BURY ME DEEP an utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist (Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1) by JANE ADAMS (best book reader .txt) 📗

instructed her to leave a message. Rozlyn was about to comply, explain who she was and about Charlie Higgins, when some instinct warned her off. She put the phone down and stared hard. If her guess was right then someone had wanted their name erased from Charlie’s records and, so far, Donovan and Mr Thompson were the only contacts for which Rozlyn could not account.

She glanced at her watch. Almost nine, too late to do anything tonight. She’d need a warrant to trace the number and chances were, she wouldn’t get hold of anyone now that would be willing to give her one until Monday. She couldn’t, off hand, think of any weight of evidence that would convince a magistrate this was worth bothering with on a Saturday night.

Mouse Man would know who Mr Thompson was and probably Donovan too. Rozlyn looked at her watch again, trying to think where Mouse would likely be at 9 p.m. on a Saturday. She drew a blank. She could go and look, she supposed, but the idea of tramping the streets searching for Mouse as she had on the previous evening held little appeal, especially as she could make a good guess where Mouse would be the following morning.

Rozlyn went back into the kitchen to retrieve her wine and carried what remained of the bottle through to the living room. The walls were lined with videos and music and DVDs. Above the fireplace was a framed poster; The Ramones, posed carelessly with their instruments in front of CBGB, beneath the sign for Bowery and Bleecker. She had a second version of this poster hanging on her bedroom wall. An image of a very young Rozlyn, posing alone and nervous, beneath the same Manhattan sign.

In the living room, a leather sofa nestled in the bay window, ready for the occasional guest; a matching chair had been positioned centre stage, in the sweet spot where the sound from the speakers converged and the music was at its most potent. She selected a Wynton Marsalis CD and sat back in the chair, cueing ‘Angel Eyes’, hoping that the light, fast intro, sensuous melody and insistent percussion that followed would conspire to purge her thoughts of the day’s rudeness. Marsalis, she had found, was not a musician that left you with any space for thinking.

But tonight, even this familiar remedy refused to help. The events she had witnessed kept on intruding. The spear, the names in the address book. The clinical tidiness of Charlie’s flat that reminded her so much of her own home and that brief image of the watchtower, if that’s what it was, up on that damned hill. That and the odd familiarity of the man who stood beside it, gazing down into the valley as though master of it all.

CHAPTER 9

THEADING. YEAR OF GRACE 878

“I should not be here.”

She stood, nervous, not quite willing to enter the birch grove.

“I’ll not seek to stop you should you wish to go.” He took a small step closer to her, noting the way the autumn sun caught the loose strands of hair that blew about her face, the low, bright rays finding the red that glowed among the brown.

“Cate.” He spoke her name softly. Almost within reach now, he raised a hand towards her, beckoning her on; then dropped it to his side as she skittered back. “I would not hurt you. How could I hurt you?”

“I don’t know.” She met his gaze, briefly, and then looked away, gazing down at the grassy, leaf-littered ground. At the birch leaves scattered like gold coins beneath her feet. Autumn had arrived in a mood of spectacular glee and had, with a sweep of her hand, turned the whole world red and gold.

“Cate,” Hugh said again. “Come here to me.” He spoke with an insistent softness that he knew instinctively she could not resist and so indeed did not. She stepped forward into the birch grove, laying one hand on the white barked tree beside her and extending the other towards Hugh as though to have him share in this so momentous decision.

Hugh took her hand and drew her to him and she stood still, eyes downcast, as he loosed her hair and only then, shy and uncertain and yet, he saw in her eyes, oh so eager, did she lift her face to receive his kiss.

* * *

BILLINGTON. PRESENT DAY

“Hey! Mouse Man!” Rozlyn watched him skittering down the street after emerging from the little chapel he attended every Sunday. Mouse kept close to the house walls, running nervously on tippy toe with many an anxious glance from side to side, looking for all the world like one of the small rodents he so adored. Rozlyn had been surprised at Mouse’s religious leanings, but knew he attended chapel for the ten o’clock service almost weekly, staying to drink coffee with the other parishioners. Rozlyn had often wondered what they thought of the smell he carried with him and if the bill for air freshener outweighed that of communion wine.

Mouse started, hearing Rozlyn call. He swung around to face her, feet square planted on the floor, head down and hands raised as though poised for flight.

“Oh, it’s you.” He composed himself, the drop in his tension reflected in a small relaxation of the hands as he trotted across the road. “What are you doing here?”

“I came to see you.”

“How did you know where to find me?”

“You told me you came here on a Sunday. Hey, what’s with you? You’re jumpy as one of those little animals of yours.”

“They have a right to be jumpy. The whole world is out to get them.”

“Well, that may be, but that’s not exactly true for you, is it?” She studied Mouse’s reaction closely. The man was even more on edge than usual. “Well? Is it?”

“How should I know?” Mouse man