Out of Sight Out of Mind (Choc Lit)

by Wareham, Evonne

  ‘Madison, I have to— Let me explain—’

  ‘Just take these,’ she interrupted. She wanted him clear headed when she bawled him out – right before she threw him out.

  Fury clogged her chest. He was reaching for her, with his mind. She got a brief flash of confusion and chaos, gaping holes where memories were leaching through, before she blocked him, shoving him back viciously, like a fist in the face, enjoying the sight of him wincing away from her.

  Wordlessly, he held out his hand for the glass and the tablets. As she dropped the pills into his palm she bit down on her reaction to the warmth of skin on skin.

  All that was so over.

  ‘Wait for those to work. Stay out of my way until they do. Then we’ll talk.’ She didn’t wait to hear his response. She had to get out, before the tears overwhelmed her. She headed for the garden.

  The clouds had parted, briefly, and the rain had stopped. Water dripped off bushes and the limbs of the apple tree. The bluebells had been battered by the rain but one or two were lifting their heads again, towards the light. She stood for a long time, looking out at the grey sea.

  Betrayal. That was a new one. Her parents had left her, Neil had left her, but it hadn’t been like this. This man – whoever he was. He’d played her. Wound up her emotions, like a ball of string. For what? She would find out, before he went.

  When the tears had finally petered out, she went back to the house.

  She opened the kitchen door. She could hear the shower running in the bathroom upstairs. She scooped up her car keys and drove down to the village, a straggle of small shops beside the road. Although it was a holiday Sunday, the doors of the small general store were open. An optimistic array of ice cream and barbecue essentials was advertised in the window. Madison bought a pint of milk, and a paper, and then sat for a while in the car, reading the headlines, without seeing them.

  When she finally returned to the cottage he was standing in the window, watching the track, sipping from the coffee mug in his hand. She sensed, without being told, that he’d wondered if she would be coming back. Good.

  The way his hair clung to his head she knew it was still wet from the shower. He was wearing a black cotton sweater and chinos they’d bought, together, a month ago. She wanted to slap him, punch him, kiss him mindless. But she wasn’t going to do any of those things.

  He was going to answer her questions. And then she’d drive him wherever he wanted to go. And that would be that. She closed her mind to the cold, ragged-edged hole in her heart, and slid out of the car.

  He’d got to the kitchen by the time she opened the back door.

  ‘You want coffee?’ He nudged the pot across the table towards her, then stepped away. Giving her space.

  His voice was subtly different, she noticed. The mid-Atlantic intonation of someone who had been educated or trained in the States. They’d even altered that in the programming. Attention to detail. The work of a genius – and Creed was a genius.

  He was hovering in the doorway, looking pale and – apprehensive? Would he tell her now who he really was? Not that it mattered. She filled a mug. He’d put out two. It wasn’t going to get him any brownie points. She opened the milk and poured, then gulped greedily. The coffee was what she needed, to put some heat into a body that felt as if it were turning to ice. She didn’t need to be grateful to him for it, though. She could have made it for herself.

  ‘Headache?’ she asked eventually, to break the silence. She didn’t really care, except that she wanted him functioning well enough to get the hell out of her life.

  He was watching her, not speaking. She shifted uneasily. His eyes were riveted on her face, as if he was trying to decode every nuance of her expression. There were lines of tension around his mouth that hadn’t been there yesterday. Nothing was as it was yesterday.

  ‘Gone,’ he responded finally.

  ‘Good.’

  His mouth spasmed at the flatness of her voice. ‘I guess you’d like an explanation.’

  She shrugged. She was going to get it, and then decide whether she believed it. But he’d sweat first.

  ‘What I want is, you, out of my house.’

  That rocked him, she saw with satisfaction. Got him where he lived, wherever that was. He hadn’t expected it. Would the slick bastard think he could sweet talk her into letting him stay? Temper flared, brisk and hot, melting some of the ice. She banked it down. She needed to be in control here.

  ‘I have a few questions,’ she said casually.

  Technical stuff. Nothing personal. Like why? Or – did any of this mean anything? The things she wanted to know were for the good of science and the furtherance of learning, stuff like that. So the next time some genius decided to hook her, for whatever experiment he was conducting, by dangling a piece of beefcake with a hard-luck story in front of her, she wouldn’t be caught again for an idiot. He was watching her warily. Letting her make the running. Clever guy.

  ‘After I have my answers, you can pack. You can keep the clothes.’ She sure as hell didn’t want them. ‘I’ll take you to the station. There’s a train from Tenby to Cardiff. You can get a connection there to London. I presume you have friends, someone to pick you up?’

  Damn, why had she asked that? She didn’t want to know. Didn’t care. Didn’t want to imagine him with his mates, laughing about how easy she’d been. Her nails bit into her palms. Easy – in every way. And much too stupid to recognise the product of a leading mind in her field, even when she had him on her investigating couch.

  Her heart jerked when he finally spoke. ‘I’ll answer what you want and then I’ll leave.’ His eyes were sharp. She watched him inhale, then swallow. God, she was still so attuned to his body. ‘I think I can guess how you feel.’

  Mister, you have no idea.

  ‘Once I’m gone,’ he continued, ‘I think you should stay here for a while. Don’t go back to work too soon. Take some time.’ He jerked a hand through his hair, raking it hard back from his forehead. She watched the line of his arm, the movement of muscle under the sweater. ‘Will you at least promise me that?’

  ‘Why should I promise you anything?’

  He grimaced. ‘Last request of the condemned man?’

  She frowned, unable to see where this was going. Why did he want her out of the way? Something to do with the lab?

  ‘It’s no concern of yours what I do.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know what you’re thinking.’ His smile was grim. ‘And you won’t let me in to find out.’

  Jay closed his eyes, to block out Madison’s accusing stare, while he pulled together whatever of himself he could get a hold on. Fuck. He was so bloody tired. His body felt as if it had been beaten all over with sticks. As for his mind …

  He’d dared to hope that breaking through the wall might be a victory, not a defeat. That they’d laugh, cry, make love. That they’d know. Instead, all he had was a head full of shards. Bits and pieces of memory that still didn’t come together, and the seeping knowledge that what was behind them wasn’t anything like he’d imagined.

  It was worse.

  Life-and-death worse.

  And somehow, in breaking through, he’d lost Madison. And if you don’t have her, then you don’t have anything. It’s over.

  He couldn’t do what had to be done alone, or he’d never have started this mess. Now he could see it for what it was. A mess. He’d been so bloody blind. You should never have dragged her into this.

  But then she’d only been a woman in a photograph, a résumé, a handful of brilliant lecture notes. She hadn’t been real.

  Now she was real in a way that was searing his heart.

  He’d put her in danger.

  It was up to him to get her out.

  He put his empty mug down on the table. She was angry at t
he deceit. Humiliated. He could work with that. She wanted him gone. He’d go. Draw the fire away from her. If they had him, then maybe they’d let her alone.

  His tired mind took a moment to see the flaw in the reasoning. The whole thing needed her, or none of this would have happened. So they’d be hunting for her. But if they couldn’t find her?

  If he refused to co-operate, she would be no use to them. Back in London he wouldn’t last long. If he went to the press? The authorities? If he played it right, there’d be a bullet in his head before nightfall tomorrow. If he could just work out the best way, the fastest way …

  Obliterate this damn freak of a mind of yours, once and for all.

  Madison stood, waiting for him to speak, her emotions too near the surface as she watched him. She ought to be going after him, getting the answers she’d demanded, but somehow she couldn’t get the words in order. The expression on his face tugged at her. He was struggling with something. He looked so … confused. Lost, and still in pain. Why did she have to be so aware of his feelings?

  ‘You have questions,’ he said at last. ‘I have one.’ His eyes were dark and clouded. She couldn’t read them. Didn’t want to. ‘The thing is … I don’t have all of it.’ Was he stalling? ‘Whatever you did to break through … What did you do?’ Curiosity flashed in the dark eyes. She hesitated.

  ‘You were dreaming. I directed your dreams. Got your subconscious to dismantle the wall, from the inside.’

  ‘Brilliant.’ His face lit with something that disturbed her, down deep. ‘So simple. So perfect.’

  ‘I shouldn’t have. Not while you were sleeping. It wasn’t ethical.’ Did she wish now that she hadn’t?

  He brushed the objection away. ‘It worked.’

  ‘Did it?’ She couldn’t help herself. ‘You said it wasn’t complete.’

  ‘Not entirely. Maybe it needs more work.’ There was something like hope in his eyes. She baulked. She’d have to take him into her bed, her arms; hold him while he slept. No way.

  ‘I’m sure one of your colleagues, or Dr Creed himself, will be able to complete the process, now it’s begun,’ she said primly.

  Unexpectedly he dropped into a chair; put his arms down on the table. ‘We may as well get that one straight. I am Creed.’

  Anger flashed over her. White hot. ‘Don’t tell me that. I’ve met Creed. Listened to him lecture. Shaken his hand. He even signed that bloody book for me. You are not him.’

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  ‘I am Jayston Creed. The man who signed your book is called Eddie Jones.’ Jay’s head was down. He seemed to be finding something fascinating on the scarred surface of the old pine table. ‘He was one of my first associates. There was a mix-up when we presented research papers together at a conference in Berlin. A news service used his picture instead of mine.’ Jay’s voice had no intonation, the flatness of exhaustion. Madison flopped into a chair. This sounded like the truth.

  ‘Big conferences – they were never my thing. I preferred to press on with the work. Eddie was good at putting stuff over to large audiences. The next big event …’ He shrugged. ‘We just kept up the deception. At first it was kind of a joke – seeing if anyone would notice. It worked, and it seemed like a good idea, so … from then on, Eddie became the face of Jayston Creed.’

  ‘But there were other pictures, from the trial,’ she objected.

  She saw him flinch. Had he really expected that she wouldn’t know?

  ‘Archive shots, or snatch stuff, taken with a long lens. Eddie and I, we look enough alike to pass. It was a closed court. The security services saw to that.’

  ‘That’s who you work for now? The security services? They shut down the trial and got you out? Everyone says you’re dead,’ she accused.

  He shrugged.

  She sat back, not wanting to believe him. Unfortunately it made sense. To someone employed in the world she inhabited. No way would she want to work for the people he represented. She never wanted to be that kind of spook, living in a shadow world. Her life was complex enough already. ‘How was it done? The barrier?’

  ‘As you thought, an enhancement of the control function. You were right on the money, Madison.’

  She didn’t want to hear the praise. ‘And that’s what this was about, was it? Testing me?’

  ‘There’s always a place on my team for a fresh mind.’

  ‘Not this one.’ She felt dizzy. She realised it was relief. This was about what this bastard wanted, about him, not about her and her work. It had crossed her mind, sitting in the car in the rain, outside the general store, with its sad little holiday display, that Creed might have another reason for this charade – that he was testing the extent of her powers for her employers. It didn’t look like it. No one was checking up on her. Her life could go on as normal. Once she got this man out of it. ‘I appreciate your flattering interest, Dr Creed, but I don’t have any plans to change my job in the near future. Of course, I may well be wanting to write this up, for the professional journals.’

  She got a nasty spark of pleasure from putting the knife in.

  ‘You may not get the chance to publish it.’

  ‘Threats, Dr Creed?’ She pushed back her chair. ‘I know I’m naive, but I’ve always believed that the truth will out. Somehow.’

  She got to her feet. It was time to finish this. She had all the information she needed. This whole charade had been a perverse, demented job interview. The man had to be more than three-parts crazy. Hold that thought.

  She shut her mind to the clamouring curiosity that wanted to ask for the real story. Did you kill your wife, Dr Creed? Did you get away with murder?

  And the anguish behind the curiosity. We made love. When you were inside me, did that mean anything? She blanked the thought, forcing all the power she had into it. No memories about lying in the arms of a murderer. No wondering if she could, even now, learn to trust this man.

  ‘I think we’re finished here. Do you want a lift?’

  ‘Thanks, but I’ll walk.’

  Madison opened her mouth to argue, then shut it. Why did she care? He’d go as far as the nearest phone and call up whatever backup team he had in place. There’d probably be a fast car to collect him within the hour, maybe even a helicopter.

  Backup team – the ones intercepting her results at the lab? It fitted.

  And never mind if it messes me up with my current employer – having someone else sniffing around. Thanks a bunch, you arrogant bastard.

  The fresh pulse of anger was hot, but it didn’t do much to warm the cold place inside her.

  She stood beside the sink, well away from him. No excuse for him to brush close to her when he left. That cold place in her heart yearned for one last touch, but it wasn’t going to happen. If he touched her she might still unravel in his arms. She couldn’t even trust herself.

  After a pause, when he seemed to be gathering himself together, Jay got up. He reached for the waterproof coat that was hanging on the back of the door.

  ‘I’ll go now. I don’t need to take anything with me.’ He stopped, eyes searching her face. She kept it averted, watching him covertly from under her lashes, keeping her mind veiled, blocking out any probe he might send in. He took a step towards her. Instinctively she leaned back, ready to move. He raised his hand, then dropped it again, in a curiously forlorn gesture that added another unwelcome layer of ice to the ache in her heart. She felt sick. Just leave, why don’t you?

  ‘You should stay on here, Madison.’ His voice was low, but unexpectedly urgent. ‘The forecast is for more fine weather. Take a longer holiday. You deserve it.’

  She caught her breath at the barefaced cheek, but even outrage wasn’t going to make her look at him. ‘You’re not my boss, Dr Creed, nor likely to be. Goodbye.’

  He hesitated for a moment longer,
eyes still fixed on her profile. Then, at last, he turned to open the door. ‘Goodbye, Madison. Take care.’

  The door closed. She heard the crunch of his step on the gravel path for a few paces and then – nothing.

  With a swift pounce towards the table, she snatched up the mug that he’d used, hurled it at the wall, and burst into tears.

  Jay turned his collar up and began walking along the empty road. Rain had soaked his hair in seconds, running down his face. His head was still fuzzy. Regret was pulling, like a sickening millstone, on his neck. He wiped his hand across his eyes, not sure whether all the wetness was rain.

  If only … Saddest two words in any language. He straightened up. No point in going there. He’d known the price of failure before he got into this.

  If he could save Madison, then it wouldn’t be a failure.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  She’d run out of tissues. Which meant it was time to stop crying.

  There was a long stain of coffee on the kitchen wall, with the debris of the mug below. She got a cloth and dustpan. A small cut on her finger from the broken pottery almost made her cry again. She sniffed, wiping her nose on her sleeve.

  She’d had what … a lucky escape? A close encounter of the worst kind?

  She sat down heavily on the floor. So many things were slotting into place. She had never met the real Creed. Not until you picked him up one night in a dark alley. No wonder she’d always found their official meetings curiously flat, and disappointing. She’d shaken the hand of Eddie Jones, the substitute, not Creed, the real deal. Jonathan was going to love this story. As soon as she got back.

  She looked around the room. She could pack the car and be in London in four or five hours. Lock this place and throw away the key. Erase all traces of Jay from the studio and the apartment. Get her work back on track – pick up all the projects she’d let slide in the last two months. Be ready for a fresh start on Wednesday, when the lab reopened.

  It sounded like a plan.

  She got to her feet. The rain was coming down in sheets. Anyone foolish enough to be out walking in it was going to get really, really wet.