Free Trap Door by Sarah Graves Page A

might be enough to make him change or at least postpone them. And if I did nothing and something happened to Jemmy, I would never forgive myself.
    So my choice was clear.
Private,
a sign announced from the closed iron gate. No one answered the intercom box mounted on it. I climbed back into the truck.
    “Okay, you’ve had all the good ideas so far. Now what?” The property was a wildly scenic compound overlooking the whole bay. I didn’t know much about it but Ellie had spent her whole childhood on the island, and did.
    “Now,” she said with determination, “we take the direct approach. Before he put this wall up there was a picnic spot on the water side of the property. Dirt road leading partway in.”
    Great, another dirt road. She put the truck in gear and began nosing it down a barely visible track, parallel to the wall and away from the gate.
    Sixty yards later she stopped again. This time we both got out. Ellie marched away from the truck; I followed, my misgivings increasing.
    “And unless he also built a wall on the water side, which I don’t see why he would… ,” she continued as we pushed through some bushes, then came out on the other side of them.
    No kidding, and I wouldn’t exactly call the approach direct. The wall ended but what replaced it worked equally well; coming to an abrupt halt I reached back reflexively for a steadying handful of those bushes, all that kept me from a plummeting next step.
    “You’re kidding,” I managed, though Ellie appeared unfazed. We were looking at a cliff with about an eight-inch path running along the edge of it. To the left, another massive rise of sheer granite swooped up, dizzying me; to the right was an apparently endless expanse of breathtakingly empty air.
    “Nobody even knows you can do this except kids who grew up around here,” Ellie said blithely, stepping onto the path, which to me looked approximately as wide as a tightrope. I closed my eyes, decided that was a bad idea, and hastily opened them again.
    “Remind me again why we can’t just come back when someone’s here to let us in?” Gulping, I crept forward.
    If for some insane reason you wanted to invade Walter Henderson’s place, you’d be better off landing a helicopter on the back lawn.
    “Because maybe they won’t let us in.” She moved limberly ahead of me, no hesitation at all; to her this was nothing. “And then we might not get to look for Cory Trow. You want to at least say we have, remember? And do it with a straight face?”
    She stepped quickly away from me. “Besides, I want this Jemmy nonsense over and done with as soon as possible.”
    Okey-dokey. I put my foot out. In response, my heart traded places with my tonsils. Crumbs of loose granite fell rattlingly away. “But once we get past this part we can just walk along the back end of the property and up to the front door,” Ellie called over her shoulder cheerfully.
    Yeah, this part. A seagull sailed by, his beady eye fixing me contemptuously. Out over the water, ducks skimmed, wings whistling.
    “What, then we ring the bell and say ‘Avon calling’?” In defiance of any possible inkling of common sense whatsoever, I shuddered a tiny bit farther out along the narrow cliff edge. A big chunk of granite broke off under my feet and tumbled to the rocks below.
    Far
below; a hundred feet or more to where deep water moved sullenly. I averted my eyes, battling a sudden attack of vertigo. Part of the trouble was that in my case vertigo usually won. The other part, however, was my current actual position on the planet, commonly known as Too High Up.
    “I don’t know what you’ll tell him,” Ellie replied with a grin as her foot slipped; nimbly she recovered her balance. “You said
you’d
think of something.”
    Me and my big mouth. Meanwhile the farther we got along the cliff’s edge, the less sure I felt about what had turned suddenly into an extreme hiking adventure. On the other hand, I was not going
back
over