“Barbara?” Tyler mumbled from the back seat. “Who calls a gun Barbara?”
Logan wasn’t taking no for an answer. He wound down his window the rest of the way, and fixed the old woman with his most polis-like glare. “I’m confiscating that firearm. Hand it over, or I’ll place you under arrest.”
Kathryn wrestled with her options for a moment, then thrust the shotgun through the open window, barrels first.
“Jesus! Point it the other way!” Logan snapped.
“Then it’ll be pointing at me, won’t it? And you can get that idea right out of your fucking head, right now. You want it, take it. Go on.”
Logan grabbed the shotgun by the barrels, yanked it from the old woman’s grip, then passed it back to a jittery Tyler.
“Thanks. You can have it back later,” Logan said. He reached forward to tap the dashboard to indicate that Dave should drive on, but the constable was one step ahead, and both detectives were thrown back into their seats as he accelerated them up the incline and past Kathryn Chegwin’s cottage.
“How quickly can you get us to the lighthouse?” Logan asked, clutching the handle above the door so tightly the plastic groaned in complaint.
“Dunno,” Dave admitted. He grinned, and dropped down a gear. “But let’s find out.”
The answer to Logan’s question, it turned out, was somewhere between ‘very fast’ and ‘too fast,’ and both detectives arrived at the lighthouse as changed men. And, in Tyler’s case, with some light Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.
There was one other car in the car park. A woman in her thirties was playing down at a rock pool with two kids under five. They all looked up when the Peugeot came screeching to a halt, then turned their attention back to the pool they were prodding around in.
“Tyler, get that lot out of here,” Logan instructed. “I want them in their car and on the road in the next two minutes.”
“On it, boss,” Tyler said, throwing open the door and all-but falling out of the vehicle.
He wasted a moment savouring the feeling of standing still, then he set off on a lumbering, shaky-legged run down towards the rocks.
“You alright getting into the cafe there?” Logan asked Dave, who responded with a nod. “Good. Check in with them, see if they’ve seen anyone going in or out of the lighthouse since it was shut.”
“What about you? Where are you going?” Dave asked.
Logan reached into the back and took the shotgun from where Tyler had propped it up in one of the rear footwells. His gaze went to the tower of the lighthouse, standing proud against the sky.
“There,” he said. “I’m going there.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
Logan paced around the building at the base of the lighthouse, peeking in the windows and searching the gloom inside for any signs of movement.
Nothing.
The builders were using the room for storage, it seemed, and while it was possible that Bernie and the girl were tucked away in there somewhere, it would’ve been a big risk. There were a lot of windows, and not a lot of hiding places, so staying hidden would’ve taken effort.
Much better to keep her somewhere that nobody could just wander up to and have a peek inside.
His gaze, once again, crept upwards to the tower of the lighthouse itself.
The door at the base was locked. Logan put a shoulder to it, but it was a half-hearted attempt. The door was thick and heavy. No way that bloody thing was shifting without a battering ram, or…
He considered the shotgun he was carrying, shrugged, and took aim at the lock. Jamming the butt of the gun against his shoulder, he gritted his teeth, screwed his eyes half-shut, and—
“Boss!” Tyler’s voice called to him from across the car park. The DC ran ahead of Dave Davidson, holding up something that glinted in the midday sun. “Keys, boss! I’ve got keys!”
Once he was close enough, he tossed the bunch to Logan, who snatched them from the air. There were a dozen or more keys on the ring, of all shapes, sizes, and makes. Logan picked the most likely candidate, then thrust the shotgun into Tyler’s arms just as the DC stumbled to a stop.
“What am I meant to do with this?” Tyler asked, fumbling with the weapon.
“Just hang onto it,” Logan instructed, trying the first key. It didn’t fit, so he moved on to the next.
“Why’d you even take it, boss?”
“I don’t know,” Logan admitted. “Seemed like a good idea at the time.”
He tried another key that didn’t fit the lock, and pressed on again. The sound of an engine drew his attention for a moment, and he gave a satisfied little grunt when the woman and her kids pulled out of the car park.