Page 33

33

S HEA

PRESENT DAY

HE CAME OUT OF NOWHERE, his hand clapping over Shea’s mouth, pulling her hard against him and behind a grove of trees.

Shea squirmed to free herself, her cries muffled against his palm.

“Shhh!” Holt’s breath against her ear silenced her. “You need to be quiet!” His hoarse whisper was frantic, not threatening. Shea remained stiff beneath his clutches, but she nodded until finally he removed his hand from her mouth.

The graves lay just ahead of them, their newly exposed faces staring up through the treetops to the moon that glowed above.

“What are you doing here?” Shea hissed.

Holt tugged on her, drawing her deeper into the woods. “Come with me.”

“No!” Shea pulled against him, extricating herself from his grip. “Tell me what’s going on!”

Holt looked in all directions. “Seriously, Shea, you need to trust me. We have to get out of here.”

“What about Pete?” she asked, her mouth set in a hard line. She knew it! She knew it! Holt had been behind Pete’s injuries.

Yet her suspicions were instantly challenged at the wave of concern that swept across Holt’s face in the moonlight. “Pete’s here ? At the lighthouse?”

“Yes, where else would he be?” Shea snapped, crossing her arms.

“The hospital, I was hoping, or home.” Holt looked warily over his shoulder. “He’d be safer there. Like you would be.”

“What’s going on?” Shea demanded.

“Why did you come to the graves?” Holt growled, his accusation riddled with urgency. “Why couldn’t you leave it alone!”

“How could I?” Shea raised her voice, and Holt instantly shushed her. “After everything that has happened?” she whispered. “Even Pete wanted to see this through.”

“No one sees this through !” Holt snapped. “They never have!” He motioned for her to follow as he changed course to wind back around to the rear of the lighthouse.

Shea followed but with caution. “Where are we going?”

“To get Pete!” Holt ducked under a branch, then held it up for Shea to step under. “You two need to go home. I had no idea when you rented my lighthouse that you were going to be this persistent.”

Shea stopped in the middle of the woods, forcing Holt to face her in the night. The moon cast a blue glow across his handsome face that was now contorted with what Shea could only identify at fear. Outright fear.

“Did you hit Pete with the car?” She had to ask, even though the odds of Holt giving an honest answer were slim to none.

Holt reared back in shock. “What are you talking about? Of course not!”

“Then who did?” Shea demanded.

“How would I know?” Holt motioned to her. “Come on!”

“What are we sneaking around for?” Shea began following him again, though reluctantly. “Please tell me what’s happening.”

Holt twisted, his sigh squelched by not wanting to make noise. He took a few steps back toward her and lowered his face to hers. She could feel his breath on her skin.

“I should have just asked you to leave. I should have said the lighthouse was closed and terminated your stay.”

Shea rolled her eyes at him in the dark. “Well, if you wanted me gone, yes, that would make sense.”

“But...” Holt raked his hand through his hair. “At first I wanted you to write the book.”

“Because you wanted the publicity?” Shea asked.

Holt nodded sheepishly. “If the lighthouse was haunted, and you wrote about it, I’d never be shy of bookings ever again. So I crept around the lighthouse at night to make noises. I rigged your light to pop like a ghost killed it. I made corn syrup to look like blood and smeared it on the window.”

“That was you ?” Shea couldn’t help but give him a look of sheer exasperation.

“Yes.” She could see the whites of Holt’s eyes in the night. “I’m not proud of it! But that’s what people tend to do after reading about a haunted lighthouse. They want to visit it.”

Shea shook her head. “I’m a writer, and you knew I eat that kind of stuff for breakfast!”

“I realize now it was totally wrong! But—I needed to get some publicity for the place and—” Holt’s chest heaved, and he released a sigh. “Listen, when you booked the place, you said you were a writer. I wasn’t surprised you were interested in Annabel—anyone who comes here is. But I thought you were going to keep it simple, not dig into it like an archaeologist! Shea, it’s this sort of research that might’ve gotten Jonathan Marks shot. And look what happened to Pete? We can’t play around with this anymore. This is something longtime local legend the old-timers around here take very seriously!”

“Point made,” Shea said. She was discovering that all on her own.

“I’m not here to hurt you or Pete. I’m here to get you away from the lighthouse. Let Annabel and Rebecca and Edgar ... everyone else—just let them all be.”

“Why?” Shea challenged. “What if their story needs to be told. For Penny’s sake. For Captain Gene’s sake, her father. If all this stuff really happened, then there could be a silver map somewhere around here that belongs to Penny and her father. They deserve it. They shouldn’t have to lose out on their legacy just because someone out there thinks they’re owed it!” Shea threw her hands in the air, her words ending with a hiss.

Holt grimaced as the sound of tires crunching on gravel alerted them. He yanked her down behind some trees as the car parked yards away from the lighthouse, the headlights off. The engine purred and then was silenced. A car door opened, and a form emerged from the driver’s side. The driver was male, stoop-shouldered, and he hesitated as if trying to find his footing before starting toward the lighthouse.

Holt leaned into Shea and whispered in her ear, “What room is Pete sleeping in?”

“One of the attic rooms,” Shea answered.

“Okay.” Holt sucked in a steadying breath.

Shea reached out and gripped Holt’s arm. “Why? Who is that? And what’s he here for?”

Holt’s look was grim. “You should have that figured out. You’re the one who wanted to meet Captain Gene.”

Thoroughly confused, but knowing this wasn’t the time to interrogate Holt, Shea followed behind him as they moved ahead slowly, staying out of view in the tree line. When a stick snapped beneath her shoe, she froze, but Holt waved her on. It was apparent that Captain Gene hadn’t heard it, as evidenced by his hunched form continuing to lumber his way toward the lighthouse as if he owned it—or maybe as if it owned him .

Shea was perplexed. Why was Holt slinking around the edge of the woods to avoid being seen by Captain Gene? A ninety-something man couldn’t pose much of a threat, could he?

She tugged the hem of Holt’s shirt. When he glanced over his shoulder at her, she whispered, “Why are we sneaking around like this? Let’s just go talk to him.”

“You don’t talk to Captain Gene.”

Holt’s answer was unsatisfactory, and Shea told him as much. “I’m going to talk to him.” She pushed out ahead of Holt, and he clamored for her, gripping her wrist in a viselike hold that pinched her skin.

“No!”

More annoyed than cautious at this point, Shea spun and rammed her finger into Holt’s chest. “I’m not afraid of an elderly man. I’m not afraid of Annabel’s ghost. I am afraid of what’s going on that threatens anyone who dares to investigate. So how about we just end this once and for all so that no one else gets hurt?”

“Or killed ?” Holt growled back. “You mean killed, right? Because that’s what happens when anyone messes with Annabel’s story.”

“Again with the cryptic nonsense. Doesn’t anyone around here tell the truth about anything?”

Holt gave a quick shake of his head. “We don’t have time for this. We need to reach Captain Gene before he can enter the lighthouse.”

“And then what? What’s he going to do if he gets in the lighthouse?”

Holt’s response sliced through Shea like a razor-sharp knife. “He’s going to protect his family. He’s guarding family. A family that started more than a century ago. You don’t understand what you’re digging up here, Shea, and if I’d not been so stupid and greedy, I’d have sent you packing the day after you arrived.”

“Why? What do you mean he’s ‘guarding family’?”

Holt hesitated, then said, “Just trust me, okay?”

“Why should I?” Shea snapped. She didn’t trust Holt as far as she could throw him. The fact was, at this point, she was confused enough to wish she’d insisted she and Pete just return to their mundane and boring lives back home. But she was also invested enough that she knew she’d never be content with that—not now, not after all that had happened.

Moments later, they had reached the back door of the lighthouse, which stood ajar, inviting them in like unsuspecting victims. Only they did suspect ... something. Shea just didn’t know what it was. Yet concern for Pete urged her to follow Holt in silence, at least until she was better able to assess the situation.

She noticed wet footprints across the wood floor of the kitchen. Large feet, the soles probably those of rubber boots. They were staggered, and Shea noted that a set of the prints were only partially applied, and one of the kitchen table chairs was cockeyed from its normal position. It appeared Captain Gene was unbalanced of body. He hardly posed a threat!

Willing to play along with Holt’s melodrama, Shea continued following him through the spotty darkness. Narrow strips of light filtered through from the moon shining through the windows, just enough to negate the need for a flashlight and for Shea to make out Holt’s face. He stopped at the doorway to the lightkeeper’s bedroom—her room—and held up a hand.

Captain Gene stood across the room, his hands braced on the doorway that led to the spiral stairs and Pete’s room. The elderly man’s shoulders lifted and fell in heavy breaths as he struggled with the effects of advanced age. Again, hardly a threat.

Shea put a hand on Holt’s arm.

He waved her off, slipping into the shadows of the room, just out of view of Captain Gene.

Shea narrowed her eyes. Was Holt going to pounce on the man? A surge of empathy for her intruder, and irritation toward her would-be protector, flooded her then.

“That’s it!” Shea’s words cracked through the silence.

Holt jumped, and his shoulder struck the wall, sending a small oil painting of a black bear careening from its hook and sliding across the floor. Captain Gene fell against the doorway, clutching the jamb for balance, his eyes growing big in his wizened face.

Shea flicked on the light switch, thoroughly finished with the subterfuge.

She got her first good look at Captain Gene, and for a moment her world tilted like a ship on the crest of a tidal wave. Dark eyes set in his wrinkled face, shaggy white hair sticking out over his ears. His nose was rounded on the tip like a cuddly Santa Claus, but it wasn’t red and chapped from the cold. Instead, it was weathered from the buffeting wind, the years spent in the Porcupine Mountains. His flannel shirt was half untucked in his faded, navy-blue trousers. His jacket was a khaki-colored slicker with a patch over the right side of his chest, boasting a pine tree in green embroidery and the words Protect the Trees . But it was his eyes. His expression. His startled stare that burrowed into hers that was so eerily familiar, Shea could only swing to the younger version of Captain Gene, who now stiffened in the corner of the room.

“You!” She shifted back to the captain, calculating the visual evidence of what was still remarkably unclear to her. “You’re...” She couldn’t finish.

It was very apparent that Holt and Captain Gene shared a large amount of DNA. If someone put Captain Gene’s life into rewind, the years would strip away the influence of age from his face and body. His form would straighten into a broad- shouldered stature. His eyes would become less lined, less sunken in his face. His hair would grow blonder, and he would essentially become like Holt, and Holt would become Captain Gene. It was only the decades that separated them. The decades and, apparently, the truth.

Captain Gene seemed to recover from Shea’s impatient outburst. He held his arm out toward Holt, his palm extended, whether to shush him or keep Holt at bay, Shea wasn’t certain. He was stern when he faced Shea, and Holt was, strangely enough, obedient and silent.

“It is time for you to go.” Captain Gene’s declaration was controlled and authoritative. It was as though his age alone demanded compliance.

But Shea was not the compliant type, and Pete lay upstairs with a busted arm. There was no way she was going to leave him behind. “Give me one good reason why I should go.”