by Lena Gregory
He peered down at her. “Sure because someone told you? Or sure in a general sense?”
She started to answer, then paused. The sun’s parting rays fell over them, cocooning them in warmth. Something skittered across the water’s surface, bouncing along, splashing up a small spray as it went, before dropping beneath the surface. A seagull’s cry carried to her on the soft breeze, and a sense of peace enveloped her. She kissed Bee’s cheek. “I know for sure they are at peace.”
A smile lit his eyes a second before it reached his lips. “Thanks, Cass.”
“Any time.” She held him close a little longer, just enjoying the moment, then stood when she saw Stephanie and Beast heading back down the beach toward them. “Come on. Let’s get out of here before it gets any darker.”
“Sure.” He stood and brushed off his pants, then started across the rocks after Cass. “Hey, what happened to whomever you were supposed to meet out here?”
Cass paused and opened herself once again. Though the usual bombardment assailed her, she couldn’t pick out any one particular voice that seemed more insistent than the rest. And the frightened woman remained silent. She tried to shrug it off. “I don’t know. I was so sure I was supposed to come out here for some reason, but I guess maybe I was wrong.”
Her foot slid from beneath her, and she started to fall.
Bee grabbed her arm and steadied her. “Be careful.”
“Thank you.”
She slowed a little so as not to tumble into the bay, scanning the horizon for any sign of the spirit who’d helped out with Stanley, listening for the man who’d been trying to tell her something about the lighthouse and the treasure.
“Oh, oww,” Bee yelled.
Cass stopped and turned. “What happened?”
“I slipped.” With one foot stuck between two rocks and the other knee precariously balanced on another rock, Bee held on for dear life.
Cass lunged for him and gripped his hand. “Can you pull your foot up, or is it stuck?”
“No. I think I can pull it up, but I’m trying to reach something.”
“Reach what, Bee?” Cass tried to haul him up, but he shook her off. “Come on, Bee. It’s getting dark and we have to get off these rocks before it does. Are you hurt?”
“My ankle is killing me, but there’s something down here.”
“Define something?” Cass had visions of some kind of sea creature grabbing Bee’s leg and pulling him down. “Is it alive?”
“No. Just give me a minute.” He braced his hands against the rocks on either side of him and wiggled his leg back and forth to free his foot from the gap between the rocks. Once he was free, he laid down on his stomach and reached down into the hole. After fishing around for a minute, he came up with what looked like a bunch of rags.
“What is that?” Hardly the treasure he’d been expecting.
“I have no idea, but here, take it so I can get out of this.” He shoved the pile at Cass, then scrambled to his feet, favoring the one that had gotten caught.
Cass tossed the bundle onto the sand and reached for him, helping him climb across the rocks and work his way back down toward the beach.
Though he favored his right ankle and winced now and then, the pain didn’t seem to be too bad. Hopefully, just a sprain.
When they reached a flat rock, Cass stopped. “Why don’t you sit here and let me take a look at your ankle?”
Bee stopped and sat. He blew out a breath and pulled his ankle close to him.
Cass moved his hands aside and pulled off one of his signature platform shoes. “I don’t know why you insist on wearing these high shoes.”
“Listen, girlfriend, I love you to death, but do I question your fashion choices?” He lifted a brow at the leggings and tunic top she now wore, her tangled hair pulled into a sloppy knot since she’d removed the sash before leaving the shop.
“Fair enough.” She examined his ankle.
“Is everything okay?” Stephanie called from the beach at the edge of the jetty.
“I think so.” She felt around his ankle. No bruising. Little swelling. Definitely not as bad as she’d feared. “Does that hurt at all?”
“Actually.” He frowned and rolled his ankle. Full range of motion. “I think it’s fine. Once I get off these rocks and onto a flat surface, I’ll see how it feels.”
“Do me a favor, though? Please take your other shoe off and walk barefoot ’til we’re off the rocks and sand?” She handed him his shoe. “No sense asking to roll that ankle again, especially before we can get it iced.”
“Yes, Mommy.” He winked at Cass and pulled off the other shoe. When he started to stand, he dropped one shoe into a crevice between the rocks. “Oh, great.”
“I’ll get it.” Cass started toward him.
“No, you stay where you are. I’ve got it.” He set the other shoe aside, knelt down, and leaned over. After a moment of reaching into the crevice, he sat back on his heels. “Is there a stick laying around?”
“Oh, right. That reminds me, I wanted to show you Beast’s new trick.” And he’d better be sufficiently impressed. If, of course, Beast would cooperate and retrieve the stick again. Hmm. Maybe she oughta try it a few more times alone with him before inviting an audience.
Bee glared at her.
“Oh, sorry.” She searched the area for a stick but didn’t find anything.
“I’ll run and get the tire iron from the trunk.” Stephanie held her hand out for the keys, which Cass tossed to her, then she ran off with Beast and returned a couple of minutes later with the long metal rod, bent on one end, that served as a jack handle and tire iron.
Cass took it from her and handed it to Bee. “Do you want me to try it.”
“No, I’ve got it.” He continued to study the gap, tilting his head in one direction then the other. “But I think there’s something else down here.”
Cass moved up behind him and looked over his shoulder. The crevice was only about six inches wide and maybe a foot long. She could see Bee’s shoe laying on it’s side in the damp sand. “What do you mean? I don’t see anything.”
Bee pulled out his phone and shined the flashlight down into the hole and to the right, beneath a gap under the large rock beside them. “See that?”
Another bundle of cloth peeked out from beneath the other rock.
Bee leaned over onto the rock to give Cass a better view, and it tipped beneath him.
Cass grabbed his shirt. “You okay?”
“Yeah, yeah. Just didn’t expect it to move.”
“You know, it looks like it was moved recently, doesn’t it?” All of the other rocks sat pretty steadily against one another in a chaotic rocky pile. This one rocked with Bee’s weight.
“Could be the tide loosened it.” Bee lay on his side, shined the light into the hole, and reached in with the tire iron.
“You think? I don’t know. Maybe if it was the ocean or an inlet crashing through here, but I don’t think the bay waters would loosen something like that, even during a storm.”
“And we haven’t had any really bad storms lately, anyway.” Bee fished his shoe out and handed it to Cass.
She tossed it and the other one onto the beach along with his socks. “Need a hand up?”
“Give me a sec. I want to see if I can grab this.” Bee set his phone aside then reached into the gap with the tire iron once more. “What the heck?”
“Is something wrong?”
“I don’t know, but whatever I just moved is too heavy to be just cloth.” He set the tire iron down and shined his flashlight into the hole.
“Anything?”
“Oh, my . . .” He yanked his hand back and dropped the phone onto the rock as he rolled over to the edge and gagged.
Chapter Seventeen
Cass laid a hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right?”
He sobbed and shook his head.
Cass grabbed the cracked phone and shone the light into the hole to see what Bee had fished out.<
br />
A hand and arm stuck out into the gap from beneath the loosened rock. Cass reached in and gripped the wrist, automatically searching for a pulse. “Oh, man. Bee! Help me now!”
“I can’t, Cass. I’m—”
“She’s not dead, Bee.”
“What?” He staggered to his feet. “You’re sure?”
Stephanie already had her phone out and was speaking rapidly as she ran toward the parking lot.
“We have to get this rock off her.” Though the pulse was faint, just the barest flutter, it was there. As long as there was any chance they could save her, there wasn’t time to wait for help or preserve the crime scene.
Bee came up behind her. “Move, Cass. Let go.”
Cass released the hold she hadn’t realized she still had on the woman’s arm and scrambled out of the way.
Bee braced his feet against two rocks and wedged his hands beneath the enormous boulder.
“Don’t try to pick it up, Bee, just tilt it back when I say go. If you drop it, it’ll crush her.” Cass hurried across the rock to Bee’s other side and reached down into the crack.
“Why hasn’t it already?” he grunted.
“It looks like some of the sand washed out from beneath the rocks.” She reached under the rock and felt around until she hit cool flesh, then slid her hand around the woman’s ankle. She wouldn’t have long to get her moved out of the way before Bee would have to let go of the rock, though she hated not being able to assess her before moving her.
“Ready, Cass?”
“Okay, when I say go, just lift enough for me to pull her out.”
Stephanie slid in the sand and flopped onto her stomach on the rocks beside Cass. She reached beneath the rock and grabbed hold of the woman’s other ankle.
Cass braced her free hand against a rock for leverage. “One, two, three, go.”
Bee heaved the boulder up and over, just a few inches, but enough to allow them to pull the woman toward them. Cass reached into the gap to cradle her head as best she could as Stephanie adjusted her grip to hold both ankles and continued to pull.
“Get her on the sand.” Cass hooked her arms beneath the woman’s armpits, and together they carried her and dropped her onto the sand, less gently than Cass would have liked, but time was too short. She had to hurry if there was any chance of saving her, no matter how slim it might be.
“Stephanie, get someone and find out how long until they get here, then pass this on.” Cass felt for a pulse. “Pulse is thready, breathing labored.”
Bee fell to his knees at her side. “Is she alive?”
“Barely.”
Stephanie spoke rapidly into the phone, relaying the information as Cass assessed her.
“Victim is female, approximately . . .”
“Ah, man.” Bee shoved his hands into his hair. “Cass, it’s Piper.”
Every harsh thought she’d had about the woman disappeared as she worked to save her. No one deserved to end up like this. Tears streamed down her cheeks, blurred her vision.
Bee reached over and wiped them, then he gripped Piper’s hand. “Hang on, Piper. We’ve got you.”
Cass assessed her head injuries. Several cuts and contusions, one severe gash. “I need something to use as a bandage.”
Bee stripped off his shirt and held it out to her.
She grabbed it and applied pressure to the worst of the head wounds.
“I think she stopped breathing, Cass,” Stephanie sobbed.
“Bee, hold this.”
He pressed the shirt against Piper’s head.
Cass tried to get a pulse. Nothing. She started chest compressions. Piper had to live. She just had to. Cass had given all of this up, because she hadn’t been able to deal with holding someone’s life in her hands after she’d so miserably failed a patient who had trusted her. She couldn’t lose another one. She wouldn’t. “Come on, Piper. Just hold on a little bit longer.”
“You have to hurry,” Stephanie screamed into the phone. “She’s not breathing.”
Sirens finally wailed in the distance, coming closer. Not fast enough. Cass continued compressions. She paused and felt for a pulse. “I have a pulse. It’s weak, but it’s there.”
Rick and Luke barreled across the sand and slid to a stop as they reached her. Rick started pulling out equipment. He applied leads and hooked up the EKG.
“I’ve got her, Cass, thanks.” His partner, Jamie, a woman Cass had seen around town, took her place.
Cass fell back in the sand and scrambled out of the way to give them room, then she pulled her knees to her chest as the scene unfolded around her in some sort of surreal slow motion. She cradled her head in her hands, her gaze riveted on Piper.
Stephanie sobbed softly.
Cass’s heart pounded hard enough to rock her back and forth, bringing a wave of nausea. “Stephanie, where’s Beast?”
“He’s good, Cass. He’s okay. I had to let go of him to help you pull her out, so I put him in the car with the windows cracked and the air conditioner running so he wouldn’t get hit when the emergency vehicles started pulling in.”
“All right.” She nodded, numb. “Okay.”
Bee knelt on the beach a few yards away, crying softly.
Luke bent over him, his hand resting on Bee’s shoulder, soothing, comforting.
She folded her arms on her knees and rested her head, took a few deep breaths. Beast was safe. Stephanie was sitting next to her fine. Bee was upset, but Luke was with him. And the paramedics were tending to Piper. Everything was as right as it could be. Maybe she’d been wrong about the woman’s voice. Maybe it had been Piper’s fear she’d been feeling. Or Kitty’s. Maybe the voice had been urging her to take Bee to the lighthouse. Except—
She jerked upright. “Where’s Tank?”
Stephanie sniffed and pointed toward the ambulance, where Tank stood with Chief Rawlins. “I’m going to go get Beast now.”
Cass nodded. “Thank you.”
Okay. She had to calm down. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Counted to ten. Willed her heart to slow down.
“Cass?” Chief Rawlins crouched beside her a few moments later. “Are you doing okay?”
“I’m okay, thanks.” The weight of responsibility weighed on her, the fear of having failed someone who needed her churning in her gut. “Is Piper okay?”
“She’s breathing, and her heart rate has leveled out.” Chief Rawlins held out a hand to help her up.
Cass accepted it and stood, then watched as the paramedics loaded the stretcher into the ambulance they’d managed to pull onto the walkway to get closer to the beach.
“Can you tell me what happened? What brought you out to the lighthouse in the first place?”
All Cass could do was help the police find whoever had done this to her; it was up to the paramedics and doctors to save Piper now. “Bee was reading Kitty Garrison’s journal, and he wanted to come out here and see if he could find the treasure. So, I took a ride with him.”
She nodded and flipped through a couple of pages in a small notebook. “We talked to Bee.”
“Is he okay?” She should be there for him. Should have gone to get Beast herself instead of Stephanie having to do it. She’d just needed a moment, but now guilt tugged at her.
The chief glanced over to where Bee still sat with Luke. “He’s as good as could be expected.”
Cass brushed the sand from her pants.
“But he did mention you wanting to meet someone out here. Can you tell me who it was, please?” Though the chief had been kind enough to phrase it as a question, she left no doubt it was a demand.
“It wasn’t a someone.” Since Chief Rawlins seemed to believe strongly in Cass’s abilities, way more than even Cass did, she answered honestly. “I’ve been hearing voices. A lot of them, and I haven’t been able to sort through them, but one in particular kept saying something about the lighthouse.”
“Have you heard it before?”
“Yes. I think
, anyway. The day Fred was killed, I believe the same voice was telling me to stay away from the lighthouse, only I didn’t realize that at the time. I only kept catching lighthouse, so I came out here.”
“Can you tell me anything else?” She stuffed the notebook into her jacket pocket.
“Not really. There’s been a woman’s voice also, very frightened.”
“Could it have been Piper?”
“No, I don’t think so anyway.” Until then, at least, Cass had never been contacted by someone who was still alive. Besides, she’d heard the voice before Piper had gone missing. “For some reason, I thought it had something to do with Tank or Stephanie, since it seems to call to me when either of them is around.”
“But you can’t make any sense of what it’s trying to communicate?”
“No. I’m sorry. I just hear ‘take him’ and the number four, amid a jumble of other voices. And I feel immense fear. I thought maybe it meant to take Bee to the lighthouse today, but I’m not sure, and it doesn’t feel right.”
The chief nodded and studied her. “You know, Cass, I’ve worked with psychics before, both those who had incredible talent and those who conned whomever they could to make a buck. You haven’t given me any indication you’re a con artist, you seem to care deeply about those you’re trying to help, and yet, you don’t really seem to take your gift seriously. If you truly want to help people, I’d suggest embracing your talent, working to hone your skills. I truly believe you have the ability, if the desire is there as well.”
Cass worked to swallow past the lump in her throat.
“If you think of anything else, just give a call.” She walked away without saying anything else. She didn’t need to.
Cass forced back tears. All she wanted to do in that moment was hug Beast, go home, and hide away. Instead, she went to Bee. “Are you all right?”
He nodded.
Luke held a plastic evidence bag containing the clothing Bee had found.
Cass pointed to the bag. “Does that have anything to do with what happened to Piper?”