Her Mind's Eye

by D C Vaughn

  Colin drove on, seeming to think about that for a moment.

  ‘The Russians would value the technology,’ he conceded. ‘Sabotage and surveillance are their currency. If they knew about Neuray’s work then they’d be sure to try to obtain copies of it.’

  ‘But then why kill Sam?’ Rebecca asked. ‘To stop the development work? It doesn’t make sense, as somebody else would be hired to take his place. They couldn’t have known about his plans to expose the work, so what reason would they have to take him out?’

  Colin shrugged. ‘Maybe Ashton?’

  Rebecca said nothing. She wasn’t blind to the fact that Ashton could have learned of Sam’s plans and decided to kill him, but with a major MOD deal in the offing there would have been far better ways. Besides, against the manipulations of dictatorships, she could see nothing about the technology’s militarisation that was not being done in the name of protecting western civilisation. Yes, it could be used for corrupt purposes, but it could also be used for great good. Sam must have understood that. Ashton had founded the company on that principal. It seemed more likely to her that it wasn’t Ashton who was behind the corruption, if there was any, but Daryl Carter. His obstructive nature and defensive manner all pointed to him having something to hide, whereas Ashton was nearing the end of his life, was wealthy, and had little to gain from murdering Sam or anybody else.

  ‘It’s down here,’ she directed Colin.

  Colin drove down a narrow avenue, leaves swirling around the car in the darkness. Most of the houses had lights on inside, but the growing darkness meant that Colin’s car was well hidden as he pulled into the side of the road and switched off the headlights.

  ‘They’re going to be awake.’

  Rebecca nodded. ‘I know. We’ll have to wait until they’re in bed and asleep.’

  The little silver car’s interior cooled quickly, and Rebecca pulled the collar of her coat up around her neck and tightened her scarf a little. She didn’t want to sit in the car and wait for hours but there was little choice. With an arrest warrant almost certainly out for her, she knew that she couldn’t go and sit in a coffee shop in Exeter or risk being seen driving around in Colin’s car.

  The safest place right now was here, in the middle of an anonymous suburban street, her eyes fixed on the one place that she wished she didn’t have to see again.

  Sam’s parent’s home.

  ***

  XXIV

  ‘Wake up.’

  Rebecca bolted upright in her seat, blinked in the cold darkness and saw Colin’s face ghoulishly half–lit by the street lights outside. A splatter of rain rattled against the windshield, the street outside obscured by sheets of water.

  ‘What time is it?’ she asked groggily.

  ‘Quarter past midnight,’ Colin replied. ‘Their lights have been out for an hour now.’

  Rebecca glanced at the house, lit by streetlights against the gloom of the wet, windy night. Leaves blustered across the darkened streets like dark thoughts flitting from one place to another.

  ‘Are you sure it’s in there?’ Colin asked.

  Rebecca did not reply for what felt like a long time. She knew that what she was about to attempt was illegal, and yet she knew of no other way that she could get inside.

  ‘They hate me,’ she said finally. ‘They won’t let me in no matter what I say. Last time I was here, Sam’s mother hit me on sight.’

  Colin watched the house with her for a few moments before he spoke again. ‘Seems like an odd place to send the data Sam took. I would have thought Neuray would be in here like a shot?’

  The same thought had crossed Rebecca’s mind, but she had quickly realised that Sam would never willingly have placed his family in jeopardy had he thought his own life might be at risk. But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t have hidden something here that would lead to the data Colin believed Sam had taken from Neuray.

  ‘Maybe that’s true,’ she said. ‘But Neuray’s board can’t just walk in here and search the place either. If Dylan Carter really did have Sam killed for stealing data from them, it’s not going to be something they can ask his parents to go and fetch. Pete and Helen are lovely people, but Sam would have shielded them from any of this. He didn’t even tell me.’

  Colin said nothing.

  Rebecca reached into the pocket of her jeans and felt there her front door key to Sam’s parent’s house. To even begin to consider what she was about to do provoked feelings of terror in her that far surpassed those she had felt when tackling armed suspects as a beat officer.

  ‘You sure you don’t want to try to ask them about it instead and…’

  ‘No,’ Rebecca replied sharply and grabbed the door handle. If she hesitated any longer, she knew her courage would fail her. ‘Wait here.’

  Rebecca opened the door and a cold wind rushed in as she stepped out and closed it quietly behind her. The street was empty at this time of night, though parnoia insisted that she look up and down one more time. Her gaze swept also the windows of the various houses, searching for nosy neighbours twitching their curtains to see what she was doing. Satisfied that she was alone and unobserved, she tucked her hands in her pockets and headed towards number seventeen.

  The home seemed more imposing now, more threatening than it had any right to be, and Rebecca swallowed down her nerves as she walked up the drive, avoiding the front door. She knew that there was a motion sensor right above the porch entrance that was attached to a security light, so she moved up to the garage door and then slipped sideways, easing slowly beneath the motion sensor until she was out of its field of view.

  The porch was sheltered from the wind and in darkness, Rebecca grateful for the cover but also aware of the relative silence as she reached for her key. Sam had given her the spare key years before, with his parents’ blessing, for those “just–in–case” moments; just in case she lost her own front door key; just in case Sam needed her to drop something off at his parent’s house; just in case Sam was shot and she needed to break and enter to prove his involvement in an international conspiracy that may have cost him his life. The absurdity of it almost caused her to turn back and demand that Colin drive them to the nearest police station. The reality of what she had witnessed, what she now knew, pushed her on.

  With intense concentration and patience, she slipped the key into the lock a millimetre at a time. Silence was her ally. Most folks didn’t even think about it, but they were all in tune with the sounds of their home: the creaks, the thumps, the sound of a boiler or door, even the ambient air pressure inside a home were commonly heard and recognised in the homeowner’s subconscious. Sam’s parents would be in bed asleep, but if she put the key in loudly enough, or opened the door too quickly, they would almost certainly hear the noise, sense the change, and awaken.

  The key slid all the way into the lock, and Rebecca held her breath and the key with both hands to smooth its passage as she turned it slowly to the left. The barrel rolled and she heard the latch inside release. The door opened a fraction and she instantly felt its passage arrested as an interior safety chain caught.

  Rebecca held the door in place and reached into her coat pocket. She retrieved a rubber band, wrapped one end around the chain as close to the metal casing as she could, and then pulled it through the loop on the other end of the band. She slipped it over the door handle, then slowly pulled the door closed once more, keeping the key turned to the open position.

  The door touched the jamb and she heard the metal chain inside drop from its casing and fall away against the interior wall. Rebecca eased the front door of the house open and slipped inside, closing it silently behind her.

  The home smelled clean, the faint scent of wood polish and furnishings that Rebecca recalled enjoying so much when she had visited. For a moment she stood in silence and listened. If the metal chain’s release had awoken Pete then he would almost certainly be moving by now, but she could hear nothing from upstairs. Rebecca had been in the house enough times t
o know where to go, but right now she found herself rooted to the spot. Sam’s old bedroom was upstairs, around to the left, down the hall, last door on the right. To get there, she would have to walk right past Pete and Helen’s bedroom.

  She took a silent, deep breath in the darkness. She was here, now. There was no choice.

  She turned to her right, past the downstairs toilet, and saw the stairs before her. She positioned her foot to the far–left side of the lower step, a spot where few people would have walked, to avoid bearing weight on any creaking boards, and then eased herself up. The stairs were carpeted so her footfalls were soft, but it seemed even her breathing was deafening as she walked up the stairs one at a time, her eyes fixed on the entrance to the main bedroom as she climbed.

  The door to the main room was half open as she reached the top of the stairs. She could see inside, and in the faint light making it through a gap in the curtains discern the shape of a body beneath the duvet. Rebecca touched her foot onto the landing, then turned slowly and crept past the door toward the front of the house.

  The sense that someone was watching her was overwhelming, the fear of being discovered intense enough that she felt nausea swilling in her belly. Rebecca had managed to go through her life without breaking a single law – even telling white lies had always been a stressful experience. Now, she was burglarising the home of her fiance’s parents. She hesitated, closed her eyes, and tried to quell the growing wave of paranoia and fear coursing like acid through her veins. You’re here now. Just get the job done and get the hell out.

  Sam’s bedroom was small, and had long since been redecorated as a home office that Pete had used for his building and decorating business until he had retired. Rebecca knew that there was a computer desk inside, a chair and a couple of oak wood cabinets. Slowly, every breath squeezing through a tight band around her chest, she made her way to the office and peeked inside.

  The room was dark, the office desk still there just as she remembered it. She eased inside and crouched down onto her knees. Slowly, she reached up and moved the office chair to one side. Instantly the plastic creaked, as loud as a gunshot in the silence, and Rebecca froze.

  The silence in the wake of the noise seemed louder than the noise itself, every one of her senses hyper–alert. She heard a shuffling sound, someone turning over beneath a duvet, and then in one terrible moment she heard someone get out of bed.

  Rebecca closed her eyes, her hands still gripping the chair as she saw in her mind’s eye Pete walking down the landing and hitting the office lights to find her crouching there in the darkness. The footfalls became louder, and then a light burst into life.

  Rebecca opened her eyes a fraction and saw a glow on the landing as someone went into the bathroom at the far end. She crouched in terrified silence as she heard Pete cough, and then the lavatory flushed. The noise seemed deafening, and Rebecca quickly used it as cover and moved the office chair to one side. The bathroom light went out again and she was plunged back into darkness.

  For a moment she remained crouched and unmoving. The rush of water in the toilet cistern fell silent, and then she heard the sound of someone getting back into bed, the ruffle of a duvet and the clearing of a throat.

  Rebecca was sweating and her heart was hammering inside her chest as she tried to control her breathing. The house fell silent around her but in her own ears her breathing sounded like a freight train, her heart like a crazed prisoner trying to beat their way out of a cell with their bare hands.

  She waited a full five minutes, terrified that Pete would be in bed next door, unable to sleep. If he heard even the slightest sound, she knew that he’d phone the police and she’d be in custody and under arrest. She forced herself to control her anxiety and eagerness to get out of the house. Hold yourself together, damn it.

  Slowly, her breathing eased and she turned to the task at hand. Sam had once told her that he had earned money at school selling his sandwiches, and that he would hide the money in a cigarette tin that had once belonged to his father. Sam had discovered that there was a loose floorboard under his bed, the perfect spot to hide his secret stash.

  The carpet beside her looked new, probably something that had replaced the one that Sam would have pulled up to hide his little box of trinkets. Rebecca moved to the corner of the room, where Sam’s bed had once stood, and reached down. Gently, ever so slowly, she pulled the corner of the carpet up, the fabric crackling softly as it was torn from the grippers stuck to the wood panels. There, below the carpet, was a rubber lining. Rebecca pulled that back too, revealing the wood panels below.

  The room was too dark to see clearly, so she slipped her mobile phone from her pocket and opened the cover. The screen glowed blue and she directed it to the corner of the room, standing it open on the carpet so that it wouldn’t move. She glanced over her shoulder at the bedroom door, but the light was too weak to cast much of a glow out onto the landing.

  The wooden floorboards were split, one of the long panels halved, and she could see right away that it was loose and not nailed down. Rebecca reached down and carefully pulled on the board. To her surprise it lifted easily. She carefully removed it and at once she could see that there was a small cigarette tin sitting there in the dust and darkness, a rubber band around its centre that held it closed. She lifted it out, set it beside her on the carpet, and then replaced first the panel, then the carpet liner and finally the carpet itself.

  Relief tingled across her shoulders and shuddered down her spine as she slipped the tin into her pocket. Now all she had to do was get the hell out of there and hope that Pete had once again fallen asleep.

  Rebecca tip toed her way out of the room and down the landing, waited for a moment, listening intently. No sound eminated from the bedroom, which was as dark as the rest of the house. Rebecca knew that she couldn’t wait forever. If Pete was awake and looking in the right direction, he would see her without difficulty.

  Rebecca took a breath and moved to the top of the stairs, then crept down them in much the same way that she had climbed them, each foot placed at the far right or left of each step. No voice halted her movement and she heard nothing from the bedroom as she crept to the bottom of the stairs and saw the front door ahead of her, the lights from the street outside glowing faintly through glass panes set within it.

  She crept to the front door, reached out, turned the handle as quietly as she could, and pulled.

  The door remained stuck fast. Rebecca frowned and glanced at the chain to see it still loose by the wall with the rubber band dangling from it. Then she looked down and saw the small metal bolt pushed through to lock the door. Shock bolted up and down her spine as she realised that somebody else had moved the bolt into place after she had entered the house. Panic ripped through her and she slid the bolt out of its housing even as she heard the voice right behind her.

  ‘The police are on their way.’

  Rebecca whirled to see Pete standing behind her in the hall as he flicked the light on.

  ***

  XXV

  Rebecca stood immobile and squinted in the bright and sudden light. Pete Lincoln stood in his dressing down and slippers, a hammer in one hand and a volatile mixture of confusion and outrage twisting his features.

  Rebecca knew that she could open the front door, but she also knew that Pete would be on her in an instant and she wouldn’t be able to fight him off if he chose to restrain her until the police arrived.

  ‘I can explain,’ she whispered.

  Pete folded his arms, the hammer still in his hand, but he showed no interest in listening to her. ‘What was it that Sam did that was so bad that it turned you into this?’

  There was something in the way that Pete said “this” that made Rebecca’s skin crawl, as though she had been reduced to something less than nothing, no more than a stain on Pete’s shoe that simply wouldn’t clean off.

  ‘I don’t think that Sam did anything,’ she replied.

  ‘You expect us to believe
that?’

  Pete glanced at the stairs, and Rebecca turned and felt her stomach plunge into a freefall of shame as she saw Helen on the stairs, also dressed in a gown, her features stricken.

  ‘What are you doing in our house?’ she hissed.

  ‘Looking for evidence,’ Rebecca replied, hiding behind the only thing that she could rely upon. The truth.

  ‘Evidence of what?’ Pete snapped. ‘Evidence of your own lies that you want to cove…’

  ‘I haven’t lied!!’ Rebecca shrieked, so loudly that she shocked herself.

  Pete’s eyes widened for a moment and Helen took a step backwards up the stairs. Suddenly Rebecca felt weary and she slumped sideways against the wall, her head aching again. She put one hand to the wound and closed her eyes for a moment before she gathered herself and spoke again.

  ‘Sam was working on something at Neuray and I think that’s what got him shot,’ she said, her voice a whisper.

  Pete was unimpressed. ‘I suppose that’s the excuse you’re using now for whatever this is really about?’

  Rebecca couldn’t help it and rolled her eyes. She yanked the cigarette tin from her pocket and showed it to him. ‘Sam hid something here, and I found it. This could be what he was attacked over.’

  Pete’s eyes locked onto the tin.

  ‘That’s one of your old cigarette tins,’ Helen said in surprise.

  ‘One that you gave Sam as a child,’ Rebecca said to him. ‘Sam used it to hide money he’d earned at school when he sold his sandwiches, kept it tucked it under a floorboard in his bedroom.’ She saw the surprise on both Pete and Helen’s face and she quickly took advantage of it. ‘Sam was worried about something on the night he went into the river. I can’t remember what we spoke about but I know that he wasn’t himself. Today I was approached by one of his colleagues at Neuray, who told me that the company was working on a surveillance project that would change the world, because it would allow law enforcement to watch a person’s movements in real time, through their own eyes. I know it sounds impossible, but I’ve seen it in action: they can see a person’s thoughts on a screen.’