Chapter Eight: Infiltration

They really were out there in the fog.

Emmett Shaw peered half his face out from the shrubs at the cliff’s edge. He looked twenty years older than his wanted photo, beard gone gray, his eyes like two dried-up wells. Beside him, Cole Pruitt was ten years younger, quicker in his movements — and crazier.

“The woman’s up there.” Pruitt jerked his chin toward the cabin. “Lights on.”

“Walker’s with her.” Shaw’s voice was like sandpaper. “That kid’s been in our way since he was small.”

“Take both of them out?”

Shaw was quiet a moment. The fog crawled against their faces, cold as a dead man’s hand. “No,” he said. “I want the woman alive, down at the tide cave.”

“Why?”

“Because twenty years ago, her sister walked into that cave on her own too.” Shaw bared his teeth, but there was no smile in it. “I want her to see whatever her sister saw. Once she’s seen it, let the sea take her. That’s how Mr. Garrett stays happy, and how we collect the rest of our money.”

Pruitt grinned. He pulled a crowbar from his pack.

“Cut the phone line first,” Shaw said. “Then we wait. Wait till they’re hungry, wait till they’re afraid, wait till the woman can’t help herself and runs down here. In fog this thick, who’d hear a sound out on the water?”

They melted back into the white fog like two crabs retreating into a crack in the reef.

Up on the cliff, Lila had just hung up with Eli.

“They’re down there.” Her voice was steady — steadier than she felt. “Caine, they’re down there.”

Caine was already on his feet, moving as fast as if a spring had popped him up. The first thing he did was pull the heavy floor-to-ceiling curtains shut; the second was kill every light; the third was take a very short hunting knife from a kitchen drawer and tuck it behind his belt.

“Our phones still have signal.” He glanced at his. “But not for long. In fog like this, the cell tower won’t hold.”

“How long until Eli and the others get here?”

“Driving up from town, twenty minutes.” Caine stared at her. “But the fog’s so thick they might lose the road. There’s only one road up here, and they know it.”

Lila went to the window and peered down through a crack in the curtains.

In the fog, the reef flats were dead still. Nothing to see.

But in the instant she was about to pull back, she saw it clearly — the old iron chain bolted to the cliff face, the one that led down to the lower reefs, was swaying, ever so slightly.

Someone was climbing up.