A moment later they were near to where the boat always waited to row tourists through the pool, and Oliver was there on the rocks, reaching to help them out of the water. Libby too, a few steps away.
Panic clawed at her chest. This wasn’t the plan, wasn’t the plan at all. He and Mabena were supposed to be hidden in the cave before the stranger arrived, along with the constable’s men. But had they even gotten here yet?
This bloke must have had the same idea and positioned himself inside first.
Libby, who’d never even stepped foot in the cave before today, wasn’t supposed to be going alone into its darkness. But there she went, one hand on the ever-damp wall, the other now clutching the change purse. The only light within was from the torch Mabena had dropped.
She gripped Oliver’s arm. “She shouldn’t be in there alone.”
“You think I don’t know that?” His voice was agony wrapped in fury. “He has a gun. What am I to do, exactly?”
“The two of you should have run.”
“So he could shoot the two of you?” Apparently satisfied that her footing was firm, Oliver pulled his arm from her grasp. “Don’t be an idiot. She was inside and dropping down to the rocks before he finished speaking. You’re her friend, Benna, whether you realize it or not.”
“And what is that supposed to mean?”
Casek pulled himself out of the water behind her. “Could you two save the bickering until later? Who is that in there? What’s this about? He thinks she’s Beth?”
“We don’t know who it is.” Oliver clambered up the ledge and reached a hand to Mabena. But his eyes were on Libby, and he looked as though he might rush to her side with just a breath of wind to nudge him. “But yes.”
Casek snorted and reached for a bag he must have stowed in the shadows. “Leave it to the Tremaynes to bring a mad gunman to our shores.”
17
Oliver gritted his teeth and turned his head, ready to sneer, snap, or punch at Casek Wearne as he shoved past him and strode out of the cave. But the moment he turned, he saw movement on the path they’d run up, and his chest tightened even more, somehow.
“The constable’s men.” He kept his voice so low that he could barely hear it himself and aimed so that the wind and rock and water couldn’t carry it inside the cave. “Wearne, I need you to go and intercept them. Tell them not to come this way, or he’ll just shoot her.”
Casek raised his chin. “You go and tell them.”
“I’m not leaving Libby in there alone!” he whispered furiously.
“And I’m not leaving Benna here with you.”
Mabena should have been bristling at the implication that she needed a protector, but her eyes looked too dull with pain to allow for any bristling. “I’ll go with you.”
At least one of them had sense. Oliver motioned them onward. “Good. You’re out of his view now. He won’t see you leaving.”
Casek relented with a huff, muttering something about fetching the doctor. Oliver stiffened at that—what had happened to Mabena to require a physician? But he couldn’t ask. They’d already taken a few steps away, Casek’s arm supporting her frame, which meant something must be seriously wrong.
But she was on her feet and moving, so he simply said a prayer and turned back to the cave. Edged, a few inches at a time, more fully into it. Then lowered himself to his stomach so he could see below the ledge.
Libby’s progress was slow. Perhaps by design, perhaps because her feet were unaccustomed to the wet stone and her mind no doubt full of the stories of Johnnie slipping and cracking his skull and never rising again.
But not slipping. It was him, whoever it was hiding in the shadows in there, that had done it. He knew that now.
Oliver slid a few inches closer to the ledge so he could drop down again if necessary. He didn’t know what he could do that wouldn’t just get them both killed, but he prayed with every quarter of an inch that the Lord would show him something. Make a way. Send a bolt of lightning or an earthquake or a tsunami or something to distract the man long enough for Libby to get back out to him.
She’d made it only halfway to where the voice had come from when it echoed again. “Stop!”
She stopped, hand still braced on the cavern wall.
“What exactly is in that bag?”
Her fingers gripped it tightly. “Silver.”
“You’re growing tiresome, Elizabeth. What kind of silver?”
“Coins.” Though this was true, her voice shook just a bit. He couldn’t blame her—his would have been shaking if he were approaching a gunman too. Even if he had exactly what the other wanted.
A growl rumbled its way out. “What kind of coins?”
He could imagine Libby picking through the answers they’d devised to the possible questions. This one among them, or close enough. “I can only give what I have, sir. Now I’ll thank you to let me uphold my end of the bargain so that you can uphold yours and end this nonsense.”
Her voice was stronger that time and nearly sounded like Beth’s. They’d schooled her a bit in his sister’s intonations and phrases over the last two weeks. Just in case whoever met her tonight relayed her words to someone who actually knew Beth.
If only they really were capable of upholding whatever bargain Beth had struck.
But the man in the cave didn’t seem amenable anyway. His voice emerged cold and cruel from the shadows. “If those are modern coins, you’ll pay the price for your deception. You know well we want Mucknell’s hoard. Nothing less.”
Blood pounding, Oliver slid his foot forward again.
Libby dashed the change purse to the ground in the exact fashion Beth would have done, with the right snort of exasperation—they’d made her practice the move that Beth was famous around the islands for. “You don’t want it? Fine! I’ll keep it myself, and you’ll either shoot me and lose all hope of recovering the rest, or you’ll give me the time I asked for!”
That shoot me part hadn’t been rehearsed. They hadn’t known there would be a gun involved. And though he was proud of her for the improvisation, he couldn’t quite believe how offhandedly she’d tossed that part in.
“Think you’re indispensable, do you?”
Given the shift of Libby’s head, she must have lifted her chin. “I know I am, or you wouldn’t be here. No one else knows these islands like I do, sir. Not now that you’ve killed Johnnie.” Also true, if she were who they thought.
The man took a step forward. Not so far that the splash of light fully reached him, but enough that Oliver could make out his general form. He frowned. The fellow Libby had described from the road to the Wights’ was tall, thin. This chap was average height at best, stocky. Either she’d been wrong in her description—which he doubted—or it wasn’t the same man.
Which meant what? That the other was lurking somewhere too? Or just that he’d sent someone else to do his dirty work tonight?
“Let me make this clear, luv. If you’re going to fail me anyway, then it doesn’t much matter, does it? Dead or alive, you’d do me just as much good. Only, making you dead would be considerably more entertaining than just showing up again empty-handed at my employer’s. So, you get me the silver the buyer wants. Or I make you dead. Yeah?”