident, I would have the means to make it difficult for him.
I spat salt water and gingerly examined the knife by touch. The blade was nine inches long with a serrated tip and an edge so sharp it could split atoms. I wasn’t altogether certain I could actually use it, but I did know that I wanted every opportunity to get out of this alive.
I had only just concealed it up my left sleeve when I saw Tony’s light shine onto the water over my shoulders. I turned around slowly, clutching my hurt arm to my chest with my good one, holding the blade up that sleeve with its handle close to hand.
The light passed over me and for a moment I believed that Tony hadn’t seen me—it was getting darker by the minute—but those thin hopes were rent when the beam returned to rest squarely on my face. Markham obviously was no longer interested in creating the illusion of an accident, for a bullet whizzed past my head. I rushed to get out of the light and into the shadows on the beach side of the staircase when I heard a second and then third shot that seemed to come from another direction completely. The light played wildly across the water and up the slope, and either the wind was playing acoustical tricks or Tony was moving with supernatural speed. Neither thought cheered me much, and I decided to risk wading along the bluff’s base, away from the stairs and the beach. The water was deeper there, and churned more violently with the steep drop-off of the river’s bed very close to the shore. I was counting on Tony believing that I would be moving closer to the beach and toward relative safety from the storm.
Pausing to try and catch my breath, I hazarded a glance back toward the stairs, where the waves that accompanied the high tide smacked against the crumbling concrete. To my surprise Tony had started down the stairs, but did not appear to be looking for me. Instead he turned his attention back up the slope toward where the wreck of the house stood, drawn to someone or something that I could not see.
A beam from a flashlight lit him, and with a sigh of relief, I realized that Neal had succeeded in contacting the sheriff’s department. If only he had listened to me and stayed away after that!
I began to move cautiously back toward the stairs, fearing that unless Stannard moved quickly, Tony might be able to dodge him and flee toward the beach himself, probably to Amy Griggs and a waiting car. I had to slow him down long enough for the sheriff to make it down the slope.
Another shot came from upslope, and this time Markham clutched at his left side. I struggled, hopping and sloshing through the surf, feeling as though I was moving in slow motion with my body weighted down with cold, exhaustion, and leaden clothing. The dark below the cliff was nearly impenetrable, and the light from the flashlight served to illumine only Tony’s face, distorted with pain from the bullet wound. I noted with vehement satisfaction a gash on his forehead where I had kicked him, still oozing blood that mingled with rainwater running down his face.
Then I heard something that paralyzed my heart in spite of my exertions. I renewed my efforts to reach the staircase. It was not Dave Stannard on the slope.
“Bastard! Bastard! You stay there, or I swear to God, I’ll blow your fucking head off! You stay right there! You drop your gun where I can see it!”
It was Meg.
I have to hand it to him, Tony didn’t miss a beat. “Meg! Miss Garrity!” he called out as if in piteous relief. “Thank goodness! Emma, Professor Fielding’s in terrible trouble! I only just—”
“Fuck off!” she screamed. “I know! You shot Neal! Now throw your gun over the cliff! Do it now!”
I watched Tony toss his pistol, but so feebly that it landed a few inches from the edge of the bluff.
“Shit!” Meg screamed. “Stay there, stay right there, or I will fucking blow you away!”
It was only when she carefully edged over to retrieve his pistol that I realized what he was doing. Tony’s right hand snaked almost invisibly into his pocket to the pistol he had removed from Billy’s corpse. I found my voice as I reached the staircase.
“Meg! Stay away from—!”
Too late! Her scream rent the storm as the bluff, eroding and unstable for as long as I had known it, surrendered several tons of soil and rock to the violent river, taking Meg with it.
With the last niggardly shred of strength I could ever hope to have, I hooked my good hand around Tony’s ankle before he realized what was happening and pulled as hard as I could, toppling him from the stairs.
Markham landed on top of me, flailing wildly. My head went under and something hit my shattered wrist, forcing a soundless howl from me and a gout of seawater down my throat. I had released my hold on Tony when we collided, and now I fought to get my head above water for a lungful of air. Another wave slapped at me, but I finally found a firm foothold and managed to heave myself up, gagging up salty water and stomach bile.
I sucked in one deep breath, only to have it knocked from my lungs as a tremendous blow landed across my back. This time I fell forward and heard someone else splashing heavily in the water nearby. A third, huge swell swept me toward the base of the cliff, and it took all of my concentration to keep from being slammed into the wall of coarse sand.
As I struggled up I was surprised to see my left hand still attached to the end of my arm. Vaguely I remembered Billy’s knife, but that was long gone, lost during my ill-considered attack on Tony. Worse yet, I realized dully that he was now nowhere to be seen.
I felt increasingly warm and tired and distantly recognized the signs of shock and hypothermia. The thought floated through my tired brain that I should try to move: Meg might still be alive. But I had nothing left in me to move toward where the bluff had been.
I stood dumbly, buffeted by the surf, as I vainly tried to sort out what I should be doing, and what I was now capable of doing, when I heard another roar over the waves. My head ached so that I couldn’t be certain that the noise wasn’t just a result of concussion. The noise, a low throb, continued, and I turned, remotely interested, toward the source and was surprised to see Tony gliding easily over the water not ten feet from me. Nothing made any sense anymore, and I stood unsteadily in the surf, the rain still pounding my head, trying to figure out what was going on.
It took a moment, but after brushing a tangle of hair from my eyes, I saw that the motorboat that Billy and Tony had used to haul their treasure from the bottom of the river had been lifted by the tide and was now moving away from the beach. As the small craft headed into the steam rising from the center of the river, Tony turned and looked over his shoulder and I could have sworn I saw him grinning at me before the mist obscured him totally. But of course it was too dark for me to have seen any such thing, and I was so tired and hurt so much…
Chapter 29
HARD AS I TRIED, MY BRAIN WOULDN’T WORK. AT FIRST I struggled a few steps farther over toward the cliff side of the stairs, but it seeped through the mush of reason that I was incapable of digging Meg out of anything like two tons of earth, even if I managed to find
her.
I sloshed on.
Then I heard the cries. “Help! Shit! Goddamn it, where are you? Emma!”
“Meg?” I croaked in disbelief. “Where are you?”
But she wouldn’t have heard my amazed whisper on a calm day, so I started back toward the steps. I knew that there were fourteen of the cement steps, and oddly, I remembered that Sherlock Holmes knew how many stairs led down to the rooms at 221B Baker Street. Might as well have been a hundred, from where I stood in the water. A wave shoved me in the right direction and I fell against the wet, gritty stairs.
Meg had called. Meg had called. I used that as a mantra, a focal point as I tried to make the most of the wave’s push, since I was already a mess. Only I couldn’t feel the hurts I knew I had, and that bothered me. I started to count the stairs, try and mark my progress to the top, but the only real thing that kept me moving was the fact that Meg was still out there.
“Coming,” I muttered. I pushed myself up carefully, if not on all fours, then unsteadily on three, and hauled myself up four more stairs. I sat on the fifth as a reward, but realized that if I didn’t want to risk the rest of the bluff crumbling away from the stairs, I would have to keep moving.
I hauled myself up another three stairs, only to be surprised by the feel of grass under my hand. One more effort and I was at the top, where I fell over into the sharp, wet weeds. All I wanted to do was sleep. I forced my eyes open again, and that simple act brought with it a ray of hope.
Or at least a ray of light, which was just as welcome. Meg’s flashlight spilled a beam along the ground away from me, illuminating her as she clung, almost on her belly, to the edge of the bluff. She seemed to be trying to edge forward without moving too much. Suddenly I saw something appear on the bluff a few feet from where her head and hands were. Had Tony returned? No, it was Meg’s foot, followed by her backside, as she, in one move, pulled herself up and over, and rolled away from the edge to lie on her back about fifteen feet from where I had collapsed.
I must have checked out for a moment, for I heard Meg yell hoarsely, “Emma! Where are you?” and couldn’t remember how she came to be standing up.
“Over here!” I tried to holler, but a hacking cough was all that came out. My stomach rolled as I raised my head.
She started, not expecting to find me so close by. Meg’s chin was badly cut, and the front of her was unevenly covered in coarse, wet sand. Water soaked her leather jacket, and even as my vision closed I was transfixed by the way the rain beaded on her glasses and earrings, spattering them with dark jewels. She picked up her flashlight and came over to me.
I waved tentatively, trying not to lose my balance and fall again, but my head was buzzing and I couldn’t see very clearly. Through the warm fuzzy feeling that seemed to envelop me, I lazily tried to remember something that seemed rather important at one point. “Tony…I think Neal’s…I wasn’t…”
Meg didn’t bother to stifle her exclamation of dismay when she reached out for me. I looked down and saw that my left index finger was jutting out and back in a sickening fashion. My stomach heaved and I looked away.
“Shhh. Neal’s not okay, but he’s not dead, not by a long shot,” she said. “We’ve got to get the two of you to a hospital though, or we’ll have a couple more specimens for the faunal collections.” She half-pulled, half-carried me up the slope, away from the edge of the bluff. “Damn, you weigh a ton,” she gasped.
That irritated me, but I couldn’t think of any suitable retort.
“I was just getting him, Tony, lined up when the ground collapsed under me. I could feel the vibration and chucked the light and Sally, but I got the wind knocked right out of me, I didn’t think I was gonna be able to hang in there—”
Meg was rabbiting on and on about climbing, and blankets, and whatever, and I was glad to have her there, but I really wished she would just shut up and let me drift off. I’d had enough. I tried to explain this politely to her, but apparently the words weren’t coming out properly, because every time I tried to stretch out on the slick grass for a little rest, she would just start swearing and yelling at me. Then she would yank me up again, which was annoying, but at least now it didn’t hurt.
Then, just as I had decided I would really have to be quite short with her, Meg shouted again, but this time not at me. Dozens of people, it seemed, came swarming toward us, asking me silly questions, and poking and peering rudely. I lost track trying to watch them, and got more muddled when I tried to talk to them. I caught words that I recognized, but most of it made no sense, like I had missed the beginning of a word game. In the midst of all the to-do, I felt something sting my arm and cursed the virulent Maine mosquitoes that seemed not to fear either the dark or the stormy weather. I abruptly decided that if no one was going to take the trouble to deal with me politely, I would ignore them too, so I slipped away into the dark.
Chapter 30
SATURDAY EVENING I WOKE UP TO SEE SHERIFF STANNARD standing in the doorway of my hospital room for a moment, sort of taking in the view, I suppose. He shook his head slowly in disbelief.
“Well, the doctors tell me that you’ll be all right.”
When I’d come to that morning, it had taken me a while to sort out just which parts of me were actually damaged and which were just along for the ride in the blur of pain. The official inventory was three fractured metacarpals, a smashed third carpus, and a simple fracture of the left humerus—that’s a busted wrist, crunched index finger, and a broken arm for those of you without an abiding professional interest in skellies—a mild concussion, a sprained right ankle, a couple of bruised vertebrae, and a fine collection of assorted contusions and scratches. The most impressive-looking, though by no means the most painful, injury was a monster bruise all over the back and right side of my noggin from my crash landing. It peeped out along my hairline like a black and purple aurora borealis and scared the dickens out of me the first time I made it to the bathroom by myself and got a load of it in the mirror.
I nodded at the sheriff, immediately regretting the action. My head still felt sore and dizzy—they wouldn’t let me have any painkillers worth a damn because of the concussion—and it seemed as though the slightest movement triggered coughing bouts. It would be a long time until I had the urge to go swimming again.
“My wife made these.” He moved into the room carrying a brown paper bag. “Blueberry muffins. People walk in front of trucks to get Barbara to make muffins for them. She made some extra at breakfast, and thought you might like a break from the hospital chow.”
I was about to tell him that I hadn’t been eating anything, that I didn’t have much of an appetite at all, when I got a whiff of them. Magnificent, rich, with coarse sugar on the tops of them. Those blueberries had been picked by real humans. Carefully—they were still hot—I pulled the top off one and stuffed it into my mouth. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d eaten, and had certainly never tasted anything so good in my life.
“Maybe you can tell me how you finally got yourself into this state?” Dave asked, as patiently as he could. “What possessed you to drive out there in that god-awful weather?” He settled down in the hideous blue plastic chair at the foot of the bed, making himself comfortable.
“Mmmmm—” I chewed up my mouthful of muffin.
But the sheriff let his anger or frustration or worry get the better of him, and without waiting for me to swallow and translate, he quickly added, “You know, you could’ve gotten killed, rather than just getting the crap kicked out of you? You don’t know how lucky you are—”
“There was nothing else I could have done,” I said tiredly. I waited a second to see if the muffin would stay put. “I wanted to call, but the lines were down and I didn’t want to waste any time. I did send Neal, but now I kind of wish I hadn’t. But I did try.”
The emotion on Dave’s face shifted to something softer. “I know. I think you’re one of those people who can’t help themselves when they get an idea in their heads. Sta
ying alive out there was a real trick, though. I’m just glad you had the sense to tell someone else you were going…” he trailed off thoughtfully.
“You’ve seen Neal?” I asked eagerly. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine, though he won’t be doing any bench presses anytime soon. I got a statement from him before he was released,” Stannard answered. “The, ah, young lady who pulled your fat out of the fire the other evening was with him. Ms. Garrity. I’m not real sure, but I think that I may have interrupted a make-out session.”
I laughed in spite of my sore throat, for the first time in days it seemed. “What century are you from?” I asked after I got done coughing. “Make-out session!”
The sheriff got serious again. “That accounts for nearly everyone who was out there when we showed up. We pulled Billy Griggs’s body out, but we’re still trying to locate Markham’s body. It hasn’t washed up yet. And Amy—”
“What about Tony?” I demanded. A lead weight settled in my stomach, and I set the muffin down. “You haven’t found Tony yet?”
“No, not yet, but I’m sure it’s just a matter of time,” he said confidently. “That was a bad storm, the worst this early in years. No one could have survived it in an open boat, especially if he’d been shot. We found the wreckage of the motorboat he was using down the river a ways.”
“Yeah, but you didn’t find Tony!” I said, becoming increasingly more nervous.
“We didn’t find a body. But I’m sure we’ll find him, there’s no way he could have survived that mess.”
My head began to throb again. Jesus, he was still out there! “What about a car? He didn’t walk to the Point—”
“Not yet.” A sympathetic look crossed Stannard’s face. “Look, this is just another loose end that I can’t tie up yet. I will, though.”