by Ruby Loren
Contents
WINTER’S LAST VICTIM
Copyright Ruby Loren 2017
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INTRO
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
Other Books in the series:
Grab Your FREE copy of The Lavender of Larch Hall!
WINTER'S LAST VICTIM
A Holly Winter Mystery
Ruby Loren
Copyright Ruby Loren 2017
Other Books in the series:
Snowed In With Death
A Fatal Frost
Murder Beneath The Mistletoe
Grab your FREE copy of The Lavender of Larch Hall!
Simply click on the link and let me know where to send your free book:
http://rubyloren.com/lavender-of-larch-hall-free-book/
INTRO
For once in his life, Rob Frost was glad of the British weather. It was the night before New Year’s Eve and the world was dark as clouds covered the full moon. Rob liked the darkness. It reminded him of the depths of dug holes and it was especially useful if you were planning on doing something illegal.
Rob shouldered his spade and cast a final look around the field he was standing in before he risked turning on the torch light on his phone to safely navigate the barbed wire fence. A few seconds later, he was on the other side and turned the light back off, allowing his eyes to adjust to the black night before walking on.
His footsteps crunched on the grass as the frost began to take hold. He tried not to think about just how hard the ground would be and instead walked a little faster. At least staying warm was one thing he wouldn’t need to worry about. Once he started digging, he’d be glad of the winter’s chill. He used his spade to swipe a path through the thicket of weeds that blocked his way into the sparse woodland. The woods were part of the South Downs National Park and Rob knew from past experience that you definitely weren’t supposed to dig holes in National Parks. He didn't usually go out of his way to destroy national heritage but he was finally on the trail of something he'd searched for his whole life. Tonight might be the night he found the treasure he’d dreamed he’d find ever since he was a just a kid.
He breathed out and his breath misted and froze in the air as he walked around the small clearing until he felt a familiar tug in his gut and began to dig.
At first, the ground hardly yielded to his spade. It had been cold for a whole month and Rob knew it would be hard going, but then the earth broke and gave way and Rob made his first impression. A smile lifted his lips as he forced the spade in deeper and began to dig a hole. All the time he dug, he thought about the truth he was going to unearth and felt the piece of metal that hung from a string around his neck warm against his skin. He knew it was around here somewhere and he wouldn’t give up until he found it.
Rob only paused for breath when just his head was poking out above the hole. So far, he hadn’t found anything, but he would dig a little deeper down and then try again. He’d waited his whole life for this dig, he could wait a little longer. He’d listen to his gut some more and one of these times it would be right. He’d find it.
He frowned as the woods suddenly became silent. All the sounds of the nocturnal creatures stopped and the hairs rose on the back of Rob’s neck. All of his instincts screamed that something wasn’t right.
Someone, or something was coming.
The buzzing sound was out of place in the woods. If it had been summer, his thoughts might have gone to a hornet but it was the wrong season and as the sound got closer, he realised it was far louder than any insect. Curious, Rob lifted his head a little over the lip of the hole and then instinctively ducked as something swooped down on him. He blinked and turned his head, trying to see where the thing went but was unable to see much at all in the darkness. Rob felt strands of something fall on his face and dusted them off using a hand. He’d thought a leaf or a cobweb had landed on him but he immediately realised he was wrong. It was his hair he was brushing off his face. Rob nervously reached a hand up and discovered that his perfectly styled ‘do was an inch shorter than it had been. The buzzing intensified again and Rob threw himself flat in the hole, just as the drone swooped down again. He’d figured out that that was what it was, when he’d seen the little pilot light. Going by the circular saws that had been attached to the otherwise innocuous piece of technology, he’d say that this one had been somewhat modified. He stayed still in his hole as another fly past was made. He was willing to bet that whoever was flying that thing was using night vision and he just hoped he’d vanished from their radar. He thanked his lucky stars that he was so quick at digging holes. A few inches shallower and he’d have lost his head.
The buzzing drone flew away, the noise fading into the distance and the night time sounds of the woods returned. Rob scrambled out of his hole and moved across the clearing until he collided rather painfully with a holly bush.
“Perfect,” he muttered and slid behind it, just as the moon broke free from the clouds and illuminated the clearing where he’d dig his hole.
He didn’t have to wait for long.
A minute later, two men walked into the clearing. They were both dressed in black - the universal fashion choice of people up to no good. The first thing they did was to go over to Rob’s freshly dug hole and peer inside. One of the men shrugged and Rob detected some disappointment.
They’d been hoping to find a body - his body.
A chill ran up his spine as he watched the men raise their spades and start to dig their own holes. He could take no joy from the way their spades clanged against the frozen earth and the diggers swore as they made little to no progress. He didn’t know who these men were, or how they’d managed to find him, but he was certain about one thing:
Someone else was looking for the same thing he was… and they were willing to kill the competition.
CHAPTER ONE
Story Of My Life
Holly had a lot to think about when she started the drive down from Surrey to Sussex. She hadn’t even known that Rob was so close geographically until he’d texted her, just moments before she’d told him she was going to leave. Something about all the secrecy was making her skin prickle and she sensed that whatever Rob was caught up in, it wasn’t good. He’d told her that someone had already tried to kill him, although he hadn’t told her how. All he’d said was that he needed her help and like the good friend and business partner she was, she’d jumped straight in the car.
The other reason she’d been so happy to go on a road trip and ditch the sleepy town of Little Wemley was because George, the man she’d thought she’d had some real feelings for, had told her he was moving away for good. She couldn’t blame him. Since the pair had met, he’d been accused of mass murder and then kidnapped by a crazy woman who’d imprisoned him in her attic.
When she really thought about it, Holly acknowledged that there hadn’t been a whole lot of time for romance to blossom between them. For George, it had been too much. He’d decided to take a break from the weirdness around Little Wemley - and presumably around Holly - and had left. She’d be lying if she said she wasn’t feeling a bit sorry for herself right now, but this case of Rob’s was the perfect distraction. If she were being truly honest, Rob himself was distraction enough.
She smiled as she drove down the main road, her thoughts already drifting to Rob’s dark hair and his eyes that always glinted with trouble. She sighed. The first time she’d met Rob, she’d been immedia
tely attracted to him, especially that dark wit of his, but before she could blink, they’d been caught up in a string of murders and had barely escaped with their lives. The situation had pushed them together and brought about the founding of their detective agency, Frost and Winter, but fortune had not favoured any romance.
She glanced in the mirror and tried to blow her fringe out of her eyes, so she could see, Watson, her dog, properly. As usual, she’d let the fringe get too long but wasn't daring enough to take a pair of scissors to it herself. She’d lost count of the times she’d wetted her dark brown hair and hovered in front of the mirror with the scissors, never finding the courage to cut. Something inside her always warned it would be a mistake and Holly had learnt to listen to that instinct. The fact that she was still breathing proved it hadn’t failed her yet.
Watson yapped from his place on the back seat and she thanked her lucky stars that the puppy wasn’t travel sick. It was also fortunate that the boisterous crossbreed (who was looking more like a Collie mixed with an Alsatian everyday) was having a rare sleepy session. Otherwise her upholstery would be in pieces. She only hoped that Rob wouldn’t mind the addition of a puppy to their team but she couldn’t leave Watson behind, especially when he’d so recently saved her life.
An hour or so later, Holly pulled into the car park of a rather rundown hotel. Despite the January chill, they still had their faded, striped awnings out. Holly soon noted it was an attempt to cover the slew of mould that was crawling up the walls. She chewed her lip as she took in the awful establishment. What was Rob doing here?
She got out of the car and thought about leaving Watson behind but decided against it. He was too young for that. Hopefully she’d be able to smuggle him in and it wasn’t as if one little dog was going to contribute much deterioration to the general heap of a building.
A window on the second floor opened and she looked up.
“Room 28!” A voice said and she was almost tempted to tell Rob to stop being such a drama queen. This wasn’t a spy movie. She held her tongue and walked inside, passed the unmanned reception desk and up the stairs. Until she knew the full story, she wouldn’t make any judgements.
Holly wound her way up the uneven steps (that had no right to be uneven, given that the building wasn’t old, just in poor repair). The smell of old plastic and disinfectant drifted up from the floor and if she’d closed her eyes, she might have imagined she were in a rather dirty hospital. The difference was, the guests were presumably paying to stay here. Watson whined at the steep steps and she picked him up, even though she knew he was just being lazy.
“Did anyone follow you?” Rob asked, sticking his head around the door as Holly approached. She glanced behind her.
“Er, I wasn’t really looking to be honest. Seeing as I didn’t even know where I was going, I doubt anyone would have followed me?” She said, wondering if that was a silly assumption to make. Rob grabbed her arm and pulled her and Watson into his room before slamming the door. He stared at the dog for a moment and then seemed to dismiss him.
“You’d better tell me everything,” Holly said, wondering if Rob had gone completely nuts, or more worryingly, if there was a good reason for his paranoia. Rob nodded, pacing the room. Holly noted that his usually deliberately dishevelled dark hair was now simply messy and there were dark shadows beneath his eyes she’d never noticed before. Holly started to have a really bad feeling about what was going on.
“Yeah, you’d better sit down. It’s a long story. In fact, it’s my story, the story of my life and what I’ve been looking for since I was a kid,” he said. Holly seated herself on the threadbare armchair by the side of the bed.
“Oh, do you want some tea or coffee, or something? I wouldn’t recommend it… the kettle is so covered in limescale I think it’s just as likely to combust as it is to boil water,” Rob said, returning to his usual snarky self for just a second. Holly managed an encouraging smile but shook her head politely. Watson walked over to Rob and bit his bare foot, as affectionately as he knew how. Rob stared at the lanky puppy.
“I’m not even going to ask,” he said and gently shook Watson free, although not without sacrificing his sock.
“So… someone tried to kill you?” Holly prompted. Rob sighed and sat down on an incredibly ancient leather stool.
“Yeah, but I’d better start at the beginning. Although it would be cool to kind of jump around, you know, like films and authors to do just to add to the general confusion?” Holly gave him a look and a smile briefly lifted his lips.
“I like digging. I always have done. Even as a kid, that’s all I did. I went out in the garden and dug up the lawn when I outgrew the sandpit and so on. My parents used to go nuts at me, but eventually they gave in and bought a metal detector. I was obsessed with the idea of buried treasure. I guess I still am, and since then I’ve got pretty good at finding it. My first ever find was a Roman coin. It wasn’t worth much, but it was something. I still have it, you know…” He said and then shook his head to free himself from the mists of the past. Holly waited patiently, knowing he would return to the present soon. “You know what happened next. I got better at finding things and started getting feelings about places. Pretty soon I was digging up stolen hoards and accidentally caving in tunnels dug to rob a bank.” He shot her a look when he said the last one and Holly nodded. She remembered. “I suppose you could say I was just lucky but I like to think that the sheer number of holes I’ve dug makes my odds pretty good and my feel for it even better. But all of that stuff… those finds… they were just perks. I still haven’t managed to locate what I’ve been looking for my whole life.” He took a deep breath and his mouth quirked up as he thought of something. “I know I said I wouldn’t jump around, but we need to go back in time again. I was twelve when I first found the book that introduced me to the one piece of buried treasure that I would dedicate my life to finding. I’m not even sure what that book was doing in the local library, but it was great. It was super old. It didn’t even have a publisher’s mark, but it had so much stuff on archaeological curiosities.” He paused for a moment, shooting Holly a surreptitious look. “I sort of… permanently borrowed it,” he admitted. “The book talked about all things Roman, Iron Age, Bronze Age… you name it. Any legend of treasure in Britain from the past, it would be in that book, but so was something else. There was one legend that talked about Midastophians. They were described as being the so-called golden race because they’d managed to accrue so much gold. There was no mention of whether they mined it or stole it, but I was intrigued. I’d never heard of the Midastophians before and the more I read, the more I wanted to know. The book I’d found said that their society was only legendary, much like Atlantis. And just like Atlantis, they'd disappeared without a trace, leaving no proof of their existence.” He looked at Holly with the light of adventure shining in his eyes. “If anyone ever managed to find the missing proof, they would turn the history of the world upside down. The Midastophians were said to be an incredibly advanced society, perhaps even more advanced than we are now. Yet they were theoretically wiped out without a trace. That’s the biggest mystery of all and the one I’ve always dreamed of solving. Right after finding the proof of their existence, of course.”
Holly tilted her head and ruffled Watson’s floppy ears.
“What makes you so sure they existed?” She asked, as carefully as she could. Rob smirked and she sensed he’d been asked that question many times before.
“I did do further research and found mention of the Midastophians in journals and so on. Just to double check that the book I had wasn’t some spectacular work of fiction. Aside from that, I think I just know in my heart and in my gut.” He turned his dark eyes on Holly. “You know the feeling, don’t you?”
She slowly nodded. She’d always thought that gut feelings were one of the most reliable ways of making the right decision.
“So, various publications speculated as to where the society might have once existed. Some ev
en speculated that, much like Atlantis, the society was a floating one. My feeling has always been that they lived on the land and somewhere in this country, I would find them.” He paused for a second. “I think I finally might have done it. Two days ago, there was an article in The Daily Mail…” He took a second to shake his head at that. “The article claimed that a man had dug up a piece of alien technology near the South Downs. The writer was basically mocking the poor man, and I’m sure no one took it seriously, but I contacted the archaeologist and asked to look at his find, the way I have done for years with cases like that, just on the off chance that it’s a lead. This one was different.” He pulled the string around his neck and a tiny piece of gold swung out on top of his shirt. Holly stood up and moved closer to look.
At first, it looked like the interior of a watch with many cogs and pieces miraculously melded together but the closer she looked, the stranger it got. She could see tiny, clear vials of unrecognisable substances and realised that the design was more complex than she’d ever seen before. She couldn’t even fathom what this odd piece of technology may have been used for, or even whether it was of human design.
“I looked at it under a microscope and some of the workings have been microscopically engineered,” Rob said and Holly started to chew her lip as she thought it all through. “Before you ask, I carbon dated it. It’s not modern. In fact, it’s at least five thousand years old.” He paused again. “The Midastophians really did exist and I’m so close to finally finding the evidence that will prove it.” Rob rubbed a hand through his hair, making it even messier. “But unfortunately, I’m not the only one who read the article in The Mail, or perhaps I’ve been followed. I’m not sure which, but two things I know for sure. I’m not the only one digging, and someone tried to kill me yesterday.”