Tom had quietly closed the door between the servants’ corridor and the antechamber. Duncan might know every blade of grass on the estate, but Tom knew every draft in the abbey…
He didn’t have to wait long. First came a click that told him the antechamber door had opened. He could almost count the seconds until?—
Boom!The rush of air from the northwesterly breeze shot through the wind funnel, caught the main door, and slammed it.Nice work, poltergeists. From the antechamber, Duncan would have caught the barest glimpse of the main door closing. With luck, he’d assume Tom had exited through it.
Sure enough, Duncan emerged, rifle muzzle first, and then red beanie pulled over his gray hair. Tom hunched in his ambush spot while Duncan did a quick sweep of the hall, but it was perfunctory. As Duncan passed Tom and reached for the main door, Tom tossed a grapefruit at the head of the suit of armor that stood by the staircase. Not his best throw—it struck with a dull clang and bounced off rather than knocking the whole thingto the floor—but it had the desired effect. Duncan swiveled to face it, putting his back to Tom. Exactly where Tom wanted him.
Tom launched and ran a few steps, ignoring the crunching pain in his foot. He dived at Duncan’s legs. A textbook rugby tackle: legs shoulder-width apart, knees bent, weight over his feet, head up. He drove his shoulder into Duncan’s back, wrapping his arms around the guy’s waist and keeping his feet moving until Duncan smashed into the wood paneling at the side of the staircase. He dropped Duncan to the floor, ripped the rifle away, and turned it on him, backing up, panting. The pain started back up in his ankle. But the objective was achieved.
Duncan looked like an old man, groaning in pain. Hewasan old man. Tom had just tackled a wounded old man to the ground.
An old man who’d killed his grandfather and tried to kill him and his … and Amelia.
Tom had to disassociate. Like when he’d looked through his scope at an enemy combatant. If you stopped to think about the consequences, the hostile would take out your mates before you had a chance to act. It was possibly the one time in his life he’d forced himself to zoom in and stay there. He had to do the same now.
Duncan backed up against the paneling. “Go on, then. Shoot.”
Tom steadied his breath.
“You don’t have it in you,” Duncan spat, wiping blood from his mouth. “You couldn’t pull the trigger on a dying stag if it looked at you with its eyes rolling and begged you to put it out of its misery.”
Tom adjusted his grip on the rifle. “I might not be able to shoot you in the head, but a shot in the leg would be enough.” Tom pretended to size him up. He’d much rather stick with his plan, which was to tie Duncan up with the curtain cord he’dgrabbed from the butler’s room, and steal the keys to his pickup. Drive off with Amelia and never come back. “You’d walk with a hobble the rest of your life. You wouldn’t like that, would you?”
“You still wouldn’t do it.”
“I suppose you’d know all about killing someone you’d known all your life, wouldn’t you, Duncan? Someone who was like family.”
Duncan scowled. “Your grandfather? It was an accident.”
“Then why didn’t you say so at the time? Explain?”
“Explain,” Duncan said, shaking his head. “You think anyone would believe me?”
“Why wouldn’t they?”
“We’d both been on the whiskey. We argued. You know how he could get. He came at me, and I defended myself. Simple as that.”
“What did you argue about?”
Duncan glanced sideways. “Can’t even remember.”
Tom could tell that was a lie. “Defended yourself how?”
“Pushed him away. Only, he cracked his head on the mantel. He was bleeding. It was a proper solid knock. Didn’t stop him though. He kept coming at me and coming at me, so I picked up a bookend and struck out. Got him clear in the head.”
“The copper bookends.” Tom hadn’t seen them for years. Duncan must have got rid of them. “You could still have come clean.”
“I didn’t just hit him once,” Duncan growled. Tom couldn’t decide if Duncan had an urge to confess or was just buying time. But Tom wanted to know. Needed to. “It just all came out. I kept hitting him and hitting him, even once he was down. Couldn’t stop myself. He was… By the end his head was… It was no pretty sight. And not a scratch on me. That sound like self-defense to you?”
“It really doesn’t.” Tom tried to block out the mind picture Duncan had painted. Like Amelia said:Act now, process later. He pulled the cord from his waistband.
“You see? So, I panicked. Rolled him in that rug and left him there. Couldn’t look at his face after…”
Tom almost felt sorry for him. It was bad enough when Tom had seen the faces of strangers he’d killed in battle. To look at the face of someone you knew so well…
“You’re right, you know,” Duncan continued. “He was my mate, when it came down to it. We had more differences than most, but he was my mate. I stood there for ages, clock ticking away and chiming, wishing I could turn back the hands. Then I stumbled to the cottage, through the old passage. I had to think. I was shaking like a scared puppy. I threw up. Cleaned myself up, changed my clothes, and sat there, waiting for the reckoning. Had it all mapped out in my head. The coppers would arrive, and I’d put my hands up and say, ‘You got me. I did it.’”
“And what stopped you?”
