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.
ELEVEN
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 gr
oaned, 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.”
She placed one hand on his forearm, a casual touch, but he felt the jolt of the contact clear to his toes. “Your feelings of guilt are blinding you to the truth. It didn’t matter to Kevin whether Kirsten was on the island or not. He’d have killed her no matter where she was.”
“But I made it easier for him.” Ignoring the pain, he sat up, resting his back against the ladder.
“Kirsten made it easier for him. She was the one who was trying to manipulate everyone to get what she wanted. She was the one who stormed off when she didn’t get her way.” Shea pulled his hands into her own and gripped them tightly as if she were determined to squeeze some sense into him.
She still loved him, he realized with a relief so intense, he felt dizzy with it.
“Kirsten doesn’t blame you, Teague. Don’t you think I’d know it if she did?” She smiled. “And you know what else?”
“What?” It was hard to talk with your heart clogging your throat. Her smile was doing weird things to his breathing too.
“I love you, Teague Harris, and I’m not going to waste any more time being jealous of a dead woman.” Shea pressed her sweet mouth to his, and the world dissolved around them.
For a brief moment he didn’t feel the throb of his head or the pain in his legs, aware only of Shea and how much he loved her. Then she pulled away with a sigh, and their surroundings swam back into focus. The grimness of their situation hit him like a blow to the solar plexus.
“You’ve got to get out of here,” he said.
She shot him a startled look. “We’ve got to get out of here, you mean.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Shea. You were right. I am hurt bad. I’m pretty sure both legs are broken.”
She studied him in silence as the sense of his words sank in. She looked stricken for a split second. Then she squared her jaw. “I’m not leaving you. Maybe we can reason with Kevin.”
“How do you reason with a murderer? He killed Kirsten and now he’s after you.”
“But why? I’m no threat to him.”
“Yes, you are, and I think he knows that.”
“But—”
Teague outlined the information the sheriff’s investigation had revealed. “You suspected all along that Jack was your father, didn’t you? That’s why you agreed to the charade in the first place.”
She nodded. “I thought he’d had an affair with my mother.” She shook her head in bewilderment. “But the truth is so much stranger.”
“And more dangerous. The long-lost twin of the cherished murdered daughter poses a huge threat. Kevin wants Jack’s money and he doesn’t like to share.”
“But I don’t care about the money.”
“I believe you, but Kevin won’t. Money is everything to him.”
Shea frowned. “Kevin must have been the one who broke into your apartment,” she said slowly.
“Right. Only he wasn’t stealing anything. He was planting evidence.”
“Finding Kirsten’s ring is what convinced me I couldn’t trust you.”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“I know that now. I think I must have known it then, but I was already upset because you’d called me Kirsten and that clouded my judgment.”
“Shea, you’ve got to find a way out of here. Kevin will be back soon to finish us off.”
“I thought …I thought he’d just leave us here to die.” Her eyes looked huge.
Teague started to shake his head, then changed his mind when the pain kicked in. “Too chancy. Someone might find us here, and then, of course, suspicion would fall on him. He’s too smart for that. No, I suspect he’s out there right now, arranging a fatal ‘accident.’ It’s hard to say how long he’ll be gone. Our best hope is for you to go to the sheriff for help. He knows I came out to keep an eye on you. In fact, I’m supposed to check in with the dispatcher once an hour.”
“Check in how?”
“On my cell phone.”
“Why didn’t you say you had a cell phone?”
Teague hated to quench the glimmer of hope in her eyes. “‘Had�
�� is the operative word. Kevin took it.”
“But the sheriff knows you’re here. When you don’t call in, he’ll get worried and come looking for you, right?”
Teague shrugged. “Unless the dispatcher’s so busy she forgets to mention it to him. No, like I said before, our best bet for survival is for you to go for help.”
“How? The trapdoor is nailed shut.”
“Yes, but the cellar is really just a hole in the ground. Dirt,” he said. “We’ve got hands. We can dig.”
“Dig,” she echoed. “I’m an idiot. The spade. That must be why I had to bring it.”
“What?”
“I have a spade down here somewhere.” She scrambled around on her hands and knees searching for it. “Here it is.” She brandished it in triumph.
“Kevin doesn’t know you have it?”
“How could he? He followed you, not me.” She stood up. “Where should I start digging?”
“Back wall as high up as you can reach.”
It was awkward trying to dig a hole at shoulder level, but the ground was surprisingly soft, almost as if it had been disturbed recently. As it had, she remembered. Beelzebub had been buried in the soft wet earth behind the cabin.
“Hurry,” Teague said.
“Why? Do you hear him coming?” Shea glanced nervously over her shoulder.
“No, the flashlight batteries are beginning to fail.”
She studied the light. Teague was right. It was definitely dimmer. She attacked the hole with renewed energy. Ten minutes later she hit something hard, something that thunked solidly against the spade. Shock waves reverberated down her arms, and she swore under her breath.
“What happened?”
“I hit a rock or something.”
“Can you work it loose?”
“I’m trying.” She levered the shovel underneath, then along the sides to loosen the big stone. Working carefully so that she didn’t start an avalanche, Shea dug around the rock, then inserted the tip of the spade under the obstruction and exerted an upward pressure. The rock popped free like a cork from a bottle, rolling across the cellar to come to rest at Teague’s feet.
“Now I’m making some progress,” she said with satisfaction.
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