Heroes Are My Weakness(96)

“Stop yelling at me.”

He wasn’t yelling, as he immediately pointed out. “I’m not yelling.”

But he had raised his voice, so she raised hers. “I don’t care about the cottage,” she lied. “The best day of my life is going to be the day I leave this place.”

“And exactly where do you plan to go?”

“Back to the city, where I belong!”

“Doing what?”

“Doing what I do!”

They kept on like that for a few minutes, their voices getting louder by the second until they both ran out of steam. “Damn it, Annie. I worry about you.”

He’d finally calmed down, and she couldn’t resist touching him. Her palm to his chest, feeling his heart beat. “It’s your nature. Now stop it.”

He looped his arm around her shoulders, and they turned toward the steps. “I have something—”

Annie spotted a sheet of white construction paper fluttering across the rocks. Livia was gone.

“Liv!”

There was no response.

“Livia!” She instinctively turned toward the sea, but she’d been standing at enough of an angle that surely she would have seen her if she’d gotten close to the water.

“Did you find her?” Jaycie appeared at the top of the cliff. She was coatless, her voice reedy with near hysteria. “She’s not in the house. I’ve looked everywhere.”

Theo had started to move toward the rockslide that blocked the cave, but it took a moment for Annie to see what he had seen, a torn piece of pink fabric lying in a fissure between the boulders. Annie rushed to his side. The cave entrance had been blocked up years ago, but there was an opening in the rocks, an angular space wide enough for a child to get inside. And four crayons lay nearby.

“Get a flashlight!” Theo yelled up to Jaycie. “I think she’s gone in the cave.”

High tide was a few hours away, but who knew how deep the water already was inside? Annie crouched in front of Theo and leaned into the crevice. “Livia, are you in there?”

She heard the echo of her own voice, the slap of water against the cave walls, but nothing else. “Livia! Honey, you have to answer me so I know you’re all right.” Did she really think she could demand that a mute child talk?

Theo pushed her aside. “Liv, it’s Theo. I found some great shells for the house, but I’m going to need help building the furniture. Can you come out and help me?”

Theo locked eyes with Annie as they waited. They heard nothing.

Annie tried again. “If you’re in there, can you make a little sound for us? Or throw a rock so we can hear? Just so we know you’re there.”

They strained to listen. A few seconds later, they heard it. The soft plop of a stone hitting the water.

Theo began frantically shoving at the boulders, undeterred by the fact that even the smaller ones were too big for one man to move. Jaycie was racing down the steps, flashlight in hand, still coatless. Theo momentarily stopped what he was doing to stare at her as she scrambled toward them over the boulders without her crutches. It wasn’t Annie’s job to explain, and he went back to work.

“She’s in there.” Annie moved out of the way so Jaycie could kneel in front of the crevice.

“Livia, it’s Mommy!” Jaycie shone the flashlight inside. “Can you see the light?”

Only the waves answered.

“Livia, you have to come out. Right now! I won’t be mad. I promise.” She spun toward Annie. “She could drown in there.”

Theo grabbed a heavy slab of driftwood. He shoved it under the top boulder to make a makeshift lever, then hesitated. “I can’t take the chance. If I do shift the boulders, there’s no guarantee they won’t seal up the entrance even tighter.”

Jaycie’s cheeks were ashen. She clutched the torn pink fabric from her daughter’s coat. “Why did she go in there?”

“I don’t know,” Annie said. “She likes to explore. Maybe—”

“She’s afraid of the dark! Why would she do this?”

Annie had no answer.

“Livia!” Jaycie cried. “You have to come out now!”

Theo had begun digging at the hard sand at the bottom of the crevice. “I’ll go in after her, but we have to widen the opening.”

“You’re too big,” Jaycie said. “It’ll take too long.”

The tip of a wave crested over the rocks and splashed their feet, returning some of the sand that Theo had moved. Jaycie tried to push him aside. “I’m going in.”

Theo stopped her. “You won’t fit. We need to shift more sand.”

He was right. Even though he’d deepened the opening, the seawater kept trying to move the sand back, and Jaycie’s hips were too wide. “I have to,” she protested. “Right now, she could be . . .”

“I’ll do it,” Annie said. “Get out of my way.”

Even as she pushed Jaycie aside, she wasn’t sure whether she would fit, but she stood a better chance than either of them. Theo’s eyes met her own. “It’s too dangerous.”

Instead of arguing, she gave him her cockiest smile. “Out of my way, dude. I’ll be fine.”

He knew as well as she did that she was the only one of them who had a chance of doing this, but that didn’t ease the struggle that played out in his eyes. “You be careful, do you hear me?” he said fiercely. “Don’t you dare do anything crazy!”