Covert Cargo. Elisabeth Rees

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       ONE

      The Return to Grace Lighthouse was under familiar attack. A wailing wind whipped around the tower and rattled the windows of the cozy keeper’s cottage. Beth Forrester put another log on the fire of her unique home and pulled her dog, Ted, away from the front door, where he whined and scratched, seemingly eager to go out into the wild, dark night.

      Ted reluctantly walked toward the hearth, stopping to sniff the cracked remains of an old rowboat that were drying next to the warmth of the flames. The wreck had washed up on the beach a couple of weeks back, broken into two pieces but with the hull intact. After establishing that no one had claimed it, Beth had asked a local fisherman to help her bring the bulky hull inside, where it now lay, ridding itself of the salt water that had seeped into its wooden bones. Beth was in the process of turning the wreck into a bed frame—sanding it down, repairing it, lovingly turning the broken wood into something new and beautiful. Then it would be sold for enough money to keep her going for another couple of months. The pieces of driftwood that washed up on the shore were treasures to her, and she turned them into cabinets, tables, chairs, beds and works of art. Her profession suited her reclusive lifestyle perfectly. This remote lighthouse, standing at the edge of the town of Bracelet Bay in Northern California, had become her sanctuary, her hideaway from the world. She needed nobody and nobody needed her.

      A noise outside caught her attention—a high-pitched wailing sound being carried in waves on the wind. Her dog instantly ran back to the door to resume scraping the wood with his paws. The wailing on the other side of the door grew louder.

      Beth shook her head, almost disbelieving what she was hearing. “No,” she said to herself. “Can that really be what I think it is?” She looked at Ted. “Is there a child out there?”

      Almost as if he understood her question, Ted barked and ran in circles, clearly agitated. Beth rushed to the closet and pulled on her raincoat, tucking her long brown hair into the hood and drawing it tight around her face. Then she took a flashlight from the shelf and sank her feet into the rain boots she always kept on the mat.

      The wind snatched the breath right from Beth’s mouth when she opened the front door, and she shone the flashlight into a sheet of rain hammering onto the long stretch of grass that grew on the cliff overlooking the bay. The beam of light picked out a tiny figure emerging from the gloom, arms flailing, bare-skinned and soaking wet. It was a child of probably no more than seven or eight, wearing just shorts and a T-shirt, running barefoot. And there was a look of absolute terror on his face.

      Ted raced past Beth’s legs, almost knocking her off balance, and she steadied herself on the frame of the door. Then she took off running, following Ted’s white paws streaking across the grass. Her dog reached the child in just a few seconds and the boy fell on his behind, obviously startled by the appearance of a big, shaggy dog looming out of the dark night. When Beth caught up with him, she put the flashlight on the ground and reached out to pick up the child, but he scrambled away, crying out in a language that she didn’t understand.

      “It’s okay,” she said, taking hold of Ted’s collar to keep him back. “We won’t hurt you.” She looked at the boy’s strange appearance, dressed for a summer’s day rather than a stormy November night. Squatting to the wet grass and holding a hand out to him, she said, “Where did you come from, sweetheart?”

      Another voice floated through the rain-soaked air. This one was deeper, older and louder, belonging to a man shouting words in a foreign language. He sounded angry. When the child heard the voice, he leaped to his feet and took her hand, suddenly eager to go with her.

      “Vamos,” he said, pointing to her lighthouse. “Faro.” She recognized the words as Spanish.

      When Beth hesitated, the child let go of her hand to start running to her lighthouse, his bare feet splashing on the sodden grass. The older man then appeared from the darkness, dressed in black, agitated and aggressive, waving a knife through the air.

      “Leave the boy alone,” he shouted in heavily accented English. “He is mine.”

      The boy called out as he ran, “El es un hombre malo,” and Beth delved into the recesses of her mind to dig up her high school Spanish. She realized with horror the translation of these words: he is a bad man. The child was warning her.

      She turned on her heel and started running, calling for Ted to follow. She concentrated on heading for the light shining from the window of her cottage. “Please, Lord,” she prayed out loud. “Help us.”

      The boy reached her front door and pushed it open, going inside with Ted. He left the door open behind him, and a shaft of light flowed out onto the grass, giving her a path to follow.

      She picked up her pace and threw herself into her home, trying to slam the door shut behind her, but she was too late. The man’s fingers curled around the door frame and gripped tight. Beth pushed with all her strength, as the child stood shivering on her Oriental rug, droplets of rain falling from his black hair. Beth was tall and strong, but she sensed that her power would not be enough to hold back the danger.

      “Give me the child,” the man yelled.

      Then the door was shoved with such force that Beth was knocked clean off her feet and sent crashing to the floor. The door burst wide-open, and the man stood over her, breathing hard, his big hulking frame dripping wet. The boy screamed and ran to the edge of the living room, shouting in Spanish. Beth jumped to her feet and raced to the child while Ted began growling, standing between her and the danger. The man swiped his blade at Ted, but her dog dodged out of the way.

      Then the attacker suddenly stopped and turned his head to the old rowboat drying next to the fire. “Where did you get this?” he shouted. “This boat is not yours.”

      He walked to the broken vessel and jabbed the blade of his knife into the wood of the hull and twisted. The wood seemed to almost squeal, and splinters flew into the air.

      The child clung to the hem of Beth’s raincoat, cowering behind her. The door leading into the lighthouse tower was just to her right. The tower had been decommissioned many years ago, and she rarely went inside, but she knew that the lantern room had heavy-duty bolts to secure the door from the inside. They would be safe there. With one hand, she made a grab for the child’s fingers, and with the other, she snatched her cell from the table. Then she darted to the door, flung it open and plunged into the cool darkness of the tower’s circular base. She heard Ted snapping and growling in the cottage, preventing the man from following, but she knew it would be temporary. Ted was a giant schnauzer, large and imposing, but he was old and his teeth were worn. She hated leaving her dog to fend for himself, but the child had to come first.

      Beth looked up at the winding, spiral staircase, gripped the boy’s hand in her own and began climbing for her life.

      * * *

      Dillon Randall scanned the sea from the Bracelet Bay Coast Guard Station with binoculars, trying to seek out any vessels that might be in need of assistance. The storm had not been forecast, so any boats caught in the swell would be in serious trouble.

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