These Hills Called Home | ONC 2024

[15] The Last Drop

    Braced and breathless, the pub crowd stayed rooted to their seats in speechless anticipation. Suddenly, a stuttered, startled chuckle cracked through the silence from the heart of the room. "Bravo, Miss Haywood. As something of a thespian myself, I can appreciate such an impassioned, show-stealing entrance," Edgar said, setting one hand on the gold-ringed black cane by his side. He leaned forward in his seat, the gradual focusing of his features driving nausea right into the back of Gemma's throat. "I'll even be so kind as to overlook the serious and baseless accusation you threw out. Now, listen to your friends and go rest, yes?"

    The man's calm, direct tone underlined the manic thump of Gemma's pulse through her ears. It was a blatant attempt to shame her into silence, and without the fury relentlessly rushing through her blood, it might have worked. "I'm still standing just fine," she replied with a demonstrative wave of her arms that shifted more weight onto her sore ankle than she intended. "Which is more than I can say for my brother, or Nadine Summers, or Edmund Cox, or whoever else you've killed over this!"

    "Gemma, we all know what you've been through since you got here," Graham began as he closed the rest of the distance to Gemma. The nearest spectators scraped their seats back a pace, leaving the two men and Gemma stranded on a broad stage. "And Lord knows you've clearly been through something tonight. But storming in here, screaming bloody murder? You're wearing our patience thin, lass."

    "Really? Because I ran out of patience a few corpses ago," Gemma snapped, shoving Graham away with a firm thrust against his shoulder. She turned to face the onlookers, immune to the council leader's flurry of belligerent sounds. "Underneath Brookbank Grange, right by the stream, there's a security room linked to a whole network of secret cameras around town. Edmund and Nadine are there too, only they're both dead. And if I'd picked a different night to stumble on these two, I'd be right there with them."

    In the crowd, Avery choked on a gasp and hid her reddening eyes in Nathan's side. The man himself simply looked on in stunned, forlorn silence. Gemma's heart bled with a yearning to break off and pull them both close, to beg forgiveness for uprooting their home. Yet she knew as well as they did that an apology would not bury the truths she had dug up.

    A leaden thud rocked the room, and Edgar stood over his seat with his hands resting on his cane. "More wild allegations, girl? And here I thought you were a sharp, clever sort." He slid his chair back and walked forward, his heavy wooden cane snapping against the floor. "What do you expect us to do? Shall we all decamp from this warm, dry building and trek all the way through this horrid downpour to this wretched hovel you speak of?"

    Tossing the backpack down, Gemma met Edgar's withering gaze. "Actually, nobody needs to go anywhere," she retorted, letting her acerbic words fizzle in the man's mind. Dizzy with a potent blend of nerves and anticipation, she unzipped the rucksack and scanned the crowd. Iris and Elizabeth stood by the rear wall, and she flapped a pair of files in their direction. "Surveillance reports. Every day, these two have been stalking nearly everyone in town, figuring out how to bribe, blackmail, or outright bully you into going along with their redevelopment plan."

    Elizabeth took the file from Gemma's hand and flicked through its contents, pale terror razing the boundaries of her face. "How...this is the NDA I got about Jake's death," she uttered as she peeled the document from between the file's pages. "But I never signed this, even after Edmund left it with me. And now he's also..." Sobs escaped her throat to rob the surrounding air, and her fingers traced the dark lines across her brow. "What is this?"

    "A heap of tripe, that's what!" Rocking the walls with well-honed yells, Iris pinned her eyes on Graham and slapped a hand off her file's open pages. "Like this – 'potential new supplier: Bronze Castle Brewery'. When did I tell you about that, then?" she asked to Graham's twitching face.