Dreaming of the Bones

listened, straining into the darkness. A rustle... then a sound that might have been a faint human grunt of pain. Nodding at Gemma, he turned and went on, placing each foot more carefully than before. Cowboys and Indians, he thought, conscious of every snapping twig. As a child, he’d always wanted to be the Indian, and he had a sudden intense memory of the smooth, rolling motion of his feet as he crept through the woods. Then he came round a twist in the path and stopped short.
    They stood at the edge of a small clearing faintly illuminated with moonlight. On the far side, two bodies grappled on the ground, and a few feet away he saw a gleam in the grass. The gun.
    Then the body on top heaved itself up, turning towards them with the heavy menace of a cornered beast. Darcy.
    Kincaid dived without thought, a soaring lunge that brought him skidding across the grass onto the gun. He rolled with it in his hands and scrambled to his knees.
    Darcy stood before him, swaying slightly. Half his face and neck looked black in the dappled light—a shadow? No, blood, Kincaid realized. He got one foot underneath him and rose slowly without shifting the stock of the gun from the hollow of his shoulder, or its aim from the center of Darcy’s chest.
    He could shoot Darcy. Now. The thought came with cold clarity. Self-defense. Justifiable homicide. Who would question it? He had broken so many rules already, why not one more?
    Darcy shifted on his feet, balancing his weight on flexed knees.
    He meant to run. Let him make his break, then shoot him. No one could say it wasn’t right.
    The whites of Darcy’s eyes flashed as he looked from side to side. His hands clenched into fists.
    ”Lie down on the ground,” said Kincaid slowly. ”Put your hands behind your back. If you don’t do as I say, now, I will shoot you.”
    For a moment, Darcy stood, and Kincaid tensed, preparing for the recoil of the gun.
    Then Darcy dropped heavily to his knees. ”I need help, medical attention,” he said. ”He shot me. I’m injured.”
    ”Down!” Kincaid shouted, his anger and frustration breaking on a rush of adrenaline. ”I don’t care if you bleed to death, you son of a bitch. Do you understand that?” He motioned with the gun, and Darcy lowered himself to the ground with a groan. ”Gemma—”
    She’d reached Darcy. ”I’ve got a scarf.” Quickly, she knotted his hands together, then ran to Nathan.
    Kincaid heard her whisper, ”Oh, dear God, please...” as she knelt beside him.
    ”Is he breathing?”
    ”I think so. Yes.” She struggled to lift Nathan’s head from the water. ”But he’s covered with blood—”
    There was a racking, retching cough, then Nathan’s voice gasping, ”His. It’s his. I shot him.”
    Then Kincaid heard the screech of tires and the slamming of car doors, and a moment later he saw the flicker of torches moving through the trees. Lowering the gun, he said, ”It seems the cavalry has arrived.”
    ”I didn’t know how much I wanted to live until he had his hands round my throat,” said Nathan, his voice little more than a hoarse whisper. They sat round the table in his kitchen, he and Adam, Kincaid and Gemma, drinking herbal tea.
    The medics had dressed the worst of his cuts and abrasions, but he’d refused to go to hospital. ”I thought I wanted to die,” he continued after a sip of tea. ”I thought I’d shoot him, then shoot myself. But I failed on both counts.” Gemma touched her slender fingers to the back of his hand. ”You didn’t fail, Nathan. You didn’t need Darcy’s death on your conscience. And it wouldn’t have made Vic’s death, or Lydia’s, any less a waste.”
    ”We all failed,” said Adam. ”We failed ourselves, and we failed Darcy. He wasn’t always so wicked. I don’t think he meant to kill Verity. But she refused him, and he couldn’t control his temper.” Pausing, he eased his finger between the clerical collar and his neck. ”We’ll never know what he might have become if we’d held him accountable for what happened that night.”
    ”You will hold him accountable now,” said Kincaid. After a preliminary assessment, the medics had taken Darcy to Addenbrooks, accompanied by police guard. He’d suffered considerable blood loss from the shot embedded in the right side of his face, neck, and shoulder, but he’d been protesting his innocence and threatening legal action even as they closed the ambulance doors.
    ”Your testimony will be essential to the