Annie didn’t try to stop her. The damage she’d done to their relationship ran too deep for an easy repair. She returned to the kitchen, intending to stay there until Jaycie was ready to talk. Jaycie appeared almost immediately but brushed past her. Without even a glance in Annie’s direction, she opened the back door. “Livia! Livia, where are you?”
Annie was so accustomed to going after Livia herself that she made her way toward the door, but Jaycie had already stepped outside. “Livia Christine! Come back here right now!”
Annie followed Jaycie. “I’ll go around the front.”
“Don’t bother,” Jaycie snapped. “I’ll do it myself.”
Annie ignored her and checked the front porch. Livia wasn’t there. She went back to Jaycie. “Are you sure she’s not inside. She could be hiding anywhere in the house.”
Jaycie’s concern for her daughter temporarily eclipsed her anger at Annie. “I’ll go look.”
The stable door was securely locked. Annie didn’t find her in the woods behind the gazebo, and she circled to the front of the house again. The porch was still empty, but as she looked down at the beach, she spotted a splash of pink against the rocks. She rushed toward the steps. Even though Livia stood well back from the water’s edge, she shouldn’t be down there alone. “Livia!”
Livia looked up. Her pink jacket was unzipped, her hair falling straight around her face.
“Stay right where you are,” Annie ordered her as she neared the bottom. “I found her!” she yelled, not certain if Jaycie could hear.
Livia wore her mulish look. She held what appeared to be a piece of drawing paper in one hand and a teepee of crayons in the other. Earlier, Annie had asked her to draw a picture of the beach. Apparently the four-year-old had decided to do it on location. “Oh, Liv . . . You aren’t allowed to come down here alone.” She recalled the stories she’d heard about rogue waves sweeping grown men into the sea. “Let’s go find Mommy. She’s not going to be happy with you.”
As she reached for Livia’s hand, she saw a figure striding down the beach from the cottage. Tall, lean, and broad shouldered, wind rippling his dark hair. Her heart tripped all over itself with the love she felt for him, along with a fierce determination not to let her feelings show. She knew he cared for her, just as she knew he didn’t love her. But she loved him enough to make certain her feelings for him didn’t become one more guilty burden. For once in Theo Harp’s life, a woman was going to look out for his well-being instead of the other way around.
“Hey, Boo,” she said as he stopped next to her.
His eyebrow shot up in a dagger of annoyance. “Don’t even think of trying to play cute with me. I heard what happened. Are you crazy? What possessed you to take off like that?”
Love possessed me. She forced her rigid jaw muscles to relax. “It was the middle of the night, and I was barely awake. I thought you were hurt. Pardon me for being concerned.”
He ignored the barb. “Even if I’d been dying, the last thing you should have done is leave the island.”
“We’re friends, you ass. Are you telling me that, if you thought I’d been in a terrible accident, you wouldn’t have done the same thing?”
“Not if it meant losing the only place I had to live!”
So untrue. He would have done exactly the same thing for any of his friends. That was how he was made. “Go away,” she said. “I don’t want to talk to you.” I want to kiss you. Smack you. Make love with you. But more than that, she wanted to save him from his own nature.
He threw up his hands. “All you had to do this winter was one simple thing. Stay in place. But could you do that? No.”
“Stop yelling at me.”
He wasn’t yelling, as he immediately pointed out. “I’m not yelling.”
But he had raised his voice, so she raised hers. “I don’t care about the cottage,” she lied. “The best day of my life is going to be the day I leave this place.”
“And exactly where do you plan to go?”
“Back to the city, where I belong!”
“Doing what?”
“Doing what I do!”
They kept on like that for a few minutes, their voices getting louder by the second until they both ran out of steam. “Damn it, Annie. I worry about you.”
He’d finally calmed down, and she couldn’t resist touching him. Her palm to his chest, feeling his heart beat. “It’s your nature. Now stop it.”
He looped his arm around her shoulders, and they turned toward the steps. “I have something—”
Annie spotted a sheet of white construction paper fluttering across the rocks. Livia was gone.
“Liv!”
There was no response.
“Livia!” She instinctively turned toward the sea, but she’d been standing at enough of an angle that surely she would have seen her if she’d gotten close to the water.
“Did you find her?” Jaycie appeared at the top of the cliff. She was coatless, her voice reedy with near hysteria. “She’s not in the house. I’ve looked everywhere.”
Theo had started to move toward the rockslide that blocked the cave, but it took a moment for Annie to see what he had seen, a torn piece of pink fabric lying in a fissure between the boulders. Annie rushed to his side. The cave entrance had been blocked up years ago, but there was an opening in the rocks, an angular space wide enough for a child to get inside. And four crayons lay nearby.
“Get a flashlight!” Theo yelled up to Jaycie. “I think she’s gone in the cave.”
High tide was a few hours away, but who knew how deep the water already was inside? Annie crouched in front of Theo and leaned into the crevice. “Livia, are you in there?”
She heard the echo of her own voice, the slap of water against the cave walls, but nothing else. “Livia! Honey, you have to answer me so I know you’re all right.” Did she really think she could demand that a mute child talk?
Theo pushed her aside. “Liv, it’s Theo. I found some great shells for the house, but I’m going to need help building the furniture. Can you come out and help me?”
Theo locked eyes with Annie as they waited. They heard nothing.
Annie tried again. “If you’re in there, can you make a little sound for us? Or throw a rock so we can hear? Just so we know you’re there.”
They strained to listen. A few seconds later, they heard it. The soft plop of a stone hitting the water.
Theo began frantically shoving at the boulders, undeterred by the fact that even the smaller ones were too big for one man to move. Jaycie was racing down the steps, flashlight in hand, still coatless. Theo momentarily stopped what he was doing to stare at her as she scrambled toward them over the boulders without her crutches. It wasn’t Annie’s job to explain, and he went back to work.
“She’s in there.” Annie moved out of the way so Jaycie could kneel in front of the crevice.
“Livia, it’s Mommy!” Jaycie shone the flashlight inside. “Can you see the light?”
Only the waves answered.
“Livia, you have to come out. Right now! I won’t be mad. I promise.” She spun toward Annie. “She could drown in there.”
Theo grabbed a heavy slab of driftwood. He shoved it under the top boulder to make a makeshift lever, then hesitated. “I can’t take the chance. If I do shift the boulders, there’s no guarantee they won’t seal up the entrance even tighter.”
Jaycie’s cheeks were ashen. She clutched the torn pink fabric from her daughter’s coat. “Why did she go in there?”
“I don’t know,” Annie said. “She likes to explore. Maybe—”
“She’s afraid of the dark! Why would she do this?”
Annie had no answer.
“Livia!” Jaycie cried. “You have to come out now!”
Theo had begun digging at the hard sand at the bottom of the crevice. “I’ll go in after her, but we have to widen the opening.”
“You’re too big,” Jaycie said. “It’ll take too long.”
The tip of a wave
crested over the rocks and splashed their feet, returning some of the sand that Theo had moved. Jaycie tried to push him aside. “I’m going in.”
Theo stopped her. “You won’t fit. We need to shift more sand.”
He was right. Even though he’d deepened the opening, the seawater kept trying to move the sand back, and Jaycie’s hips were too wide. “I have to,” she protested. “Right now, she could be . . .”
“I’ll do it,” Annie said. “Get out of my way.”
Even as she pushed Jaycie aside, she wasn’t sure whether she would fit, but she stood a better chance than either of them. Theo’s eyes met her own. “It’s too dangerous.”
Instead of arguing, she gave him her cockiest smile. “Out of my way, dude. I’ll be fine.”
He knew as well as she did that she was the only one of them who had a chance of doing this, but that didn’t ease the struggle that played out in his eyes. “You be careful, do you hear me?” he said fiercely. “Don’t you dare do anything crazy!”
“Not planning to.” She took off her coat and passed it to Jaycie. “Put this on.”
She surveyed the tight opening, then pulled her sweatshirt over her head and tossed it aside, leaving herself in only jeans and a bright orange camisole. The cold raised goose bumps on her skin.
Theo dug furiously at the sand, trying to give her more room. She crouched down, wincing as an icy blast of spray struck her. “Liv, it’s Annie. I’m coming in with you.” She gasped as she lay down in the cold sand. As she pushed her feet inside, she imagined getting stuck in the cave entrance like Pooh in the honey jar.
“Easy now.” Theo’s voice was unnaturally tight. “Go easy.” He did his best to help her maneuver, but at the same time, she detected an almost undetectable resistance, as if he didn’t want to let her go. “Careful. Just be careful.”
It was a word he repeated half a dozen more times as she threaded her legs through the crevice, then turned her body so that her hips were roughly parallel with the opening. Another wave sprayed her. Theo shifted his position, trying to shield her.
Her sneakers were underwater inside the cave, renewing her fears about the water’s depth. Her hips wedged between the rocks. “You’re not going to make it,” he said. “Come back out. I’ll dig deeper.”
She ignored him and sucked in her stomach. With the upper half of her body still outside, she pushed as hard as she could.
“Annie, stop!”
She didn’t. She bit her lip against the sharp edges of rock and dug her feet into the sand. With a final twist of her shoulders, she was inside.
AS ANNIE DISAPPEARED INTO THE cave, Theo felt as though he, too, had been sucked in with her. He passed the flashlight to her through the crevice. He should be the one in there. He was a stronger swimmer, although God knew, he hoped the water inside wasn’t deep enough to make that a factor.
Jaycie stood behind him making helpless sounds. He kept digging at the sand. He should be the rescuer, not Annie. He tried not to think about how this scene would play out if he’d been writing it, but the ugly scenario unwound in his head like a filmstrip. If this were a scene in one of his books, Quentin Pierce would be inside that cave waiting for an unsuspecting Annie to become the victim of his next sadistic butchering. Theo never wrote detailed descriptions of the brutal deaths of his female characters, but he planted enough clues so the readers could fill in the cruel particulars for themselves. And now he was doing that in his head with Annie.
The very reason he’d been drawn to writing horror novels mocked him. By creating his gruesome tales of twisted minds, he’d achieved a sense of control. In his books, he had the power to punish evil and make certain justice was served. In fiction, at least, he could impose order on a dangerous, chaotic world.
He mentally sent in Diggity Swift to help her. Diggity, who was small enough to slip through the crevice and resourceful enough to keep Annie safe. Diggity, the character he’d killed off two weeks ago.
He dug faster and deeper, ignoring the bleeding cuts in his hands, calling to her, “For God’s sake, be careful.”
Inside the cave, Annie heard Theo’s words, but she’d been plunged back into her old nightmare. She turned on the flashlight. Erosion had left the water level at the front of the cave deeper than it used to be, already at her calves. Her throat clogged with fear. “Liv?”
She swept the beam around the cave walls, then forced herself to shine it on the water. No torn pink jacket bobbed on the surface. No little girl with straight brown hair lay facedown. But that didn’t necessarily mean she wasn’t there . . . She choked out the words, “Livie, make a noise, sweetheart, so I know where you are.”
Only the lap of water echoed against the granite walls. She moved deeper into the cave, creating a mental image of Livia crouched out of sight in one of the nooks. “Livia, please . . . Make a sound for me. Any kind of sound.”
The continuing silence pounded in her ears. “Mommy’s right outside the cave waiting for you.” Her flashlight caught the ledge at the back that she remembered so well. She half expected to see a sodden cardboard box. The water splashed the top of her knees. Why wouldn’t Livia answer her? She wanted to scream with frustration.
And then a voice whispered, Let me.
She flicked off the flashlight.
“Turn it back on!” Scamp exclaimed in a shaky voice. “If you do not turn it back on immediately, I shall shriek, and that will be unpleasant for everyone. Let me demonstrate . . .”
“Don’t demonstrate, Scamp!” Annie fought the possibility that she was playing out a puppet show for a child who might already have drowned. “I turned it off to save the batteries.”
“Save something else,” Scamp declared. “Like Pop-Tarts boxes or red crayons. Liv and I want the flashlight on, don’t we, Liv?”
A small, choked sob drifted over the water.
Annie’s relief was so intense that she could barely manage Scamp’s voice. “You see. Livia agrees! Pay no attention to Annie, Livia. She’s in one of her moods. Now please turn the light back on.”
Annie switched on the light and waded deeper into the cave, her eyes desperately searching for any movement. “I’m not in a mood, Scamp,” she said in her own voice. “And if the battery runs down, don’t blame me.”
“Liv and I plan to be out of here long before your stupid battery runs down,” Scamp retorted.
“You’re not allowed to say ‘stupid,’ ” Annie proclaimed, her voice still shaky. “It’s rude, isn’t it, Livia?”
No answer.
“I apologize,” Scamp said. “I’m only being rude because I’m scared. You understand, don’t you, Livia?”
Another muffled sniffle came from the back of the cave. Annie swung the flashlight beam to the right and traced a narrow shelf that hung just above the waterline and curved around a jutting piece of rock. Could Livia have crawled along that ledge?
“It’s very dark in here,” the puppet complained. “And that means I’m very scared, so I shall sing a song to make myself feel better. I shall call it the ‘Sitting in a Dark Cave’ song. Written by me, Scamp.”
Annie waded through the thigh-high water as Scamp began to sing.
“I was sitting in a dark cave
High on a ledge.
Hiding away
Not wanting to stay—ay—ay.”
She was so cold, she was losing feeling in her legs.
“When along came a nice spider
And sat down beside her
And said . . .
Holy cow! What’s a nice spider like me doing in a dark cave like this?”
She rounded the edge of a protruding rock and glimpsed a blessed blur of pink huddled on the ledge. She wanted to charge forward and grab her. Instead she ducked back out of sight and aimed the flashlight down into the dark water.
“Annie,” Scamp said, “I’m still scared. I need to see Livia right now. Livia will make me feel better.”
“I understand, Scamp,” Annie said, “but
. . . I can’t find her anywhere.”
“You have to! I need to talk to a kid, not a grown-up! I need Livia!” Scamp grew increasingly upset. “She’s my friend, and friends help each other when they’re scared.” Scamp started to cry in pathetic little sniffles. “Why won’t she tell me where she is?”
A wave hit Annie’s thighs, and the cave ceiling dripped icy fingers down her spine.
Scamp began crying harder, her sniffles growing more pronounced. Until three soft, sweet words drifted over the water . . .
“I’m right here.”
Chapter Twenty-one
ANNIE HAD NEVER HEARD ANYTHING as beautiful as those faint, hesitant words. I’m right here. She couldn’t spoil this . . .
“Livia,” Scamp whispered. “Is that really you?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I thought I was alone, with only Annie.”
“I’m here, too.” Livia’s newfound voice had a rusty little rasp from lack of use.
“That makes me feel better.” Scamp sniffed. “Are you scared?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Me, too. I’m glad I’m not the only one.”
“You’re not.” She couldn’t fully form her r sounds, and they came out more as w’s, the sound substitution so sweet it constricted Annie’s heart.
“Do you want to stay here longer, or are you ready to leave?” Scamp asked.
A long pause. “I don’t know.”
Annie reined in her apprehension and made herself wait. Long seconds ticked by.
“Scamp?” Livia finally said. “Are you still there?”
“I’m thinking,” Scamp said. “And I think you need to talk this over with a grown-up. Is it okay if I send Annie to find you?”
Annie waited, afraid she’d pushed too far. But Livia responded with a quiet “Okay.”
“Annie!” Scamp called out. “Come over here, please. Livia needs to talk to you. Livia, I’m very cold, and I’m going to get some hot chocolate. And a dill pickle. I’ll meet you later.”
Annie waded around the rock, praying that her appearance wouldn’t make Livia mute again. Livia still had her knees pulled to her chest. Her head was down, her hair hiding her face.