going on? Did the guy I was chasing have a partner? Or had I stumbled into something even worse? I exhaled slowly
“I’m going to put my hands up and turn around,” I said, keeping my voice way calmer than I felt. There was a gun pointed at me, for Christ’s sake. But getting excited wouldn’t help matters.
I found myself staring at a woman standing three feet away from the depression where I’d fallen. It was a little hard to make out details in the dim light, but she looked middle-aged, maybe older, and was wearing a plaid flannel shirt and ripped jeans. She did, indeed, look like she knew how to use that gun.
I swallowed. I’d handled guns before, which was why I had a healthy respect for them, and zero desire to be on the business end of one.
“Can I ask why you’re pointing that at me?” I kept my voice as neutral as I could.
The woman snorted. “Gee, I don’t know. Can I ask why you’re trespassing and vandalizing my private property?”
I blinked. “We’re on city land. And I’m not vandalizing anything.”
“Don’t try the ignorant act with me. You crossed the border onto my property four yards back. Considering how precise the damage to my grounds has been, I’m sure you know exactly where the line is.”
“But the line’s—” I broke off. Things were becoming a little clearer.
Still not crystal, and there was still a gun a few feet from my face. But if this woman was talking about her property, she had to be affiliated with Slagle’s Marine, and I supposed it was possible that I’d strayed onto her land chasing the guy from the beach.
“Ma’am, I think there’s been some confusion. I apologize for crossing over onto your land, but it was unintentional. I was trying to—”
“Unintentional my left foot.” Her voice was full of scorn. “I’m onto you. I’ve just been waiting for you to come back. What was the plan this time? More oil in the water tanks? Or chemicals on my beach? I hope you weren’t planning on cutting the power lines again—that’s getting a little old, I’ve got to say, since the fourth time you did it.”
“Chemicals on your beach?” I looked at the woman again, reassessing. “Ma’am, I think you and I might be on the same side, here. I was down at McIntyre Beach tonight trying to stop vandalism myself. I found someone trying to destroy a sea turtle nest. When I caught him in the act, he ran. I was chasing him, which was how I ended up over here.”
“A likely story.”
“A true story,” I protested. I held up the jacket I’d torn off the guy as proof. “If you were out here waiting, you had to hear us fighting. He got away, but I got this off of him. And he left some tools down on the beach.”
The woman frowned. “Those could just as easily be your tools. Your jacket.”
“This jacket is too small for me. If you let me out of this ditch, I could show you. Hell, I can do better than that. If you’d stop pointing that gun at me, I could call my boss, Tom Merritt from Parks and the People. He’s paying me to keep an eye on the beach until the council votes. Dammit, we’re trying to save the beach, not destroy it. It, or your property.”
“Tom Merritt? I know him.” The woman’s eyes narrowed. “Who else do you know on that project? You could have googled Tom.”
I sighed. It really would be nice to get out of this hole in the ground sometime in the next century. “Julian Jackson, for starters. Or if he doesn’t satisfy you, you could ask Eleanor Churchill. She’ll vouch for me.”
Actually, Eleanor might be just as likely to say she didn’t know me out of spite, but I didn’t see a reason to mention that right now.
“How do you know Eleanor? Plenty of people could say they know her, but it’s not enough to just have seen her around the island.”
“She’s my grandmother,” I said, exasperated. “Does that count?”
The woman looked at me for a long moment in silence, and finally—finally—lowered her gun.
“I suppose you’d better come inside.”
Sarah Jane Slagle, it turned out, not only ran Slagle’s Marine, she lived on the property as well. She and her husband had managed it for years, and after he’d died, she’d continued to run the whole thing herself.
“Got a kid out in Arizona,” she said as she opened