He was asked what they were supposed to be looking for.
“A large black shadow,” he said. “I don’t know. Hopefully, the victim will be able to tell us what happened.”
Ricky Long had answered at the desk. He didn’t seem to think that the request was odd, but before he hung up, he asked, “Lieutenant, are we sure we have a victim?”
“What do you mean?”
“The man might have just fallen off the dock. I mean…never mind. I don’t have any problem telling people they’re supposed to be looking for a large dark shadow. After all, they’re going out to the Merlin house.”
Naturally, they had to save a life first. Ah, yes, running around like chickens with no heads. Desperate to get a man out of the water, desperate to make him breathe.
It had all worked very well, especially considering that it had been a spur-of-the-moment plan. He’d heard Kelsey speaking. The book! That damned book! He could have taken it; it had been right in front of him. But he’d never imagined that old Cutter had stuck notes into the thing. He’d needed Kelsey there, needed her to point the way.
But now he needed the book. God knew what else the notes said, what Cutter Merlin might have suspected or figured out by that time. Merlin had been a fool. He should have gotten rid of the real reliquary years ago. But he had held it, determined to catch his daughter’s murderer….
The excitement began to ease as the med techs left with the body, with Kelsey.
He slipped back in, ready to go for the book.
Kelsey wasn’t sure who gave her the blanket she was wearing. It helped, though. Winter in Florida was doing the right thing, being mild at the moment, but still, being wet, and drying slowly and stiffly, was not comfortable. And yet, other than the fact that she’d been shivering, she hadn’t thought much about it. She simply realized she had acquired a blanket somewhere along the line, and she was grateful for it. She hoped she remembered to thank all the right people.
Avery didn’t come to while they were in the helicopter.
He didn’t come to at the hospital.
She was terrified that any minute, a doctor would walk out of the double-swing doors with a sad expression and shake his head sadly while her heart and mind rebelled at the horror of such an impossible tragedy.
Not Avery, too. Please, God, not Avery, too. Please don’t let him be touched by whatever monstrosity of greed or fate plagues my family.
The day had been absurd. She should pinch herself and discover that the entire thing had been a nightmare or a daymare, or a hideous creation of her mind.
But it wasn’t.
She’d never felt the wet and the cold so thoroughly in a dream. It was real. At least, this part of it was real. Before…before she had seen Avery floating facedown in the water, she’d been talking to a ghost. A ghost named Bartholomew. And everyone knew him, of course. At least, Liam knew him. Liam, the dead-steady, capable, solidly sane cop. Or so said the ghost. But the ghost knew Katie, David, Sean and Vanessa, too. Naturally. The ghost was a conch. Conchs were friendly.
She couldn’t bear sitting there, waiting….
When she thought that she would lose her mind, she saw Liam walking down the hallway. How he had gotten there so quickly, she couldn’t imagine. She jumped up and went running to him.
“How is he?” Liam asked huskily.
“I don’t know. He wasn’t conscious, but they keep telling me that I shouldn’t be horribly worried about that. But they won’t tell me that he’s okay, either. How in God’s name did you get here so fast?” she demanded.
“I decided to abuse a little power and order a copter for myself,” he told her dryly. “It is police business. I believe he was attacked.”
Kelsey shook her head. “Liam, Jonas didn’t attack him.”
“I didn’t say it was Jonas.”
“It’s obvious that you’ve been suspicious of Jonas.”
“Really? It’s that bad?”
“Why?”
“The bone-thin leads I have point to him,” Liam said.
“He didn’t hurt Avery. I saw him run by the window. I ran through the house. I was one step behind him when we plunged into the water to get Avery. Oh, God, he wasn’t breathing. You resuscitated him. I don’t know how long he wasn’t breathing. He hasn’t come to. In movies, when someone spits the water out of their lungs, they wake up!”
“Let’s believe that he’s going to be all right, Kelsey.”
“Liam, I don’t know how long he was in the water!”
“But Jonas heard him scream. That means he couldn’t have been without oxygen that long. The human body is remarkably resilient, Kelsey. He’ll be all right,” Liam said.