Chapter 35
I jerk awake in panic. Sweat pools beneath my arms and on the back of my neck. I feel like I’m buried alive, clawing my way out of a grave.
Just a dream.
And the now oppressive warmth of the library – the fire has been banked up recently and is flinging out heat.
I pull myself from sleep with frantic, desperate grabs.
I wasn’t supposed to fall asleep.
I’m groggy, cramped from my sleeping position and thirsty too. The room is dark now, lit only by the fire. I haul myself out of my chair and try to switch on the light, but nothing happens. The useless click of the switch is like another stab to my heart.
Something else.
Always, something else.
Has the generator failed, or has Euan deliberately plunged us into darkness to further hamper us?
I can see vaguely by the brightness of the snow through a gap in the curtains.
I stumble to the windows and wrench them wide, bathing the library in pale light.
Then I survey the room. Becca and Leo are out cold, sleeping soundly in their chairs.
Jameson is gone.
‘What …?’ My limbs fire with fresh adrenaline.
I’ve got to find Jameson, get out of here, get help.
I spot Leo’s phone on the table. It must be habit for him to keep it close even though it doesn’t work, and clearly without a SIM card, Euan doesn’t consider it a threat.
I snatch it up and turn on the torch function.
The battery level is lower than I’d like, but it’ll have to do.
I check the time – a little after midnight!
I can hear the wind rising again, accompanied by cracks and rumbles overhead. More thunder-snow. That must have been what woke me.
As if blizzards and gales weren’t enough.
Always something else.
I pad through the dark house on socked feet, holding Leo’s phone tightly in my hand, fighting the tremors that shoot through me.
You can do this, Eilish. You are strong.
I keep the torch turned off – I don’t know where Euan is and don’t want to alert him to my wakefulness.
Crossing the hall, my foot kicks into something metal, and liquid slops over the floor, soaking my socks.
I freeze, just waiting for Euan to come running, but there’s no sound nor sign of him.
The front door stands wide open, the wind blowing scurries of snow in to blanket the floor.
There’s something wrong here—
The liquid pooling around me has a distinctive smell.
I need to get under his skin, figure out what makes him tick so I can work out what he’s planning. Suddenly it comes to me in a rush:
The smell … the newspaper article … that scrawled threat.
Something nagged at me before about the annotation—
I know what you did.
I’m coming for you, Jennifer.
What if it wasn’t one message, but two?
I pull the article out of my pocket and study the notes with fresh eyes. All written in block capitals as though to disguise handwriting. There it is: Just slightly different shades of pen. The letter formation similar … But not the same.
I assumed Johnny Metcalfe had written the whole thing, letting his stepsister know that he knew what she’d done.
What if the original note was written by Gen and sent to her stepbrother? Perhaps Gen didn’t set that fire that killed her stepfather, but she knew who did.
I remember the Post-it note stuffed in the back of Gen’s book revealing exactly what was in her mind … I’ll set us free. Not by killing, but by taking what was rightfully hers – hers and her mother’s. The money.
She had nice clothes but they were old and she never bought new ones. She never splashed the cash like Becca and Leo did. Gavin Metcalfe was a successful businessman but she was only his stepdaughter. What if he chose to leave none of his wealth to his wife and her child, only to his son?
To Johnny.
And Gen decided she was overdue a payout. I know what you did. Blackmail is a dangerous game and a sixteen-year-old boy capable of burning down a summerhouse with his father drugged and helpless inside is a powerful enemy.
An enemy who felt powerful enough not to be cowed by her threat, but to send it right back to her with a counter threat.
I’m coming for you, Jennifer.
He did come for her, and he ended her. He came for Alex too, when he realised Alex was sniffing around the story.
Ended him too.
And now, he’s coming for me.
Most murderers don’t change their MO unless they have to – he had to improvise with Alex, but he’s had time to plan and prepare for killing the rest of us.
Fire is his preferred method.
The liquid pooling around my feet, soaking into my socks, and burning the inside of my nose, is petrol.
*
I need to find Jameson. Is he stupid enough or brave enough to have tried to tackle Euan alone?
He’s always had something of a saviour complex.
Shivering in the blast of cold that sweeps the hall, I look up the dark staircase.
I could check the bedrooms, but there are at least twenty of them; it’ll take me ages.
I assume Kimmy is sound asleep upstairs, knocked out by the migraine medication mixed with whatever was in the tea.
I remember Euan and Becca talking earlier about Lady Morrow’s sleeping tablets, Becca saying she didn’t want to take them as they’re so strong and she wanted to stay sharp.
Perhaps that’s what Euan used to knock everyone out.
I hope Kimmy’s okay, having presumably had a double dose.
I don’t have time to check on her. I decide to search the ground floor first. I look in all the reception rooms, but they’re dark and cold. The heating is down again and the air is frigid. I’m convinced Euan has deliberately taken the generator out of commission.
Just like he took out the phone line?
When I find the doors to the terrace open, curtains streaming out, snow gathering in piles on the polished wood, I pause in the doorway to look out.
The wind tears at my hair and sends icy blasts through my clothing.
My teeth chatter, but something catches my notice – marks at the threshold of the room, leading across the terrace.
Not just footprints but something else: long drag marks in the snow.
Like someone has been forced out the door and across the terrace, digging in their heels. When I lean out to examine the marks more closely, I see something else: spots of blood, bright smears against the white.
Jameson.
I shouldn’t go out without putting more clothes on – I know that.
But urgency overpowers good sense, and I run out the door in my socks, darting across the slippy terrace following the prints and a trail of blood spots.
Cold seizes me, seeping through my socks and into my bones, crippling my poor feet.
I force myself to run on, blind with desperation.
I’m just starting to have second thoughts – I’ll die out here if I don’t go back and at least put on some boots, particularly if this trail leads me out of the immediate grounds and onto the wilds of the estate – when the prints stop by the pool complex.
The door is closed, but not locked. I fall against it, almost crying with cold, and stumble inside.
Residual heat clings to the walls, and begins the painful process of thawing me out.
I follow the tracks – a few more drops of blood, wet footprints on tile now, moving cautiously.
I’m scared, breath fluttering high in my chest. Euan could be here, lying in wait—
The corridor opens up on to the pool where the water is still and glacier blue.
There’s no one here, but the prints continue around the pool towards the steam room and sauna at the back of the building.
I pause to dip my hand in the water – still warm.
An empty swimming pool in the dark is a frightening place to be for some reason – for me more than most perhaps, with my fear of water – but I push the fear aside and keep moving. I have no choice.
The sauna door is wedged closed, a stand of loungers pushed in front of it. I pause, listening. From inside the cubicle I hear a faint moan. I drag the loungers aside, one by one, straining my muscles. They’re not heavy but they are cumbersome and they make more noise on the tiles than I’d like.
I rattle the door – locked!
The moans coalesce into a blurred word. A name.
Mine.
‘I’m coming, Jameson!’ I call back, and the answering grunt lends me fresh energy. I search the door with my hands, feeling for a keyhole, but find instead a slide bolt. Locked from the outside – bolted shut. I slide back the bolt and pull the door open. Steam curls out from the small, dark space.
Jameson is on the bench, bound and gagged, the ropes that hold his wrists tightly knotted through the slats of the bench, which is bolted into the floor.
His eyes are wild in the glare of my torch, but they soften with relief at the sight of me.
Above his right eyebrow, there’s a knot of dark bruising, blood flowing from a wound, which drips down his face, onto the thighs of his jeans, and the floor.
I spring forward and tug on the cloth that gags him. He winces as it scrapes at the corners of his mouth. ‘Oh, thank fuck,’ he says. He’s sweating, and I can’t tell if it’s the residual heat from the sauna or the fear of being confined. ‘I’m so claustrophobic,’ he moans.
It takes me longer than I’d like to work loose the knots that bind Jameson to the bench.
I glance over my shoulder as I do so, scared I might see Euan creeping up behind us.
Jameson struggles to his feet and pushes his way past me, bursting out into the pool room.
He stumbles and sprawls on the tiles, his feet still hobbled.
His blood spatters the floor, diluted by pool water.