“Oscar,” Teddy said the moment the door was closed. “Are you all right? You took a hell of a fall.”

“My wrist is pretty effed up, but other than that, I’m fine.”

“Okay, good. Just give me a minute.”

In the pitch dark, Oscar couldn’t see what she was doing, but he could hear what sounded like a sharp slap, followed by a soft grunt of pain. “Damn,” she whispered. “That freaking hurt.”

“What are you doing?”

But she didn’t reply, and he heard the same sound again—a swish through the air, then a slap—sharper, harder, and more violent. But this time, there was another sound, too, a faint little snap. She gave a cry of pain, followed by a gush of, “Oh, thank God.”

“What the hell are you doing? Teddy? Are you all right?”

“Just give me a sec,” she said, her voice tense. “That hurt so bad. I’ve got to get my ankles free, then I can help you…”

“What?” He heard more moving around, and by now realized she’d somehow freed herself from the zip ties. “How did you do that?”

“Do you know where the flashlight is?”

“I slipped it into my pocket. Right side, upper… Yes. There.” Her hand digging around next to his thigh made him think of other, more pleasant things than being zip-tied and left in the dark, or shot, or otherwise killed, and that renewed his anger and determination not to let those assholes take Teddy from him.

Suddenly, the flashlight was on. “Oh my God, Oscar, you must be in agony. Your wrist is purple and so swollen. The plastic is cutting into your skin.” She sounded like she was going to cry.

“I’m aware of that,” he said, gritting his teeth as her movements trying to free him made the pain even worse. “How the hell did you get yourself free?”

“Hold on,” she said. “There’s probably something in here I can use to cut you loose. You won’t be able to do what I did without really hurting yourself—”

“Teddy. If you don’t tell me how you got yourself free—”

“All right, all right. Geez. It’s really easy, but it hurts.” By now she was back behind him with the flashlight and something she’d found in one of the tubs; Oscar realized he preferred not to know what sort of sharp implement she was going to be using to cut the plastic away from where it dug deeply into his swollen wrist. “You lift your arms up as high as they’ll go, then you bring them down and to your sides in a really fast and hard motion. It snaps the plastic. Did I mention it hurts?”

Oh my God. Talk about hurting… He ground his teeth and closed his eyes, breathing deeply against the pain, as the plastic she was working on moved against his tender wrist. Then, suddenly, the restraints were gone.

“Thank you,” he said, bringing his arms back around to the front and gingerly feeling around his swelling hand. Yep. If not broken, then it was badly sprained.

“Now your ankles,” she said. “How bad is your wrist?”

“It’s not great. But it could be worse.” It felt like his wrist had been placed on an anvil and someone had pounded on it. “I’m guessing you’ve done some research on how to escape zip ties.”

“Yes.” He heard the smile in her voice. “I was so happy he had zip ties and decided to use them instead of rope.”

“Or shooting us,” Oscar said as the tie around his ankles fell away.

“Right. Well, Misty had a point. It would have been a mess.”

“Let’s not talk about that right now, hmm?” He pushed himself gingerly to his feet, taking care not to put any weight on his wrist. “We need to get out of here while they’re out on their dive.”

“Okay, but I want to see what else is in these tubs,” Teddy said, waving the flashlight around.

“No,” he replied firmly, starting for the trellis-hidden door. “That’s how the good guys always get caught—they spend too much time messing around looking at things when they should make an immediate beeline for freedom and safety. We’re getting out of here now and calling Joe Cap, and then— Dammit to hell.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I can hear them out there, Teddy.”

“What are they doing?”

“I don’t know. Sounds like they’re arguing—yes. He wants to dive now, but she wants to wait because of the storm coming. Well, maybe it’ll keep them busy for a while. But we can’t go out there now.”

“There’s that other door that leads somewhere inside the lighthouse,” she said. “We can go that way. If we can get it open.”

She brought the flashlight over and shined it on the padlock.

“If we had a screwdriver, we could just unscrew the lock plate from the wall, there,” he said. “Did you happen to see anything like that over in their stuff?”

“Philips or flathead?” She walked away with the light.

“Flathead.”

He heard her rummaging around and went to join her. “Look at this, Oscar!” she said in a low voice. “They really hit the jackpot.”

Inside one of the larger tubs was an array of gold and silver objects: plates, cups, flatware, candlesticks. Much of it was covered with algae and seaweed.

“If this is from the Astors’ ship, it’s going to be solid gold or silver,” Teddy said. “I wonder what else they’ve found. There’s got to be jewels and all sorts of other treasure down there. No wonder they’re willing to kill for it.”

Oscar dug out a silver butter knife. “This’ll work. Bring the light, Teddy—but let’s listen at the door first. Maybe they’re gone.”

They didn’t hear the sounds of voices until Oscar cracked the door and listened at the trellis. “They’re still out there—but now it sounds like they might be on the porch.”

“They’re probably drinking our wine!” Teddy said, sounding outraged about the least of their problems. “But damn, that means we can’t go back to the cottage. Unless we go from the inside. All right, let’s get to work on that padlock.”

A butter knife wasn’t the best tool, but it eventually got the job done. There were three screws that held the latch to the wall, and by the time he finished with the third one, Oscar’s fingers were cramped from working in the small location and maneuvering the makeshift screwdriver with his left hand.

But at last the latch fell away. Teddy carefully pulled the door open, and they slipped through into a small hallway that didn’t look familiar to Oscar.

“Oh, this is the way to my bedroom,” she whispered, gesturing to the left. “And straight ahead is the door to the staircase that leads to the lantern room at the top.” She pointed up.

“Can we get out without them seeing us if they’re on the porch?” he asked, for he could hear their voices very close by. Apparently, Misty had won the argument and they were delaying the dive.

Teddy shook her head. “My room is right next to the porch—remember? And we’d have to pass through the connecting door, and you can see that from the porch too.”

Damn. And they couldn’t go back around through the trellis door, because there was nowhere to go from there but down to the lake without being seen.

“All right. Let’s just wait here for a while until they—uh—go somewhere else.”

Until they come for us.

His suggestion was punctuated by a distant roll of thunder, and that reminded him of the plans Misty and Rob had made for them. Oscar reached for Teddy’s hand with his good one and squeezed tight. “Is there a closet or somewhere we can hide in case they start looking for us?”

She shook her head, her eyes narrowing in the dim light. “I don’t think so. There isn’t one in my room, and the one in the bathroom is much too small for even one of us.”

“All right. We’re safe here for now. Let’s just…wait.”

They sat next to each other, leaning against the wall in the small, dim, and dingy hall. Oscar turned off the flashlight, for it seemed to be a little dimmer than it had been.

“Oscar,” she said, tilting her head onto his shoulder. “I just want you to know, there’s no one else I’d rather be stuck in this situation with.”

He caught himself before he laughed. “I’d rather not be stuck in this situation at all,” he said. “But thank you for the sentiment.”

Then he drew in a breath, because there were things that needed to be said, and in case he didn’t have the chance to ever say them, he knew he’d better now. Before whatever happened happened.

“Teddy, I…realize that you were in a particularly festive mood last night. When I got back here. And you were probably a little bit—um—relieved not to be alone—or having to learn the hard way there wasn’t any water after the power went out.” She gave a soft, muffled laugh, and he smiled. “Anyway, look…I…”

How did he say this?

“I—uh—well, I guess what I’m trying to say is, if you were so—um—”

“Oscar?”

“Yes?”

“I have no idea what you’re trying to say.”

“Neither do I.” He sighed. He wasn’t good at this sort of thing—putting his emotions into coherent words. “Look, I guess I just want you to know that I came back last night because I was—am—really falling for you. But I don’t know whether you were so, well, exuberant and, um, not so very mad at me for leaving and coming back because you were just glad not to be alone and you were celebrating your book being turned in, or…or not.”

“Is that your way of asking if last night was just me being celebratory and not really about you and me?”

“Well, yeah.” For once, she’d been remarkably succinct—and he’d been the one floundering around with random phrases and clauses.

“Well, you’re right about one thing. I should have been more annoyed with you for leaving and then just coming back like—like some prodigal son,” she said. “You really were a jerk.”

“Right.” He wasn’t certain whether this was going well or not.

“I mean, I didn’t make you grovel or anything,” she said contemplatively, “and you really probably should have been made to do so, considering that you left me to go back to your former fiancée after sleeping with me for the previous two nights.”

“Well, we didn’t technically sleep together—”

“And if it hadn’t been for nosy old Maxine and Iva and her love for ghosts, we probably would have actually slept slept together before you found out that Marcie wanted you back—”

“She never said she wanted me back—”

“Oh, phfffft. Of course she wanted you back, Oscar.”

He swore he actually heard her roll her eyes. “Well, we’ll never know because I… Well, the simple fact is, Teddy, I’m falling in love with you, and I don’t give a damn what Marcie wants or thinks. I only care what you want or think.” And I hope it’s me.

“Oh, Oscar.” Now he heard her smile, and the knots in his belly loosened. “The reason I was so mad at you—and I was, and I really did give you a break by not making you sweat it a lot more—was because I’m feeling the same way. And you left me in the middle of it. But mostly I was glad I hadn’t told you how I felt before you left, because that would have been even more awful.”

“Right.” He thought he understood what she was saying. But even if he missed some of the subtler nuances, he got the gist of it.

And now he was damned certain he was going to get them both out of this mess, alive and safely.

Teddy lost track of time—it was impossible to know whether an hour or only minutes had passed, sitting as they were in a dark room with no windows and no way to tell time. They held hands and she rested her head on his shoulder.

They didn’t need any more words.

She could hear the storm as it drew near, and she knew that meant Rob and Misty would be coming back for them any time, regardless of how long it had been. And that was when things were going to get hairy again.

Still, she felt optimistic about their chances of coming out unscathed. After all, she and Oscar were both extremely resourceful and intelligent, and Rob and Misty…well, they probably weren’t the sharpest tacks in the box.

At least, that was what she told herself.

And then it happened—Oscar stiffened at the moment she heard the sound of someone in the storage room. Whoever it was, they were on the other side of the door with the padlock. She and Oscar had closed that door behind them, but there was no way to block it, and it would only be a moment before Rob and Misty realized where they’d gone.

She and Oscar had already pushed to their feet, but to her surprise, there was no shout of surprise announcing they’d disappeared. Still, he had her by the hand and was pulling her toward the door that led to her bedroom—and the rest of the cottage.

If they could just keep one step ahead of Misty and Rob, who’d surely be coming in behind them, they’d be out the front door of the cottage and running down the road where Oscar had left his Jeep.

He opened the door to her bedroom, and they slipped through into familiar surroundings. That was when they at last heard the shout of alarm in the storage room.

Teddy led the way out through her bedroom to the foyer with the connecting door, pausing to peek out at the porch to make sure no one was there.

Let’s go, she said with her hands, and Oscar pushed ahead of her to crack open the curve-topped door. He peered around the opening, and was just about to step through when an ugly noise met their ears.

And stopped them in their tracks.

It was the sound of a gun cocking. Right on the other side of the curve-topped door.