She lifted her left foot, hearing more rattling as the limestone turned to sand under her weight. “You’re sure it’s safe to move?”
“I’ve got you.”
Remi’s throat went suddenly dry. As she moved toward him, her right foot slipped out, sending the top stone plunging down into the cave. Sam pulled her to him, wrapping his arm around her. Her heart thundered in her chest. When she was on solid ground, she looked back. The stone where she’d stood was completely gone. A coating of dust and gravel was all that was left in the space beneath.
“That was close.” She turned, looking up at Sam, who was still holding her.
“You okay?” he asked.
She nodded.
“You sure?”
She nodded again, but her heart continued to beat loudly.
Finally, Dimitris, with a scuffling noise and a very loud cough, reminded Sam that they were not alone. He held Remi a moment longer, then let go. When he found solid purchase, he turned on his phone’s flashlight, aiming the beam downward. It barely penetrated the darkness.
Dimitris kneeled beside him, trying to see in. “I have some gear, but Manos and Denéa are both climbers,” he said. “They’re out on the boat with my father. I’m sure they wouldn’t mind if we borrowed some of their equipment.” He nodded at the tree growing on the other side of the rocks. “We could anchor to that.”
Sam looked up at the tree trunk, shaking his head. “I don’t like the look of these rocks. A few too many cracks for my comfort.”
“It looks solid right here.” Dimitris patted the rock beneath him. “Remi’s light. We could lower her down.”
Remi, standing behind both men, thought about her close call, and was glad when Sam nixed that idea. “What about a video camera?” she said. “We could lower it down. Safer than tempting fate.”
“That, Remi, is brilliant.”
Later that afternoon, they returned
with the needed equipment. Sam had managed to rig a small cage that held the camera tilted at a slight angle downward with a flashlight next to it. To keep the contraption from spinning, they attached the cage to two sixty-meter ropes, Sam on one side of the cavern entrance and Dimitris on the other. The basket hit something solid close to the fifteen-meter mark.
“Must be the bottom,” Dimitris said.
They lifted the rope a few feet on each side, then moved in a clockwise circle. At one point, Remi thought she saw a flash of white, but the light moved past before she could tell what it was. Finally, they lifted the camera to the surface and removed it from the cage.
The three moved away from the opening, and sitting beneath the shade of the tree, Dimitris opened the control panel of the camera and rewound the video to the start. When he played it back, they saw the rough cave wall as the camera descended. Apparently what it hit wasn’t the bottom at all, but a ledge.
“What’s that?” Sam said.
“It looks like bones,” Dimitris replied, confirming that Remi had indeed seen something white down there.
“No. Not that. A few seconds before.”
Dimitris rewound the video and played it back.
Sam pointed to the lower left corner of the screen and Dimitris pressed stop. At first glance it didn’t look like much. But Dimitris shaded the screen with his hand, then sucked in a breath. “It’s a shoe. Do you think someone’s down there?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The last murder on Fourni occurred decades upon decades ago. The local police were woefully unprepared to deal with this kind of investigation. They called for the federal police, who sent out a team to recover the body from the cave. Arrangements were made to search the cave for other remains.
Sam stood off to one side as the investigating officer took a statement from Remi and then Dimitris about what they’d seen that morning on the hill. When they were finished, the three waited together as the police raised the body from the cavern, using a stretcher. Two men at the surface guided it up, then moved it away from the cave’s entrance.
Dimitris froze when he saw the victim. “Tassos Gianakos.”
“You know him?” one of the federal officers asked.
He nodded, unable to speak for a moment. “A friend.”