Reluctantly she turned back the way she had come. She would venture in again when she had a better understanding of the tides. The torchlight fell on something on one of the higher ledges. Annie moved toward it, keeping her light on the spot. It looked like a battered old rucksack, dirty with time but with snatches of fluorescent orange and blue still visible beneath the grime. Her heart kicked up a notch. Had she discovered a bag of jewels or a shipment of heroin? Was she likely to get shot if it was the latter? Maybe this tunnel was used by modern-day smugglers too! Unable to quell her inquisitiveness, she picked her way across the mossy rocks and began to scramble up the slippery ledges to the bag. She reached up, standing on tiptoes. Her fingertips had brushed one of the fabric straps that dangled over the edge when a voice snapped: “Leave it!”
Annie stopped dead. When her heart began to beat again, she gingerly brought her arm down.
“Okay,” she said in a voice that she hoped sounded calm, compliant, and nonconfrontational. “I’m going to go now. Please don’t kill me. I am not at all interested in whatever it is you’re doing here.”
She began to climb carefully back down the rocky ledges, her hands and knees shaking. “I’m leaving now,” she soothed. “I haven’t seen anything.”
She plopped back down onto the pebbles and crunched her way as quickly as she could toward the hole of light ahead. Her heart pounded in her ears; she could feel her pulse thrumming in her forehead as though it too were trying to escape. She wanted to look back to make sure the person wasn’t following, but she dared not; if he was coming up behind her, it was better that she didn’t know. Shit shit shit shit. The torchlight trembled in her hand.
She rounded a curve, and the cave mouth beckoned with an ethereal light from outside. Annie let out an involuntary gasp of gratitude. In another moment, she was stumbling back out into the sultry morning, breathing hard and hoping to God to see somebody else on the beach.
Chapter 20
A wet border collie bounded along the beach with two women in tow. Annie was flooded with relief. Her feet slipped and slid as she scrambled up the mounds of pebbles, which collapsed beneath her wellingtons and pulled her backward as though she were perpetually trying to run the wrong way up an escalator. She quickened her pace to put space between her and her would-be attacker and to close the gap to the women.
“Hello there!” shouted the older of the two. She was a broad woman and looked as though she’d been born to wear her blue Barbour jacket and beige corduroys. “Everything all right? You look like you’re trying to escape the devil himself!”
Annie stopped scrambling long enough for the dog to leap up at her and send her sprawling onto the pebbles. The border collie, thinking it was a game, bounced expectantly beside her prone figure.
“Podrick!” the woman shouted. The younger woman laughed.
“Sorry!” she called. “He’s a bit overenthusiastic. He’s still in training.”
“For what?” said Annie, pulling herself up to a sitting position. “Law enforcement?”
The women reached Annie, and the older woman held out her hand. Annie took it and was pulled to her feet with a force that took her by surprise.
“Sheepdog,” said the woman. “I’m training him up for my daughters.”
Annie brushed herself down.
“You looked as though you were running from something,” said the younger woman. “Is everything okay?”
“There’s a man,” said Annie, still slightly breathless. “In the cave.”
The daylight was diminishing the threat she had felt in the cave, and the presence of other humans quashed it further. With hindsight, she wondered if her fears might have been a tad hysterical, heightened by Mari’s talk of blaggards.
The women looked at her and exchanged glances with each other.
“Did you get a look at him?” asked the younger woman.
“No,” said Annie. “I heard him. There was a bag, you see, on a ledge. . . .”
“Alfred?” the younger woman asked her friend.
“More than likely,” said the older.
“Who’s Alfred?” asked Annie. “Should I be concerned? I’ve just moved down here. I don’t want to be on the wrong side of the local criminal element!”
The younger woman laughed. It was a sweet laugh that matched her sweet little face and her flowery dress and cardigan.
“Alfred’s not a criminal,” she said.
“Alfred is Willow Bay’s homeless person,” said the older woman.