The question was, which way should she go now? She knew the streambed would almost certainly be dropping down toward the ocean, and when she strained her ears she could just make out the very faint, sporadic sound of surf coming from somewhere on her left. The ocean meant the beach, and the beach meant people. That’s what she needed if she was going to get out of this predicament, and stay ahead of Koi.
Her stomach rumbled more insistently, but she didn’t have any time to waste. From the faintness of the sound, it seemed like the surf was fairly far away, and she needed to get moving if she was going to get there before nighttime. Amanda leaned over and tied her shoes, pulled her hair back tightly, and started off, skirting the rocky streambed on her way to an uncertain destination.
As she walked, she welcomed the salty sea breeze as an old friend. Even though she was being cautious and trying to move from shadow to shadow, the thought of finally emerging from the forest gave her strength and resolve. Mile after trudging mile became harder and harder, and she finally admitted defeat and sat down to rest for a while. The stream had cut back and forth across the uneven terrain, and she was feeling the effects of hunger and fatigue. If she didn’t get to the ocean before nightfall, she might have another night out in the open, with Koi somewhere out there, looking for her.
She closed her eyes, and suddenly heard a distinctive screech above her head. Looking up, she saw one of the most common seabirds in the area, a murre, hanging effortlessly above her, its broad wings catching the wind just enough to let it hover. It seemed to be looking at her, perhaps considering how a strange human had showed up in its domain, before it flapped its wings three times and sailed ahead of her.
Toward the sun.
It was exactly the sort of hopeful sign Amanda needed, when she thought she had no more energy to go further.
Amanda slowly stood up and followed after it. She’d learned a few things about the wildlife along the Oregon Coast, and one thing she knew was that murres had some favorite cliffs they used for nesting. If there was a murre around, it almost certainly spent most of its time down by the ocean.
She picked up a long stick and used it to help her walk, following a strange bird and walking toward the sun.
By the time she could see the wind-sculpted trees, like huge bonsai, that marked the place where the ocean met the shore, she had walked for miles. Her feet hurt, and the sore hip from was throbbing without mercy. She could still feel where her face was swollen from the impact of the crash. Even though the airbags had helped cushion her somewhat, her top lip was puffy and sore.
It didn’t matter. None of it mattered now.
She could hear each individual wave as it rolled onto the rocks and broke against them. The woods had thinned a bit, and when she walk through the edge of them, the stream plunging down onto the rocks below, Amanda’s breath caught in her throat.
It was the Pacific Ocean stretching before her like some sort of glorious paradise, the late afternoon sun glinting across the rolling breakers and casting a million dazzling lights dancing across the horizon-wide expanse. Maybe she hadn’t really seen the beauty of the ocean until she moved to Oregon, or maybe she’d finally had time to really look and see its grandeur and how amazing it was. Timeless, endless, and cradle of life for so many.
It was also one more step closer to home.
She could see fishing vessels far out past the breakers, but a quick scan down the coastline didn’t help her figure out where she was. The landscape was mostly wild, full of untouched and inaccessible beaches, with jagged shoals protecting them from incursion from the sea and tall cliffs looming upward on the land.
Limping a bit, Amanda gritted her teeth and walked closer, and suddenly realized that she knew exactly where she was.
Ahead of her was a rough, rocky cliff face, dropping vertically toward the ocean until it finally sloped away from her. The closer she got, the bigger her smile became.
The sound of the surf had been supplemented by the harsh cries of wheeling seabirds and sighing wind. The rookery had untold numbers of nesting birds tucked into spots on the cliff, and it seemed like most of them liked talking and griping at each other.
There was no mistaking the landmark ahead of her.
It was the Zimmerman Point Lighthouse, abandoned for years due to budget constraints, and left to slowly succumb to the decay wind and time would wreak on it. Jutting upward was a battered white tower with a red conical roof, once so important to sailors and fisherman along down the coast, but now replaced by more modern methods that required less money and less manpower.
It was real, and it was shelter.
Now she just had to figure out how to get to it. There was no path, no road.
Only a dangerous climb down a sheer cliff, with deadly rocks below.
Chapter 16
“Nothing in the database?” George asked, and James shook his head. He took the tall paper cup of hot coffee George handed him and flipped his jacket collar up against the late afternoon chill.
“No, nothing. I had them check the gang database, and Interpol, and everything else we could think of. They can’t find a thing for anyone nicknamed Goldfish.”
“Well, it was worth a try,” George said, leaning back against his squad car. Getting James out of town under the pretense of watching the road in and out, had turned out to be a very good idea. It had given him the break he needed, because it hadn’t been easy to escape all the questions and prying eyes back in Ravenwood Cove. He knew the last thing James Landon needed was for one more person to express sympathy or ask him about what was happening. It was hard enough, not knowing what had happened to his wife, and people bombarding him with questions made it much worse. “Amy packed a couple sandwiches for us, if you want one.”
“No, thanks.” James took a sip of his coffee and looked off down the hill. “Thank Amy for me, would you? She’s a good woman.”
“Sure.” George followed James’ gaze to Ravenwood. The streetlights were just flickering on as the daylight seeped away. He could see cars threading through the curved streets, heading home from work. He knew his wife Amy would be at home with his children, working with them to complete homework and making dinner. Tonight, the thought gave him no comfort. He couldn’t imagine the anguish James was going through. “Amanda’s a good woman, too,” he said, very softly.
Silence.
They watched the town below, the soft purple of dusk stealing over it, until finally James spoke.
“So, I’ve been thinking about something, George,” James said, and the words hurt even to say them. “Do you think Yoder called Amanda with himself as bait? So she’d come see him so someone could hurt her?”
“Maybe,” George said slowly. “I was wondering the same thing. Either that, or did the kidnapper know she was coming to see Yoder, killed Yoder, then set a trap for Amanda to run her car off the road?”
James sighed. Either way meant there was still a killer on the loose.
“Can I tell you something and you won’t think I’m a nut?” he asked the police chief, and George looked at him strangely.
“Go ahead.”
“Is it terrible that I kind of hope Amanda is the one who shot Yoder?”
George chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “Not terrible at all. If that’s the case, I’ll make sure she gets a medal when she gets home. A big one.”
He glanced at his friend.
“James, do you want it to turn out Amanda shot him because he’s a bad guy, or because she almost married him when she lived back in LA?”
James gave a small, bitter laugh.
“I’m not quite sure. Ask me after I get her back.”
Chapter 17
The light was slowly seeping from the cloud-streaked ocean sky, but she felt as exposed as if she were standing on a stage with a brilliant spotlight on her. Without the shadows of the forest and foliage to hide in, her best bet was to get out of sight, and quickly.
The only sounds around here were th
e calls of the wheeling gulls, the endless cries of the birds nesting below, and the relentless rhythm of the pounding surf as the base of the cliff. The abandoned lighthouse hadn’t been used for years, and it showed. Long streaks of dirt and debris from the crumbling roof ran down the once-white sides of the tower, and a platform with stairs that led up to the single entry door was missing planks and part of the handrail. A worn path from a tiny parking lot was almost obliterated by time and the unforgiving Oregon coastal weather. Any road that had led to the promontory in the past had long since been washed away.
As Amanda carefully peered over the edge of the rocky cliff, she was startled by a streaking blur as a loudly shrieking murre flew right at her face. She yelped in surprise and leaped backward, but the angry murre circled her, complaining in no uncertain terms that Amanda was invading too close to her nest.
“Hey, easy!” Amanda said, throwing up her arms to protect her head in case the aggressive bird decided to divebomb her. “I’m not here to hurt your babies!”
After a minute or so of trying to shoo the concerned mother bird away, Amanda finally watched her attacker swoop down the cliff in an effortless rush of wings and grace, effortlessly alighting on a rock jutting out from the stony wall.
Amanda took a gulp of the clean ocean breeze and leaned over again, trying to find a path downward. She knew there had been scientists who monitored the birds yearly to see how many nests were on-site and which seabirds were nesting on the cliffs. One of the scientists had even stayed at her Inn the night before he’d packed his equipment and headed to the cliffs to make his observations. They’d had a lively conversation over breakfast about how difficult it was to scale the rock face. Dr. Keillor had been proud he’d figured out the safest way to descend to the main rookery the previous year, and he’d talked about how long it had taken him to finally get to a spot where he could set up his camera and sit down to take notes. He’d been a keen amateur photographer, and at the time she’d found his photos of the derelict lighthouse, so neglected and tortured by nature, to be oddly beautiful.
There was only one way she was going to get into the possible safety of the lighthouse, and that was to pick her way down through the ragged rocks. She could see a wide strip of gravel and smaller rocks as the base of the cliff, and knew that meant there had been falling stones and erosion. She’d have to be careful.
First things first. She dug back in her memory to what Dr. Keillor had said in his earnest German accent, about descending the cliff face. Crouching down a bit to keep from being silhouetted against the deepening sunset in front of her, Amanda carefully walked along the precarious edge, finally finding a jutting boulder of granite embedded at the edge. Looking on either side, it seemed like it was unique and out of place. She remembered the ornithologist talking about the handholds it had afforded, that got him started on finding a good path.
It took mere moments to shimmy her legs over the lip of the embankment and firmly set her feet on the nearest ledge. Carefully, with achingly slow movements, she picked her way downward over the damp rocks, taking her time to make sure every handhold and wedged foot was as secure as possible before moving on to the next spot. More than once she would ease downward and suddenly be within arm’s reach of a startled murre on a nest, who screamed out an alarm as the odd human moved on past.
As Amanda carefully changed position again and again as she climbed down, she never looked up. If Koi was above her she’d know it soon enough, and she needed every ounce of concentration and strength to move herself to safety. Even though the ocean breezes swirled gently around her, she could feel a trickle of cold sweat slide down her spine. If she messed up just once, she would fall to her death. The thought of leaving James and Katie, and her friends at Ravenwood, was almost more than she could bear.
As she reached the lower third of the cliff it started to slope out a bit, giving her an easier, less vertical face to scale, and when she finally set foot on the gravel field at the base of the cliff, she gasped in absolute relief. Her numb hands were stiff and cold from effort and her knees were shaking, but she quickly staggered toward the old lighthouse. Even from yards away she could see a heavy iron padlock holding a hasp across the entry door.
When Amanda got to the bottom of the stairs, she chanced looking back at the top of the cliff. No looming figure was there, no sign of Koi standing against the rapidly darkening sky. She sagged in relief, then leaned down a picked up a gray rock the size of a small cantaloupe. Holding it in both hands, she carefully climbed the uneven stairs, then examined the padlock. It was hardened steel, locked onto a thick loop of metal. A quick survey of the rest of the door instantly gave her a gameplan of what she needed to do.
With all her remaining strength, she hefted the rock over her head and brought it down as hard as she could, right on the screwed-in plate which held the metal hinge in place. As stout as the padlock was, the two screws were definitely the weak spots, as they ripped out of the wooden door, and the entire plate pivoted to the side. With a groaning creak, the thick door pulled open a couple of inches, and Amanda could see darkness inside. A single push barely nudged the door inward, but when she put her shoulder against it and shoved with all her might it slowly opened enough for her to wriggle her body through.
She gasped as she almost fell backward into the nearly black tower. Debris from animals, the effects of neglect and time, and seeping rainwater had formed an inch-thick pad of foul-smelling sludge on the concrete floor. She could hear dripping water. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she could see a spiral staircase that twisted upward.
Wooden plank steps were set in the metal structure, making wedge-shaped stairsteps like a spreading fan.
Amanda glanced back at the door. If Koi saw the entrance was ajar, he’d know she was in the lighthouse. She reached around and grunted as she heaved the metal plate back into place as much as she could, then went back inside and shoved the door shut. With one hand on the railing, she took her first tentative step, then another, as she carefully climbed the stairs.
With every creak, she pictured what it would be like to fall into the darkness beneath her feet. She eased from stairstep to stairstep, until her head finally was level with the steel grate platform that made up the top of the tower. Three more steps and the sunset was pouring its golden light onto her face, as if greeting her and cheering on her escape. She’d always loved seeing the sunsets over the Pacific from her beloved Ravenwood Inn, but the thick glass windows, even mottled with dirt, displayed a broad expanse of gleaming water, catching the last light of day. She could never remember dusk being so lovely. It was open and free, clean and unchanging, and it was almost home.
The last of the light was fading as the sun dipped below the horizon, and she quickly searched around her to see if there was anything she could use to signal where she was, or even a weapon she could use to defend herself.
She sagged against the dirty glass of the lighthouse, peering out at the line of coastline stretching away from her.
Somewhere, out in the looming darkness spreading over the ocean, was her family.
But she had no way to reach them.
She slid down to sit on the metal floor, exhaustion suddenly sweeping over her like a wave. With so little sleep, so little food, and the mental fatigue of trying to figure out how to evade Koi, she was tired down to her toes. She hugged her knees to her chest, laid her head down on them, and tried not to cry.
There wasn’t time for crying, or for worrying.
She needed a way to protect herself and a way to get home.
And she had almost nothing to make those things happen.
Chapter 18
Amanda pulled her hair back off her face and pulled off the black elastic band that had held her ponytail in place. Smoothing it again, she redid her ponytail. If she was going to be ready for Koi, she needed to be able to see and not be distracted by her hair hanging in her eyes.
Her stomach ached in hunger, and her mouth had gone dr
y.
A quick search of the lighthouse didn’t reveal any weapons, food or water.
If she couldn’t defend herself, perhaps she could signal where she was. Her first thought was to use the high-power light to somehow shine it on a highway or at a boat, to alert people she was there, but the massive Fresnel lens was long gone, probably relegated to a museum or someone’s collection.
Fumbling around the wall, her hand touched a familiar type of panel, and with a quick flip of the switch, a single lightbulb in the wire fixture at the top of the staircase blazed into bright light.
It was something so simple, yet Amanda couldn’t help but giggle like a crazy person with the sheer delight of having manmade light. Where there was light there was hope, and she had every intention of surviving to see her family again.
It also made it easier for her to search. There was a small cabinet under a panel of controls at the side of the top tower room. The panel was rusted and it looked like parts of it were missing, with some twisted pairs of plastic-coated wire hanging out. She rummaged through the cabinet underneath it but found only a large Phillips screwdriver with a cracked handle and an empty first aid kit. Reaching to be very back, her fingertips touched something smooth, and she stretched as far as she could and pulled out a plastic case with two latches. Clicking it open revealed a set of heavy-duty earphones and a small manual on their use and warranty.
It took a bit more searching, feeling along the semi-darkness of the octagonal room, before she discovered why someone had left such expensive earphones.
Flora, Fauna, and Foul Play Page 6