For Whom The Willow Weeps: A crime mystery from Somerset (A Valentine Investigation Book 1) by Joe Talon

Author:Joe Talon [Talon, Joe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mirador Publishing
Published: 2023-06-22T16:00:00+00:00

~ Chapter 14 ~

Dale hurtled into the field, hoping against hope he wouldn’t fall down a rabbit hole. Did rabbits make holes in the middle of a field? He should have asked Milly. She was going to kill him. Come to that, Lauren was going to kill him. Oh, he’d forgotten how much fun this could be, playing silly buggers with bad guys.

Shouts from behind him and a yelled, “After the fucker,” made his long legs stretch out.

If there were rabbit holes in this grass, there’d be bits of him scattered all over the field.

The soft swish to his left made his body jack-knife to the right, some instinct forcing him off his chosen trajectory. A slim shape had appeared for a moment, hardly more than a breath, but he’d seen the shape before, a crossbow bolt. A favoured weapon of thugs when they couldn’t get a firearm, they also didn’t have the same legal implications. Just as bloody deadly, though. These guys were heavily armed. Not fun. Not fun at all.

If he could form a conscious thought beyond forcing his legs to move faster, his heart to keep beating and not explode, his lungs to suck in more air, he’d tell himself he was a fool. The bridge over the small rhyne separating two fields lay to his right, but it took him up a slight incline and further from the car. At this speed, he could jump the slow-moving stream of drainage water, but landing was another problem. He’d never been much good at free running, lacking the coordination necessary because of his bulk. Martial arts had suited him best, though he’d done some boxing as well. Ringo loved bouncing through the city from pillar to post, trying to stay off the pavements for as long as possible.

The man chasing him cursed. He must have stumbled over something. Dale saw his opportunity as he hit the edge of the longer, wetter grasses. He dropped into the ditch and lay flat, tucking close to the nearest bank. Cold water instantly covered his chest and legs. Dale pulled the snood higher over his face, trying to calm his raging breaths so he could listen. The noise his blood made in his ears rendered him deaf.

A shout in accented English near his hiding place almost made him yelp in shock. Dale fought the desire to run and turned his face into the weeds and grasses, hoping his dark clothing would make him nearly invisible. The man with the crossbow cursed and muttered. Dale heard his footsteps swish through the grass. He didn’t come near the edge of the stream, though, didn’t even seem to think of it as a hiding place.

A phone went off and Dale realised his was still in his jacket pocket, now soaking wet and probably now nothing more than a paperweight.

“I can’t find him,” said the crossbow man. “I can’t see a bloody thing out here. It’s just too dark.”

Definitely Newcastle. The man came from the north.

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