Mourn not your Dead

in the dark, just touching. Kincaid turned full circle, willing his eyes to adjust, willing his ears to pick up a sound over the thumping of his heart.
    After a long moment his pulse began to slow, and beside him he felt some of the tension drain from Gemma’s body. The noise came just as she drew breath to speak. His arm shot around her and he clamped his hand over her mouth, feeling the bite of her teeth against his palm as she gasped in surprise.
    He heard it again, the faintest suggestion of a creak. The hair on the back of his neck rose. “The mobile phone,” he breathed at Gemma. “In my jacket, in the car. Go—”
    The voice came from the darker oblong of the doorway into the hall. “I wouldn’t do that, if I were you.”
     

Fifteen
     
    “DCI OGILVIE, I PRESUME?” KINCAID’S VOICE SOUNDED EASILY conversational, but Gemma could feel the tension in the hand across her mouth. She reached up carefully and tapped his hand, letting him know she understood, and it dropped away. He took a small step away from her and continued, “You’ve saved us a lot of trouble looking for you.”
    “Don’t move,” the man said sharply. A click, and the light came on in the hall behind him, silhouetting his body but leaving his face in shadow. The light sparked from an object in his hand—flat and compact, it looked like a toy. A gun. Gemma thought desperately of the firearms chapter in her criminal investigation text, trying to place the gun— semiautomatic, a Walther, maybe—-while at the same time a small detached part of her mind wondered what difference it made. She couldn’t judge the caliber. From where she stood the opening at the end of the barrel looked big enough to swallow her.
    He moved another step into the room, throwing the gun into darkness again, but Gemma kept her eyes fixed on the spot where she knew it must be. “The pair of you are too clever by half,” he said, mocking them. “Now, the question is, what do I do with you?”
    “Why not slip out the front as we came in the back?” asked Kincaid. He might have been inquiring about tomorrow’s weather.
    “I tried.” There was a trace of humor in Ogilvie’s voice, for Gemma had no doubt now that it was he. “Damn Alas-tair and his paranoia. The front door has to be opened with a key, and I don’t happen to have it. And the windows seem to be stuck shut. So you can see my predicament. You two are all that stand between me and a tidy exit.”
    Gemma’s tongue felt as if it had been glued to the roof of her mouth, but she tried to match Kincaid’s matter-of-fact tone. “There’s no point in killing us, you know. We’ve turned everything we know over to C&D.”
    “Oh, but there is, Sergeant. I’d intended to brazen it out, come up with some plausible excuse for my sudden absence. They’ll not find anything concrete on me. But now that you’ve seen me here—”
    “Why are you here?” asked Kincaid. “Satisfy my curiosity.”
    Ogilvie gave an audible sigh. “Bloody Alastair managed to acquire some rather damaging evidence of my activities. I thought it prudent to get it back, but unfortunately he seems to have been more devious than I gave him credit for, and I’ve run out of time.”
    Gemma’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light well enough so that she could see the planes of Ogilvie’s face and the glint of teeth as he spoke. He’d traded his usual Bond Street attire for nondescript jeans and anorak, and he looked even more dangerous without the civilized veneer. The gun made a small arcing movement as he shifted his aim from her to Kincaid and back again.
    Kincaid moved a step nearer and put his arm around her, his fingers resting lightly on her shoulder. He meant more than comfort, she was sure, but what did he want her to do? All the should haves ran through her mind. They should have called for backup when they found the dog. She should have stayed outside, but would she have known Kincaid was in trouble before it was too late?
    She felt Kincaid’s hand tense, then freeze as Ogilvie drawled, “However, I’ve had a good run, and I have a considerable bit of money tucked away on the Continent. I think I might prefer to retire DCI Ogilvie and start afresh, rather than pop holes in you two. It makes such an unpleasant mess, and while I may have walked the other side of the line a few times, I haven’t resorted to murder. But I can’t have you raising the alarm too soon, can I? Sergeant—”
    “What about