* * *
Teddy lost track of time—it was impossible to know whether an hour or only minutes had passed, sitting as they were in a dark room with no windows and no way to tell time. They held hands and she rested her head on his shoulder.
They didn’t need any more words.
She could hear the storm as it drew near, and she knew that meant Rob and Misty would be coming back for them any time, regardless of how long it had been. And that was when things were going to get hairy again.
Still, she felt optimistic about their chances of coming out unscathed. After all, she and Oscar were both extremely resourceful and intelligent, and Rob and Misty…well, they probably weren’t the sharpest tacks in the box.
At least, that was what she told herself.
And then it happened—Oscar stiffened at the moment she heard the sound of someone in the storage room. Whoever it was, they were on the other side of the door with the padlock. She and Oscar had closed that door behind them, but there was no way to block it, and it would only be a moment before Rob and Misty realized where they’d gone.
She and Oscar had already pushed to their feet, but to her surprise, there was no shout of surprise announcing they’d disappeared. Still, he had her by the hand and was pulling her toward the door that led to her bedroom—and the rest of the cottage.
If they could just keep one step ahead of Misty and Rob, who’d surely be coming in behind them, they’d be out the front door of the cottage and running down the road where Oscar had left his Jeep.
He opened the door to her bedroom, and they slipped through into familiar surroundings. That was when they at last heard the shout of alarm in the storage room.
Teddy led the way out through her bedroom to the foyer with the connecting door, pausing to peek out at the porch to make sure no one was there.
Let’s go, she said with her hands, and Oscar pushed ahead of her to crack open the curve-topped door. He peered around the opening, and was just about to step through when an ugly noise met their ears.
And stopped them in their tracks.
It was the sound of a gun cocking. Right on the other side of the curve-topped door.
Nineteen
“Thought you were pretty smart,did you?” Misty sounded annoyed. “Rob! Here! I’ve got them!” She gestured with her firearm (Teddy couldn’t see it well enough to tell what kind of weapon it was) as she pushed through the connecting door, forcing them back toward Teddy’s bedroom. “I oughta just go ahead and put a bullet in each of you right now.”
“Kind of messy,” Teddy said before she could stop herself. “I vote for lightning strikes on top of the lighthouse.”
Oscar had grabbed her hand again and squeezed hard enough that she gasped. When she chanced a look at him, she saw he was furious—and worried. She squeezed back, still feeling optimistic—quite a bit less than a few minutes earlier, but still. They weren’t dead yet.
After all, a bullet might be a sure thing, but a lightning strike wasn’t.
“Get ’em up top,” Rob snarled when he appeared from Teddy’s bedroom. “Storm’s getting nasty—it’ll be the perfect way to take care of ’em, then no one can nail anything on us. They won’t even be suspicious enough to check things out.”
As if to punctuate his words, a wild flash of lightning lit the room, followed too closely by a loud crash of thunder.
Teddy’s optimism flagged slightly. As if he understood, Oscar tightened his grip on her fingers.
“Up we go,” Misty said, gesturing with her gun as she prodded them back the way they’d come, through the room in which they’d waited, and to the base of the hundred and sixty-eight stairs. “No, wait. You go first,” she said, pointing at Oscar. “I’ll keep your girlfriend nice and close to me. Rob, you come up behind.”
And with that, Teddy had her arm gripped tightly by the taller, far-fitter-than-she Misty, and a gun pointed at her as they began to climb.
Please don’t trip,she thought, imagining what would happen if she or the gun-toting Misty did so. A bullet in this small, cylindrical space, and so close to her body… She shivered.
All right, just concentrate on getting up there in one piece.
“So, you decided to try and haunt us out of here,” Teddy said. “The scream, the ghostly green projection, and so on. But you only did it outside—why not ever inside? That probably would have been more effective, to be honest. And how did you get the door up top to lock and then unlock? And the freakychill?” Teddy slowed her pace a little to catch her breath and so she could talk.
“One of you wasalwayshere,” Misty said. “You never left the damned cottage, so we couldn’t set up anything in here. It wasn’t hard to break in when we finally had the chance. But we’d have gotten more serious if the other stuff didn’t work to get rid of you—but this here is a much better solution. Keep moving.”.
“So.” Teddy puffed. “The first night we were here—well, technically the second night, but it was the first night we were up on the lighthouse—how did you even know we were going to be up—”
“Shut up,” growled Rob from behind them. “Just stop talking and keep moving. This isn’t a goddam book club.” He shoved at Teddy, and she barely caught herself from taking a header into the steps in front of her.
