Chapter Three
I scream.
Or I almost scream. It comes out like a kind of strangled yelp as I whirl around in full-on attack mode, hands flailing and ready to hit.
Pain ricochets through my wrist as I connect with something, a nose, judging by the grunt from my assailant, but I barely have time to feel victorious as I lose my footing on the wet pavement slabs beneath me.
My right foot slides in front as I hit the back of the well with an oomph , and for one stomach-dropping moment, I teeter over the edge before I’m jerked up, pulled not into the murky darkness below but straight into the broad, hard chest of a stranger.
Strong hands grip my shoulders, easing me back from where I’d faceplanted against his jacket, and I look up to see the dark-haired man from this morning peering down at me.
Callum .
His name pops into my mind at the same time I realize I’m clutching onto his coat like I’m holding on for dear life. The whole episode took about five seconds, but in those five seconds I went from weary calm to hyper-alert and my brain does not know what to do with that.
Move , I command as my body takes its sweet time connecting to my nervous system. Move . But I don’t. I don’t do anything and when a few moments pass and still nothing happens, Callum’s brow creases in concern.
“You okay?”
The sound of his voice is what does it, unblocking the weird barrier in my mind so that every instruction roars through me at once.
As a result, I don’t so much let the man go as I do shove him away, scrambling to the side as I reach for the phone in my back pocket.
Before he can so much as take a step, I switch on the torch, shining it right at him.
“Jesus,” he mutters, shielding himself from the light. “Are those things supposed to be that bright?”
“What are you doing here?”
“Losing my vision, apparently. Do you mind?” He squints my way, and I reluctantly lower my weapon, angling it so it’s no longer blinding him but still illuminating the space enough that I can make him out in the dark.
Not to be all small-town stereotype, but it’s rare to have someone not from here roaming about, especially in the middle of a power cut.
Not to mention that the man is dressed for skulking.
Dark jeans, dark winter coat, dark beanie pulled low over his head. Almost like he’s—
“ Ow .”
I flash the phone back in his direction as he steps forward and he immediately rears back, his palms shooting up as though to prove his innocence.
“I thought country people were supposed to be friendly.”
“Not in the middle of the night to men they don’t know.”
“We met this morning,” he says. “And I just saved you from falling down a well.”
“I wouldn’t have fallen down the well.”
“That’s sure what it looked like.”
I move the phone to my other hand, registering a slight twinge before remembering what happened. “I hit your nose.”
“You broke my nose.”
“Really?”
“No.”
When it becomes clear I’m not going to blind him again, Callum drops his hands, watching me as I do him, except he’s much more obvious about it, appraising me like I’m the one who interrupted his night and not the other way around.
But before he can say anything more, a shattering of glass sounds from the pub, followed by an ironic cheer, and I remember why I’m out here in the first place.
The torches.
Crap. The keys are no longer in my hand, that much I register, and I pat my empty pockets before shining the light at my feet, trying to spot them.
“What are you looking for?” Callum asks.
“I dropped my keys.” And Adam will lose his shit if I can’t find them.
It may or may not be the third time I’ve lost them.
Though, to be fair, I did find the last set in the inside pocket of my coat two months after we replaced them.
But who checks the inside pocket? Who even regularly uses an inside pocket? Not my fault.
Okay, a little bit my fault.
I startle as a new beam of light joins mine and turn to see Callum sweeping his own phone over the patio. Right. This guy.
“You didn’t answer my question,” I say, abandoning my quest for the moment. “What are you doing here?”
“Looking for you.” He says it like it’s the most natural thing in the world. “I figured this place is small enough that it shouldn’t be too hard. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
“You didn’t,” I lie. “You just have suspiciously quiet feet for someone so…” Strong .
“Tall. And what do you mean, you were looking for me?” I stiffen as soon as I say the words, my skin heating with embarrassment at the thought of what happened this morning.
Am I in trouble? Is that what this is? Are they going to try and arrest me for trespassing or something?
I don’t know if they can, but Nush always talks about how much money these people have and how ruthless they are, and I guess I did piss off the big boss man and—
“I wanted to apologize.”
Callum’s words interrupt my spiraling I’ve never been in real trouble before panic, and I swallow, grateful he can’t see me too well in the dark.
“For this morning,” he continues. “And the mornings before that. The team are going to sort it out.”
“You’re going to stop building the hotel?”
He starts to smile, his lips curving up before he realizes I’m not joking.
“No,” he says after a long second. “As captivating as your case was, Glenmill Properties is not going to stop their multimillion-euro construction project. But we can stop the traffic. We’d actually planned that route to avoid too many vehicles going through the village.
Unfortunately, that means they all seem to be going right by you.
I talked with the team, and rerouting the entrance shouldn’t be a problem.
Most of the guys are coming in from the city anyway, and there’s no reason they can’t approach from the main road.
I can’t do anything about disruption from the site, but it will buy you a few hours in the mornings and maybe you could—”
“Are you serious?” I interrupt, and he pauses, taken aback by my sudden excitement.
“We’ll need to trial it,” he says carefully. “But yeah. We’ve been told not to piss off the locals and you’re a local. Didn’t take much sign-off.”
I can’t believe it. It worked.
My delirious activism worked.
“Hopefully better than nothing,” he continues, when I just stare at him.
“It is,” I say quickly. “It is much better than nothing. It’s something. It’s great. It’s…thank you.”
“No problem.”
“And I’m sorry about this morning,” I add, feeling charitable. “I was a little out of it. Probably wasn’t the best way to start your day.”
“You kidding me?” He laughs, a pleasant, husky sound that I instantly want him to make again. “That’s the most fun I’ve had in weeks. I’ll let you know when Jack’s visiting next, and you can swing around again.”
“Not likely,” I mutter, wincing at the thought. “You’re sure I didn’t get you in trouble?”
“The surest,” he says. “So, what kind of keys?”
“Oh, you don’t have to— small,” I say, when those green eyes swing my way. Shut up , Katie. “Blue key ring. Thanks.”
“And they’re definitely not in your pockets?”
“No.” Though I check again to make sure. “I dropped the coin in with my right hand, I had the keys in my left and then I heard you and then I freaked and then…”
I catch his eye and, as one, we turn to stare at the well.
“No,” I say.
“It’s a possibility.”
“I would have heard them fall.”
“Maybe not.” He rises to look into it, shining his light inside. “How deep is it?”
“I don’t know. Two hundred feet? Why? Are you going to climb down it?”
“No, but you must have some rope and bucket situation going on.”
“We don’t use it for water. I don’t think we’ve even had it checked.” And if they’re down there…I groan and spin away, heading over to the side of the pub. “Just give me a leg up.”
“What?”
“The keys are for the gate,” I explain, gesturing to the six-foot wooden slats blocking off the storage area.
We put them up a few years ago when Adam finally got fed up with foxes burrowing in.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him they’d have no problem climbing over it. “The shed inside should be unlocked.”
“Why isn’t the shed locked?”
“Because I’m in charge of locking it and I know I definitely forgot to do it last night.”
I come to a stop by our very penetrable wall and slip the phone into my pocket, plunging us into darkness once more.
“If you could just give me a boost, I’ll be able to— what are you doing ?”
Callum moves quicker than I expect, bending to grab my knees before lifting me into the air like I weigh nothing at all.
I grab hold of the fence on instinct, scrambling to straddle the thing.
Once I’m sure I’m not going to fall, I look down with a glare, but he’s already pulling himself up to join me.
“You don’t need to come too.”
“Then how will you get back?” he says, and I take his point as he climbs the fence easily, his movements suspiciously nimble.
“Please tell me you haven’t done this before,” I say, but he only winks before dropping down neatly to the other side.
I stay where I am, wondering if I’m still a little sleep-deprived, but I don’t feel like I’ve lost any common sense.
There are no alarm bells ringing, no twisting feeling in my gut telling me to run for the hills, and, knowing that Adam’s going to lose a whole night of business if he doesn’t get these torches, I ignore my new friend’s outstretched arms and climb down myself.
Callum lets out a low whistle when I open the shed door, adding his phone’s light to mine as we peer inside. “Remind me to come back here when the apocalypse happens.”
“We get a lot of blackouts,” I explain, pushing aside the camping gear, sandbags, and emergency supplies to find the box. “And sometimes the river on the other side of the village floods. We’ve learned the hard way to be more prepared around here.”
“I can see that.”