Read Chapter 33: The Cost of Truth

The Great Hall still hummed behind her, the buzz of a hundred journalists filing their stories, the flash of cameras bleaching the ancient oak. Eleanor stood in the doorway, the diary a dead weight in her bag, the microfilm tin cold against her ribs. Her phone vibrated again. And again. Press inquiries, colleagues, strangers.

She silenced it, about to pocket it, when a new message blinked up at her.

*Midnight. The chapel. Bring the diary. Or the next fire won't be the archives.*

Her blood went cold. Not the firm—they were being taken apart by the police. Someone else. Someone who had watched her speech, who knew she still had the diary, who wanted it enough to threaten her life. The words *another, more personal fire* echoed in her skull.

"Eleanor?" David's voice came from beside her, low, wary. He'd seen the colour drain from her face. "What is it?"

She showed him the screen. His jaw tightened.

"We're not going to the chapel," he said. "We're going to the police. Right now."

"No," she said, surprising herself. "They're not done with their arrests. If I go in now, I'll be tied up for hours. And whoever sent this knows where I live. They know everything."

"Then you're not going home either."

"I have to. The fire—what if they've already—" She stopped. Her keys. Her notes. Her father's letters. Everything was in that flat.

"I'll come with you," David said. "Five minutes. Grab what you need. Then we regroup at Marcus's."

They took the back streets, avoiding the floodlit quad where television vans hunkered like predators. David kept his hand at the small of her back, guiding her through the narrow lanes, his eyes scanning the rooftops. The air was damp, the cobbles slick with recent rain.

Her building—a modest Victorian conversion near the Mill Road cemetery—stood quiet. No smoke. No sirens. She exhaled, fumbling for her keys.

The door gave. She stepped inside. The smell hit her first: petrol, sharp and sickly sweet, layered over the musty scent of old books. Her heart seized.

"David—"

The match flared in the dark at the end of the corridor. A figure, hooded, lit the wick of a Molotov cocktail. The bottle arced toward her; she threw herself sideways, glass shattering against the stairwell, liquid fire blooming up the wallpaper.

"Out!" David shouted, gripping her arm, dragging her toward the door. The flames roared at her back, heat searing her lungs with every breath. She coughed, black smoke filling her vision, her hand over her mouth as fire alarms shrieked across the street.

They spilled onto the pavement, gasping. Eleanor sank to her knees, hacking, tears streaming down her ash-streaked face. Neighbours emerged, pointing, shouting. Behind them, her flat window erupted in a column of orange.

"Are you hurt?" David crouched in front of her, hands on her shoulders, searching her face. "Eleanor. Look at me."

"I'm fine," she rasped. "I'm fine. God. David, they found me. They found—"

The crack was sharp, almost polite, like a champagne cork. David's eyes widened, his body jerking. A dark bloom spread across his chest. He looked down at it, puzzled, then crumpled.

"David!" Eleanor caught him as he fell, her knees hitting the pavement hard. Blood—hot, impossibly red—soaked through her fingers as she pressed against the wound in his ribs. "No. No, no, no. David, stay with me. Someone call an ambulance!"

He tried to smile, blood already creeping at the corner of his mouth, a thin bright line. His eyes found hers, hazy, softening.

"Worth it," he whispered. "You were worth it."

The sirens came. The neighbours swarmed. But Eleanor felt the world narrow to the man in her arms, his hand clenching weakly on her sleeve as the light drained from his gaze. His lips moved once more, a ghost of a word, and then he went still.

"No," she heard herself say, the word torn from somewhere deeper than her chest. "David. David, please."

A paramedic pulled her away, gently, firmly. She let them. She had no fight left. Through the blur of shock, she watched them work over him, watched a blanket settle over his face, watched his blood stain her hands and her dress and the pavement beneath her, and she could not stop shaking.

Her phone buzzed again, somewhere in the chaos. The same private number.

*One down. Bring it to the chapel, or the next one dies too.*

The words stared up at her through the grime of her cracked screen. Somewhere above, the sniper was already gone, vanished into the Cambridge dark. And Eleanor Ashworth, who had wanted only to uncover a truth, understood at last what the truth had cost. A life. A man who had faked his own death to save hers, who had held her hand on a bridge and promised to see this through, who had whispered that she was worth it as he bled out on the street in front of a burning building.

She looked down at her bloodstained hands. They were still trembling.