conversation. “Where?” he asked.
“Becca’s cottage. Freddie, do you have—”
His phone rang, startling him. Thinking it was Kieran, he picked up with a rush of relief. “Thank God. What were—”
“Duncan?”
“Gemma?” he said, surprised. “Look, love, sorry, but I can’t talk—”
“There’s something you should know,” she broke in. “I should have rung you sooner. There’s this guy, Ross Abbott. His wife—”
“I know who Ross Abbott is.” Kincaid’s gut clenched. “How do you—never mind. What’s happened?”
“I think he may have had a pretty good reason to kill Becca Meredith. And now he’s got a gun. I don’t know what he means to—”
“I do,” said Kincaid.
The rumble of thunder came with a gust of rain and a spatter of wind, just as Kieran dug the key from beneath the flowerpot at the corner of the cottage.
It was dark enough now that Kieran couldn’t see the approaching storm, but he didn’t need to—he could sense it. His head felt full, as if it might explode. Beside him, Finn whined. He knew the signs as well as Kieran.
Kieran flinched as thunder cracked, nearer, but he rose unsteadily to his feet and said, “I’m going to be okay, boy.” He wasn’t going to let the damned weather keep him from doing what he’d come here for.
The porch was dark, and he fumbled at the lock, wishing he’d brought his torch from the Land Rover. It had seemed odd to park on the verge in front of the cottage. Always before, he’d parked up by the church, so as, according to Becca, not to give the neighbors food for gossip.
The lock clicked open and he stepped inside, Finn at his knee, and switched on the lights.
As the lamps illuminated the familiar sitting room in a warm glow, Kieran’s heart contracted with the buffet of memories. He’d been so focused on his task he hadn’t realized how the cottage would feel with Becca gone.
“Not just gone. Dead,” he said aloud, and steeled himself. The photo was on the shelf in the bookcase, just where he remembered. Crossing the room, he took it down and sat carefully on the sofa beside the lamp, Finn settling at his feet.
Kieran held the photo between his hands, examining it, and the frozen faces captured in the photo stared back at him. He picked out Freddie, looking impossibly young, gazing into the camera with hungry defiance.
Then, beside Freddie, the man he’d seen at the Red Lion. Younger, leaner, less heavy in the jaw, but unmistakably the same.
And he remembered the story Becca had told him, the night she’d taken the photo down and held it under this very lamp. It was late summer, after dark, and they’d made love half on the sofa, half on the floor. Then, lazily curled up beneath a throw, they’d begun—of course—to talk about rowing. It was all they’d ever talked about, really.
“Do you know how easy it is to nobble a rower before a race?” she’d asked.
“I’ve heard of it being done,” he’d said. “I’ve never seen it happen. At least not that I know of.”
“I have.” Slipping from beneath the blanket, she’d padded, naked, to the bookcase, and he’d admired the long, muscled line of her back. She took the photo down and came back to the sofa, snuggling under the blanket again, her bare shoulder resting against his.
She’d touched the now-familiar face in the photo, and he remembered how he’d always thought her hands remarkably delicate for a tall woman—that is, if you didn’t notice the calluses from the oar grips on her palms. “This guy—he was bowside—barely made the second boat. But he always thought he deserved better than he got, and he was convinced he should have been in the Blue Boat. He bitched and moaned for weeks, until Freddie told him to shut up and get on with his job.
“He kept quiet after that, and I didn’t think any more of it until it was too late.”
“What happened?” Kieran had sat up, interested.
“They usually keep the crew pretty sequestered before the race, but some of the wives and girlfriends were invited to a press party the day before. The guys weren’t supposed to be drinking, it was all squash and lemonade and everyone on the very proper sportsmanlike up-and-up, with some fancy canapes to make up for the lack of alcohol.
“But other people were being served drinks, and when I saw him”—she tapped the photo— “switch his glass with the guy rowing the same position in the Blue Boat, I thought it was just a prank, maybe a bit of vodka in the lemonade or something.”
She’d looked up at Kieran then, her hazel eyes flashing with an anger that hadn’t faded. “Until the next day, when the Blue Boat went out with him in it. I couldn’t believe it.
“I’d got a place on one of the following launches, cold and rough as it was that day. Not very pleasant, but I wanted to see Freddie win. It meant so much to him, to all the crew. They’d worked so hard, and they were all my friends.”
“What happened to the guy who was supposed to be in the Blue Boat?” Kieran asked.
“Ill, the rumors were. Maybe food poisoning, oysters on the canapes at the press party the day before. Later, I found out he was so dehydrated that they had to send him to hospital. But,” Becca added, her voice dripping sarcasm, “what unexpected good fortune for his replacement. Except that his replacement couldn’t bloody do the job. He wasn’t fit enough, he wasn’t good enough, and by the halfway mark you could see him weighing down the boat like a lead anchor. Oxford never had a chance. But
“What happened afterwards? You reported it?”
She’d shaken her head. “No. And I’ve never forgiven myself. But his fiancee was one of my best friends. We rowed together, we were going into the police together after uni. When I told her what I’d seen, she said I had to be mistaken. She begged me not to say anything, for her sake, and after all, I had no proof.
“Not that I’d have needed any. Hearsay would have been enough to damn him forever in the sacred community of Old Blues.” The note of derision was unmistakable.
“So you didn’t tell? Not even your ex-husband?”
“No. Not after I’d promised my friend.” Becca had shivered and drawn the blanket up to her chin. The anger drained from her face. “But it didn’t matter that I didn’t tell. It ruined our friendship anyway—the secret ate away at it like a cancer. Obligation made her hate me more in the end than outright betrayal would have. Betrayal, maybe, we could have got past.”
“Why tell me now?” Kieran had asked, brushing a stray strand of hair from her face.
“Because—” She’d shrugged, her brow furrowed. “Because you don’t know them. You don’t belong in that world. That”—she’d smiled, touching his cheek—“is a good thing.” Then, she’d trailed her fingers along his bare arm, making him shiver in turn, but her eyes had still been far away. “And because,” she’d added slowly, “I needed to remind myself that secrets kept only fester.”
The image of Becca, for a few moments so vivid, faded, and Kieran sat alone in the cold cottage, holding nothing but a photo.
A photo of a man who had killed Becca and tried to kill him, he was certain now. But if this man had been willing to murder Becca to keep his secret, why had he waited all these years? What had changed?
Thunder cracked, and the wind blew a fusillade of rain against the old cottage windows. Kieran jerked and the photo slid from his hands, bouncing on the faded carpet that covered the floorboards in front of the sofa.
But there’d been another sound, beneath the drumming of the rain—or had there? He couldn’t pinpoint it. His ears were ringing now, his head pounding, his palms sweating, the storm bringing the onslaught of adrenaline that he’d tried so hard to learn to control.
Finn raised his head, listening. Maybe, thought Kieran, his mouth dry, maybe he wasn’t crazy. Maybe Finn had heard something, too.
He held his breath, but the only sound that came to him was his heart beating in his ears. It must have been a car door he’d heard, or some other ordinary noise—a neighbor coming home, someone calling their cat in from the rain. Not shelling, not here.
All he had to do was calm down, he told himself, and remember that his mind could control his body. He would be all right if he just—
Finn stood, the motion so fast it knocked Kieran’s knees sideways. The fur rose along the dog’s neck and
