Smugglers & Scones

by Talbot, Morgan C

  That deep, serious tone again. I knew he meant it. “How is this gonna go?”

  “I’d guess it’s about twelve feet to open air. That’s ten, maybe twenty seconds of holding your breath. Can you do that with me?”

  “I have no flipping idea,” I cried. “Can’t you just tow me or something?”

  I felt Lake swivel to look over his shoulder. “The tunnel isn’t that wide. They probably didn’t carve it any bigger than they needed in order to get the barrels into the speakeasy. Kick hard and pull yourself along the tunnel wall. You can do it.”

  “You go first.”

  “Okay. I’ll be waiting at the other end. You should be able to see me against the light. I’ll reach back for you. Look for my hand.”

  I nodded. My body began to shiver from the cold. Hypothermia! How much time do I have before I pass out and sink to the bottom of this shaft? Al would know. So would Paul. He nearly drowned Artemis in his last book. Suddenly, I wished I’d offered to go first. At least in the marina across the river, there were ladders and a couple of marina docks for me to grab onto—if I could swim that far with my shivering arms.

  Lake’s arms guided my hands to the edge of the tunnel, less than a foot under the surface. “Give me about ten seconds, then swim after me. Easy peasy.” He began to duck underwater, then rose again, put his hands on the sides of my head, and pressed a hot, salty kiss on my lips.

  Wow. My mind lifted right out of that dark, wet, freezing hole and flew up among the glittery gold stars. They were hidden in the billowing smoke, but I knew they were there.

  And then he was gone. I blinked. One, one thousand, two, one thousand… Am I really going to dive after him? I might be able to wait for the firemen to find me. No, no, hell no. I’ll get hypothermia or catch fire that way. Or both. I’m rescuing myself, thanks.

  When I reached a hurried ten, one thousand, I took a deep breath and hauled myself down to the tunnel’s entrance, clumsily dropping the flashlight. My fingers slipped on the wet rock, and I ended up stuck to the top of the shaft like a helium balloon on a grocery store ceiling. I couldn’t reach the bottom of the shaft, and I had zero traction clawing at the rock behind my back. My lungs started to ache as I writhed to turn myself over like a crab.

  In a frenzy of panic, I scrabbled across the watery ceiling like a possessed monster, desperate for air. But I felt my body using up my precious supply of oxygen way too quickly. Too late, I remembered that I should’ve done a few practice breaths before I went underwater.

  Lake! Help!

  Lake’s warm hand encircled my wrist. He pulled, and I flowed bonelessly after him, leaving the clutches of the whisky tunnel behind. With a hard kick, Lake propelled us to the surface of the Silver River. I gasped and sputtered, choking on cold seawater and clawing frantically at his arm.

  “I have you. I have you. You’re safe now. All you have to do is breathe easy. Let’s float over to the marina here, and I’ll get you out of this nippy water. You just hang out, and I’ll do all the work, okay? Pippa?”

  “Yeah. Okay.” My teeth chattered hard, and I felt raindrops on my face as Lake started swimming across the river, towing me with him. Though I was looking up at the passing rain clouds, my eyes could still vividly see the tunnel’s dark rock surrounding me.

  In what seemed like no time at all, Lake was placing my hands on cold metal rungs and pushing me upward. I shuddered my way up onto the end of the floating dock just inside the short marina jetty and flopped over, shivering and panting.

  Lake was by my side in a moment, dripping and heaving with effort. His lips were a faint shade of blue. “Come on, Pippa. We’ve got to get you out of the rain.”

  Somehow, he got me on my feet and up the two flights of covered stairs that lined the sheer cliff wall on the south side of the river. I stopped to catch my breath several times, and every time I looked across the river, the cloud of smoke pouring from On The Rocks streamed further across town, tugged by the constant wind. The fire engines hadn’t arrived yet, since they were stationed up in Waldport. But despite their absence, the building wasn’t an inferno. Maybe the rain was hindering the fire. Maybe it hadn’t been as bad as we thought. Maybe we’d risked our lives because of a glorified smoke bomb.

  We reached the boat tour office, where he unlocked the door. His hands shook from the cold, but his body language still proclaimed that he was calm, cool, and collected.

  Inside, the office felt like an oven. I began to shiver even harder. “We need to warm up, right now,” I said through chattering teeth.

  Lake took my hand and led me back to a supply closet in the very back corner of the room. “I saw some blankets back here while I was getting the cleaning supplies.”

  “Great thinking. Take off your wet clothes. We need to concentrate our body heat and trap it.”

  Lake managed a shivery smile. “Yes, ma’am.”

  Halfway between numb and being stabbed to death by pins and needles, I struggled to get my heavy, stubborn clothing off. My shirt proved easier—and stretchier—than my jeans. My fingers just would not grab that brass button at my waist. Lake dumped an armful of scratchy gray blankets at my feet and reached for my pants.

  “Here. Let me.” He had the button free in a split second, and I let him help me tug the clingy, sopping denim free. I hugged myself, standing in front of him in a lacy blue bra and not-at-all-matching panties, and he whirled a thick blanket around me and began rubbing my arms and back, trying to get my blood flowing.

  “I’m good now. Get undressed.”

  He didn’t need any more prompting. Off came his flannel overshirt then his white T-shirt. He sat in Cecil’s desk chair to peel off his wet jeans, and I couldn’t help admiring the dark V of chest hair that was already starting to dry and curl up across his muscular chest. As he pulled his thick socks free, I reached for a blanket to hand him.

  “Don’t forget your socks, Pippa,” he said, accepting the blanket.

  He stood and helped me balance while I pulled off one sock then the other. I draped them across Cecil’s topmost desk shelf. “I feel like an icicle.” My teeth still hadn’t stopped chattering, and I sounded like I was riding some crazy fair ride with no shocks. My bra and panties felt like they’d been freshly pulled from the freezer.

  Lake grabbed the desk phone and called the local police. The dispatcher assured him that yes, indeed, the fire department had been called. He thanked her and hung up then leaned against the desk, exhausted.

  “Come here. We need to do the body heat thing.”

  He nodded and stood up. “That water was maybe fifty degrees. We need to get our core temperature up—and soon.” He opened his blanket for me, and I did the same, hugging him close. He wrapped his arms around me, holding his own blanket tightly in his grip. We stood like that for a couple of minutes, and I started to feel like a human Jell-O creation. My shivering would not stop, but I had never been so sexily warmed from nearly dying in my life.

  A kiss landed atop my damp hair. “You were great back there. Very brave. Not everyone could choose to risk their life swimming down a secret tunnel instead of waiting to be rescued.”

  I worked my jaw muscles free of their jiggly feeling so I could speak normally. “I almost couldn’t. I feel like all the little things I’ve worried about recently really don’t matter at all now that I’ve made this admittedly epic choice.”

  I heard Lake’s smile in his voice. “It was epic. I saw it.”

  “I wouldn’t have been able to if I hadn’t been with you. For a guy who hasn’t lifeguarded since high school, you sure remember enough to save a girl’s life. And how you came back for me when I got stuck… Do you skin dive or scuba, too?”

  “Oh, I do just about every water sport there is. With a name like Lake, it’s hard not to embrace the hydro lifestyle. I was a junior Olympian in platf
orm diving, back in the day.”

  Surprised, I looked up into his bright-blue eyes. “No way. Were you good?”

  His gaze became guarded, wistful. “I was. I medaled in 2004. Silver.”

  “You did? Really?”

  He nodded.

  I took his reticence for that adorable humility exceptional athletes often display. “Why didn’t you stick with being an Olympian? It’s got to be cooler than piloting tour boats in rinky-dink Oregon towns. Definitely more Twitter followers, too.”

  He huffed a laugh that echoed through his chest and into my ear. “I wanted to, but I let the wrong things go to my head.”

  “Like what?”

  “Alcohol, for one. I crashed my new car that year and shattered my leg. Hence the limp. My friendly reminder, I call it.”

  I went still. He talked so lightly of a tragedy that had changed his life. I had one of those, too, but I couldn’t be anywhere close to that comfortable talking about it. Not even Uncle Hilt knew about my college roommate’s sudden suicide and the racking depression it gave me. We had been so close, and then she was gone. I’d had no warning, been racked with guilt. Maybe Lake had found some secret Olympian method to accepting the dark parts of his past. “Reminder of what?”

  “Never to lose sight of what I want again.”

  I felt a bittersweet smile cross my lips. “Lake Ivens, you’re a deep man.”

  “Thank you.”

  I kissed his smile, and he returned my affections with a honeyed sweetness that took my breath away. We snuggled down into a pile of extra blankets in the corner of the office, and Lake wrapped me against his warm chest. A hot, urgent part of me ached for Lake, and I really, really tried to let it have its way with me, but the rest of me just plain ached, and exhaustion dragged at my limbs. Lake was so warm, and he smelled so good. I tucked my face into his neck and murmured, “Kamanova?”

  His response was a wicked chuckle into my ear, but he must’ve been even more worn out than I was. After a sleepy nibble on my earlobe, his breathing evened out, and his arms relaxed around me. I had a final thought of sheer bliss, and then we slept. Together. Again.

  The next thing I saw was a stony-faced Officer Tavish, standing over us, sleek bun looming, arms akimbo. In my sleepy state, she loomed like a dark, avenging angel. I leaned protectively against Lake’s chest. She lifted one of my damp socks from where I had hung it to dry and glared at us. “We’ve been scouring the entire town for you two, and I find you canoodling like a pair of half-drowned, half-naked teenagers, Lakyn? You have got some nerve!”

  20

  “I don’t believe in ghosts, but that doesn’t mean they don’t believe in me. The dead live on in our memories, and from time to time, they reach forward to remind us that they were once like us. And that someday, we will be like them.”

  Raymond Moore, 1965

  Officer Tavish offered us a ride back to Moorehaven, but she made me sit in back, behind the grate, and had Lake sit beside her in the front. The icy chill in the air should have frozen us solid. Despite her coolness toward me, I asked about the fire, and I was relieved beyond words when she told me the flames had been contained and extinguished. Our party crasher had apparently thrown damp blankets onto his fire, creating far more smoke than flame. I wanted to ask why he’d do such a thing, and what might’ve happened to Lake and me if he’d managed to corner us in the speakeasy, but I decided against any more talking after seeing the dark look she gave me in her rearview mirror.

  I clutched my blanket tightly around me and pressed my damp clothes against my thigh so I wouldn’t make the mistake of abandoning them in her backseat. The last thing I wanted was to talk to her again anytime soon. The way she glared at me made it clear she blamed me for the whole fiasco, but at least she didn’t spare Lake her dark looks.

  We pulled up in the Moorehaven parking lot. I had no idea what time it was, but Lake and I had been asleep long enough that night had fallen. What a mess I’d gotten myself into!

  Officer Tavish opened the side door for me. “Go in and get warm, Miss Winterbourne. I need to have a few words with Mr. Ivens.”

  I glanced at Lake to see if he actually wanted to stay, but he sat still and didn’t look back. Reluctantly, I slid out. The wet asphalt sucked the heat right out of my bare feet, so I gathered my belongings and trotted up to the porch. Uncle Hilt was waiting for me and opened the door as I approached.

  He hurled himself at me faster than I thought was possible for a man of his seven-plus decades and squeezed the breath out of me in a terrified hug. “Don’t you scare me like that, girl. You coulda died! You coulda drowned! Then who’d take care of me and this big ol’ rambly house? Huh? Who’d keep me outta trouble then?”

  I teared up at the ragged affection in his voice and hugged him back. “I’m okay, Uncle Hilt. Lake saved me. He’s a lifeguard and an Olympic diver and everything. I was in good hands. The best. I’m okay.”

  He pulled back and met my eyes. “Well, then, I’ll hafta shake that man’s—” Hilt broke off, and his concern shifted in a different direction once he saw that I was carrying most of my clothing. “Ya know, on second thought…”

  “Nothing happened, I swear.” I bolted past him into the front parlor, where I massaged my feet on the thick rug, warming them up.

  “Where have you been?” Jordan said from the dark-red couch.

  “Jordan! What are you doing here? You would not believe the day I had.”

  She stood up and gave me a tight hug. Behind her, Hilt folded his arms and regarded me with a searching look that I studiously ignored. “When I heard there was a fire at On The Rocks, I was just glad no one was in it at the time. And then Hilt called and asked if I knew where you were. I got a sinking feeling in my stomach. I’m so glad to see you are okay. You are okay, aren’t you?”

  I nodded and squeezed her back. “Lake saved my life. And I’m not even kidding a little bit.” I heard a babble of voices swiftly approaching from down the hallway, and I knew my guests had heard I was safely back. I knew they’d be full of curiosity and concern, so I gave them a minute to come in before I started my tale of adventure and woe. Telling them everything that happened helped all the loose pieces of my adventure fall into a more ordered picture, which made me feel better about my memory skills, if not about nearly drowning. Al shamelessly pulled out his phone and started videoing me.

  I had just gotten to the part where we had to swim for our lives, when Lake finally entered. Everyone paused and looked over at him. He appeared shaken and a little pale. Considering his stalker ex-wife had the power to arrest him and had just seen him snuggling with another woman, I didn’t blame him. I personally thought he’d gotten off light after the looks she’d shot him.

  “And here’s my hero. If it hadn’t been for Lake, I don’t think I could’ve jumped into the smugglers’ tunnel in the first place, let alone made it outside, or even across the river to the marina.” I imagined I was wearing one of those soft, goofy expressions you see on teenage girls’ faces when they’re in love. “I owe you my life, Lake.”

  With that self-deprecating half grin of his, he said quietly, “No, Pippa. Now, we’re even. You saved my life first, remember?”

  Jordan still had a comforting arm around my shoulders. She gave me a sudden, hard squeeze. “You know what they say about the life you save, right?”

  Al and Skylar looked back and forth between Lake and me, wearing speculative, thoughtful expressions.

  Paul murmured, “I guess stuff like this really does happen in real life.”

  Hilt snorted. “Wouldn’t happen if we didn’t have a mad killer running around loose. He tried to smoke you guys out, didn’t he?”

  “I don’t know if he was trying to kill us or just scare us,” I said. “How bad was the fire?”

  Jordan replied, “Smoke and water d
amage but not much structural stuff. Poor Gwen. Maybe I can start some kind of fundraiser to help. The tourists go to On The Rocks a lot. I’m sure they’d want to contribute.”

  Hilt twitched into motion, unfolding his arms as if he’d had a sudden thought. “You tell Officer Tavish about finding the spot where Roddy was killed?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t want to get into the fact that I could have told an officer of the law, but she was being jealous and possessive, and I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

  Hilt excused himself to go call the station. “And I’ll call Chloe, too, and tell her you’re home safe. She was worried and didn’t want to leave this evening.”

  The authors all leaned forward in interest. “Did you find the treasure?” Paul asked.

  “Or any clues?” Skylar added. “And while you were down there, did you feel any chilly spots or funny sensations, like the place might be haunted?”

  I gave her a tolerant smile. “I’m pretty sure it wasn’t haunted, by Roddy’s ghost or anyone else’s. And I’m afraid we didn’t find any solid clues, but we did find the stars.”

  Lake nodded and explained about the golden stars on the speakeasy ceiling. “We still don’t know what it means exactly, but it does seem to be a solid link.”

  “Oh,” Skylar piped up. “And while we were out looking for Devin, I spotted him and his cameraman—Kyle, right?—at the fire. They were getting footage that they hoped to sell to the TV stations for a little cash. I wrote a quick note and slipped it in Devin’s pocket when he wasn’t looking. I even managed to melt into the crowd before he could spot me. I saw him looking around and holding the note. I’m actually getting better at this stuff.”

  “What did it say?” Lake asked.

  “It said to come here to Moorehaven tonight at seven and to bring all the footage he had shot in town in case we could see some clues on it. And it said to come alone, to keep the circle of evidence smaller. I thought that was a nice line.”