Country Rivals. Zara Stoneley

all things four legged and furry, or feathered, and anything North of Stratford-Upon-Avon.

       Jamie Trilling – intern, location scout and general dogsbody.

       Xander Rossi – Pandora’s half-brother. Dashingly handsome polo player. Adviser on the film set.

       Ella – Xander’s Wire-Haired Dachshund.

       Chapter 1

      Jamie Trilling had worked on enough film sets to know the sound of a shotgun being closed. It was a heavy clunk. Distinctive. The type of sound that vibrated in the still night air.

      His fingers froze mid text.

      Before he even had time to look up from his mobile phone there was the metallic echo of a safety catch being released and he knew he had to move. He couldn’t. His tongue stuck to the parched roof of his mouth, and his throat – along with the rest of his crouched body – tightened with fear.

      The shotgun barked out an unmistakable message, peppering his hands, his face, his hair with a shower of dark, peaty earth, and sending a rush of adrenalin that shocked him out of his stupor.

      Jamie dived straight into the nearest rhododendron bush, catching a brief flash of a ghostly figure shimmering in the moonlight before his body hit the ground and the breath was knocked out of him.

      For a moment all he could hear was the sound of his own breathing, then the crisp snap of twigs told him that whoever, or whatever, had shot at him was about to get a second chance.

      He was too young to die, and if he did have to go he’d not planned on it being under a bush in the middle of nowhere. His mother would never forgive him.

      Jamie swallowed hard. If this was the movies he’d be rolling his way out of trouble and have his assailant in an arm-lock and disarmed before the next bullet had been loaded. But it was real life and his arm bloody hurt from landing on an exposed root. Lying paralysed in the greenery was so pathetic though. And for what? If he hadn’t relied on bloody Pandora he’d have arrived in daylight and knocked at the door, not been skulking in the undergrowth, in the middle of night, with only a camera for company.

      There was another crack of brittle wood, alarmingly close this time, and a rustle of leaves and Jamie shut his eyes.

      ‘Damned ramblers. I’ll give you the right to roam, you buggers.’ The unmistakably posh, and female, voice was unexpected. ‘Think you own the blasted countryside.’ There was the sound of a path being hacked out between him and her. He opened one eye, and through the shrubbery could just make out a green wellington boot. Not a ghost, then. ‘Come out and show yourself, man, before I pepper your backside with shot.’

      It was a turn of events he really hadn’t expected, and it was all beginning to feel a bit surreal. A bad dream. Except it would take a better imagination than his to conjure up the painful throb in his elbow.

      Jamie groaned. Two minutes earlier he’d been crouched in the undergrowth gazing at the image on his camera display like some self-satisfied goon who’d won the lottery. Now he was about to die. Or worse.

      * * *

      If he was honest, it had been a pretty weird kind of day, the strangest part being that his boss’s wife, Pandora, was actually being helpful.

      ‘Ignore Seb, dear. He’s just anxious,’ she’d remarked, swanning into the room just as Seb Drakelow had stormed out, after ripping a strip off him with the type of sarcasm you had to be born with. ‘I can help you get back in his good books, if you like?’ She’d said it disarmingly enough, but it still made him feel uneasy. Pandora was never nice to anybody. Feeling he hadn’t really got much choice, he’d nodded. ‘I do rather like you. It would be a shame if you were sacked so soon after starting, like the last boy.’ She smiled, as sympathetically as her Botox-frozen features would allow. ‘He’s rather impulsive. It’s his artistic side, I’m afraid. Now, what was it he asked you to do?’

      Without Pandora’s help Jamie would have been in trouble. Location scouting was fine when you had time on your side and knew what you were looking for. But he’d been dropped in at the deep end, with a ridiculously tight deadline, after the site his predecessor had arranged had fallen through at the last minute.

      ‘Don’t worry, I know exactly what type of place we need.’ She held a hand out for his tablet. ‘We did have a shortlist of places before, let me just look … Something like this maybe? Or this one? Oh yes, I can just imagine filming here, can’t you? Although it’s probably way outside our budget. Now this one,’ she tapped on an image that linked to a newspaper report, ‘Oh dear, they’ve had a fire and it looked ideal.’

      Jamie looked over her shoulder. ‘But that’s what it looks like after the fire, isn’t it? The outside still looks fine.’

      ‘So it does, aren’t you the clever one? And I suppose it might be a reasonable price if … Well, I’ll leave it with you. I must admit though, it does look rather nice. You have a closer look and let me know.’ She’d dropped the tablet on his lap, one finger to her lips. ‘This can be our little secret, I won’t tell Seb I helped. I presume you do want a permanent job with us?’

      He did. He stared at the images, hardly noticing as Pandora left, shutting the door quietly behind her. She was right. From the few details he knew about the film it seemed to fit the bill. In fact, the more he looked at the Tipping House Estate, the more he was convinced it was exactly what Seb Drakelow was looking for. He scanned the newspaper report, a fire, closed for business, broke landowners …

      ‘You are a fucking genius, man.’ An unexpected surge of triumph had flooded through him. ‘A bloody genius, even if I say so myself.’

      Two hours later Pandora had willingly (in her husband’s absence) authorised expenses for his train ticket and practically pushed him out of the office. ‘And if you fuck this up you’re on your own. Seb really doesn’t like failures,’ had been her parting words as she’d signed the form without even looking at him.

      The train journey had been a nightmare, and by the time he’d arrived at the nearest station to Tippermere it had been dark. The taxi rank had been deserted and when the station master had taken pity on him and offered the loan of a bike and directions to the estate, which was ‘impossible to miss’, it had seemed ideal. It would be a doddle – how hard could it be to find a whacking big country estate in a village?

      It turned out to be harder than anticipated. There were no signs, no street lights and the names of the country lanes mysteriously changed at what appeared to be random points. He’d needed a map and he couldn’t get a signal on his mobile, and his hands felt like they were about to drop off from the combination of freezing cold and juddering handlebars.

      When he’d finally spotted the entrance gates to the Tipping House Estate he’d dropped the bike, punched the air and done a jig. Then he’d realised that he couldn’t get in, which was slightly sobering. But with the promise of a well-paid job hovering just out of reach on the horizon he’d decided he had to be resourceful.

      He’d clambered over a stone wall, torn his jeans on a barbed-wire fence, had brambles wrapped round his crotch (thank God for thick denim) and stood in more than one pile of smelly fox poo. He stank and was frayed at the edges, but he’d been proved right.

      As he’d absentmindedly brushed a hand down one long denim-clad leg, his blue-grey eyes never leaving the image, he had to admit it. Tipping House was awesome. The perfect country pile. Full, no doubt, of stuck-up toffs and their horse-faced wives, but what the hell? It was the building he was interested in, not its inhabitants.

      From his vantage point in the woods there was no sign of the fire damage that had caught his attention