“Why go to the trouble at all, when you can just use the guy who’s coming?” said one low voice. The men stopped mere steps away from my hiding place.
“Can’t. He won’t be able to.” The second man had a slight accent, but I couldn’t place it. “And you know, appearances matter most and I really wanted a—” A cell phone jingle interrupted him.
“Yeah,” came the deeper voice of the first man. I dared a peek around the outcropping of rock. He pointed his flashlight toward the ocean as he spoke into the phone. He wore jeans and a sweatshirt with a San Diego Padres logo. Not anything I’d ever seen a security guard wear. A gun gleamed on his hip. My mouth went dry. “Yeah, we’re here.” He paused. “What? Ugh, the idiot’s lost. We’re at Point Loma, where you’re supposed to be.”
“Give me the phone,” said the second man. He wore…a suit? At the tide pool? In the middle of the night? He tucked his small flashlight into his pocket and put the phone to his ear. “Do you have the item?” He paused again. “Good. Describe where you are.” He waited a moment, his gaze turning. I dropped back behind the rock.
“Call you back,” he continued slowly.
No. No, no, no.
Footsteps scraped over the stone, coming closer. I shut my eyes. Please, no. My hands shook. My teeth clenched.
A flashlight beam shined in my face. I squinted against it. My breath seized.
Please don’t hurt me.
“And what on earth do we have here?” asked the man with the accent. Blinded by the flashlight, I couldn’t see his face. The scent of some kind of swanky men’s cologne came from him on the sea breeze. I stayed frozen.
“What are you doing here?” asked the other guy. “Do you realize you’re trespassing?”
He should talk. I wasn’t the only one trespassing. Whoever these men were, they had no business being here either. I shrank into my little alcove, about to pass out from cardiac overdrive, my jaw locked.
One of them laughed. More footsteps crunched as the man in the sweatshirt came closer. I squeaked and flinched, but all he did was grab my book bag and rummage through it. His flashlight beam left a lingering black shadow in my retinas.
“No ID,” he said. “No cell. Just a book and a flashlight.”
“Aww. A little marine biologist, are we?” He laughed again. “I can appreciate that. Do you live around here?”
Yeah, like I’m going to tell him. I bit my lower lip. After a long silence, he continued.
“Negative tide is a great time to explore the tidal pools, isn’t it?”
The tightness in my chest let up just a bit. Were they studying aquatic creatures like I was? Fat chance, but I swallowed and gathered enough nerve to ask.
“Are you marine biologists?” My voice came out weak. The two men laughed.
“Yeah, let’s go with that,” said the man in the sweatshirt, whose mocking tone told a different story. He pointed his flashlight at my eyes again, making his face indecipherable. I held a hand up against the beam.
“Oh. Sorry, I’m just…I was just looking for…” I cast my brain around for some kind of sea life. Something a marine biologist would recognize. “A chambered nautilus.”
“Ah,” said the suited man in his light accent. “Well, you’ll have to come back another time to find those, I’m afraid.”
No, I wouldn’t. There were no chambered nautili in California. Not in the wild. These guys weren’t marine biologists. My suspicions confirmed, I clenched my teeth. The man took my bag from his companion and dropped it at my feet.
“Maybe let’s not come back here in the middle of the night though, all right, musling?”
I stared at the bag. My muscles wouldn’t budge.
“Go on, now,” the man said again. “You’re not in trouble. But you will be if you don’t clear off and forget all this happened.”
Breathe. Move. Go. I reached down and picked up my bag. Would these men shoot me in the back once I turned away? Would they ambush me and throw me in the ocean? I turned and took a cautious step away. Did the gun click, or was that just rocks crunching? Another step. The waves crashed. The tide was coming in. I stepped again. Then again. Soon I came to where the rocks made steps up toward the trail. The ocean became louder, as though it had been turned off the last few minutes and then suddenly came back to life.
“Shouldn’t we do something about her?” said a voice behind me, still decipherable above the surf.
“Nah. She’s harmless. A dumb kid doing dumb things.”
I took a couple more steps, but one last thing carried over the breeze before the two men fell out of earshot: “… La Jolla Beach.”
My heart dropped. Were they headed to La Jolla Beach next? No. Please. Anywhere but there. I resisted the urge to turn and get a better look at the two men. As my vision cleared, I scurried in the dark, my palms slick, my heart refusing to slow. I had to hurry.
Had I just witnessed an almost-crime being committed? I shuddered, weak with gratitude that they let me go. Even so, those men couldn’t be up to any good. And they mentioned La Jolla beach…right where Samantha had gone to photograph the bioluminescence in the ocean. I quickened my pace, instinctively reaching for my cell phone before remembering it lay somewhere in the ocean. Those men were heading straight toward my best friend, and I couldn’t warn her. How could I have dropped my phone?
I made my way to the top of the bluff, stumbling on loose rock and slippery sandstone. The moon cast weak light over the
