by Kate Johnson
‘No. But I bet they’re pretty damn friendly with MI5, aren’t they?’
‘Actually there’s a lot of interdepartmental rivalry,’ I began, but Jack’s eyes narrowed so I tried again. ‘I didn’t tell Luke where we were.’
‘You did. I heard you. You told him we were in London.’
‘London’s a pretty big place!’
‘Crawling with CCTV. He could have found you. Could have spotted us yesterday at BBC&H. Or,’ the gun seemed to get closer, ‘maybe you were the one who told Harrington where we were.’
‘Why would I do that?’ I yelped. ‘Why would I bring the man who’s chasing us – who’s chasing me – down on us?’
‘Well, maybe you’re not who you say you are, Sophie Green,’ Jack said. ‘Maybe you’re not an ex-spy after all.’
‘Jack,’ I said as steadily as I could, which considering the yawning barrel of the Beretta looming in front of me wasn’t very damn steady at all, ‘I am not working with MI5. Or 6. Or any government agency. I work in a bookshop. I’m retired.’
‘You’re a bit young for a pension,’ he snapped.
‘I can still be retired from my old job! I’m not a spy! I’m on your side! Jack, please.’
He regarded me unwaveringly for a long, terrible moment. Then he said, ‘Get out of the car.’
‘Why?’
‘I’m the one with the gun, just do as I fucking say,’ he said.
I raised my palms and got out.
‘Get him out, too,’ Jack said, gesturing to the driver. I glanced at him, a big man in his fifties.
‘I’m not sure –’
‘Do. It.’
I reached in and unfastened the driver’s seatbelt. The front of the cab stank of cigarettes and halitosis. Where the driver was slumped forward I could see the blood on the back of his head, and I paused to check his pulse.
‘What are you doing?’
‘You could have killed him,’ I said, but I was relieved to feel the blood thudding under his skin. I took the man’s arm and tried to pull him out of the car, but he wouldn’t move.
I glanced at Jack, an idea forming in my head. ‘I can’t do it by myself,’ I said, even though I probably could. I’m hardly a weakling. ‘You’ll have to help me.’
Jack hesitated, then, swearing, he tucked the pistol into his jeans and came forward.
Whereupon I lamped him with my handbag, made heavy by all the essentials I’d piled in there.
Oh yes, and the weight of two guns.
Jack wavered, and I hit him again, frantic now. He crashed against the open cab door and went down.
‘Oh God,’ I gasped, looking at the two unconscious men in front of me. ‘Oh God, oh God.’
I’d just knocked Jack unconscious. Hit him on the back of the head and knocked him out. All right, he’d done the same to me back in France, but this …
… this felt very bad. I glanced around, terrified someone might have seen, but we were alone. I forced myself to calm down and think of my options.
I ought to put the driver’s money back in the cab and walk away. I ought to sit and wait for Jack to come round.
Instead I looked around for CCTV and when I found the camera, fired my gun at it. The silencer muffled the sound, which was as well as it took me a couple of goes.
Then I took Jack’s gun and the money belt, heaved him with some effort into the back of the cab and, as an afterthought, went through his pockets. Vallie’s cash and cards were still there.
I put the lot into my bag, shut the cab doors, and walked away.
My legs were shaking as I emerged into the sunlight. My head was reeling. My face was hot and damp with perspiration. I made it inside the terminal, and forced myself to think logically.
Jack and the cabbie would be coming around soon. Depending on who woke up first, I’d either have a very angry ex-partner after me, or a cabbie reporting assault to the police. They’d be looking for me. They’d start here.
I nearly ran to the nearest cash machine and withdrew the daily maximum from all of Vallie’s cards. The silly frivolous creature hadn’t cancelled them yet. Then I made my way as quickly as possible, which wasn’t very quickly at all in an airport roughly the size of China, to the coach terminal.
‘Gatwick airport, please,’ I said at the kiosk, and paid in cash.
I spent the journey planning what to do next. Getting out of the country seemed like a good idea, what with MI5 being after me, and after the cabbie incident, probably the police, too. I’d need to look different, because if there was the smallest suspicion that the people who’d robbed the cab driver were me and Jack, they’d start searching CCTV with facial recog software, and I’d be really screwed. Okay, so facial recog isn’t a hundred percent reliable, but was fifty percent something I could gamble on? Sixty? Eighty?
Also, I needed to do something about the three – three! – guns I was currently carrying. I damn well wasn’t going about unarmed, but how to get them on a flight?
It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve travelled armed, but it’s a very different situation if you’re on legitimate business. People don’t really like the idea that they’re on the same flight as a firearm, but it happens all the time. People take shotguns on shooting holidays quite often – you just turn up with the gun in one secure case, the ammunition in another, and your licence, and the police handle it. The cases are tagged and taken by the police directly to the aircraft, away from the public areas of the airport, and stowed in a secure part of the hold. At the other end the process is repeated. The guns go nowhere near the passenger cabin or the flight deck of the plane, and they’re not allowed to be loaded with ammunition, either.
Yes. That is a speech I learned when I worked on check-in.
I took a breath and blew it out. I didn’t have a licence for any of these guns. The only one I even used to be able to claim legitimate ownership of was my SIG and that was now officially at the bottom of a Cornish harbour. Even if I had the licence it’d be no good. Quite apart from the expiration date, the damn thing had my real name all over it.
If Luke was here he’d know what to do. Or Docherty.
Wait – Docherty.
Time to get myself further into debt.
Chapter Eight
‘I didn’t think it was possible,’ said the cold voice in his ear, ‘but she’s in even more trouble.’
Luke glared out of the window at the car which had followed him back from London. Right now he wasn’t sure if it was MI5 or 6. He wouldn’t put it past Sheila to spy on him at home. Hell, she’d done it at the office.
‘Enlighten me,’ he said.
‘Assault and theft. Kidnapped a taxi driver at gunpoint, robbed him and knocked him unconscious.’
He closed his eyes. ‘How do you know it was her?’
‘He was instructed to take two people to the offices of BBC&H, but they panicked on seeing someone outside and told him to go to Heathrow instead, where he was robbed. He gave a physical description that matches your Sophie and a young man also wanted for the murder of, coincidentally,’ her voice dripped disdain, ‘the murder of a former BBC&H partner. We do cross-reference these things. Which is why 5 had the office under surveillance. It seems she has a partner in crime. We’re checking Heathrow’s CCTV now.’
Fuck. Fuck. ‘It wasn’t her. Sophie wouldn’t do that.’
‘I’d lay odds she just has. Did you know she was in the country?’
Soft curves and damp skin, lips parted on a gasp, soft hair sliding between his fingers, wide blue eyes and the clutch of her hand on his shoulder –
‘No,’ Luke said as expressionlessly as he could. ‘Why would she come back here? It’s too dangerous.’
‘She’s stupid, and she’s taking risks,’ Sheila said bluntly.
Rage rose in Luke and he shoved it back down again. Sheila was right: it was a stupid thing to do. He himself had accused Sophie of monumental stupidity on more than one occasion. She was reckless and had a tendency to a
ct before she thought. He knew that. He could say it to her.
Sheila couldn’t.
‘It could have been anybody,’ Luke said. ‘Someone’s set her up for this, there’s more to it than we know right now. And how detailed was this guy’s description anyway? It could have been anyone.’
‘A tall young man with dark hair, olive complexion, medium build –’
‘Could be anybody,’ Luke said dismissively, but the thought of this tall young man being comfortable enough with Sophie to answer her damn phone, spending all this time with her, God damn him, it was all too much. She’s mine. She was in my arms last night.
He could only attribute what he said next to jealousy, lust, or anger. Some cocktail of the three.
‘How’d he describe Sophie? Tall brunette with big boobs and a tendency to trip over her own feet?’
There was a pause, and Luke wondered what he’d done, specifically, to annoy her this time.
Then it hit him like a fist to the gut.
‘How,’ Sheila said, ‘did you know she’s a brunette?’
It turned out to be surprisingly simple to look like a different person. Some fake tan, those cheap reading specs, a scarf to cover my hair. I’ve been told ears are as distinctive as fingerprints, so I covered mine up. I used Vallie’s money to book flights from and to several completely random destinations. Paris to Bombay. London to Amsterdam. Los Angeles to Sydney. I even checked in on a few of them. No one commented on my travelling without luggage on a long-haul flight. Trust me, when you’ve been up since three a.m. and have dealt with nervous flyers and lost passports, passengers with thirty kilos excess baggage who don’t understand a word of English, and school parties where every single child wants to be reseated next to his friends but not near that loser from Mrs Smith’s class, then you could check in a pantomime horse and barely notice.
I knew that eventually, if they discovered my pseudonym, I’d be tracked to a passenger manifest. But I was a step ahead. That was all I needed right now: to be one step ahead.
I tried not to let the thought hit me that Jack was half a step behind me.
I made it through Security without a single eyelid being batted, and in a wave of relief hit the shops. I desperately needed clothes and toiletries, although I confess I probably could have done without shopping in Chanel. What the hell. All the adrenaline was making me dizzy. I bought a smart new bag to stash all my new things in. When I passed Dixon’s, I wandered in and found myself in possession of a shiny new smart phone. Hell, I had a long flight ahead of me. Learning how to use the damn thing might occupy a portion of it.
In the souvenir shop I bought a selection of baseball caps with Tower Bridge and Stonehenge on them. If I’d got this far, it meant no facial recog software was being used, but I didn’t want to take any more chances.
I changed hats several times in the departures lounge, and coats and jackets, too. I’d already changed my outfit in the Ladies. Always trying to stay ahead of the cameras.
Shopping had helped erase some of my fears about getting on a flight with a fake passport. No one really checked. But then that’s not what ground staff are there for. Their job is to check you have the correct document – that the passport isn’t out of date or belonging to the wrong person, that it doesn’t require a visa and that, basically, it’s not going to result in the passenger being put on the next flight back, at the airline’s expense.
The job of checking for fake or falsified documents falls to Immigration at your destination. And that was the part that bloody terrified me.
I ought to have spent the flight thinking about how to evade capture once I arrived, and what my next step would be regarding tracking down who’d really framed us. Framed me. I had no idea if I could trust Jack right now. But I was so tired. Guilty about all the shopping I’d done with stolen money. Frightened about the reality I was now living in. And angry. Angry with myself for being so damn weak and stupid as to go and see Luke, and angry for arguing with him, when who knew if I’d ever see him again? What if I was taken into custody when I landed, or chased down and killed, and the last words I ever exchanged with him were in anger?
I buried my face in my hands, and when the flight attendant asked if I was all right, I gave her a weak smile. ‘Scared of flying,’ I told her. ‘Is it too early to get a vodka?’
I had to wait until we were fully airborne for my drink, but by then I’d calmed myself down a bit. It will all be fine, I told myself. It will all be fine.
I’m such a bad liar.
Lord of the Rings was on as part of the entertainment, so I watched that. Hours and hours of Viggo Mortensen and Orlando Bloom gave me very sweet dreams, and for a while I forgot that I was wanted for murder, theft, taxi hijacking (well, probably, by now), that my former partner-in-crime was out to get me, that I was armed with nothing scarier than a pair of heels, my boyfriend wasn’t talking to me, and I was less than sure of the reception I’d get when I landed.
‘Oh, Sophie,’ Aragorn husked, drawing me into his arms as I brushed the blood and sweat from his face, ‘I fought out there for you. You are the reason I want to save Middle Earth. Come away with me to the Undying Lands, forget about that pointy-eared freak and –’
‘Excuse me, miss? Can you fasten your seatbelt, please? We’re beginning our descent.’
Right. Yes.
It was a relief to step out into the cold night air in Chicago. Waiting in the queue for Immigration, I started to get nervous. My ESTA had been approved and I’d kept a copy of the details with my passport, but hey, even when I’m travelling legitimately I get tense at Immigration.
The immigration officer asked for my fingerprints, and nervously, I put my index finger on the scanner.
In the bathroom on the plane, I’d already swapped my contacts and rolled on the fake fingertips. One of them kept coming off, which gave me panic attacks, but I stuck a sticking plaster over it, which seemed to work.
The woman never batted an eyelid – and neither did I, when the iris scanner accepted my patterned lenses. She read the address for my first night’s accommodation, an address I’d utterly invented. She stamped my passport, wished me a nice day, and never once looked me in the eye.
I walked away without looking back, tickets for an onward journey in my pocket, tired and frightened and exhilarated all at the same time.
I’d got away with it.
‘Tsow nee dzoo dzohng shih bah die,’ he said to the phone.
Sheila paused. ‘I wasn’t aware you spoke Mandarin.’
He didn’t. But Sophie had sat him down in front of the TV and demanded he watch every episode of Firefly, and he’d been physically unable to resist translating the Chinese insults. He wondered if Sheila knew what he’d just told her to do to eighteen generations of her ancestors, or if she was bluffing.
‘There’re a lot of things you’re not aware of,’ he said, and ended the call.
She’d ordered him down to London. He’d refused. She’d threatened to send someone to his flat to frogmarch him away. Luke reset all his alarms and checked his gun was loaded. She ordered him to tell her everything Sophie had said and done. Which was when he started insulting her in Chinese.
The really awful thing was that she was right. It had been really stupid of Sophie to come to his flat. It had been reckless. And no matter how much he desperately wanted to see her, how much he needed to touch her, he should have sent her away immediately.
He rolled his head back against the sofa and blew out a sigh. He should have warned her Harrington would trace her. He should –
Wait. How had Harrington known she’d be going to BBC&H? Why were they waiting for her there? He couldn’t possibly have known that Sophie had been to see Luke, or he’d have been up here like a shot, rattling him for information. Sheila would have got wind of it.
Why were they waiting at BBC&H?
With a sick feeling, he realised the truth. They hadn’t been waiting for Sophie. They must have been following him.
I slept overnight at JFK and took the first flight to Cincinnati, where I rented a car and drove eighty or so miles through the early morning to a small town called Waiting, which I imagined did a brisk trade in comedy postcards. It was the first time I’d ever driven in America, but after British traffic jams, French aggression and Italian lunacy, it was a breeze.
Wearily, I checked the directions from the sat-nav on my phone, and I was a few streets away from my destination when I saw a little girl walking along the pavement, long shiny dark hair draped over her backpack.
She looked a little alarmed to see the car stopping beside her, and when I wound down the window and said, ‘Hi!’ she nearly fainted.
‘Oh my God! Sophie?’
‘Hi, Rachel. How you been?’
She stared at me, her dark eyes huge. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s a long story.’
‘Dad said you were on the lam.’
‘Maybe it’s a really short story.’
‘Do you need a place to stay? I’m sure my grandparents won’t mind if you crash at mine.’
I love this kid.
‘Are you on your way to school?’
She nodded. ‘The bus stop is just down there.’ She cocked her head. ‘Or you could give me a ride.’
‘Hey, didn’t your grandma ever tell you not to get into cars with strange people?’
‘But I know you.’
‘I’m still a very strange person.’
Rachel grinned. ‘Only in the literal sense. Hey, I don’t suppose you’d consider helping me cut, would you?’
‘Cut school?’
I narrowed my eyes calculatingly.
‘What do you have today?’
‘Math. I hate math.’
‘Very useful, though.’
Rachel looked sceptical. ‘Like trig is useful.’
She was nine. Nine. How the hell did she even know what trigonometry was?
‘And I have gym,’ she added, trying to look sad.
‘Okay, get in.’
I hated gym when I was a kid. Still do. That’s why I’m not skinny.
Rachel directed me to the centre of town where there was an ice cream parlour, told me that their choc fudge sundaes were to die for, and I decided that of all the things I might potentially die for in the near future, an ice cream was probably one of the best.