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“Hey, wanna go for a walk or something?” Tom said hesitantly. “There are some nice routes over the moor. And there’s an amazing pub in the next village over.”
Jesse was sorely tempted. He thought about walking out over the snowy horizon with handsome, kind Tom, about booking a room at the pub and not coming back, leaving all the complexity and uncertainty behind. But then he remembered Emory’s face…and Dimity’s.
He shook his head. “Sorry, man. I’ve got some stuff of my own to get on with. But hey, if I don’t see you, have a good one, yeah?”
“You, too,” Tom said. He squeezed Jesse’s arm. “You deserve a nice Christmas, Jesse. I hope you get one.”
“You, too, mate,” Jesse said sincerely, moving toward his door. “Really.”
Jesse slumped against the inside of his door as the reality of the coming hours dropped on him like bricks.
All too soon darkness had fallen. The weather forecast had promised more snow, but it hadn’t started falling by the time he was getting ready. He cursed. They needed snow to cover tracks. Snow, tonight, was his friend. But as he shouldered his bag and went downstairs, the sky out of the window was still blank and dark.
Greenway was waiting for him at the side door. She was silent and rigid as they left the house and made for the garages.
A shadow detached itself from the rest along the wall as they approached.
“Sir,” Greenway greeted the shadow then went to open the garage.
“Shit,you’recoming?”
“Of course I am.”
Jesse shifted from one foot to another. He could feel Emory’s eyes on him but neither of them spoke as Greenway brought a car round.
They drove down the winding country lanes in silence. Jesse’s jaw ached from clenching. His palms were sweating inside his gloves. Greenway took a round-about way down back roads to the mayor’s house, but it was all too soon that Jesse spotted lights between the trees on a rise to their left.
Greenway pulled in and shut off the engine. Jesse sat for a long, tense moment in the warmth of the silent car, the presence of Emory solid at his side, then climbed out into the frigid air.
The only sound was the ringing of church bells drifting through the air from somewhere far away. He climbed over a gate into a field. The snow was a dull gray in the moonless dark. As he trudged through the shin-deep snow, fresh flakes began to fall. His chest loosened slightly. But then he took in blinding light on the horizon, and his stomach knotted all over again.
The daylight floods around the mayor’s house bathed the snow in brightness for twenty yards in every direction. Jesse hung on the edge of the pool of light, glaring at the mansion and clenching and unclenching his fists. He checked his watch. The fake security footage he’d looped into the CCTV feed had been rolling for almost a minute. He had a maximum of thirty before the next patrol when the security guard watching the feed would realize something was up. But it was still hard to make himself step into the light.
He glanced up at the window of Dimity’s bedroom. The curtains were open, and the low light of a nightlight bathed the pink ceiling.
He dashed across the lawn to the side door that he and Emory had entered by the night of the party. He shook his head when he entered the same code from that night and the door clicked open.
“Amateurs,” he muttered, then ducked inside. He donned night-vision goggles and hurried along the corridor as quietly as he could manage. He took a circuitous route to avoid passing the security room door then crept up to the third floor.
The corridor was flooded with brightness from the floodlight over Dimity’s door. He squinted against the glare. His heart was thumping wildly in his chest. The room was just three doors away. There was still time to turn back…
Two doors. One.
He checked his watch. Ten to midnight. Twenty minutes left. Was he really going to do this?
A footstep on the stairs had his heart lurching into his throat. He tried the handle of the nearest door and almost buckled with relief when it turned, and he ducked into the dark room beyond. A quick sweep with his goggles showed an empty bedroom. He stood there in the silence, holding his breath and listening. He heard a door closing somewhere below…then silence.
He was about to leave when he noticed the coat hanging on the back of the door. Something about it was familiar. It was pale green in the night-vision, but when he lifted his goggles, he could make out it was pale orange.No…peach.
He looked around at what must be Aunt Helena’s room. It was meticulously neat. Silk pajamas were folded on the bed. Her makeup stood in a neat line on the dressing table. A laptop sat in the precise center of the desk. Jesse made himself put a hand on the door handle. Then he cursed and turned back. He was into the laptop in seconds and had accessed her encrypted hard drive a few seconds later. He typed in Emory’s case number from memory and there it was—the lawyer’s file.
Jesse glanced at the wall, thinking of the little girl sleeping on the other side, then opened the file.
It was similar to the one in Emory’s desk. Most of it didn’t make any sense to him. Applications. Affidavits. Precedent statements. Then he caught sight of the evidence list. An entry at the bottom made his heart jerk behind his ribs.
Kill List.
He swallowed. His hands throbbed. He clicked the link. A scanned document displayed. Jesse’s mouth dried out as he read.
