Chapter 15
Tom
Tom backed further into the canopy as Rhys jumped into the pickup. It took off, kicking up gravel.
“You said before that they were ‘shady’?” Amelia said.
“Only in the sense that they use some creative ways to make money.”
“You mean poaching deer?”
“That and… See those?” He pointed at two commercial greenhouses in a field to one side of the house. “Officially, a hothouse flower operation. But I’ve heard from a few mutual acquaintances that they produce the best-quality weed in the county.”
“Really?”
Tom rubbed his forehead. “At least they’re not being bought out by some twenty-something billionaire.
But I wouldn’t have thought them capable of hurting anyone.
Let’s break in.” He strode in the direction of the house.
“We can use their phone to call the police. Maybe even nick one of their quad bikes.” He pointed to a large shed beside the house, where two were parked.
Amelia hurried after him. “The last time we saw Duncan, he was talking about confronting them over the poaching. Maybe they shot him? Mistook him for an animal and then panicked and covered it up?”
“That doesn’t explain why they would be walking by the house at three in the morning with a rug.”
“Or why they were searching the abbey and the cottage. Maybe we’re hallucinating this entire day. Like a virtual reality game.” She lightly slapped her cheek several times. “How can we be sure about anything? My head hurts—actually.”
His headache was back too. He hadn’t noticed it had gone away. “I never did find those painkillers. You say you heard Griffin and Rhys talking, in the study. What did they say?”
“I didn’t catch much. I remember hearing, ‘It’s not bloody here now.’ And then I knocked into a vase on the landing, and they went quiet. I hid and they left. No wonder they weren’t bothered to find me—they were intruders too.”
“‘It’s not bloody here.’” Tom repeated. “What wasn’t?”
“If they were still in the abbey overnight, and then in Duncan’s house this morning, maybe they didn’t find whatever it was.”
“Whatever’s going on, at least now we know who we’re running from.”
As they reached the house, Tom began trying doors and windows.
Amelia got the idea and dashed further along, doing the same.
Like those on the ground floor of the abbey, they were old-fashioned sash windows, but not a single one budged.
Deadbolted, by the look of them. Tom used to tag along with Eddie and Connor when they messed about with the Pritchard brothers in their teens, though his grandfather disapproved.
They’re not our people, he’d say. They’d always been a little wild, but this?
“There are security cameras,” Amelia said nervously, looking up at one above a side door.
“We’ll be in and out super quickly. Assuming we can get in at all.”
“You could learn something from their security,” Amelia said, taking a second go at jiggling a window, once they had circled the entire house.
“I prefer to trust in human nature.” He peeked through a window. “I guess they have something to hide.”
Tom yelled Duncan’s name. The only answer was an echo through the wood.
“Worth a shot,” he said. “I’ll have to break a window.
” He briefly sized up the shotgun butt before crossing a pathway to the shed.
The gun was already likely to be out of alignment.
No point making it worse if there was another option.
He skirted around one of two quad bikes to a drum of garden tools.
He plucked out a spade and tested its heft.
“Tom,” Amelia said quietly, from behind him. She brushed past, heading for a rudimentary shelf at the far end of the shed. “Cyclops. Light-up tentacle…”
“What?”
“Headlamps.” She pointed to two miner’s lamps. “What if that’s what we saw? One of the cyclopses seemed to stare right at me, but what if it wasn’t an eye I saw, but a light? And your light-up tentacle…”
Tom came up alongside her. “That makes sense. It would explain why we couldn’t make out their faces. They would have been in darkness, next to the lamps.”
“So maybe they shot Duncan near the house—the gunshots were very close at one point. And he managed to make it inside to try to get help.”
“And they followed him and broke in somehow.”
“Somehow? It’s not exactly The Tower of London.”
“It wasn’t designed as a lock up and leave. If you’re intent on finding a way in, you’ll find one.”
“And he ran to wherever that rug was, and they finished him off there, or something, so they took him and the rug to get rid of the evidence? And they didn’t realize they’d been seen until the cop turned up. But how would they have known she came by?”
“You’d be surprised how quickly word gets around, especially when it involves my family. And they could have been watching the place, waiting to see when he was discovered missing.”
“You thought you heard someone in the hallway outside the kitchen, when we were talking to the cop.”
“I did hear someone.”
“If they overheard that conversation, they’d have heard her say that our memories would come back.”
“I wish that would hurry up and bloody happen. I keep thinking there has to be a simple explanation for all of this that doesn’t involve… But every hour that goes by… I should have told Duncan to stay away from them yesterday.”
Amelia squeezed his shoulder. “You did. And you weren’t to know. All we can do is—” She cocked her head, listening.
“Amelia, what is—?”
And then he heard it. A vehicle.
“It’s getting louder,” she said. “They’re coming back, fast.”
The pickup screamed into the driveway, spitting gravel.
Amelia and Tom ducked behind the nearest quad bike.
He peered out. Rhys jumped out of the passenger seat with the rifles.
As Griffin stepped out, Rhys handed him one.
Griffin opened the tray and the dogs bounded out, doing loops around each other, barking.
“Could they send the dogs after us?” Amelia whispered. “Are they those kinds of dogs?”
“They’re tracking dogs, used for deerstalking, mostly. Some kind of Lab-Retriever-Pointer cross.”
“Tom?” Rhys called out, scanning the house. “That you? We heard a big crash.”
“And gunshots!” Griffin shouted.
“No kidding,” muttered Tom.
“Tom?” Griffin yelled, while Rhys whistled to the dogs. “Tom, if it’s you, yell out.” He said something to Rhys, and they had a low, urgent conversation. Only a few phrases reached Tom’s ears:
“He knows, Griff. I swear, he’s got to know.”
“Don’t worry about that. We just need to find him, okay?”
The dogs were sniffing the ground, tails wagging, jerking their heads up now and then to bark. One headed off around the far side of the house, following the path Tom and Amelia had taken.
“Mac’s caught a scent,” Rhys called, following him. “C’mon Griff.”
“Shall we run?” Amelia whispered.
“We’ll never make it to the wood,” Tom replied, jumping on the quad bike and beckoning her to follow.
“You can hotwire this?” she said, landing behind him.
“The keys are in the ignition.”
“They’ve left the keys in it?”
“Who’s going to steal it, out here?” He passed her the shotgun. “Hang on to me, tight.”
“Wait half a sec,” she said, slinging the gun onto her shoulder. She leaned over to the other quad bike, which was parked alongside, and pulled the keys from the ignition. “Okay, go!” she said, straightening.
He waited for her arms to close around him before he started the bike, then turned the throttle to gun it out of the shed.
He banked it hard left, heading for a well-traversed farm track that led up to the wood.
It was a less-direct route than the one he and Amelia had taken across the field, but less exposed.
The shed would shield them for the first few minutes—hopefully long enough to get out of firing range.
Over the gunning engine, he made out shouting and barking.
He hunched, bracing for rifle fire. He felt Amelia twist in the seat, as if she were looking behind.
“I can’t see th— Wait, now I do. The guy in the blue puffer.
He’s just standing there shouting at us.
And here comes the other one.” She narrated as the brothers disappeared into the shed, and then reappeared, having evidently discovered the keys to the other quad missing.
“They’re getting back in the pickup, loading the dogs. Can they follow us on that?”
“Not as easily as with the quad, but the pickup will be quicker. The track ends at a pond about three-quarters of the way to the house. We can go on foot from there.”
“Won’t their dogs follow our scent?”
“That’s why we need to pull ahead.” She was right, of course. Wherever he left the quad bike, the dogs would be able to track a direct path to him and Amelia.
They reached the canopy, and he took a cold breath that tasted of damp earth.
The first part of the track, which went through the eastern side of the wood, was windy and undulating enough that it kept them out of sight of the pickup.
Amelia occasionally caught a glimpse, but never for long before it ducked out of view.
Tom pushed the quad hard, bumping and swerving along the soft ground. He knew he was driving right on the edge of disaster—tipping it, rolling it. But there was a long, straight stretch coming. If he didn’t pull far enough ahead, the brothers would get a clear shot.
“Uh, Tom? Is that the gas gauge?” She pointed at a dial on the little dash.
“It is.”
“It’s nearly empty.”