Page 101 of The Final Vow (Washington Poe #7)

The moment Poe stepped away from the back wall of Herdwick Croft was the moment he knew Puck was out there.

Watching his cottage, his sight trained on the front door.

He couldn’t explain how he knew, just that he did.

It was like the air was charged. Or maybe it was because the hair on his arms and on the back of his neck was standing up.

He’d left his Timex in his soap dish as he hadn’t wanted the luminescent hands giving him away, so he counted out thirty lots of sixty in his head.

It was weirdly therapeutic. Calmed him down.

Steadied his breathing. After his final sixty seconds, he got to his feet and made his way down the slope.

He then bore left and followed the lip of the basin-like crater.

Poe had learned to move quietly in the army, and he’d perfected it on Shap Fell.

He liked to walk at night, and he liked to see the wildlife.

The badgers and foxes, the rabbits and hares, the voles and shrews. Plus, ewes in lamb were easily spooked.

Poe walked carefully, though. Nothing to be gained by rushing.

He tested each step before he put his weight on it.

He avoided the boggy areas. Lifting his boot out of a bog would make a sucking sound that would carry all the way to Ezekiel Puck.

For the same reason, he avoided the granite outcrops that littered Shap Fell like acne.

He might pick up a pebble in his boots’ thick rubber treads.

A pebble on granite would be loud and unnatural, like the metal segs he used to hammer into the heels of his school shoes.

Tried to impress the girls by kicking them off the ground, making sparks.

Which probably explained why Poe had been a girlfriend-free zone at school.

Ninety minutes. That was what Poe had allowed.

He wasn’t wearing his watch, but he reckoned he was close to where he’d been on his last two rehearsals.

When he and Edgar were roaming the fell for hours and hours at a time, he’d got pretty good at measuring time by tracking the moon’s passage.

Everything in the sky with an orbit was like the hand of a clock. They all measured time.

‘When you get into position, you sit for an hour,’ Towler had said.

‘Don’t be tempted to look for him straight away.

Trust that he’ll be there. You might have spooked an animal.

As quiet as you think you’ve been, he might have heard something.

You sit still and you don’t move. If he did hear something, he’ll dismiss it if he hears nothing to back it up. ’

It was good advice. Poe ignored it. Towler had identified four potential firing positions.

He’d said the fourth was by far the most likely.

It was the perfect sniper’s nest. But Poe didn’t want to get to the fourth position to find Puck wasn’t there, not without having checked the first three positions.

Anyway, he figured crawling over the edge of the crater’s lip would be good practice.

Rehearsing this was fine, but he was playing with live bullets now. It would be different.

Poe rolled on to his stomach and belly-crawled to the edge of the Shap crater. He peered over the edge. Waited for the moon to clear the wisp of cloud it was hiding behind. When it did, he saw position number one was empty. No Ezekiel Puck.

He crawled back and skirted along to the next one. Repeated the action. Found he was more confident this time. Same result, though. The nest was unoccupied. Third time lucky, maybe? Not for Poe. The third position was emptier than a pandemic bog-roll shelf.

Poe made his way to the final position. The one Towler said he’d have chosen. If Puck wasn’t there, he was going to have to do all this again the next night. And the next night. Ad infinitum.

Now he could take Towler’s advice. He could rest. Make sure his breathing was steady. The sweat had cooled. His head was clear. Focused on the task in hand. He closed his eyes and counted to five hundred. He opened them and checked the position of the moon. He reckoned it was coming up to 5 a.m.

Time to move.