Catwalk Criminal

by Sarah Sky

  “That’s never going to happen,” Jessica said, rising to her feet. “Is it, Zak? Tell her. She’s going to die behind bars.”

  Zak relayed the message to his handler through a microphone embedded in his jacket. He listened to the voice in his earpiece. Jessica guessed he was being told to stall.

  “I don’t have the authority to discuss those terms with you,” he said finally. “That would require sign-off from the director of the CIA, who’s uncontactable at present. So let’s discuss—”

  “The truth is, Zak, you don’t have the authority to clean my shoes,” Margaret barked. “So I suggest you find someone from the CIA that I can do business with. Remember, the clock’s counting down. I wouldn’t like to be in the shoes of those MI6 agents at three p.m. Tricky. Very tricky.”

  Jessica caught her breath. Margaret knew about LibertyCrossing’s plan to publish the list. She glanced at Zak. He couldn’t hide his shock.

  “You’re wasting time, Zak. Tick-tock, tick-tock. Don’t you get it yet? I won’t make a deal with teenage models. I want to speak to someone far higher up the CIA food chain than you.” Margaret pounded her fist on the glass. “Guard? Is anyone there? Hello? We’re done here.”

  Jessica glared at her. Margaret knew the guards couldn’t hear; it was all for show. But there wasn’t much time before they did become suspicious about the glitch in the CCTV footage and came to investigate.

  “How do we know that you’ve got any information on The Collective?” Jessica said. “You can’t expect to deal with anyone else from the CIA until we know what you’ve got. Give us something to take back to Zak’s bosses.”

  Margaret folded her arms and shook her head.

  “She’s bluffing,” Jessica said, turning towards Zak. “She’s got nothing. Let’s go.”

  “Really?” Margaret said. “You want to take that risk? The truth is, you both came here today because you followed the trail. I’m guessing members of The Collective hacked MI6 and left behind a clue.”

  Jessica spun around. “Lily. You told LibertyCrossing my mum’s name.”

  Margaret chuckled. “I sold LibertyCrossing a lot more than that while I was still with MI6, long before I was arrested – background details about your crippled ex-MI6 agent father, your ex-Westwood grandmother, your boyfriend, Jamie – or is he an ex already? Your best friend, Becky. The list goes on and on.”

  “Jessica was right about you,” Zak breathed. “You are a total psychopath.”

  Jessica clenched her fists. Margaret had mentioned everyone in her life, apart from her mum. There had to be a reason for that.

  “You told the leader of The Collective about my mum’s murder and its connection to Sargasso, didn’t you? LibertyCrossing guessed that if I found the firewalls down in the MI6 computer, I’d search for confidential files. He used it as a trap to incriminate me and get me kicked out of Westwood.”

  Margaret smiled. “Your late mother’s your weak spot. It always has been. That’s your downfall. Now it’s beginning.”

  She approached the glass. “What do you mean?”

  “LibertyCrossing’s going to rip you apart, piece by piece, until there’s nothing left. I suggested his followers target Westwood and your school first. Your modelling career’s next. A few abusive emails sent from your account to the editors of Vogue, Tatler and Elle and you’ll be blacklisted for ever. Then maybe they should start on your friends, sabotaging your relationships with Becky and Jamie until your life as you know it is over and you’ll wish you were dead.”

  “Back off her!” Zak shouted.

  He lowered his voice as he pulled Jessica away from the glass. “We have to go. Rodarte can’t keep the camera offline much longer.”

  Margaret burst out laughing. “The Rodarte knight in shining armour, riding to rescue the poor little Westwood girl in distress. How boringly predictable.”

  “I don’t need help,” Jessica retorted. “But you do, Margaret. I’m going to ring Nathan as soon as I leave here and tell him that my hunch was right, that you are connected to The Collective. That you sold information about me to LibertyCrossing and in return his army of hackers was supposed to bust you out of here. Except they failed on Saturday and now you’re stuck here. MI6 will interrogate you and get the information it needs before three p.m., without any deal on the table.”

  “You silly little girl,” Margaret hissed. “Believe me when I tell you that you’ll never make that call to Nathan.”

  “Of course I will.” Jessica frowned. What did Margaret mean? What was she missing?

  “You’d both better scoot,” she said, chuckling. “I’m guessing a guard will return in approximately thirty seconds. Security must be wondering what we’ve been talking about in private for so long.”

  Jessica scooped up her coat from the seat and threw it on.

  “I must get myself one of those coats,” Margaret continued. “I think black would suit me better. But maybe I’ll opt for light blue too.”

  “You don’t need a new coat. You’re never getting out of here.”

  “Don’t be so sure of that.”

  Jessica caught her breath. Was The Collective planning another strike on the prison?

  A guard appeared at the end of the corridor, as Margaret had predicted. “Is everything all right down there?”

  “Yes,” Zak called back. “We’re good, thanks.”

  “Either sit back down or leave.” The man hovered, watching them closely.

  Jessica hesitated. She wouldn’t get another chance like this to confront Margaret. “Tell me what really happened to my mum. Who ordered the hit on her? Was it Vectra?”

  “Come on, Jessica,” Zak hissed. “We have to go.”

  Margaret walked to the back of the cell.

  “Did you sabotage her helicopter?” she pressed.

  “Stop it,” Zak pleaded. “Margaret’s messing with your head. She’s never going to tell you what you want to know.”

  She ignored him. “What’s Sargasso? I know it’s connected to Mum and the death of a former KGB officer. Why were they killed?”

  Margaret picked up a book and flicked through it. To Jessica’s surprise, she threw it down on her bed and returned to the glass. “They joined the dots and found Sargasso. Come closer.”

  “Get back from there!” the guard shouted as she approached Margaret. They were separated by a few inches of glass.

  “Knowledge is dangerous, Jessica. I’ll be sure to let Sargasso know that you’ve been enquiring about the organization. You’ll end up the same way as your interfering mother.”

  Zak pulled her away. “That’s enough. The cameras are going live again.”

  She ducked her head down and ran towards the guard. She’d got more from Margaret than she’d bargained for today.

  “We’re done here. Can you let us out?”

  The guard glared at her. “Don’t ever pull a stunt like that again. Follow me.”

  Zak caught up with them, gripping Jessica’s arm.

  “Are you OK?” he whispered.

  “I’m fine.” She pulled her arm free and followed the guard.

  He pressed his thumbprint and entered his code at the first set of security doors.

  “You don’t look fine to me,” Zak said as they walked through the next door. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  That was the last thing she wanted to do. Thoughts of her mum’s death, Sargasso and Margaret were swirling around her head. Zak could never understand what she was going through. She wished she could talk to her dad about what had happened.

  “Tell me that Margaret’s not going to get what she asked for back there,” she said under her breath. “Promise me that your director won’t cut a deal to release her.”

  “Not in a million years. Her request was instantly vetoed. I couldn’t tell her that, of course. We had to p
lay along and see what we could get from her.”

  A few more tantalizing clues about Sargasso, but nothing that would scupper LibertyCrossing’s plan to release the list of agents this afternoon.

  The guard stopped at the next set of doors. “That’s strange.” A frown mark deepened between his eyes as he pushed open the door.

  “What?” Zak asked.

  “The door’s unlocked. It doesn’t need my thumbprint.” He whipped out his walkie-talkie. “We have a security breach in corridor 243. Please investigate. Over. Hello?”

  Silence.

  Zak and Jessica exchanged glances as the guard strode ahead.

  “Is this something to do with Rodarte?” she said quietly.

  Zak relayed what had happened into his hidden microphone and listened to the reply. “Negative. We targeted the cameras, definitely not the locks. This is something different.”

  The guard was already examining the keypad at the end of the corridor when they reached him. This door was also unlocked. Jessica shivered. Margaret had insinuated something could happen.

  “This is bad, really bad,” Zak muttered.

  “Follow me quickly,” the guard ordered.

  “What’s going on?” Jessica asked. “Why are the doors all unlocked?”

  “I don’t know. Something’s wrong.”

  Suddenly, his walkie-talkie buzzed with static and a voice blared out. “This is a code six situation. This is not a drill. Repeat, this is not a drill.”

  Almost immediately, an alarm screeched.

  “Let’s go. Move it!” The guard broke into a run as shouts and screams echoed from deep within the prison.

  Jessica sprinted after him. “What’s happening?”

  “We have a massive security breach. I need to get you both to safety.”

  “What does code six mean exactly?” Zak gasped.

  “All the doors are open – internal, external. Everything.”

  Jessica skidded to a halt. The Collective was breaking out Margaret. “We have to go back.”

  “I can’t allow that, ma’am,” the guard snapped. “I can’t guarantee your safety back there.” He nodded down the corridor. “We need to put as much distance as possible between us and the maximum security wing.”

  Jessica didn’t move. She couldn’t.

  “Didn’t you hear me? There are murderers back there, child killers and arsonists. Believe me when I tell you, they’ll do anything to get out of here. They won’t hesitate to use whatever makeshift weapons they can get their hands on if you and your friend stand in between them and freedom.”

  “Zak?” Jessica appealed.

  “We’re leaving. The guard’s right. We have to get out of here. That’s an order.”

  She glared at him. That must be the directive he’d received from his handler. Hadn’t Zak ever heard of challenging orders?

  The sound of doors banging open and pounding footsteps echoed up the corridor. A look of panic crossed the guard’s face. “Prisoners are heading this way. Go! We can’t be caught here. We’re too far away from help.”

  He roughly shoved them towards the door and kicked it open. Jessica’s heart thumped madly as they burst through. What was she going to do? Margaret had probably got out of her cell by now. She had to be stopped before she managed to breach the prison walls. As they reached the east wing, the guard ordered them to help barricade the doors with chairs and tables.

  “It should hold, at least for now,” he said, mopping his brow. “Follow me, this way.” He led them deeper into the east wing. After a few minutes, he stopped abruptly. “This is where I’ll leave you. I need to regroup with the others in the comms room over there and assess the situation.” He nodded towards a door on the right. “Take that corridor. It’ll lead you back to where you registered this morning. You’ll be able to find your way out. Just follow the emergency exit signs.”

  Zak pulled Jessica away as she started after him.

  “No way. If they manage to get the security working again and go into clampdown, we’ll end up trapped. We have to keep moving. We can’t be found in here.”

  He grabbed her hand and pulled her down the corridor. After a few minutes, they reached an evacuation point and joined a queue of visitors waiting to be escorted out. Guards ticked off their names from their clipboards and hurriedly shepherded them through the door.

  “Keep your head down and don’t look at the cameras,” he ordered. “Rodarte’s already pulled out. It couldn’t risk being exposed by the hackers.”

  They crossed the courtyard and filed through the gate with the other visitors. Racing to the car park, they jumped into Zak’s blue Mini as police sirens wailed in the distance. He revved up and reversed out of the space. Jessica grabbed his arm.

  “We can’t go, Zak. We have to find Margaret.”

  “If we stay, we could be identified. This could all come back on us. It looks terrible that we were here when this went down.”

  Zak carefully navigated his way out of the car park. He slammed his foot down hard on the accelerator as soon as he hit the street, tyres screeching.

  “Is this our fault?” Jessica asked. “Is this connected to the Rodarte hacks?”

  He pulled out his earpiece and threw it on to his lap. “I have no idea. Rodarte’s panicking. It’s possible members of The Collective used our hacks as a smokescreen for their own. They could have piggybacked in via the loophole Rodarte exploited and unleashed a virus into the security system.”

  “Oh dear God. So we did help Margaret escape.”

  “Not intentionally.”

  “That doesn’t make it any better. We’re fools.” She groaned as the realization dawned on her. “We’ve been set up.”

  Zak took a sharp intake of breath and eased off the accelerator as more police cars screeched past, followed by fire engines and ambulances.

  “What if The Collective deliberately planted my mum’s name, Lily, in the MI6 computer system to make me suspect Margaret’s involvement?” she continued. “That could have been part of the plan. LibertyCrossing wanted us to follow up the clue and visit Margaret.”

  Zak tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “But he didn’t know for certain that we would go, certainly not today.”

  “What if he took the chance? His followers could have assessed the prison’s firewalls through the hack on Saturday and worked out a way for our visit to trigger Margaret’s escape. Perhaps the hackers had guessed Rodarte would demobilize the cameras, which would help them get in, or maybe they deliberately timed a breakout to incriminate us. Either way, Margaret was right.”

  “What do you mean?” His brow was furrowed.

  “She said I’d never call Nathan when I left here today. She’s right. I can’t. It looks like I’ve helped The Collective bust her out. Margaret knew this was going to happen and that it’d look really bad for me when it did.”

  He paused. “I agree Margaret must have known in advance. But how? She couldn’t have contacted The Collective through BBC Online or whatever internet site she usually goes on. It’s totally supervised. You read her file.”

  “I don’t know how she’s doing it, but she’s found a way round the system. She knew about the MI6 list going up online. Someone on the outside’s definitely been communicating with Margaret. Now she’s on the outside too.”

  “Let’s not jump the gun here. We don’t know if any prisoners have breached the walls yet, let alone Margaret. She could have been apprehended by the prison guards by now and be back in her cell.”

  “She’s gone” Jessica said, staring out of the window.

  “How do you know?”

  Zak wouldn’t understand. She could hardly comprehend it herself. It was as if she had a sixth sense for danger. She knew that Margaret was free.

  The long car journey back to London was tense; neither
Jessica nor Zak were in the mood for conversation, particularly as the three p.m. deadline approached. Now and then, Zak flicked on the radio for news updates on the Durham prison; a hundred prisoners were on the loose. Jessica wondered what Margaret’s next move would be. Hooking up with The Collective? Leaving the country? Or coming after her? Any of those scenarios had to be a serious possibility.

  By the time they pulled into a motorway service station at 2.50 p.m., her hands ached from clenching her fists so hard. She left Zak in the car park, speaking to his boss on his mobile, while she queued to buy drinks and sandwiches. She wasn’t particularly hungry or thirsty, but needed to do something other than keep checking her watch and refreshing the news updates on her mobile.

  She found a seat at the back of the café, close to a TV, which was tuned to a news channel, and took a sip of coffee. It tasted burnt and bitter, but at least it was hot. Her hands trembled as she put the cup down and glanced at her watch again. It was three p.m. The presenter had given an update on the Durham prison breakout and was now droning on about interest rates. No breaking news alerts about MI6 agents flashed up on the TV screen. It was odd. She’d expected the leader of The Collective to release the list with a massive fanfare of publicity.

  For the next ten minutes, she scanned Twitter, BBC online and every other major news channel website on her mobile. Zero. Absolutely nothing about MI6 agents being outed. Had Westwood managed to stop The Collective? It was starting to look that way. She felt more confident as every minute passed. How had Nathan done it? Quickly, she scanned the hacking websites. None of them mentioned MI6 agents either, but hundreds more angry people had posted messages to LibertyCrossing, demanding the jackpot for the best hacks. Some were calling the competition a scam, as no winner had been announced.

  By the time Zak returned, it was thirty minutes past the deadline. Still nothing had appeared on the news or online. He slumped down into the seat opposite and took a swig of cold coffee.

  “Coffee frappé?” He raised an eyebrow. “Delicious.”