“Teddy. If you don’t tell me how you got yourself free—”
“All right, all right. Geez. It’s really easy, but it hurts.” By now she was back behind him with the flashlight and something she’d found in one of the tubs; Oscar realized he preferred not to know what sort of sharp implement she was going to be using to cut the plastic away from where it dug deeply into his swollen wrist. “You lift your arms up as high as they’ll go, then you bring them down and to your sides in a really fast and hard motion. It snaps the plastic. Did I mention ithurts?”
Oh my God.Talk about hurting… He ground his teeth and closed his eyes, breathing deeply against the pain, as the plastic she was working on moved against his tender wrist. Then, suddenly, the restraints were gone.
“Thank you,” he said, bringing his arms back around to the front and gingerly feeling around his swelling hand. Yep. If not broken, then it was badly sprained.
“Now your ankles,” she said. “How bad is your wrist?”
“It’s not great. But it could be worse.” It felt like his wrist had been placed on an anvil and someone had pounded on it. “I’m guessing you’ve done some research on how to escape zip ties.”
“Yes.” He heard the smile in her voice. “I was so happy he had zip ties and decided to use them instead of rope.”
“Or shooting us,” Oscar said as the tie around his ankles fell away.
“Right. Well, Misty had a point. It would have been a mess.”
“Let’s not talk about that right now, hmm?” He pushed himself gingerly to his feet, taking care not to put any weight on his wrist. “We need to get out of here while they’re out on their dive.”
“Okay, but I want to see what else is in these tubs,” Teddy said, waving the flashlight around.
“No,” he replied firmly, starting for the trellis-hidden door. “That’s how the good guys always get caught—they spend too much time messing around looking at things when they should make an immediate beeline for freedom and safety. We’re getting out of here now and calling Joe Cap, and then— Dammit tohell.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I can hear them out there, Teddy.”
“What are they doing?”
“I don’t know. Sounds like they’re arguing—yes. He wants to dive now, but she wants to wait because of the storm coming. Well, maybe it’ll keep them busy for a while. But we can’t go out there now.”
“There’s that other door that leads somewhere inside the lighthouse,” she said. “We can go that way. If we can get it open.”
She brought the flashlight over and shined it on the padlock.
“If we had a screwdriver, we could just unscrew the lock plate from the wall, there,” he said. “Did you happen to see anything like that over in their stuff?”
“Philips or flathead?” She walked away with the light.
“Flathead.”
He heard her rummaging around and went to join her. “Look at this, Oscar!” she said in a low voice. “They really hit the jackpot.”
Inside one of the larger tubs was an array of gold and silver objects: plates, cups, flatware, candlesticks. Much of it was covered with algae and seaweed.
“If this is from the Astors’ ship, it’s going to be solid gold or silver,” Teddy said. “I wonder what else they’ve found. There’s got to be jewels and all sorts of other treasure down there. No wonder they’re willing to kill for it.”
Oscar dug out a silver butter knife. “This’ll work. Bring the light, Teddy—but let’s listen at the door first. Maybe they’re gone.”
They didn’t hear the sounds of voices until Oscar cracked the door and listened at the trellis. “They’re still out there—but now it sounds like they might be on the porch.”
“They’re probably drinking our wine!” Teddy said, sounding outraged about the least of their problems. “But damn, that means we can’t go back to the cottage. Unless we go from the inside. All right, let’s get to work on that padlock.”
A butter knife wasn’t the best tool, but it eventually got the job done. There were three screws that held the latch to the wall, and by the time he finished with the third one, Oscar’s fingers were cramped from working in the small location and maneuvering the makeshift screwdriver with his left hand.
But at last the latch fell away. Teddy carefully pulled the door open, and they slipped through into a small hallway that didn’t look familiar to Oscar.
“Oh, this is the way to my bedroom,” she whispered, gesturing to the left. “And straight ahead is the door to the staircase that leads to the lantern room at the top.” She pointed up.
“Can we get out without them seeing us if they’re on the porch?” he asked, for he could hear their voices very close by. Apparently, Misty had won the argument and they were delaying the dive.
Teddy shook her head. “My room is right next to the porch—remember? And we’d have to pass through the connecting door, and you can see that from the porch too.”
