“The Army—a proper career soldier,” Tom said, checking the bedside drawers. “The only period of his life when he lived away from the estate. That was before his father died and he took over the groundskeeper role here. Duncan served with my father in Northern Ireland, and in the Falklands before that.”
Several photos were framed on the wall. They looked like they hadn’t been updated in decades. A brunette woman holding a baby, smiling up at the camera. A much younger Duncan with the same woman, at the foot of the Eiffel Tower. A succession of school photos—a boy growing into a lanky teenager. Connor, she guessed. Some formal family portraits from the fifties and sixties. A sepia-toned picture of three men sitting around a desk.
Amelia gasped. “That’s the rug!” She pointed to the foreground of the last photo. “The rug we saw last night, the one the cyclopses were carrying!”
“That’s my grandfather’s study,” Tom said, stepping closer. “It’s Duncan with my father and grandfather, ages ago. You canhardly see the rug in that photo. Are you sure it’s the same—? Wait, don’t answer that. Of course you’re sure.”
“That room—your grandfather’s study—that must be where it happened.” Had she seen the rug when she’d peeped in yesterday? She’d gotten such a scare when she found the room occupied that it hadn’t registered.
“Then why did the robot vac find hair in the basement?”
“We need to have a good look in the study, and the basement.”
“Weneedto get you out of here. Whatever’s going on, you should not be caught up in it.”
“It could be helpful to figure out who’s after us.”
“If Dunc— If someone’s been killed, getting to safety and raising the alarm comes first.”
“You’re right. You’re totally right. What am I thinking?”
Something squeaked. A footfall on an old wooden step. Tom’s gaze dropped to Amelia’s feet. “Not me,” she whispered.
Someone else was in the house.
Chapter 11
Amelia
Tom held up a palm to signal Amelia to remain where she was. As he crept to the bedroom door, she could almost hear her heart pounding. Noises out of place in an otherwise silent house—that was what fired her fear response. Even more so than a gunshot cracking past her, though that hadn’t happened until today. She knew from therapy that you tended to get a stronger visceral response to situations you had experienced than to abstract or theoretical threats. Except when it came to sharks. Pretty much everyone had an irrational fear of sharks.
Downstairs, a door opened and then snicked again—the back door. Quick footsteps crunched outside. Tom leaped down the stairs almost in one stride. Amelia crossed to the bedroom window, but it only offered her a side view: a lawn dotted with trees. She heard the back door open again, and then nothing. After a few minutes, she inched down the stairs, wincing when her foot hit the squeaky one, though her labored breath was twice as loud, and keeping silent was probably futile now.
The back door hung half open, swinging slightly in the breeze. The sounds in the cottage were the same as earlier—the humming fridge, a ticking clock, a faucet dripping into a metalsink—but she heard them with more clarity now, like her ears had upgraded their software. A succession of what-ifs tumbled through her head, but the one that implanted was: What if Tom didn’t come back?
As tempting as it would be to lock herself inside the cottage, that would be the obvious place for a pursuer to start looking. It was a small house, and even if she could barricade the doors, it’d be easy enough for someone to smash a window. Besides, who would raise the alarm if she didn’t get away? She had to assume that outside help was not coming of its own accord.
She stole through the kitchen, reaching the doorway just as a large figure appeared in it. She was hyperventilating too much to emit more than a squeak. Tom. It was Tom.
“I didn’t get a look at him,” Tom said, closing and locking the door. “He got too much of a head start, and it’s a maze through those trees. Could have gone any direction.” In the distance, a vehicle engine started up, and accelerated away, driven hard. “Guess he made it to the road.”
Even that reprieve wasn’t enough to bring Amelia’s breath back.
“Shooting at us one minute and running from us the next?” Tom continued. “This keeps getting odder. He must have been hiding in Duncan’s study. We should… Amelia? You are seriously shaking.”
“I’m sorry, it’s just…”
“Hey. Hey, it’s okay.”
He grasped her forearms and looked her in the eyes with his moonstone gaze.Healing, calming, and soothing. She’d take all the help she could get.
“I’ll be fine in a minute, honestly… I’m not good with jump scares.”
“You’ve just had a car crash and been shot at. It’s okay to feel shaky, especially on top of your history. I feel shaky too.”
He didn’t feel at all shaky. He felt solid and strong. He enveloped her in one of his full-commitment hugs, and honestly, she wasn’t sure whether her insides were churning from the intruder just now or the reminder of the robbery or just utter relief at the comfort. She’d noticed, in the last year, that she would get somewhere relatively safe—to work, to her car—and exhale, and only then realize how tense she’d been. This was that relief magnified a hundred times. As with inhaling and exhaling, you could only hold it in for so long before it all came rushing out. But standing here with him, she could feel herself gaining strength. A magic spell, and nothing to do with any magic potion, she was sure of it.
She took a breath and forced herself to pull away. Now was not the time to spin a cocoon, and even a guy like Tom couldn’t protect her from everything. “I’m not the ideal person for you to be stuck in this situation with. When it’s a choice between fight or flight, I default to ‘freak out.’”
