Page 18 of All That Glitters in Pelican Point

The air outside is cooler than I expect, crisp and briny, like the ocean is trying to slap some sense back into me. My cheeks are flushed—partially from the walk back to my rental and the archives, but mostly from the still-glowing, still-smug echo of last night and all its not-even-remotely-casual implications. I can still feel him, like an aftershock humming under my skin, warm and lingering in places that have no business remembering how good he felt.

Focus, Evans. There was a tunnel collapse, remember? Sabotage. Secrets. Sharks. You have a job to do.

Heather is already at the archive when I get there, sipping from a mug that says, 'Plot Twist.' Fitting.

"You look like someone just committed a federal offense against your virtue," she says, not even glancing up from her laptop. "Like your whole worldview got thoroughly rearranged by someone with suspiciously perfect forearms and an aversion to shirts."

"I tripped over my feelings. Full-on face plant. It was horrifying. Like emotional whiplash wearing Cruz’s smirk and yesterday’s hoodie. My brain staged a protest, my dignity is filing a lawsuit, and my libido is doing victory laps with a tiny flag that says 'Team Devlin.'"

She snorts. "So you slept with the rogue diver? Color me shocked. You’ve known the man for, what, a week? Less? I thought you would keep it strictly professional, although I'm not sure I'd have done much better."

"Heather," I hiss. "We are surrounded by three hundred-year-old documents. Keep your scandalous voice down."

She raises both eyebrows. "Honey, those documents have seen worse. Believe me."

I bury myself in the table full of maps and plat books, trying to outrun the smirk on her face. It’s only the second time I’ve met Heather, and she’s already pegged me harder than most of my dissertation advisors ever managed. I spread out the coastal survey again, tracing the lines of the bluffs and old smuggling tunnels. The collapsed tunnel was a dead end—but something in the 1682 sketch I found keeps nagging at me, like a breadcrumb left by a ghost with a grudge and a flair for dramatic architecture.

"The old boardwalk," I mutter, the words tumbling out before I fully process what they mean. My pulse jumps. The lines on the 1682 map suddenly reorient in my mind, like a puzzle clicking into place. That second tunnel—it doesn’t just lead nowhere. It ends beneath the original stretch of Pelican Point’s boardwalk, back when this entire area was still a trade outpost, pretending not to be a smuggler’s paradise.

Heather looks up, her glasses perched on the end of her nose. "Come again?"

"The outpost map I found had a second tunnel route. It veers off from the main passage and ends beneath what would now be the original boardwalk. Back before it was turned into the half-collapsed walkway of doom, it is today."

"So... a second site?"

"Or first. Depending on which tunnel was built later. Either way, it’s worth a look."

Fifteen minutes later, I’m pacing the edge of the old boardwalk with a copy of the sketch in one hand and my phone clutched in the other like it’s going to save me if things get dicey. Not that I need saving. I’ve done this before—followed hunches into places most historians wouldn’t touch without a full research grant and two assistants. I’m good at what I do. I’ve survived archives that should’ve come with tetanus warnings and fieldwork that required actual snakebite protocols. Still, I hear Cruz’s voice in the back of my head telling me not to go off solo. I shove down the little voice that tells me I should listen to him.

My leather sandals scuff against the warped wood, each step groaning under the weight of time and poor decisions. The morning fog hasn’t burned off yet, blurring the edges of the world until everything feels half-formed and haunted. Salt, mildew, and something sharper—rust, maybe, or old secrets—cling to the air like a warning. The whole boardwalk creaks like it’s not happy to have visitors, and honestly? The feeling’s mutual.

I find it. A half-hidden hatch under a broken bench, rusted shut and crusted with salt, nearly invisible unless you already suspect it’s there—and I do. Because I don’t just stumble on things. I look. I study. I connect the dots no one else even sees.

It takes some serious prying, a few creative curses that would make a pirate proud, and a splinter in my palm that I’ll be complaining about later to get it open. The hinges groan like the hatch hasn’t moved in a century, and maybe it hasn’t. Inside, the tunnel yawns dark and narrow, but unlike the last one, this one hasn’t collapsed. Yet.

I hesitate—just for a second. Not because I’m scared. Because I know what I’m walking into. Because sometimes the biggest risks are the ones that feel the most right.

The air hits me like a memory—damp, earthy, and laced with rot and salt, curling around my skin like a forgotten whisper or a warning. I ease down slowly, careful not to jostle the boards too much, my flashlight slicing through the thick shadows as I descend into the unknown.

This is where I belong. Not on camera. Not chasing ratings. Right here—on the edge of discovery.

And then I see it. A cache box. Old. Iron-bound. Locked. The kind of thing that feels like it should be holding a cursed medallion or a map that leads to more questions than answers. It’s half-buried in damp earth and moss, wedged between jagged rocks like it didn’t want to be found. I kneel beside it, heart pounding with adrenaline and nerdy glee, my fingers itching to trace every rusted edge and worn engraving like I’m greeting an old friend with a thousand secrets.

I grin. I might be in over my head, but damn if I don’t know how to swim. I start to pry open the lid and hear and almost inaudible click.

My instincts scream so loud it's almost deafening. The split-second my foot shifts, I feel the tension give—a tiny, unnatural resistance in the board beneath me. Then comes the sound: a snap, sharp and sinister, like a jaw locking shut. I launch myself sideways with no grace, just pure, feral survival, as the board I was standing on cracks clean through…the old box falling into darkness. From the dark space beneath, a row of rusted spikes shoot upward with brutal mechanical precision—too fast, too smooth to be a relic of decay. They slam into the space where I was, slicing the air with a shriek of metal that sounds hungry. It’s not age. It’s a trap—designed to kill, not scare. Someone built this, primed it, and waited. And I just triggered it.

"Holy shit," I gasp, heart hammering. I scramble back, panting. Someone rigged a trap. "You have got to be kidding me."

"Crystal!" Cruz's voice cuts through the silence like a blade, startling me before his boots even thud into earshot. He bursts into view at the hatch, eyes wide, jaw locked in a mix of fear and fury—and the unmistakable look of someone who hasn't known you for more than ten days but is already acting like he has something to lose. "Have you lost your mind?” He hauls me up with one hand, the other going immediately to my arms, my waist, checking for injuries. "You okay?"

"I dodged."

"Dodged," he repeats, voice flat. "You dodged a spike trap. Alone. With no backup."

"It wasn’t exactly on the map," I mutter, cheeks flushing.

His eyes burn into mine. "What if you hadn’t seen it? What if you tripped? What if you..."

---