Free And The Earth Moved: Romantic Comedy Cozy Mystery (Amber Reed CCIA Mystery Book 1) by Zanna Mackenzie Page B

himself if he’s discovered in a place he definitely shouldn’t be or if a fight breaks out.
    What if whoever turns up does have a gun? I still don’t know if Charlie is armed or not. Do CCIA investigators carry guns?
    What if they - whoever they are - have got Charlie and I’m going to be left all alone in the quarry? What if they lock me in? What if…
    I hold my breath. Mind racing with thoughts.
    I still can’t hear any sounds out there though.
    Should I open the door? Charlie told me not to under any circumstances but if it’s quiet now then surely it will be OK to open the door just a touch. Enough to peer through and see what’s happening.
    Yes or no?
    I take a slow, deep breath and open the door a fraction, about to peer out when it’s yanked away from me and I leap back in fright.

Chapter Nine
    I look up into Charlie’s eyes.
    “I thought I told you to keep the door closed,” he hisses at me.
    Before I can reply he grabs my hand. “We need to get out of here now.”
    I nod and scramble to follow him across the room.
    “Did you…” I try to speak but it’s barely more than a whisper when the words do manage to find their way out.
    Charlie glances back at me briefly. “Not now,” he warns me, holding a finger to his lips to silence me.
    Is the person who turned up still here somewhere? Are we likely to be caught at any second?
    Outside he tugs me across the rough ground to an area behind some lorries and gestures for me to crouch down near the back chassis of one of the huge trucks so I’m out of sight. I stare back at him, so many questions tumbling through my mind, yet unable to speak. I hear a noise and see a man in a coat, the hood up, come out of one of the other quarry buildings with a rucksack. He walks towards the car and I hold my breath. As he opens the door the interior light flickers on and I catch a glimpse of the person’s face. It’s Liam. I’m sure it is. 
    Charlie and I stay out of sight until the car’s headlights disappear over the top of the quarry track, heading back towards the road.
    “Right, the coast is clear. First I need to go back and lock the door again. I didn’t want to hang around before in case Liam came out of the other building. I just wanted to get you out of there.”
    “Lock the door?” I frown. Did I see Charlie unlock the door when we hurried out? Meaning it was locked again when we were inside… “Did you lock the door again?” I ask, confused.
    He nods. “Yeah. When the car turned up I didn’t know if Liam was likely to come into the main office or not. If he had come over and then found the door unlocked he’d have instantly been suspicious and been looking for intruders. So I scooted to the door and locked it again, removing the key, just in case.”
    The footsteps I’d heard.
    Clever thinking.
    “You said, first, you were going to lock the door, then what? Was it definitely Liam who turned up? I thought it looked like him but wasn’t entirely sure.”
    “Yes it was Liam. He just went into the other building which looks as though it’s a storeroom of some kind. He shut the door behind him so I couldn’t see what he was doing. I just wanted to get you out of the office whilst he was in the other building. Then he reappeared, zipping up his rucksack, like you saw. He must have forgotten something and come back for it but I couldn’t see what it was. I think that building houses quarry equipment so it could have been anything.”
    “Why on earth would he want quarry equipment in the middle of the night?”
    “Good question,” Charlie says. “Which brings me to the second item on my list. I want to get into that building and see what’s inside it.”
    Now that Liam’s car has gone silence surrounds us again and I shiver. I just want to get out of here as quickly as possible. Charlie, now examining the lock on the other building, clearly has other ideas.  Nervously I make my way towards him. “Can you unlock it?”
    He’s