He was out for mere seconds, but in those seconds he felt he lived another life. Pain. His arm. His left arm was on fire. He couldn’t open his eyes, or maybe he just didn’t want to.

The sound of a car door opening. And then hands on him, pulling him out of the car. Someone hoisted him up, and his left arm hung limp.

He opened his eyes to see a fuzzy world. Trees everywhere. He was moving. Pointed down. Looking down, he could see legs moving. Fireman’s lift—he was on someone’s shoulder.

Consciousness came and went. But every time he surfaced, they were still there. The trees. Going by. Whoever had him was taking him a long way.

And then eventually the trees became constant.

They had stopped.

The sound of an engine coming closer, closer, closer. And then it stopped. A sliding door.

And suddenly, he was airborne again. He had been thrown, and in a second he crumpled on a cold metal floor, with his left arm under him and howling with pain. He tried to straighten up and saw that he was in the back of a van.

The figure who had carried him, dressed all in black, wearing a cap, climbed in after him and slid the door shut. Matthew tried to look around but his neck felt stiff and unwieldy.

“Drive,” the figure said. And the metal started pulsing under Matthew as the engine started.

The figure took off his cap. And smiled. “Hey, Matt,” Tim said, “long time no see.”

Chapter Seventy

During...

Tim slammed through the cottage door, dragging Matthew by the scruff of his neck. Pru was at the kitchen sink, washing up and listening to a podcast. She looked up at the sound and her eyes widened.

“What’s going on?” she said. “Is that...?”

Tim threw Matthew on the floor, and the young man collapsed in a heap. Unconscious. Bleeding forehead, either from the crash or where Tim had knocked him out with the butt of the gun, Tim didn’t know. “Do we have any rope? I’m going to tie him up in the basement.”

“What have you done, Tim?” Another voice. Another female voice. And then they all came in—Edmund, Robert, Rachel. Tim wondered, as he often did when he saw them all, which one it was. Which one had betrayed them? Which one was helping Ferringham? Who was the reason Matthew was on their kitchen floor right now?

I’d kill them, Amber had said.

“Shit,” Robert said.