Storm Surge by Celia Ashley

inhabited the exchange.
    “Do you two know each other?” Paige asked.
    Neither man spoke.
    “Do you?”
    The two men employed another silent exchange, as if gauging each other’s size and capabilities.
    “No,” said Liam.
    “I’ve seen him once or twice,” said Dan. “Don’t know him, though.”
    “Oh, for crying out loud,” muttered Paige, swinging the door closed. “Liam, this is Dan Stauffer, an officer with the local PD. Dan, this is Liam Gray.”
    Both men grunted in greeting. Paige sat down in the room’s only chair and pulled off her left shoe to shake out a pebble. Sand stuck to her jeans and hands like glitter from a grade school project.
    “What happened to your head?” Liam asked. From the corner of her eye, Paige saw Dan touch his bruised forehead.
    “She threw her flashlight at me.”
    Liam laughed. To Paige’s surprise, Dan chuckled, too. Paige lifted her brows. “Well, ha-ha. But I need you both to tell me what you’re doing here. Which one of you is going first?”
    Both men maintained a stoic silence.
    “Okay, I’ll pick. Liam?”
    Crossing the floor, he stopped at the small section of kitchen counter and leaned his hips against it. He folded his arms across his chest. “I came looking for the cat. Your door was open. Again.”
    “I shut it,” Paige said, more to herself than to either of them. Still, they exchanged a look. “What?”
    Liam shook his head.
    “So,” Paige went on, “you found the door open and the lights on and walked in.”
    “Lights were off. I turned them on when I realized you weren’t here. If Shadow was inside, he’s gone now.”
    “Do you think Shadow nudged the door open?”
    “Doubtful,” interrupted Dan. “Not if you closed the door properly.”
    Paige shrugged. “Maybe I didn’t.”
    Dan shook his head. “Then you should take better care. Is anything missing?”
    “Missing? A cat’s not likely to—”
    “You don’t know it was the damn cat,” Dan said.
    Paige looked from Dan to Liam, whose expression had gone stony. “I don’t have much worth stealing,” Paige advised them both.
    “Check your purse.”
    From where she sat, Paige could see that her bag on the bedpost hadn’t been disturbed, but she rose to check it, slipping her foot back into her shoe. On her way across the floor, she gave a wrinkle in the area rug a shove with the toe of her sneaker. She felt something hard beneath. “What’s that?”
    Without waiting for an answer she expected wouldn’t be forthcoming, Paige grabbed the rug’s edge and peeled it back. A curved iron handle stuck up at a slight angle from a recess in the floorboards where it normally rested, meaning it had been moved. She stepped back, searching each man’s face. “What is that? A trap door? Do you think someone might have—”
    “I’ll check,” said Dan. “Paige, give me that flashlight of yours.”
    Liam held his hand out for the flashlight at the same time, ignoring the fact Paige had extended it in Dan’s direction. “It’s only a crawlspace,” Liam said. “Every cottage along the beach has one. Still, it’s worth a look.”
    “Why don’t you just let a cop do his job?” Dan demanded with a touch of sarcasm.
    At the change to Liam’s demeanor, Paige dropped the instrument onto his palm instead of Stauffer’s and moved away. She didn’t care which man did the checking. It wasn’t out of the question that a rambunctious cat could have shifted the handle in a battle with the rug, but she needed an assurance that no one lurked beneath the cottage.
    Paige pulled the rug back a little more. “It couldn’t be the man from the beach, could it? I can’t see him moving that quickly.”
    Liam paused, the ring for the trapdoor gripped in his hand. “The one you said you saw earlier?”
    “I saw him again, right before I ran up here.”
    Liam looked at Dan. “Were you out there on the beach?”
    “Yeah, and I didn’t see anyone. Anyone but Paige, that is.”
    Sand ground