Chapter 7

“And you had that camera round your neck for a bit,” Ian carried on. “The strap could have caught on the clasp, or something, couldn’t it?”

He was right. God, yes, why hadn’t I thought of that? “Come on, then.” Taking one last lungful of untainted air, I headed for the dead seal.

Karma, I decided as I tried not to gag, was going to owe me big time after this. Kelis crunched nervously at my side, her fingers digging into my arm, as we looked for the locket together. Ian was a few feet away, his dreads hanging over his face as he scoured the ground.

We seemed to search for hours. I was going to dream of pebbles, I decided. An avalanche of potato-sized boulders would cascade down and bury me in my sleep. Probably while a blond, dreadlocked berserker taunted me with Kelis’s necklace on the tip of his battle axe, his plunder—and himself—forever tantalisingly out of reach…

There. A glint of silver, among the grey and white pebbles.