“Okay, then. I have purchased a cottage in the middle of Sherwood Forest. It wasn’t official. It was cash in hand. That is where we will go after we ‘die.’ We must stay out of sight, at least until Matthew is convicted. After our names and faces are out of the news, we can start to be a little braver. In the early stages, Amber will rendezvous with one of us, rotating, at a location, again rotating, getting us food and water, as well as letting us know of anything we should know.”

“Looks like we’re in your hands,” Edmund said to Amber.

Amber said nothing, but gave a beaming smile.

That he didn’t trust in the slightest.

Chapter Sixty-Seven

The present...

“You happy now?” Tim said. “I told you it wasn’t important.”

“The metal sheets,” Robin said.

“They’re the parts of the secret room that broke off. When we heard that the Monster had them, and that the investigation was picking back up, I decided it would be better to come back and get them,” Tim said. “They were supposed to just sink to the bottom of the canal and stay there, until maybe someone just mistook them for rubbish. And by then, maybe they’d be all the way down the opposite end of the Narrow. But you just had to get involved and mess this whole thing up.”

“You messed it up good enough yourself,” Robin said. “It would have only been a matter of time before someone worked out what you did.”

Tim smiled. “You’re a bad liar, Robin. Anyone ever tell you that? No one would have known a thing. We would have disappeared. Matthew would have been convicted. And your wife would stay right where she is. Right under people’s feet while they get pissed and eat food and warm themselves by the fire.”

“Why go through all this?” Robin said. “All this stuff that you’ve done. If you were going to betray Matthew, why not just frame him for Sam...?” His breath hitched and he let out a sob at her name. He tried to carry on but couldn’t.

“We thought of that,” Tim said, “but we couldn’t have done it well enough. Matt was in his house when all this was happening, and his aunt would provide an alibi. And Matt didn’t drive or have a car, so how could he run someone over? And besides, back then, we still wanted to protect that smug bastard. We didn’t want to frame him. That only came later, when our desire to protect him evolved into something else.”

“He’s your friend,” Robin said. “How could someone—How could you do that to a friend?”

“He’s not my friend,” Tim said. “Not anymore.”