by Kate Johnson
She licked my fingers and tucked her nose under her paw. Aww. Little baby Tammy. Sod kids, I’ll have cats instead. Tammy’s like a baby anyway—whiny, demanding, noisy and sometimes smelly, but ultimately adorable and loved unconditionally.
I must have finally fallen asleep, because I was woken up by Tammy’s Pavlovian response to my dad’s alarm clock, which is to leap out of bed, scarring me as she flies, and rush downstairs to be ready and waiting with her cute starved kitten look when he comes down to make tea.
I looked at the clock. Six-thirty. I’d said I’d meet Luke at the office in an hour and a half, but if I was clever…
I crept out of bed and got dressed quickly, slipped out of the house and into Ted. I’d like to have sidled quietly out of the drive, but there’s a reason no one chooses a diesel as a getaway car. I could see my dad peering out of the living room window at me as I rumbled away.
Luke’s house was closer than mine and the roofer’s yard was empty as I parked on the road outside. Like I said, noisy car. I crept up to the front door, heart beating fast, and quickly keyed in the code on the keypad.
A long second while the machine thought about it, then a green light flashed and I turned the handle.
Nothing. Oh yeah, the key!
Once inside I knew I had twenty seconds to disable the alarm, but I also knew the code for that, and I did it without a sound. I disabled two alarms and broke into the most highly secure residence since Posh’n’Becks set up home, and there was no one here to see me.
Dammit.
I retrieved the right key and crept over to the hidden gun cabinet, not sure why I was being so quiet but also not willing to make any noise. Twenty seconds and the revolver would be hidden again and Luke would never have known I’d taken it.
Well, he’d never have known if I hadn’t somehow set off an alarm when I opened the cupboard. Suddenly there was a cold metal gun pressed against the back of my head and Luke’s voice was saying, “Stand up. Slowly.”
I dropped the revolver and did as I was told, holding my hands in the air. Why the hell was he here?
“Now turn around. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
I did and looked up guiltily at him. Luke stared back in shock.
“Sophie?”
“Um. Yeah.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same question. Will you put that bloody gun away?”
“Not until you tell me what you’re doing breaking into my apartment.”
“Aren’t you supposed to be in my apartment?”
He raised his hands, and I relaxed as the gun swung away. “I came back to pick some stuff up. Jesus, Sophie, I thought someone had broken in.”
“Well,” I said, a little smugly, “they had. Me.”
“How?”
“Magic.”
“How?”
The gun was back. I made a face. “I disabled the locks.”
He narrowed his eyes and I sighed. “Macbeth,” I said. “How do you think I got out of here yesterday?” I pushed the gun away and stepped past him.
“Macbeth is here too?”
“No. He showed me how to do it. I learnt your codes, Luke,” I said, going into the kitchen and switching on the kettle. I needed coffee to calm me down.
“Jesus Christ,” he said, flicking a safety catch on the gun and tucking it under his belt. “You are a bloody menace.”
I gave him a smile. “I’m using my initiative. You’re supposed to be impressed.”
“What were you doing breaking into my gun cabinet?”
“I was curious. Didn’t know you had guns in there.” Thank God he hadn’t realised I’d nicked one. Shouldn’t he have been more vigilant? Why hadn’t he set the alarm when I was locked in?
“So what if I’d done that when I was locked in here?” I asked, searching for a teaspoon. “Would I have had to live with the alarm all day? I’d have gone mad.”
“You already are,” Luke muttered. “I switched off all the alarms when you were here. I knew you’d try and make a break for it. Didn’t want to have the alarm wailing all day long. The guys downstairs complain about it.”
“Nice to know you considered my hearing.”
He glared at me. “Did I say you were welcome to coffee?”
“Yes.” I paused. “Maybe not today. Anyway, you’re always taking stuff from my place.”
“I’m allowed.”
“Yeah, and why’s that?” I started looking for food and located some digestive biscuits in the shiny chrome bread bin.
“I just am.” He looked irritable. “Look, today we have to go and think of something to do with Sven.”
“Shouldn’t we hand him over to the police?”
Luke rolled his eyes and sighed. “Sophie, what are we?”
I tried to swallow the biscuit but didn’t manage. “Special agents,” I said through a mouthful of crumbly digestive.
“Better than police.”
“You mean we’re above the law?”
“No, just above the police. They help us. We don’t answer to them.”
Cool.
“So can we do what we want to Sven?”
Luke cracked a smile and leaned back against the kitchen unit, his arms folded. “What did you want to do to him?”
I thought of starting by waking him up with a nice gentle bikini wax, but then it occurred to me that I didn’t really want to get into his pants that much any more. “Something painful,” I said.
“We have to be careful,” Luke said. “He’s a foreign national. Ultimately we have to return him to the Norwegian authorities and if he’s in bad shape, they might not be very happy with us.”
“Don’t we have, like, privileges about that or something?” I asked through another biscuit.
“Privileges about beating up foreigners? Sophie, you ever hear of the Geneva Convention?”
I made a face and swallowed my biscuit. “So what are we allowed to do to him?”
He winked. “Things that don’t leave marks.”
I kept that happy thought in my head as I drove up to the office. I had my stun gun in my bag, fully charged, and was looking forward to seeing what I could do with it. Overnight Sven had turned from a gorgeous fantasy figure to a rather pathetic creature, and to be honest I didn’t want anything to do with him any more. I wasn’t even too bothered about torturing him.
Well, not too much.
It was still early and no one else was in the office as we made our way down to the lab. Sven was huddled in a corner of his cell, looking terrified. He stared at me for ages before finally gasping, “Sophie! What is going on here?”
“You tell me, Sven,” I said, and I was surprised to hear my voice sounding perfectly calm. I folded my arms and looked down at him. He really did look pathetic. What the hell had I ever seen in him? “What was going on last night?”
He shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. I don’t remember anything.”
“Do you remember putting something into my drink?”
He shook his head rapidly. “No, nothing, I swear. Sophie, what is this place? Am I in trouble?”
“Yes,” I said, “you’re in trouble. You tried to drug my drink, Sven—” to my amazement I realised I didn’t know his last name “—and knock me out.”
“I didn’t drug anything!”
“You were seen,” Luke cut in, his voice icy, and once more I was glad he was on my side. He moved to stand just behind me, and I drew an inappropriate amount of pleasure from his nearness. Hey, I was a strong confident woman, I didn’t need a man to back me up.
It was nice, though.
“We have a witness ready to state that you were seen putting a tablet into Sophie’s drink last night,” Luke went on.
“But—did you drink it?”
“No,” I said. “You did.”
Sven stared wildly around for a few seconds as if he was trying to take it all in. I turned to Luke and lowered my voice.
“Is it okay for him to see all the stuff in here?”
He shrugged. “It’s just a lab. Everything’s locked up. You need a pass to get in.”
“He has a pass…”
“A proper pass. It needs to be put through the system.” He glanced back at Sven. “You done with him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Leave him stewing. We need to go and get something concrete from your friend Tom anyway.”
We left Sven crying out for help and I couldn’t help my lip curling as the lift doors slid shut.
“I see the Florence Nightingale complex passed you by,” Luke said, smiling.
“What?”
“You don’t find him remotely attractive, all helpless like that?”
I made a face. “Kittens are cute when they’re helpless. All animals are cute when they’re helpless. People…need to get a grip. That was just pathetic.”
“Remind me to never get hurt when you’re around.”
Because if he was hurt, I’d have to look after him. And unless it was minor and I ended up shagging him out of relief (he’d done it to me) then he’d probably die. I was not one of life’s nurses.
Outside in the sunlight things were starting to come to life. People were parking up outside the other little offices and workplaces, the day was starting. I yawned.
“So where does Tom live?” Luke asked, and I tried to remember.
“I don’t know the address. I know where it is… Chalker’s always getting me to pick him up from there.”
“So drive on.”
I looked at my watch. It was eight o’clock. “You’re kidding, right?”
“No.”
“Tom is not going to be awake at eight o’clock. He probably didn’t get home until about three or four and I doubt if he went straight to bed.”
“So we wake him up.”
Visions of fighting through the messy, smoky hole of Tom’s room fogged up my brain, and I shook my head to clear it. “No,” I said. “Anyway, then I’d have to explain who you are, and why we’re there… I’ll give him a call later.”
We got back into the car and I pointed it homewards, counting the seconds of silence. “So, you and Tom,” Luke began, and I burst out laughing.
“Eleven,” I said, and he looked at me like I was deranged. “Eleven seconds until you said something… Never mind.”
Luke was shaking his head. “You’re a lunatic.”
“There’s that possibility.”
“Is Tom a good friend of yours?”
I shrugged, enjoying the moment. Truth was, Tom and I had hardly spoken at school, but we got along okay where the band was concerned. Our relationship wasn’t even brother-sister, it was sort of more like distant cousins.
“Yeah,” I said, glancing at Luke, “we’re really close.”
He glared at the road, and I bit my tongue in self-flagellation. I shouldn’t be encouraging Luke. Hadn’t I already decided that it would be an extremely bad idea to fall for him? As a working partner, as maybe a friend, he was okay. I didn’t need a complicated relationship with him. I especially didn’t need him to fuck me over and tell me his work was more important than our relationship. I could get there before him. The work was more important.
Hell, I was doing important work! That’d never happened before.
“I had a thought,” I said as we pulled up at my flat, and ignored Luke’s snort of surprise. “About Harvey. I know we tried Googling him but maybe we could try one of those alumni websites. Like a Friends Reunited thing. If James Harvard and Harvey are the same person, it might be on there.”
Luke blinked. “That’s a very good idea,” he said, and there was wonder in his voice.
“Yes, well, I do have them occasionally,” I sniffed.
He grinned. “I checked all the people search engines. We have a couple of accounts online…”
“Do I get access to them?” I asked, wondering if an American search engine was really the height of sophistication in the modern spy world.
“Sure. I’ll come in with you and log you on, then the cookies will be on your PC.”
He then proceeded to complain about everything to do with my computer, from how clicky the keyboard was to how slow the dial-up connection was. “Don’t you have Broadband?”
“I can’t afford it. Not with all the spending I seem to be doing recently.”
“No one made you stay in a nice hotel in Rome.”
“No, but they did make me go out and buy something to sneak around in.” I scrolled through the results the American engine had brought up for James Harvard. There was an alumni website that had a picture of him on graduation day. If you looked really hard and used a lot of imagination, then it could just about have been Harvey.
But then it could have been Tammy, too.
I rolled my eyes at Luke and searched for a database of old school friends. I found one that was free, logged on and searched for James Harvard. There were dozens, and I started reading through them.
Hi everybody at Jefferson High! I’m at UCLA studying Marine Biology and surfing loads…
Greetings and salutations. Since leaving Martin Van Buren High three years ago…
I’ve been working for the Third Bank of Kyoto for ten years and have not left Japan in that time…
“This is insane,” Luke muttered over my shoulder.
“I know. Is there a single high school in America that’s not named after a former president?”
“There was a president called Martin Van Buren?”
Hah! I found something he didn’t know!
Oh, wait. Was Van Buren a president or just a congressman? Couldn’t remember my A levels.
“Sure,” I said. “Really famous president.” I clicked on the next James Harvard.
“In the twenty years since I left George Washington Prep…”
“How old do you think Harvey is?” I asked Luke.
“Not old enough.”
“No. Well, I didn’t think he’d have been to a prep school.”
“And what’s wrong with prep school?”
I turned to look at him. “You went to prep school?”
Luke looked defensive. “Didn’t you?”
“No! I went to the same school as everyone else around here. Which you should know as you’ve been checking up on my personal record.”
“I thought it was a grammar school.”
“Not for about thirty years. They just keep that in the title to fool people.” I clicked on the next James Harvard. “So what, were you a public school boy?”
Luke mumbled something that I didn’t quite catch.
“Did you say Eton?”
“Mmm.”
“You went to Eton?” Did they allow anyone as sexy as Luke at Eton? “Don’t tell me, you were head boy.”
Glaring at me, he mumbled, “Prefect.”
Jesus. I never even considered applying for prefect at my school. As far as I could see all it meant was reduced lunchtimes as you policed the dinner queue while the dinner ladies gossiped. My form tutor told me to apply and I remember asking her to tell me why without using the letters C and V. She shut up.
“Eton prefect.” I was still shaking my head. “RAF, SAS, you must think I’m such a pleb.”
“No, I don’t.”
“So, what, are your parents mega rich? Titled?” Hey, that would be cool.
“No,” Luke said sharply. “I don’t want to talk about it, okay?”
I shrugged. That was a back-off tone. “Okay.” I looked back at the screen and started reading aloud to fill the silence. “‘Hey to all in Temperance. I’ve hardly been back since I joined the army. I spent three years as a Ranger before leaving to work for a communications company. I now travel all over the world and hardly get back to America, let alone Ohio, although I sometimes see my brother in New York. But I have e-mail connections and would love to hear from anyone in Temperance, especially those who went to Temperance High with me. Harvey.�
�”
Jesus.
“Bingo,” Luke said.
“He was a Ranger?”
“He could have made that up.”
“He could have made all of it up! Harvey’s got to be a pretty common nickname for someone with a name like Harvard, don’t you think?”
I looked up hopefully. Luke was shaking his head. “That’s him. He even told them the same story he told you, he’s in communications. That’s his excuse for travelling all over the world.”
I stared at the screen. “It doesn’t say anything about college,” I said triumphantly.
“So?”
“If you went to—” I opened up the window with the alumni page on it “—Princeton, God, you’d tell people about it.”
Luke frowned. “You ever been to Ohio?”
“No.” All I knew about Ohio was that it was where Christian Slater killed people in Heathers, and Jennifer Crusie set her books. “You?”
“Yeah. Full of small towns.” He grabbed my old school atlas off the bookshelf and flipped through it to North America. “Do you see Temperance, Ohio, on there anywhere?”
I made a face.
“If you went off to Oxford or Cambridge, wouldn’t everyone in the village know about it?”
“No.”
“Well, no maybe not, because this village is full of commuters who only step outside their front doors to go to work, but in a regular small town, like Ohio is full of, everybody knows everybody. Everybody would know that James Harvard went to Princeton. His mom would have told everybody. He wouldn’t need to put it on the website.”
I wrinkled my nose. “I still think it’s not him.”
“Well, I think it is him. And I think we need to go and check out his hotel room at the Hilton.”
“Why?”
“Erm, because he might be Wright’s partner?”
Oh, right. Wright. With all the stuff that had been going on I’d almost forgotten.
“Okay,” Luke said, going into my bedroom and opening my wardrobe doors. “Harvey got distracted by you at the Buckman Ball, so maybe you can distract him downstairs in the bar while I search his room.”
“Luke—”
“Come on. Pursuit of justice and all that.”
“What about Chris Mansfield? Aren’t we pursuing justice for him?”
Luke came out of my bedroom holding the Gucci dress. “Chris was killed because of his involvement with the Wilkes takedown. And that’s also probably why you’ve been targeted.”