The Irishman’s eyes lit up. Much as he had liked her oil-stained tough-girl exterior, he couldn’t hide how much he relished this new facet of her. He smiled softly, and caressed her face again.
“Soon as you can,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Don’t worry. You’ve nothing to fear.”
Right, she thought. You’ll see to that.
Any guilt she might have felt evaporated as she watched him hurry along the walkway to the stairs. His boots clanged on the metal steps as he ascended toward the wheelhouse, and Angie let disdain replace her fear. If they really didn’t plan to kill Josh, chances were good the PLB hadn’t been destroyed or thrown overboard. They’d need to put it back where they’d gotten it at some point. Which meant they had it stashed somewhere. She supposed it might be in Miguel’s cabin — at least while he was sleeping — but she thought the captain’s quarters more likely, and the wheelhouse itself the most likely of all.
The clock was ticking, but Anton would come to replace her soon enough, and since they weren’t ready to kill Josh, she could afford the extra time. As soon as she had the opportunity, she’d find the beacon and trigger it. The FBI would show up and the Rio brothers would go to jail, along with those most loyal to them. Like Dwyer.
If the cost of Angie taking care of herself was Dwyer ending up in prison, she could live with that.
I’m not going to let anything happen to you. You’ve nothing to fear, she thought, his words echoing in her mind. Asshole. She had everything to fear. And there wasn’t a damn thing Dwyer could do about it.
32
“What the hell is this place?” Tori whispered, more to herself than to Gabe.
The sun beat down on the back of her neck and her shoes were full of sand, but those small discomforts were pushed out of her head by the view they had literally stumbled upon. They’d walked around to the south side of the island, surprised to find that the ridge of hills came all the way to the shore. The slope down to the beach had grown steeper, rising to a peak seventy or eighty feet above the water. The waves lapped against a tumble of rocks and a jagged cliff face, or so it had seemed at first.
Tori and Gabe had followed the land, climbing upward until the ground gave way entirely to rough black stone. The sound had reached them first. Tori had hesitated, then proceeded with more caution, and a few steps later they had realized the source of the echoing whisper of tides, the muffled ripple of water over rocks.
They stood now, staring down into a massive crack in the cliff, as though some ancient god had hacked it in two. Enormous shards had fallen into the surf like chunks calving off an iceberg, but the split in the cliff face was so deep and wide it created a secret cove, and in the shadows where the sun did not reach, it certainly appeared that the opening reached far back into the cliff — into the ridge of hills.
The tide had begun to recede, but the waves swept deep into the hidden grotto, black stones and shells gleaming wetly in the shallow surf. White bits of coral rolled with the ebb and flow. Something shifted under the water in the shadowed cleft and she narrowed her eyes, looking closer.
“Come on,” Gabe said, grabbing her arm just enough to turn her.
He started moving inland, toward the head of the cliff. Tori glanced back once and caught a glimpse of white in the surf, caught amidst the jagged black breakers that had fallen away from the cliff years, perhaps decades or centuries, before. The white rocks seemed strange against the black.
“Do you think a storm did this?” she asked as they climbed.
“Over time, I guess,” Gabe replied.
They made their way up to the peak, then continued on another fifty yards, instinctively avoiding the edge. At the grotto’s roof, the black stone must have been twenty feet thick or more, but Tori feared that it would give way underfoot and they would fall all the way down to the rocky inlet below.
“I don’t think it was just a storm,” she said as they began to descend on the other side, picking their way carefully down the rocky slope on the west side of the cleft.
“How do you mean?”
Tori turned it over like a puzzle in her head. “Boggs said there were caves in the hills, right? As deep as this thing goes, maybe there was a cave there already. A big one. You get years of erosion and then a big enough storm surge, and the wall between the water and the cave just comes down.”
Gabe lost his footing and nearly fell, put down one hand to brace himself, then shook it off, brow furrowed.
“Maybe,” he said.
But Tori had already decided that was how the grotto had been formed. It made sense to her. Not that it mattered; they’d be out of here soon, one way or another, and she never wanted to come back. But with that black, volcanic-looking stone, the grotto had an eerie beauty. She wished she had a camera.
At the bottom, the rocks formed a kind of cracked path toward the mouth of the grotto. Curious, Tori started making her way out on them, jumping up to one flat angled stone and dropping down to the next. Once, as a child, her parents had let her go to Maine with her friend Ellen’s family, and there had been rocks jumbled on the shore like this.
“What are you doing?” Gabe snapped.
Tori turned, surprised at his tone. “Just getting a closer look.”
“You think we’re on vacation? You’re wasting time.” He looked annoyed, but then his gaze shifted past her, toward the grotto, and he turned away. Tori knew the expression on his face all too well — she’d seen it on men all her life. He was hiding something.
“I only need a minute. What don’t you want me to see?”
Gabe just shrugged. “Go ahead, then. But make it quick.”
More curious than ever, Tori continued picking her way across the rocks, but with every step she grew more uneasy. Waves struck the scattered rocks to her right and salt spray misted the air. Where she’d set off, the rocks had sloped down at a manageable angle, but now the jagged stone became sheer cliff.
Fifteen feet ahead, the sea water rushed into and slipped out of the mouth of the grotto. The stones she walked on now were slick with spray, and Tori moved more cautiously. When she came to a gap, she considered turning back, but instead leaped forward, landing on an angled stone with both feet and steadying herself with a hand. Her pack bounced against her back.
As she started to rise from a crouch, she glimpsed a strange pattern in the black rock and paused to study it. Balancing precariously, she stretched out one leg to prop herself between that stone and the next so that she was able to see between them. The angled stone upon which she stood was etched on two sides with whorls and symbols that might have been the letters of some strange alphabet. Some reminded her of ancient Greek, while others were entirely unfamiliar.
Her stomach tightened with sudden nausea and gooseflesh broke out all over her skin. Tori tried to swallow and found she could not. A dreadful chill went up the back of her neck and she shuddered and lost her footing, then threw out her hands to catch herself as she fell. One foot splashed into the water between two stones and her knees came down hard on the edge of another in front of her.
She wasn’t aware of crying out, but she must have, for a second later, Gabe was calling her name and she could hear him making his way along the rocks behind her.
“Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she said.
But was she? The nausea she’d felt seemed to be passing, but the chill remained and her skin prickled with something that was neither heat nor cold. Tori recognized it. How could she not? She’d spent long spans of her life afraid, and knew the touch of fear all too well.