Bad Seeds

by Jassy Mackenzie

  “Okay,” David muttered, reading eagerly on.

  The men forced their way into the secure visitors’ complex, which at that time of night was locked, and crowbarred open the main security door. This caused the alarm to go off. By the time guards arrived, the men had smashed and opened the glass visitors’ door and had made their way into the orange zone, where they succeeded in forcing open two further doors that led to an auxiliary control room as well as gaining access to two management offices along the way.

  David turned the page.

  The offices were unoccupied, but there were two technicians on duty in the control room. The men forced the technicians out of the room at gunpoint and smashed a backup computer, which was not connected to the system. It is believed they were going to attempt to log in to the system and disable the doors that lead into the red security zone, gaining access that way. However, the technicians triggered the main alarm, and Inkomfe went into lockdown mode, with gates to the red security zone being sealed. Upon hearing the alarm, the staff still inside the red zone powered down the reactor before taking shelter in a secure room nearby.

  “So what happened to the masked guys?” David wondered, reading on.

  Police were called, and security reinforcements arrived, but the two intruders were nowhere to be found and were not captured on camera footage leaving the premises. A search was started at three fifteen a.m., and by eight a.m. the premises were declared to be secure, and the red zone was opened.

  “The men?” David said aloud, turning another page impatiently. “Any theories on how they got out?”

  It was later discovered that after leaving the control room, the intruders had broken into a locked storeroom down the passage. Nothing was missing from this room, but it is thought that they may have accessed the room, which was not often used, to obtain security staff uniforms that had been placed there for them at an earlier date, and had thus blended in with the personnel on-site, which included a number of extra guards brought in to assist as well as police and detectives. This would have enabled them to leave the premises unnoticed.

  “Aha,” David said, making a note on his own paper. A clever way of disappearing. It indicated preplanning, and the help of an extremely trustworthy inside source. As did the fact that they were going to use the computers to access the red zone.

  With so many security staff on-site and the fact that it was dark, it would then have been easy for them to blend in and to make their escape. It was later confirmed by Mr. Gillespie, who was in charge of security operations, that due to the disruption after the break-in, IDs were not checked upon leaving until approximately five a.m.

  “That’s a big oversight,” David said out loud. Perhaps a forgivable one, though, given the chaos that must have ensued. At any rate, it had allowed the men to escape. He assumed they were men. Of course, one or both could have been a woman, but he was going to go with men for now, given that the physical description had been of men—average height, fit build.

  It was interesting, too, that there were no fatalities or injuries reported. The men had been armed but had not used their weapons. They could easily have shot the laboratory techs instead of forcing them out of the control room. In fact, that had proved to be a fatal error in an otherwise flawless plan, because the techs had been able to trigger the alarm that shut down the red security zone before the intruders could hack into the system and open the doors.

  Insider knowledge. For sure, this indicated insider knowledge.

  Pressing his lips together with frustration that this hadn’t been more proactively followed up on by the detective in charge, David turned his attention to Botha’s phone records. Perhaps he would strike gold here. He was optimistic as he paged carefully through the printed sheets, but even so, he was unprepared for the bombshell that he discovered.

  Jade dreamed that she was trying to follow Carlos Botha through a crowd. It was in town somewhere, with tall, dark buildings looming on each side of the street and cutting out the sun. He was walking ahead of her, not very fast. He was strolling along, looking around casually, but she couldn’t keep up with him because other people kept bumping and jostling her. And it was hard to tell which one he was, because his face was in shadow, and it was difficult to make out his features. She kept on losing him, then having to try and find him again in the gloom.

  She realized the problem. He was wearing dark glasses that were obscuring his face. Without them, it would be much easier for her to follow him—but how could she tell him to take them off?

  She had to catch up with him. She started running, pushing her way through the crowds, but although he didn’t seem to be hurrying, he was outpacing her still. And the crowds around her were becoming threatening. They were closing in, bumping her, blocking her off from her goal. A long-fingered hand snatched at her clothing, pulling her back, and she stifled a cry.

  Suddenly she needed to get away from these shadowy streets. She was walking into danger—she knew it. She was sure that the strangers around her had concealed weapons in their ragged clothing. What if the next thing that touched her wasn’t a grabbing hand, but the cold steel blade of a knife?

  And then she saw him. He’d stopped near a doorway and was speaking on his phone. This was her chance. She had to get to him—now or never.

  Jade ran through the crowd, sprinted what seemed like an endless distance until she reached the doorway where he was standing. She touched him on the shoulder, and he slowly turned to stare at her with dull, yellowed eyes in a menacing face.

  She staggered back a step, discovering she’d been wrong. This wasn’t Botha at all; in the gloom and confusion, she’d made a mistake.

  And then she realized that this man, now moving toward her with predatory intent, wasn’t wearing dark glasses, either—none of the crowd were. Their eyes gleamed faintly in the growing dusk. Putting her hand to her face, she discovered the truth too late.

  They weren’t wearing the darkened shades.

  She was.

  Jade sat up in bed, breathing hard, the shadows from her dream still crowding her mind. God, she hated those nightmares . . .

  And then she nearly screamed aloud as a dark form appeared in the doorway.

  “What is it?” she whispered shakily. Her heart was hammering. Her palms felt cold.

  “Are you okay? I heard shouting.”

  It was Botha, which didn’t exactly reassure her. The imagery from her nightmare filled her mind, confusing and unsettling. Why had she dreamed that? What was her subconscious trying to tell her? What was she missing?

  “What time is it?” She felt disoriented.

  “It’s only half past ten. You’ve been asleep for an hour.”

  “I had a bad dream.”

  “You have them often.” It was a statement, not a question.

  Jade shrugged.

  “I’ve heard you shouting before in your sleep. And crying, too.”

  Her face went hot. “I’m okay. Really,” she said.

  He walked quietly over to sit on her bed. His skin was damp, and she thought he must have just come out of the shower. He was wearing the gray boxers she’d bought him and nothing else. A thread of moonlight spilled through the window and shone onto him, turning his tan skin to silver. Suddenly the thin cotton shirt she was wearing felt insubstantial, and she shivered.

  “I have them, too, sometimes,” he said. “Nightmares, I mean.”

  Jade’s mouth felt dry. “I know,” she told him. “I’ve heard you, too.”

  “Come here,” he said softly. It was a question, an invitation, but she could hear the need in his voice, and it tugged at her core.

  He held out his hand.

  Jade wanted to say no. She shouldn’t. But she found she had no defenses left, and compared to the terrifying imagery of her dream, Botha’s reality seemed like the lesser evil.

  I’ll just
let him hold me for a minute, to chase the bad memories away, she told herself, knowing already that this was a lie.

  She leaned into his embrace, wrapping her arms around him even as his own pulled her close. His skin was warm, silken to the touch. She ran her hands over his defined shoulders, along his muscular back while his fingers smoothed her hair and stroked her face. His lips were on hers in a kiss deep enough to allow her to forget the past few days.

  “Jade,” he whispered.

  He leaned in and kissed her again. His eyes were open, but he’d moved out of the beam of light, and try as she might, she could not see the expression in them.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Jade woke up with a start, reaching automatically for the man she’d sensed beside her earlier. She’d fallen asleep in his arms, but now the space beside her was empty except for cool, tangled sheets. She sat up in the darkness, breathing hard. What had woken her?

  The silvery thread of moonlight had moved around, illuminating an African-themed tapestry on the wall, the colors dull and muted in the dim light. From the bathroom, she heard the hiss of the shower providing a steady, soothing white noise.

  Sleep had allowed her to piece troubling parts of the puzzle together. Her subconscious had been working, and now the events of the past few days seemed suddenly clearer.

  Gillespie had planted that tracking device under her car.

  It made all the sense in the world now.

  Gillespie had seen Lisa Marais following him. He knew Lisa and Botha had stayed in touch. Between them, the evidence they were collating could destroy his career.

  But that would mean Gillespie had also hired the hit men. Had the likable head of security been that desperate to keep his secrets? And on a practical note, how had he been able to afford them? Hit men were expensive, and she’d seen how short of cash Gillespie had been after he’d gambled it all away. Maybe he’d paid them with a night’s winnings before losing all his money again.

  “The timeline makes sense,” she said aloud.

  Gillespie had asked her where they were staying the night that she drove to Inkomfe. She’d told him a Sandton hotel. Then the hit men had called around, phoned all the Sandton hotels until they had found the right one. But Jade and Botha had escaped just in time, so Gillespie had needed to make a plan B. He, or the hit men, had obtained the tracking device. And then he’d called her again to meet up with him after he’d been beaten up and mugged.

  Perhaps he’d told the hit men to beat him up deliberately. But actually, she thought it was more likely he really had been beaten by somebody he’d owed money to. Either way, he’d been able to bring Jade running. If it hadn’t been the mugging, Gillespie would have found another way.

  She’d changed the number plate and disguised the car, so locating it had taken longer. She remembered Gillespie’s excuse for leaving the breakfast table, saying he had lost the business card of the woman who’d bought him his shirt. He’d been away ten minutes, and his hands had been shaking worse than ever when he’d got back.

  Most tellingly of all, when she’d left the mall, she’d turned left to go to the parking lot and hadn’t passed a Markham or any men’s clothing shop along the way. At the time she’d assumed that Gillespie had just been so rattled after the attack that he’d gone in the wrong direction. Now she realized he’d never been going back to the shop. He’d been heading down to the parking garage to help the hit men attach the tracking device that would lead them back to Botha.

  She couldn’t understand why Loodts had been tortured, though. That was the one discordant note in the symphony. It was the only thing that didn’t make sense, but what she had was enough to convince her that the threat wasn’t over yet. While Gillespie was alive, Botha was in danger.

  She reached for her cell phone but couldn’t find it on the bedside table where she’d left it. And then the noise that had awoken her sounded again. Over the soothing hiss of the shower, she heard it ringing faintly from somewhere in the lounge.

  Jade scrambled out of bed, pulled on her shirt and tiptoed out of the bedroom, closing the door softly behind her.

  Her phone was under one of the couch cushions in the lounge, and she felt cold all over as she pulled the cushion aside and retrieved it. No way had she left it anywhere near here. It had been moved. Botha must have done it, but why? It stopped ringing as she grabbed it.

  Blinking down at the screen, she saw it was half past midnight, and to her consternation, she had six missed calls from the same number, one she recognized: David’s office landline.

  Hurriedly, she called him back. He snatched the phone up as soon as the call connected. “Jade? Is that you?”

  “Yes,” she said, confused, feeling dread starting to prickle over her spine. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Are you okay? Are you safe?”

  “I’m fine. Why shouldn’t I be? I’m at the hotel.”

  “Where’s Botha?”

  “He’s in the shower.”

  “Whatever you do, don’t let him endanger you. I’m going to send a team over in the next half hour to arrest him. I can’t get anyone there sooner than that. I’ll call the hotel’s security as soon as we’ve spoken and get them to place an armed guard outside the door to stop him escaping. In the meantime, I want you out of there. I’m going to come and fetch you myself in ten minutes. Be waiting in the lobby.”

  “But . . .” Jade’s lips felt numb. Her heart was pounding frantically. She felt as if reality as she knew it had been yanked from under her. “David, please explain. Tell me what’s going on.”

  “I called in a favor and got hold of Botha’s recent cell phone records. They arrived an hour ago in my inbox, and I’ve been having a look. He’s been calling the Middle East so often in the past few days he might as well have his own goddamned hotline set up. Jade, he’s contacted about eight different Iraqi numbers and been contacted by others, and he’s been communicating regularly with a cell phone user registered in the Emirates. Including in the early hours of last Friday morning. Phone calls were made to the Emirates cell phone number shortly before and after the sabotage that occurred at Inkomfe. When Botha was supposed to be drunk and trashing a bar in Sandton. Nice alibi. The cell records tell the true story.”

  “Oh, shit,” Jade said. This news was a hammer in the gut, a tub of ice water down the back. Her mind was reeling as she battled to process David’s words. All she could remember now was Botha’s strange stillness earlier when she’d told him about the tip-off David had received on Hamdan. How he’d stopped drinking his wine and had barely eaten. And the way she’d heard him speaking on the phone, so urgently, as she’d fallen asleep.

  “Loodts had Inkomfe’s strong room and reactor room access codes with him when he went to the meeting at Crown Street, which Botha would have known about,” David continued. “I’m sure that’s why he got Loodts to meet him on that particular afternoon. Loodts was tortured before he died, and there were no papers in the briefcase.”

  “Give me five minutes, and I’ll be ready,” Jade said.

  “Be careful. Please be very careful. Botha must be regarded as extremely dangerous.”

  “I’ll be careful,” Jade whispered.

  She tiptoed back into the darkened bedroom, adrenaline flooding her. Rummaging through her bag, she pulled on her underwear, black cargo pants, a dark T-shirt, her trainers. She couldn’t even brush her hair because her brush was in the bathroom. She found a scrunchie at the bottom of her bag and scooped it back into an untidy ponytail. Then she went cautiously to the safe and opened it. Thank God, there was the gun, still inside. She shoved it into the holster and buckled it behind her.

  She turned quickly to go, but in the darkness, she knocked against the table with the kettle and teacups. Her heart jumped into her throat as the cups fell over, clattering onto the table’s hard surface, the noise deafening.

&nbs
p; She froze, terrified that the sound might have alerted Botha.

  But the hissing of the water continued unabated.

  Jade let out a shaky breath as new suspicions flooded in.

  That convenient soft splashing, concealing any sounds that might have alerted her that Botha was moving around and hiding her phone instead of sleeping next to her. Why would he spend so long in the shower at such a time? Especially since he’d come to her room just a couple of hours ago, his skin damp from the shower.

  Jade pulled the gun out of her holster. She tried the bathroom door and found it was unlocked. No time to think about what she was going to do. She held the weapon at the ready, pushed the door wide, and in two strides she was pulling open the frosted glass door of the shower.

  Inside, only a stream of cold water spattering onto the white tiled floor.

  The cubicle was empty.

  Chapter Fifty

  “Oh, hell,” Jade whispered, staring in dismay at the empty shower stall. She reached in and turned the water off, brushing the cold droplets from her skin. She ran out of the bathroom, still holding her gun, and quickly searched the suite, already knowing it was a pointless exercise. Botha’s room was unoccupied; his bed hadn’t been slept in at all. A swift hunt through wardrobes and under couches convinced her that he had gone.

  With shaking hands, she dialed his cell phone number. She was sure it would be turned off, but to her surprise, it rang. She willed him to answer and give her an explanation for the nightmare that she’d awakened to, for him to tell her that everything was all right.

  For him to really be the man she’d believed him to be, instead of the monster whose existence she’d been blind to.

  It rang six, seven times, and just as she’d resigned herself to hearing an automated voice mail message, the call was picked up.