Huntress

by Amanda Radley

  It was obvious that Amy was hardly an expert when it came to camping. Claudia smothered a smile when Amy started referring to a large, yellow dummies guide for information on putting up the tent. It might have been the headache and the hazy vision, but she was seeing Amy in a very different light. If she were honest with herself, she had always had doubts about Amy being involved in terrorism. At the back of her mind, something gnawed away that it hadn’t seemed that likely. But she had a job to do, and that always came first.

  Trying to analyse what was real and what was fake, who to trust and who not, wasn’t helping her headache. The facts of the matter were clear; Amy and Kerry had been set up. Someone was willing to kill her, and presumably them, to get the USB stick.

  “Do you know what’s on the USB stick?” Claudia asked.

  Amy lifted her head up. “No, I didn’t get much time to look at it before Spiky came in and threatened to make me a human knife rack.”

  “Spiky?”

  Amy gestured to her head. “You know, bad hair job, had a gun.”

  “Ah.” Claudia understood now. “So, it was Spiky at the services?”

  “You saw that, too?” Amy asked.

  “No, Mark did, he told me what was happening. Well, as much as he could tell from the CCTV footage anyway. Tell me in your own words?”

  Amy sucked in her cheek. She stood up and brushed the dirt off her hands. “So, I work... worked... in a coffee shop in the services. Just temporary, you know?” She looked at Claudia expectantly.

  Claudia nodded even though she knew there was nothing temporary about the job. Amy was settling for something comfortable rather than casting herself into the real world.

  “Cara came in every weekday morning. We’d chat a bit...” Amy turned around and started fussing with the tent. “We got on, or I thought we did anyway.”

  “You liked her?” Claudia asked.

  Amy looked at her. “Does my file say I’m gay or did you guess? Do I look gay?”

  “Your mum told me,” Claudia admitted.

  Amy rolled her eyes like only a daughter frustrated with her mother could. “She outs me every chance she gets, I swear.”

  “Mine, too.” Claudia pretended to let it slip, but in honesty, it was a calculated move. She wanted Amy to be able to confide in her, and, for a reason she couldn’t quite place, she needed Amy to know.

  Amy’s eyes bugged, and Claudia tried to keep her smile in check.

  “Oh... well, yeah, I guess I like her. She’d never like me, I know that, but it’s nice to pretend.”

  Realisation hit Claudia like a brick. She doesn’t know.

  “Anyway, she was just distracting me to place a USB stick under her table. I checked out the CCTV and saw that a guy came in every night to pick it up, Spiky.”

  “You checked the CCTV yourself? Were you allowed to access that?”

  “Well, not exactly,” Amy admitted. “But Cara had gone missing and I wanted to see if I could track her down myself. The police were useless.” She put her hands on her hips. “One even said he didn’t like my coffee. Can you believe that?”

  Claudia fought back a smile, but before she had a chance to answer, Amy had turned around and was unrolling a sleeping bag inside the tent. “Anyway, I saw what she was doing. Realised that she obviously isn’t interested in me, she was just using me, distracting me. Which makes sense because she is way, way out of my league.”

  “Maybe she was doing both?” Claudia murmured.

  Amy popped back out of the tent. “Hmm?”

  “Maybe she did like you. There would be other ways to distract you if that’s all she wanted to do.”

  Amy seemed to mull that over. The way she scrunched up her face and considered the matter was bordering on cute. Claudia knew that she must have a concussion.

  “Maybe. Doesn’t matter now, anyway. You need to rest,” Amy told her. She pointed into the tent.

  Claudia decided to not argue with her. She pushed away from the tree and started to limp towards the tent. Amy met her and helped her along. After some manoeuvring, she got into the tent and slid along until she was laying on the sleeping bag. It was surprisingly comfortable. Either that or her standards had considerably lowered following the last couple of hours.

  Amy threw her coat down on the polythene tent groundsheet and undid her boots. As she fiddled with the laces she started to laugh.

  “What?” Claudia asked.

  “I’m just remembering the narrowboats.”

  Claudia smirked. “That was ridiculous.”

  “We were going, like, six miles an hour,” Amy said.

  “Four, there’s a speed limit on the canals. George told me.”

  Amy turned around, a full smile on her face. “George? Mine was Fred.”

  “Oh, I would have much preferred a Fred. George was miserable. And I had to pay him.”

  “No way, really?”

  “Yes, he was a wily old sod,” Claudia said.

  “Huh.” Amy turned her attention back to her boots. “Lesley and Fred were really nice.”

  “You seem to stumble across really nice people,” Claudia commented.

  “I think most people are nice.”

  Claudia shrugged out of her coat and balled it up to act as a pillow. “I can’t believe you managed to evade us by just bumbling around.”

  Amy pushed off her boots and edged into the tent. “Hey, we didn’t bumble around.” She turned an electric light on and closed up the tent flap, zipping it securely.

  “You did.”

  “Just because it was so easy to evade you and all your drones and spy shit doesn’t mean we were bumbling around,” Amy said. She smiled as she sat cross-legged and looked at Claudia.

  “Drones and spy shit?”

  Amy wafted her hand around. “Yeah, I know your tactics.”

  “Clearly.” Claudia chuckled. She took a deep breath. She had to tell her. “Amy?”

  Amy looked at her. “Hmm?”

  “Amy, I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but... Cara’s dead.”

  The colour drained from Amy’s face, and Claudia wished she was better at these kinds of things. She’d been through sensitivity training like everyone in her job had. But telling people repeatedly that friends and colleagues were dead made it commonplace.

  “We don’t know the extent of her involvement in the plot, but she was murdered.”

  “I knew it,” Amy whispered. A tear fell down her cheek. “I said she might be dead, to the police.”

  “There was nothing you could have done.”

  Amy reached into her pocket. “Did she die for this?” She held the USB stick.

  “Possibly,” Claudia allowed.

  “Spiky said that there was a tracker on this, that when I plugged it into my laptop, it signalled to you lot that I had it. That’s why they came for me. Is that right?”

  Claudia licked her lips. Giving out information pertinent to national security wasn’t something she’d normally ever do. But Amy deserved to know some of the truth.

  “Yes. It was known that information was being taken. A piece of code with a tracker was added so the next time it was accessed, the location would be broadcast. Sadly, it was you who accessed it.”

  “Why did they bring you in? You’re freelance, right?”

  Claudia let out a sigh and laid down, snuggling her throbbing head into her makeshift pillow.

  “I am self-employed. They contacted me because of my reputation; the stakes were very high and they needed results.”

  “Why are the stakes so high?”

  “I can’t tell you that.” Claudia was only going to go so far on the information train. There was a slim chance that this was an elaborate double bluff. The very thought hurt her head more.

  “But you used to work for them?” Amy persisted.

  “I was an MI5 agent, yes.”

  “Cool.”

  “Not really.”

  “Why did you leave?”

  “Wh
y does anyone leave a job they loved? Because of management.” Claudia closed her eyes and massaged the bridge of her nose with her thumb and forefinger in an attempt to relieve the pressure.

  “Ew. Did he try it on?”

  Claudia barked out a laugh. “No, no. My immediate boss was my girlfriend’s father, he’s a nice man. Too nice for the service. He’s a fall man, and he doesn’t even know it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Claudia opened her eyes and turned her head slightly to look at Amy. “The intelligence services are about seeking out information and deciding what to do with it. It’s not like a factory where they produce, say, cars. It’s intangible. Decisions have to be made, often based upon hunches. Mistakes are made all the time. Sometimes those mistakes are catastrophic, and, in those cases, government require an answer as to what went wrong. And the service needs someone who is in a position of power but not too important, so they can throw them under the bus.”

  Amy scrunched up her nose. “That sounds awful.”

  “It is. So, I left.”

  “You said was, what happened?”

  Claudia furrowed her brow.

  “You said he was your girlfriend’s father, what happened?” Amy repeated the question.

  Claudia attempted a shrug. “We split up.”

  Amy regarded her suspiciously. “Something happened. You said he was your girlfriend’s father. Not he is your ex-girlfriend’s father.”

  “Semantics.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Amy assured her. “She hurt you, you’re distancing yourself from her. You don’t have to talk about it, it’s okay.”

  Claudia chuckled bitterly. “How very kind of you.” She lowered herself back down and settled her hands over her stomach, concentrating on slowing her breathing. It was a relief to be off her ankle, but her mind was racing with information and the chance of sleep seemed slim.

  “Affair?” Amy guessed.

  Claudia rolled her eyes.

  “Yep, affair,” Amy confirmed to herself. “That sucks, sorry.”

  “I didn’t say that she had an affair,” Claudia argued, sitting up and leaning on her elbow.

  Amy looked at her for a few moments. “You should rest.”

  Claudia opened her mouth to argue but didn’t have the energy. She flopped back down onto the ground, wincing at the jolt.

  “If it helps, she was an idiot,” Amy mumbled.

  Claudia smiled. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  “What happened on 7/7?” Amy asked.

  Claudia sighed. “You don’t let up do you?”

  “People say I talk a lot,” Amy confessed.

  “People are right.”

  It was silent for only thirty seconds before Amy spoke again.

  “So?”

  Claudia sat up again. “Are you seriously going to badger me about this? A concussed woman?”

  “You’ve been telling me you were fine for the last hour,” Amy replied with a smirk. She reached into her bag. “Besides, you shouldn’t sleep yet. You need to eat and drink. Luckily for you, I have a lot of supplies.”

  35

  Travel Scrabble

  Amy watched the steady rise and fall of Claudia’s chest. Promising herself that she was just checking her breathing, nothing more. The woman had quickly fallen into a deep sleep, and Amy itched to check her mobile phone for medical advice. She was sure that someone with a suspected concussion was supposed to rest. But the self-doubt within her wondered if that was completely wrong, and the advice was to absolutely not rest under any circumstances. It seemed unlikely.

  She felt blessed to be in Claudia’s presence while the woman soundly slept. Claudia didn’t seem like the kind of person who would ever let her guard down. Amy had to remind herself that the only reason Claudia was doing this was because she was in pain.

  Over the past hour, Amy had sat like a guard dog. She’d listened for any sounds outside. Sat stock-still so as not to disturb Claudia and watched her, occasionally wondering about the woman’s life.

  She was an ex-spy. She was a lesbian, or bisexual, but she was definitely into women. She had an ex-girlfriend who had been foolish enough to cheat on her. Amy knew that she would never cheat on someone as strong, confident, and beautiful as Claudia. She shook the thought out of her head. Now was not the time to develop a silly crush on the woman. Amy could feel the heat rising in her cheeks as she admitted to herself that her thoughts about the unconscious hunter hadn’t been entirely pure.

  She bit her lip as she fiddled with the loose thread on her thick socks. In her mind she replayed the events of her rescue, that’s what she called it; a rescue. She had rescued Claudia from Spiky, his gun, and his crimes against hair gel. A smile crept across her face, and she felt herself beaming with pride. Claudia may think of her as a bumbling idiot, with flyaway hair and no prospects, but at least Amy would be able to say that she rescued her. She saved the life of a spy. Ex-spy. Whatever, she’d done it.

  “You look smug.”

  She turned around to see Claudia sleepily looking at her.

  “Good morning to you, too,” Amy said softly, not wanting to break the spell just yet.

  “How long was I asleep?”

  Amy looked at her watch. “Nearly three hours.”

  “Have you slept?” Claudia enquired, seemingly already knowing the answer.

  Amy shook her head. “I was guarding you... us, the tent. You know, the lookout.”

  “What happened to being exhausted and possibly passing out if you didn’t rest soon?”

  Amy felt heat on her cheeks. “Might have lied.”

  Claudia chuckled. “Might have, huh?”

  Amy continued to play with the loose thread on her sock. Anything to distract from Claudia’s sleep-mussed appearance and throaty laugh. She wanted to scream into the thick padding of her gloves. What was it about her and successful women who were completely out of her league? Was she so starved for attention that she was doomed to crush on whomever fate put in front of her?

  “You should probably sleep.” Claudia looked at her watch. “It’s just turned midnight, and I’m not due to contact Mark until ten. That should be enough time for him to get up here, establish a safe location, and secure Kerry.” Claudia sat up and rubbed at her eyes. She brushed her fingers through her hair.

  Amy licked her dry lips and looked away. It seemed somehow private to watch Claudia waking up. Intimate.

  “I don’t think I could sleep,” Amy said.

  “I understand.”

  I don’t think you do, Amy thought. She needed to change the subject. Claudia was an ex-spy and was going to easily figure out Amy’s not-so-subtle crush.

  “How are you going to contact Mark?” Amy asked. She fussed with her bag, pretending to be looking for something within its depths.

  “We have a one-hit way to communicate,” Claudia explained. “My phone is being tracked, but I have software to mask the signal briefly. I can make one call before they reverse triangulate it and figure out the new signal.”

  Amy blinked and looked up at her. “In English?”

  “My phone, all phones, have a unique identifier. That identifier is being traced. I’m going to change that identifier and make a call to Mark, which means they won’t be able to tell my phone has been used. However, they will be tracking Mark’s phone as well. So, they will see a new call come in from a new identifier and figure out it’s me. They will triangulate the location of the new identifier and find us, but it will take time. Hopefully enough for Mark to get here.”

  “Why will they be tracking Mark’s phone?”

  “The second they started to investigate me they would have pulled my phone records, they would see that Mark and I communicate frequently, and they will have put a trace on him, too.”

  Amy shivered at the thought of it. “Scary stuff.”

  “It is when you are on this side of things. But when you have a terrorist cell planning to kill as many people as possible, preventing the
m from communicating, or knowing you can find them if they do, is essential. Yes, I know all the arguments for civil liberties. But, personally, I would rather this than have innocent people being murdered because we had the technology but couldn’t use it.”

  Amy nodded slowly. Claudia clearly had strong feelings on the subject. Amy couldn’t blame her; she couldn’t imagine the things she had seen in her line of work.

  “I’m sorry, that was a little harsh,” Claudia admitted.

  “It’s okay. I get it.” Amy’s eyes met Claudia’s. She swallowed and quickly returned to digging in her bag. She wasn’t looking for anything, just trying to defuse the situation. She’d decided that Claudia’s eyes were hypnotic, and she’d spill all her secrets if she stared into them for too long.

  “Amy?”

  Amy felt her heart beating out of her chest. “Yes?” She risked a sideways glance at Claudia.

  “I need to make a splint, or some kind of a brace for my ankle, something to support it. Do you have anything I could use? You seem to have packed everything.” She gestured towards Amy’s rucksack.

  Amy looked at the rucksack and then at Claudia. “Sure, what do you need?”

  “I don’t suppose you have—”

  Amy was already unloading her bag. “I have a couple of small towels, I have a first aid kit, travel Scrabble, which is stupid and won’t help you with a sprained ankle so ignore I said that... God, I’m stupid.” She sighed and carried on unpacking. “Clothes, clothes, you’re welcome to use whatever you need. Bottle of water, food, um...” Amy felt the blush in her cheeks burning. She was at the awful stage in her crush where she constantly said the wrong thing and embarrassed herself. She continued unpacking. “A small toolkit, wash bag, um... tape... extra socks—”

  “Can I have a towel, the water, the tape, and the Pocket Scrabble?”

  Amy looked up at her. She nervously licked her lips. She didn’t want to be mocked, but she had a feeling it might be coming.

  “Sure...” She handed the items over, one at a time. “What are you going to do?”