Dan’s hand dropped. A fleeting confusion passed across his features. “I didn’t see anyone but you, staggering like a drunk. Have you been drinking?”
Lowering the flashlight to her side, Paige raised her other hand to her hip. “I had half a beer. Not even. I lost my balance for a second, but I’m fine. Just where were you that you ‘saw’ me?”
He jerked his thumb toward the ridge. “Up there by the cottage. I came to talk to you—”
“I didn’t give you the address.”
“I’m a cop, remember?”
For the first time she noticed he wore street clothes, his size diminished by the missing bulletproof vest beneath his dark T-shirt. She needed no reminder of his occupation, but she found the fact that he’d been able to locate her unsettling. “How’d you do it? Find me, I mean?”
“I’ll be honest. It wasn’t such a feat. The woman who rented you the place happened to mention it to me in passing about a half an hour ago. And I figured I’d stop by for a chat.”
Paige shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “It’s after nine o’clock at night, Dan. Bit late for a chat.”
“Your lights were on, so—”
“No, they weren’t.”
He stepped aside, affording her a full view of the rental cottage. Sure enough, every window in the bungalow glowed with the distinct cast of incandescent lighting. The door stood wide, illumination seeping into the night like yellow dye.
“Did you go in?” Paige asked.
“I did not.”
Paige lurched into a run up the hill.
Chapter 6
“Stay where you are. I’ll check it out,” Stauffer ordered as he passed her, keys on a ring jangling from his belt loop. Paige ignored him. She’d never been one for listening. That behavioral trait had earned her a reputation as an intractable student in school despite her straight-A status. She pursued Dan doggedly up to the cottage and arrived on the walkway only a few seconds behind him.
An elongated shadow undulated across the lit squares of stone. “Wait here,” Dan commanded again, and vanished over the threshold.
Paige followed.
“Paige?”
She skidded to a halt. Liam stood in the room’s center. Beside her, Dan, who had been extending an arm to stop her, dropped his open palm to his denim-covered thigh with a slap.
“Do you know this man?”
Paige circled around Dan. “Liam, what are you doing here?”
Liam moved to the left, as if trying to keep both of them in his line of sight. His gaze kept straying to Stauffer. Dan glanced frequently at him, too. Something odd inhabited the exchange.
“Do you two know each other?” Paige asked.
Neither man spoke.
“Do you?”
The two men employed another silent exchange, as if gauging each other’s size and capabilities.
“No,” said Liam.
“I’ve seen him once or twice,” said Dan. “Don’t know him, though.”
“Oh, for crying out loud,” muttered Paige, swinging the door closed. “Liam, this is Dan Stauffer, an officer with the local PD. Dan, this is Liam Gray.”
Both men grunted in greeting. Paige sat down in the room’s only chair and pulled off her left shoe to shake out a pebble. Sand stuck to her jeans and hands like glitter from a grade school project.
“What happened to your head?” Liam asked. From the corner of her eye, Paige saw Dan touch his bruised forehead.
“She threw her flashlight at me.”
Liam laughed. To Paige’s surprise, Dan chuckled, too. Paige lifted her brows. “Well, ha-ha. But I need you both to tell me what you’re doing here. Which one of you is going first?”
Both men maintained a stoic silence.
“Okay, I’ll pick. Liam?”
Crossing the floor, he stopped at the small section of kitchen counter and leaned his hips against it. He folded his arms across his chest. “I came looking for the cat. Your door was open. Again.”
“I shut it,” Paige said, more to herself than to either of them. Still, they exchanged a look. “What?”
Liam shook his head.
“So,” Paige went on, “you found the door open and the lights on and walked in.”
“Lights were off. I turned them on when I realized you weren’t here. If Shadow was inside, he’s gone now.”
“Do you think Shadow nudged the door open?”
“Doubtful,” interrupted Dan. “Not if you closed the door properly.”
Paige shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t.”
Dan shook his head. “Then you should take better care. Is anything missing?”
“Missing? A cat’s not likely to—”
“You don’t know it was the damn cat,” Dan said.
Paige looked from Dan to Liam, whose expression had gone stony. “I don’t have much worth stealing,” Paige advised them both.
“Check your purse.”
From where she sat, Paige could see that her bag on the bedpost hadn’t been disturbed, but she rose to check it, slipping her foot back into her shoe. On her way across the floor, she gave a wrinkle in the area rug a shove with the toe of her sneaker. She felt something hard beneath. “What’s that?”
Without waiting for an answer she expected wouldn’t be forthcoming, Paige grabbed the rug’s edge and peeled it back. A curved iron handle stuck up at a slight angle from a recess in the floorboards where it normally rested, meaning it had been moved. She stepped back, searching each man’s face. “What is that? A trap door? Do you think someone might have—”
“I’ll check,” said Dan. “Paige, give me that flashlight of yours.”
Liam held his hand out for the flashlight at the same time, ignoring the fact Paige had extended it in Dan’s direction. “It’s only a crawlspace,” Liam said. “Every cottage along the beach has one. Still, it’s worth a look.”
“Why don’t you just let a cop do his job?” Dan demanded with a touch of sarcasm.
At the change to Liam’s demeanor, Paige dropped the instrument onto his palm instead of Stauffer’s and moved away. She didn’t care which man did the checking. It wasn’t out of the question that a rambunctious cat could have shifted the handle in a battle with the rug, but she needed an assurance that no one lurked beneath the cottage.
Paige pulled the rug back a little more. “It couldn’t be the man from the beach, could it? I can’t see him moving that quickly.”
Liam paused, the ring for the trapdoor gripped in his hand. “The one you said you saw earlier?”
“I saw him again, right before I ran up here.”
Liam looked at Dan. “Were you out there on the beach?”
“Yeah, and I didn’t see anyone. Anyone but Paige, that is.”
Sand ground between Paige’s fingers as she stretched them in agitation. “I followed him. Or tried to. He disappeared when I was climbing off the rocks.”
“I