A switch at the back of the panel had a lever as big as her hand, with a handwritten sign under it that said simply FOGHORN. Following the wires led to a large horn shape, set outside the lighthouse and attached with its bell pointing toward the ocean.
The possibilities of a foghorn calling to other people to come help her was tantalizing, but it had one major flaw.
If a rescuer could hear it, so could her former captor.
She picked up the screwdriver and looked at it, deep in thought. What she needed was a trap.
A trap big enough for a man.
HALF AN HOUR LATER she was covered in sweat but felt hopeful and accomplished as she set the screwdriver on the top of the cabinet.
“Well, here goes nothing,” she said, pulling out the headphones and clamping them onto her ears as tightly as she could. She’d heard foghorns before, and knew she had to be careful not to damage her hearing.
But it was the only hope she had.
She held her breath and flipped the lever.
The moment the booming foghorn sounded, she leaped backward. It was so loud it resonated within her chest, and vibrated the walls. She could hear it through her earphones. They made it bearable, but just barely.
She crept to the edge of the window and slowly peered over the edge of the sill, watching the cliff face for any sign of movement. The moon was nearly full, but scudding clouds cut off light as much as they pulled back to let the moonlight through, and Amanda would catch just brief glimpses of the dark rocks on the cliff.
The birds were immobile, in their nests for the night, and seemingly unfazed by the booming foghorn. The only motion she could detect was the crashing breakers at the bottom of the rocks, and shadows of moving clouds.
She rubbed a dirty hand across her eyes, willing herself to keep them open as she fought against the fatigue that seeped into every bone. Blinking again, she gasped in shock.
A large, dark shape was carefully lowering himself over the edge of the cliff.
Koi was coming.
Chapter 19
When James’ cell phone rang, he picked up the call on the first ring.
“James, it’s George! Hey, we’re getting reports from up the coast that there’s a foghorn going off.”
The implications of the police chief’s excited words were instantly apparent to James. “And there’s no fog tonight, is there?”
“None at all,” George said, and James could hear the grin in his voice. “I called around and no one claims responsibility for it. The only other place around here that has a foghorn would be at the old Zimmerman Point lighthouse. I’ll meet you there.”
“Not if I get there first,” James said, hanging up his phone before George could get a word in.
Maybe it was nothing, but James knew his wife. His crazy, stubborn, complex, innovative wife. If he were a betting man, he’d bet that somehow she’d found a way to get a message to him, and had used a foghorn to do it.
AT FIRST, AMANDA WATCHED Koi pick his way down the cliff face with a kind of horror, realizing that if he got into the lighthouse she’d have to defend herself to the death. There was no way out of the place, nowhere to go that she could flee from him again. Her back was against the wall, and if he made it to the door downstairs she was going to have to fight for her life.
When Koi nearly fell at about the halfway point, she had a moment of hope, but he quickly regained his footing and started down again.
Suddenly, Amanda had had it.
She was tired of being scared.
She was tired of being chased.
She was tired of being tired.
A surge of primal, hot anger rose up in her. This man was willing to kill her to get information out of her she didn’t have, to get back money she’d never seen.
He was willing to murder a stranger over cold, hard cash.
Not today he wasn’t.
She gritted her teeth so hard her jaw hurt.
Time to even the playing field a bit.
If she could buy enough time maybe someone would come to help her.
Or maybe she’d help herself.
She watched warily, making sure to keep as low as possible so her silhouette wouldn’t be seen by Koi as he slowly picked his way down the cliff. At one point she saw him stumble and nearly fall, one hand clutching a protruding boulder with all his strength. He frantically flailed with the other one to try to grab onto whatever handhold he could find. It took a moment, but as he finally found a place to hold, she could see something dark fall from the back of his belt and smash against the unforgiving rocks below.
She knew the shape of it as soon as it fell.
He’d lost his gun.
Now, whatever he was going to try to do to her was going to have to be up close and personal.
The foghorn kept sounding behind her, so loud it resonated through her skull and the heavy-duty headphones she had clamped tightly over her ears. A burning headache started above her temples but she ignored it as she watched Koi finally ease himself onto the ground in front of the lighthouse.
She took a deep breath and headed for the top of the spiral staircase, knowing full well that he would be at the door in just a moment.
She couldn’t hear him, but she could see the moment he started pounding on the heavy door. She’d wedged two flat rocks under the bottom of the door, and pushing it inward wedged them even more tightly, stopping it from opening. She could see the door shake as he hit the door again and again, probably with his shoulder, she figured, because it was so forceful. There was almost a full minute of him battering away at the door before he quit.
Amanda clutched the headphones over her ears tightly as the foghorn boomed again, wishing she had some way to turn it down. It was the least of her worries, but it was so forceful it was affecting her concentration on how to deal with Koi and his attempts to get to her.
Well, one thing was for sure. This guy’s no quitter, she thought with a snort of disgust. She would see him moving the door again, slowly this time, and at last the slickness of the damp debris on the tower floor enabled him to push the rocks forward and out of the way.
Amanda ducked back out of sight, her breathing sharp and hard.
She’d seen his face in the dim light from the top of the stairs.
He was coming for her, and he was furious.
Everything now was about timing and keeping as calm as she could.
Koi put one hand on the railing, and tentatively stepped onto the first stair. Waiting just a moment, he looked up and laughed. She couldn’t hear what he shouted at her, but from the glee in his eyes she knew what he meant.
He thought he’d won. He thought she was cornered.
Every instinct in her body was to somehow flee or to instantly attack him to defend herself, but she’d already made a plan, and that wasn’t part of it.
She had to wait until the moment was exactly right. If she made one mistake she would almost certainly die.
As he slowly made his way up the stairs, she counted every step. The circular staircase turned twice on its way to the top of the lighthouse. As his head came into view beneath her, she held her breath as she grabbed her weapon and flung it downward with all her strength.
The grapefruit-sized rock crashed down onto his shoulder and bounced off the metal center pole of the staircase. She could see his mouth open in a howl of pain and rage, and he looked upward at her. There was fury in his eyes, just as she raised the second rock and hurled it at him as if her life depended on it.
He raised an arm to deflect it, and it only grazed him instead of hitting him square on the head. With a feral growl, he threw his previous caution to the wind and ran up the staircase, straight at her.
She threw one more rock down at him, then shrank back against the wall as he kept coming at full speed.
And that was just what she wanted, even though it was terrifying.
The first stair tread she’d loosened didn’t give way as she thought it would, but th
e wooden tread on the second one did, and as Koi flailed to step onto the third one, right above him, it plunged to the bottom of the stairwell, too.
There was a moment that seemed frozen in time, as Amanda’s eyes met Koi’s, his face full of absolute horror as he pitched backward. His hands scrabbled at empty air as he fell, his feet flipping up as he tumbled over the railing. Amanda could only see a sliver of the bottom entryway floor, but it was enough. One lone hand was outstretched, lying on the floor, unmoving. On the wrist she could just make out the colorful tattoo of a large orange koi.
Or maybe it was a goldfish.
Koi wasn’t going to be coming after her anymore.
SHE STOOD UP AND SAGGED against the observation platform doorway. Adrenaline had done its work to keep her alert and to help her fight a mortal enemy, but now her knees felt weak as she considered all that had happened.
She was still alone, with a dead guy at the bottom of the stairs, and no way to get home. The foghorn was still sounding, but she was beginning to give up hope.
The other problem was the stairwell below her was now useless. With four loose stair treads, including two that had fallen to the bottom of the tower, the only way she’d be able to go downstairs was to painstakingly move a tread she’d already used above her and then replace the problematic section of the stairwell when she got there.
One disaster at a time, she thought grimly. With a deep sigh, she leaned over and retrieved the screwdriver. It would’ve been her last line of defense if Koi has gotten all the way to the top of the stairs. Now, perhaps, she could use it to make the staircase usable again.
She was on the second rung going down when she saw a movement in the tower’s open doorway. Instinctively flattening herself against the wall, hoping the darkness would be enough to hide her, she clutched the screwdriver in front of her.
“AMANDA!”
She didn’t actually hear James’ words, but she knew exactly what he’d said. She sprinted upstairs and slapped her hand on the foghorn controls, shutting it off right before it was set to boom out its warning again.
Staggering to the doorway, she took off her headphones and looked down, but James was nowhere to be seen.
She could hear him pounding up the stairs.
“STOP! Don’t go any further! I’ve boobytrapped the staircase!” she warned, and eased her way downwards, trying to remember which ones she’d loosened to protect her from Koi.
As she rounded the spiral, she could see James’ pale face, his eyes wide as he watched her come toward him. “Amanda!” he said, his voice full of the emotion he’d suppressed for so many hours as he looked for his missing wife. “Stay there and I’ll find a way to get to you!”
“I’ll be here,” she said, laughing between tears, as her husband worked his way toward her.
Chapter 20
“George, I’ve got her!”
Amanda grinned as she heard her favorite police chief’s whoop of delight. James updated the police chief with what had happened as he opened her car door. He’d had to park on a back trail to get close to the lighthouse, and it wasn’t until she was safely at the car that James called his friend.
By the time they’d gotten back to Ravenwood Cove the news was already circulating, courtesy of Mrs. Granger’s infallible gossip network. Several people were smiling and waving as they drove through town, but James didn’t stop.
“Where are we going?” she asked, a bit bewildered, as they drove past the road that led up to their home.
“After all you’ve been through, I want to be sure you’re okay. It won’t take long to get you checked out, I promise, and my folk are bringing Katie straight to the hospital to see you.”
“To the hospital?” she laughed. “Honey, isn’t that a bit over the top.”
“Nope,” James said defensively. “Not at all.”
IT WAS A SLOW NIGHT in the emergency room, but George had called ahead and the staff was ready for Amanda when she arrived. At first she thought the fact they put her in a wheelchair, much to her disgust, and whisked her back to an oversized exam room was because they were worried for her health.
That was part of it, but there was much more.
As in a couple dozen more. People started showing up at the hospital, begging to see her, and she let James’ family, Mrs. Granger, Lisa, and Meg back to see her while the doctor checked her vitals and offered painkillers for her bruised hip and shoulder. She was sucking down a chocolate shake at record speed while explaining what had happened, and when she got to the part where she told about Koi, a dark shadow passed over her husband’s face.
“He kept asking me about money,” she said. “He said Ken told him I had taken it and he was just trying to get it back. I didn’t know anything about that man’s money, I swear!”
James gritted his teeth for a moment, the unclenched his jaw and, in a deceptively calm voice, said “So, what you’re saying is that your snake of an ex-boyfriend threw you under the bus so he could get away? Is that right?”
Amanda’s silence was all the confirmation anyone needed. James’ face has started to turn a ruddy shade of purple, and just as he opened his mouth to speak Mrs. Granger spoke up.
“Well, thank the good Lord you got rid of that man, ‘Manda, and thank Him, too, that you traded up. Why was he in town?”
“He told me he had some legal papers I needed to sign, to clear up some title issues with the condo we sold when I moved to Oregon.” She shrugged and looked a bit embarrassed. “It sounded legit, so I went. I never thought he’d put me in so much danger.”
James phone buzzed and he turned away to answer it as the rest of the group talked. Finally, he turned back and smiled at Amanda.
“Would you like some good news?”
He didn’t wait for her answer. “First, we let the Goldwing guy out of jail and apologized to him. It was just coincidental that his brother was driving by when Oswald Pike was at the crash site.”
“Why was he out there in the first place?” Meg asked, and Lisa quickly answered.
“I’d guess he was out there to buy some dope. Lots of dealers up in those hills.”
James’ eyebrows went up. “Well, maybe you’d like a job on the police force!”
When Lisa laughed and shook her head, James turned back to Amanda.
“And I’ve got one more piece of news. George is out at the motel Yoder was staying at. They found bundles of cash stuffed into the side panels of Yoder’s car. Apparently, Koi believed Yoder’s story about you hiding it for him, or he would’ve gotten the loot for himself.”
“All that for money,” she mused. “What a waste. There are so many things that are more important..”
“You’re right, Mrs. Landon. Let’s go home and find out what they are.”.
Chapter 21
There were some things Amanda would always love.
Waking up in her own plush bed, with the smell of bacon in the morning air and the realization that her husband was cooking breakfast was one of those things.
She eased one foot out of the warm sheets and cracked an eye open. Golden sunlight was spilling into her bedroom, and she could hear the familiar sound of heavy footsteps in the hallway. As two familiar faces came around the corner, she couldn’t help but break into a grin.
“Well, good morning!” she said as she sat up and held out her arms to take Katie from James. “How are you today?” she asked, planting a motherly kiss on the little girl’s fat cheek, and the baby waved her pudgy little hands in response.
“Actually, it’s almost noon. I let you sleep in.”
“It’s almost...” Amanda looked surprised. “I guess I needed some rest.”
“Yes, you did, but Katie didn’t. She was awake with the sun today, and it’s almost time for her first nap. Just our luck we got an early riser, isn’t it?”
He sat on the bed beside her, and gently leaned against her.
“So, are we going to talk about this?” he asked, and she knew instantly what
he meant.
Amanda sighed, then smiled. “I would’ve been shocked if you hadn’t brought it up,” she said, jiggling the baby a bit. “Okay, let’s talk.”
James’ expression turned serious.
“That’s it. You’re grounded.”
Amanda laughed at her husband’s words and chucked Katie under the chin, causing the baby to coo in delight. It was wonderful to be home, and even her husband’s statement couldn’t change that. She’d been checked out at the hospital and the doctor had said she was in good enough shape to go home.
“Very funny, James.”
“I mean it. I about lost my mind when I couldn’t find you,” he said, sliding onto the bed beside her as he kicked off his cowboy boots. “I’m not letting you out of my sight. You could disappear again.”
“This wasn’t my fault, though, was it?” Amanda asked. “It was just a case of mistaken identity.”
James gave a grunt of disagreement. “Mistaken identity? That wasn’t it at all. It was a case of you having dated the biggest jerk on the planet, and him throwing you under the bus to save his own sorry hide. What a guy! Chivalry at its best.”
“Okay, well, maybe my taste has improved a bit,” she teased as she leaned over and kissed James on the cheek. “I definitely traded up.”
“Lady, you’re not going to get out of this one,” he said, his voice surprisingly forceful. “Next time you get some weird phone call to meet an old boyfriend or something like that, I want you to promise me you’ll call me so I can tag along.”
“And not cause trouble?” she teased, and as she made faces at the baby she could feel her husband’s arm steal around her shoulders.
“I’ll be quiet as a mouse, I swear,” he promised, then laughed. “Unless they aren’t nice to you, then blam!”
“You sound like some sort of caveman,” she accused him, and he shrugged.
Flora, Fauna, and Foul Play Page 7