BURY ME DEEP an utterly gripping crime thriller with an epic twist (Detective Rozlyn Priest Book 1) JANE ADAMS (fox in socks read aloud TXT) 📖

gaze swept the snow-covered grass, as he sought the swiftest exit. Then he turned and began to run, knowing that the cause was lost to him even as he took the first steps.

Treven drew back his arm. His aim was straight and true. Hugh fell and lay very still and Treven waited, watching the blood flow from the wound and then cease. When at last he knelt and pulled the weapon free, the ground beneath Hugh’s body had sucked the final life from him. He imagined that it left his imprint on bare ground, earth reddened and nourished by his blood.

Treven lifted the body of his one-time friend and tied it across the saddle bow of Hugh’s mount. He then broke the shaft from the spear, casting it aside. The spearhead itself he cleaned with freshly fallen snow, wiping blood and soot away from the twining patterns that brought the blade to life and gleamed like dulled sunlight against the silver winter.

* * *

From the writings of Abbot Kendryk of Storton Abbey, Year of Grace 878.

That day he came to me, with the precious heirloom of his house wrapped in red cloth. He knelt, this man who knelt before none but his King and laid it at my feet.

“It is best you keep this for me,” he said. No explanation or excuse. He laid the instrument of his judgement at my feet and then left me to make mine. I knew when I unwrapped this weapon, so beautifully wrought, so precious and so deadly, what he had done.

Should I have called him to account for this? I will let those who come after me make their own judgement on that score. But I will say this. I have never had cause to regret my decision, to take this thing from his hands and then to take it to my grave with me. I have ordered that this is to be so and the other things beside, those things of Hugh de Vries that Treven kept and from time to time sold to relieve the suffering of his people. The rest, he gave also into my care. It was his belief that no good could come of handing them down to his sons and to their children and I believe that, at least, was a sound judgement.

For the other, God will examine the hearts of each one of us come that great day when we stand before him and, for my part, I would give more for the heart of Treven of Theadingford than that of Hugh de Vries.

EPILOGUE

Rozlyn arrived home after the raid on Mark Richards’ house to find a message on her phone. Her grandfather had fallen ill. There was little hope of him surviving. Could Rozlyn come at once? It made everything else seem wholly unimportant.

It was three in the morning but by five she had arranged her flight and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for her to call Ethan and ask for a lift to the airport.

Her flight left at nine and, gazing out of the window, glimpsing the patchwork of land below the high, wispy cloud, Rozlyn prayed that she would be in time to say goodbye to this old man that was the last of her family. To wish him safe journey and Godspeed to whatever destination he might be headed.

From up here, Rozlyn thought, it was easy to imagine the web of life and fate stretching across the world and linking all things living and . . . whatever the opposite might be. The web that had brought her into Ethan’s life and Ethan into hers and Mrs Chinowsky and the old man at The Larks. And Donovan Baker. Rozlyn wouldn’t rest until Baker had been found. Silently, she promised the ghost of Charlie Higgins and the living spirit of the Mouse Man that she would find Donovan Baker and see that he paid for what he’d done.

I’ve always lived life from the sidelines, she thought. Never stepped off the edge. Sometime or other, she told herself sternly, you’ve got to commit. Loneliness should not be a vocation. She had friends and she should value them. Some, she knew, would come to the funeral and Rozlyn made up her mind that she should see her grandfather’s end, desperately sad though that was, as a chance for fresh beginnings.

She had new friends too, now, she thought, and she should and would cultivate those as well.

The cloud cover thickened and the view of the ground went from patchy to nothing. For a few minutes she watched the sunlight bouncing off the clouds. Gold and pink and rosy hued and then she turned her attention to the envelope Ethan had given her just before she’d boarded. Inside were notes Ethan had made on the Kendryk scripts. Some he had translated. Others were in their original, incomprehensible form. He’d given Rozlyn what he called a glossary. It appeared to be a dictionary of sorts, though a quick glance told Rozlyn it was all a bit more complicated than that. There seemed to be a half dozen ways of saying ‘I’ for goodness sake. Just as well it was a long flight.

She riffled through until she found an entry that Ethan had already worked on and began to read. “Treven,” Kendryk said, “was a man who knew how to read the land . . .”

And there had been a second phone call. This one on her mobile as they drove to the airport, from Emlyn Reece at the dig site. He’d been trying to reach Rozlyn since the day before.

“We’ve found another murder,” he said. “Only I think you’re a bit late to investigate this one. It was beneath where that poor man’s body was found.”

“You’re kidding me?”

“Oh no, our forensic archaeologist is very excited. The poor chap had been stabbed in the back and then buried face down.