Wounded (a mystery and a sweet romance)

Wounded: Chapter 9 Part 2

Tara was deciding whether it would be best to stand up with her hands spread or simply lie there and wait for them to find her when the beams of light jerked in another direction.

“You hear that?” a man asked.

“...came from over there.”

Tara poked her head out from behind the log again. The troopers were walking in the opposite direction, swinging their white beams back and forth across the beach. She shifted into a crouch. If they walked far enough, she would be able to run up the trail they had come down.

One pointed at something in the water, and the other shifted his light in that direction. Tara couldn’t hear their words any more, but something had their attention. Figuring this was her best chance, she hopped over the log. Staying low and running beside the cliff, she raced for the trail as fast as she dared in the dark. She wasn’t about to turn on her flashlight app again. She tripped a few more times and almost crashed into a rock, but she reached the bottom of the path without making any significant noise. She had recognized that rock—she was at the trail leading up to the eco village. Good. There weren’t any more lights marking it, so she started up the path.

She glanced at the deputies to make sure they weren’t looking her way. They had stopped at the edge of the water. Both of their flashlights were focused on something light-colored bobbing in the surf. It was hard to tell from a distance, but it almost looked like a piece of clothing wrapped around... that wasn’t a body, was it? An image of the knit shirt Malcolm had been wearing at dinner flashed into her mind. She halted so fast she almost pitched to her knees again.

No... he wouldn’t have thrown himself into the Sound, and she hadn’t heard any other guns go off, so it wasn’t as if someone had shot him. He couldn’t have fallen off the cliff in the dark... could he? Tara swallowed. There were places where it loomed out over the Strait with nothing but dark water and darker rocks below.

One of the deputies pointed toward the top of the cliff, and she shrank low. They looked like they were discussing how to get the... item out of the water. Tara hurried up the trail again. She could watch from the brush up above, though she wasn’t positive she wanted to watch. No, she had to know, one way or another.

Up top, more people—troopers?—moved around the wooded part of the acreage, their flashlight beams slicing through the darkness. In the village, most of the lights in the cottages were on, the illumination spilling out onto the dark ground in yellow rectangles. Numerous people were out on their porches, watching the search.

Tara would have a hard time getting back to her cottage without being seen. She wasn’t ready to return anyway. She left the trail and picked her way along the salmonberry thicket that blocked the edge of the cliff. Without the benefit of a flashlight, finding a spot to peek through it to the water below was difficult, but she didn’t dare turn her app on with all those people in the nearby copse. As it was, she feared too many dry twigs were crunching beneath her feet.

Finally, she found a gap in the brush next to a tall moss-covered stump and eased her way toward the edge of the cliff, testing each step before committing her weight. Shirt or not, she had a hard time believing Malcolm would have fallen, but she had less faith in herself. She hadn’t spent much time roaming the cliff top during daylight, much less at—

Someone grabbed her arm from behind. The logical part of her mind noted that it was probably one of the troopers, one who’d seen her and wanted to drag her back for questioning, but a wave of panic squashed that thought, replacing it with one of someone shoving her over the cliff. She opened her mouth, a reflexive yell—or maybe a curse—on her lips, and tried to scramble back from the edge.