Chapter 21
Tom
Tom ran down to the basement, fast and silent. So they had been wrong about the body. But then, why were the Pritchards so determined to hunt them down? For money, as they’d said in the forest? From where? From who?
Maybe the brothers were on a bad trip of their own. The important thing was that Duncan was alive, Amelia was safe, and within minutes they’d be on their way to the police station.
At the gun room, he shoved open the door.
His boot crunched on the broken decanter glass, and he winced at the noise.
He waited half a minute but heard only the abbey’s usual clunks and wheezes.
Nothing he wouldn’t dismiss without a thought on a normal day.
The anemic light of the old torch from the tree hut barely illuminated the cave-like space.
He entered the code into the first safe.
It double-beeped—an error. He tried it again.
Double-beep. It was definitely the code Duncan had told him.
He tried the second safe. Same result. And the third.
He leaned back against the last safe, swearing quietly.
Duncan must have got the codes mixed up—he certainly hadn’t seemed himself.
Today was the first time Tom had ever looked at him and seen an old man.
And, yeah, he was objectively an old man.
But his confused expression when Tom had started talking…
It seemed at first as if Duncan hadn’t recognized Tom. Not an ideal time to lose your marbles.
Tom crept out of the room. Nothing stirred in the basement.
Usually, he found the stillness of the house comforting, like a cathedral.
Now it made the back of his neck crawl. The basement was a very different space from the adventure playground it had been in his childhood, where he and Eddie had set up their Thomas the Tank Engine set, or their Hot Wheels.
He glanced at the storage alcove, frowning.
There was no carpet back then—they’d raced their cars along timber planks slotted roughly over the dirt floor, occasionally crashing one down a gap.
When had a stupidly valuable carpet been placed there?
As Amelia had pointed out, his family hadn’t demonstrated much respect for valuable furnishings, but it was still odd.
He halted. Aware he needed to get back to Duncan and Amelia, he quickly doubled back and kicked aside a corner of the carpet.
The old floorboards were underneath. He went to replace the carpet, and caught a glimmer of something between the planks, glinting in the low light.
He picked it up—a gold cufflink, like the one in Duncan’s study, but dirty and missing its stone.
He cradled the torch between his chin and shoulder, and fished into his jeans pocket for the emerald.
It fit neatly into the setting. He turned the cufflink over in his palm. There were initials on the back.
“Shit,” he whispered.
He yanked back the carpet and knelt for a closer look.
The packed-dirt floor underneath the boards had been recently dug up and turned over, leaving it pale brown rather than the dried-out gray you’d expect.
He laid down the shotgun and lifted one of the planks.
Fresh rake marks were visible along the dirt, where they hadn’t been flattened by the timber.
Come to think of it, there had been a lot of dirt in the basement robot vac, along with the hair and the emerald.
More than could be explained by muddy foot traffic.
Someone had been digging in here, the same night they saw the men carrying the rug.
He picked up the shotgun and went to sling the strap over his arm. A thought struck him. He tore it away, holding it at arm’s length while he turned it over. There, near the handle: a small engraving. The same initials as on the cufflink, worn almost smooth from decades of use.
How had he failed to make that connection?
For the first time in days, he could see clearly. Primarily, he could see he was a fool—had been for years.
Abandoning stealth in favor of speed, he sprinted back to the top floor. The door to the yellow room was wide open, and Duncan and Amelia were gone.
Amelia
Duncan raised his hand to block the phone light from his eyes. “This person in my study,” he said. “Did you see him?”
“Uh, no.” Amelia forced her breath to steady. So much for taking a risk and trusting people—and she’d just confirmed to Duncan that her family didn’t know she was here.
“Those bloody Pritchard boys. Wouldn’t put anything past those two.”
“Perhaps it would be better if we went and found Tom.” Amelia began backing up toward the closet.
“No.” Duncan captured her wrist, and the flashlight beam wobbled. Tom was right—the old man was strong. “We need to get out of the abbey.” He stepped in behind her, cutting off her retreat.
“Okay,” she said, aiming for a calm tone but landing somewhere between nervous and terrified. “I’m just… I’m a little scared of the dark.”
He obviously wanted to get her out of the house—and then what? Was he working with the Pritchards? Had one of them been on the other end of the rug?
She swallowed. The only thing she was certain of was that Duncan had carried one end of it.
And yes, until a few minutes ago, Duncan had been a cyclops, in her recollection—and the person at the other end still was—but somehow she knew the memory of Duncan carrying the rug was real, as real as the pain from his grip on her wrist.
“That’s all right, love,” he said, through gritted teeth. “I’ve got you.”
He stepped forward, shunting her along in front. She stumbled and something wet and sticky brushed her cheek. She went to stifle her scream, then realized there was no longer a need for silence. She screamed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I felt something. Something touched me.”
“I told you—it’s all fake. Keep walking.”
“Okay.” She wasn’t going to freeze or freak out, not this time. Tom was right. In the robbery she’d had no options, but in this situation, she could find some, create some. Duncan might have a gun, but he couldn’t control all the factors. He couldn’t control her. Act now, panic later.
She released Duncan’s phone and it clattered to the floor, the flashlight beaming onto a wall. “Shit, sorry.” In the gloom ahead, the tunnel began to descend, via a narrow wooden staircase.
“Just keep quiet, love.”
“I will.”
Duncan bent to retrieve the phone, letting her wrist go.
She pulled away, and ran. She reached the stairs, grabbing the railing as she descended.
Her hand hit something slimy. She snatched it away, glancing behind.
Duncan thundered after her. His flashlight danced over the tunnel, lighting up cobwebs, a bandage hanging from the ceiling, a fake severed arm hung just at the right length to brush over her hair.
At least, she assumed it was fake. An unearthly groan sounded beside her, and she flinched.
More sound effects. She rounded a landing and something fell against her.
A body. She screeched. Not a real body—a mannequin.
She picked it up and tossed it behind her.
“Let me go,” she cried. “I’ll change my flight, I’ll go straight home, I’ll never speak of this again. You don’t want to kill me. You don’t want that on your conscience.”
“There are a lot of things I don’t want on my conscience, but they are on my conscience. This won’t make a whit of difference.”
To her left, a line of daylight was visible at floor level.
Had to be a door. She pushed against it, but it didn’t give.
She fumbled for a catch. Duncan was almost upon her.
She felt him touch her back, just as she found a handle and pushed it open.
She stumbled into light and whirled around.
It was the room with the Rococo chaise, the one she’d hidden in when she’d seen the brothers in the study.
Duncan was stumbling out of the wall panel she’d opened up.
He drew up his rifle. She yanked the calico sheet off the chaise and flung it over him.
“I don’t even know what I saw last night!” she said, running for the door. “I was stoned. We both were.”
A gunshot blasted, blowing out her hearing.
She lunged for the doorway, plaster raining over her, and skidded out onto the ballroom mezzanine.
She picked up the vase she’d nearly knocked over that first day and threw it at Duncan, just as he was ripping off the calico.
It smashed onto his shin, the glass shattering.
He cried with pain and clutched his pant leg.
His phone careened across the floor, right past her, and dropped through a gap in the wrought iron railing.
A second later it smashed onto the floor below.
Blood oozed around Duncan’s fingers. A large shard of glass was embedded in his calf.
He yanked it out with a yell, and an arc of blood flew up.
Amelia briefly sized up the stairs down to the ballroom floor before deciding they would leave her too exposed. The mezzanine at least had a row of marble columns. She could dash behind them.
“Tom!” she yelled, sprinting. She could hardly hear her own voice over the ringing in her ears. The next gunshot, when it came, was muffled. She guessed it hadn’t hit her.
She fled through several rooms, following the breadcrumb trail of fabric—velvet, damask, brocade, chintz—to the music room.
She made for the fake wall that led to the servants’ stairway, stopping to yank the bell pull on her way past, in case Tom couldn’t track the sound of the gunshots.
She darted into the stairwell and pulled the fake door closed behind her.
She blinked. It was pitch-black. Out of the darkness, a figure loomed.
Not a real person. A memory. The figure on the lane—the ghost. She could see it clearly now, in her memory, face and all.
Duncan, standing on the road.