Page 94 of Artifice

As lightning split the sky, she saw the rusted warning sign tilting precariously at the path’s edge, its faded lettering barely visible.

“Liv?”

She whirled toward the voice then relaxed slightly at the sight of Stephanie from The Salty Kettle. Her blonde hair was pulled into a messy ponytail and her waitress uniform replaced by jeans and a thick fisherman’s sweater.

“Stephanie? What are you doing here?” Olive kept her voice casual, though alarm bells rang in her head. They weren’t supposed to meet until later tonight.

“I’ve been trying to reach you. I decided it couldn’t wait.” Stephanie walked toward her, concern etched across her features. “So I went to the B&B, hoping to find you. Mrs. Potts said you might be out here. Are you okay? You look like you’ve been?—”

“Rock climbing?” Olive finished with a wry smile, wiping her wet hair from her face. “Something like that.”

Stephanie stood beside her now, peering curiously over the cliff’s edge. “That’s quite a drop.”

“Yes, it is.” Olive paused. “How did you know exactly where to find me?”

“Mrs. Potts, like I said.” A flicker of something—guilt?—crossed Stephanie’s face. “She was worried.”

Olive took a step back, her heel dangerously close to the cliff edge. “I never told Mrs. Potts where I was going.”

Stephanie’s expression hardened, just for an instant, before softening into regret. “I was hoping we could do this the easy way.”

The attack came faster than Olive anticipated—Stephanie lunged forward with a syringe that flashed silver.

Olive’s defensive training kicked in as she dodged, twisting to break the other woman’s grip.

But her foot, too close to the edge, sent loose rocks tumbling into the darkness below.

Olive stumbled.

Stephanie used that fraction of a second to drive a syringe into Olive’s neck.

Cold fire spread through Olive’s veins.

Her limbs went heavy, unresponsive. She tried to reach for Colin’s phone, to hide it, to throw it—anything to protect the evidence—but her hands refused to cooperate.

“I’m sorry,” Stephanie murmured, catching Olive as she crumpled. “I didn’t have a choice. They have my brother at the school.”

Darkness closed in around the edges of Olive’s vision.

The last thing she saw was Stephanie’s face, genuinely remorseful, as she extracted Colin’s phone from Olive’s pocket.

The last thing she heard was Stephanie’s whispered apology.

The last thing she spoke was, “Wait. Don’t . . .”

Then nothing.

CHAPTER 51

Consciousness returned to Olive in fragments, each more unpleasant than the last.

The hard stone floor beneath her. The coarse rope binding her wrists. The throbbing ache at the base of her skull.

She forced her eyes open.

Dim electric lights cast sickly yellow pools in what appeared to be a tunnel. Rough-hewn stone walls arched overhead, and the distant drip of water marked time like a broken metronome. The ancient brick flooring was slick with moisture. The air smelled of salt and mildew and something medicinal that made her stomach turn.

“Welcome back.”