by Kate Johnson
‘What happened to you?’
‘Inter-departmental co-operation.’
‘In English?’
‘Harrington beat the shit out of me for information.’
‘Robert Harrington?’ Luke nodded. Harvey whistled. ‘You give it to him?’
Luke gave him a look.
‘Okay, all right, just checking. Listen, I spoke to her this morning.’
Luke’s head jerked up, which introduced him to a new specific kind of pain. ‘You did what?’ She hadn’t returned his calls, any of them, but she’d speak to Harvey? Was their relationship really in that much trouble?
‘Yeah. Saw her a couple of days ago, too. She’s doing okay. Well, I mean she’s tired, but –’
‘Where is she?’
Harvey’s eyes narrowed the tiniest fraction. ‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘You bloody well can. I don’t care what rules or orders or whatever you’re disobeying, but I have to know where she is. I have to warn her.’
‘Warn her what?’
He felt like crying. ‘Alexa Martin. She’s out, Harvey. She got out of jail.’
Harvey stared, the most shocked Luke had ever seen him. ‘But – how? She’s a psychopath!’
‘I know. And she hates Sophie. Think about it. Who else is as likely to be behind all this?’
Harvey frowned, tilting his head. ‘I don’t know, I mean … are you sure?’
‘That she’s out? Yes. They’re trying to keep it quiet. Don’t want to panic the populace. I mean, she did kill –’
‘A hundred-and-forty-three people. I remember.’
‘And maybe more now. And Sophie has to know. I have to warn her. So I need you to tell me,’ Luke leaned forward, ‘where she is.’
Harvey gave him a long, considering look. Then he said, ‘I can’t do that.’
‘Tell me or I will shoot you in the head, right here in front of everybody.’
‘I can’t tell you because I don’t know.’
‘But you saw her –’
‘Two days ago. I saw her onto a train. Going north.’
‘North? North where? We’re in bloody Connecticut, where the hell else is north of here?’
Harvey looked down at his bourbon. He drank some. ‘Luke,’ he said, ‘I am not saying this as a CIA officer. And I’m not saying it to you as an MI6 officer. I’m saying it to you as a friend who thinks you really need some advice.’
‘I don’t need relationship advice from someone whose job involves getting shot at five thousand miles away from his pregnant wife.’
‘It’s better than getting shot at in close proximity to my pregnant wife,’ Harvey said calmly. ‘Did you fly here under your own name?’
Luke shrugged and nodded. ‘The Service know all my aliases anyway.’
‘Right. And you’ll have been under surveillance, yes?’
‘Since she disappeared, more or less, yes.’ He’d stopped even looking for them now.
‘So it’s not unreasonable to suspect someone’s followed you?’
‘Well, you did, right?’
‘We’ve had tabs on you since you got on the plane.’
Of course they had. ‘I expect half the people in this bar are MI5.’
‘Right. And they’re going to continue to follow you. And if you lead them to Sophie, what do you think they’ll do?’
Luke stared at him, too tired to think. ‘They’ll arrest her and bring her home –’
‘Will they? The people who beat the shit out of you? Luke, I’ve heard about this guy. He’s a pitbull. He thinks Sophie is a traitor. He finds her, he’ll rip her apart.’
‘He can’t –’
‘Can’t? Like he “can’t” beat up a fellow officer?’
‘Funny story there,’ Luke said. ‘Not entirely sure if I am a fellow officer right now.’
Harvey stared at him. ‘Jesus, Luke.’
Luke drained his glass.
‘Look, I know you’re tired. I know you’re worried.’
‘Exhausted and terrified is more like it.’
‘I was trying to spare your British pride. Listen, what are those books Sophie’s always reading? The fantasy ones.’
Luke looked up, frowning at this non-sequitur. ‘Terry Pratchett?’
‘Yeah. She was telling me once how they introduced her to the concept that personal isn’t the same thing as important. You have to think with your head on this one.’
He stared at the table. Sheila had told him the same thing, what felt like decades ago. Sophie herself had refused to give him her location.
Harvey drained his glass. ‘Look, if our situations were reversed, if it was me going after Angel, what would you tell me?’ He held up a hand pre-emptively. ‘Barring the question of what Angel would be doing on the run in the first place. Would you let me run after her? Or would you tell me to use my goddamned brain and back off?’
There wasn’t anything Luke could think of say to that.
In the last, slow hours of morning I got no sleep. I lay awake for hours, Jack asleep in my arms, his breathing soft and even. He was calm at last. Comforted at last.
But in comforting him, I’d destroyed myself. Too shocked to cry, too numb to feel pain, I lay awake in the moonlight, cradling my lover.
My lover.
Everything else had fallen away from me at some time during the night, and I could see with horrible, exacting clarity exactly what the situation was. Luke and I had fought. We hadn’t broken up, we’d fought. We’d fought because he’d sent Jack after me. Not, as my confused and frightened psyche had decided, because he wanted to break up with me, but because he was concerned about me.
Appalled, I stared at the ceiling. Why now? Why couldn’t I have realised this before I slept with Jack? Why had it taken this, this … stupidity, to jolt my brain out of its terror and confusion and see clearly? Why now, when it was far too late?
Luke was still in contact. Still texting me. Still sending voicemails. He didn’t hate me, didn’t want to be free of me.
But he had threatened me, and he didn’t even know it. I was in trouble, so much trouble, and not just from the deranged killer who seemed to be stalking me. From Jack, who I’d considered a threat to my life, to my freedom – but never to my relationship.
And Luke had sent him to me.
I wondered what Luke was doing now, if he was sitting at home worrying about me. If he was up all night searching through files for information about this Sarah Wilde. If he was still trying to call me, while I’d run away to my remote hideaway where he couldn’t reach me. If he knew, if he’d find out what I’d been doing. And if I wanted him to.
Jack shifted in my arms, his unshaven cheek rough against my neck. He felt good in my arms. But he didn’t feel right.
What the hell had I done?
He saw the dawn in with the last of the bourbon. The TV burbled away, showing programmes he didn’t recognise, adverts for products he’d never heard of, news reports on stories he really didn’t care about.
He flicked from channel to channel, trying to find something, anything, that actually had any meaning. A bulletin about an escaped British prisoner. A car chase in which said prisoner was gunned down and killed. A report about two fugitives being taken into custody.
But there was nothing. He lit another cigarette and peered at the clock. The first flight out was in a few hours. He could get on it, as Harvey had told him to, or he could get in a car or on a train and go north and utterly fail to have any idea where Sophie might be. Or he could stay here in this hotel room and drink himself to death.
He flicked from channel to channel. He picked up his phone and dialled Sophie’s number. Nothing.
He changed channels again.
I guess I must have dozed a little: my body was exhausted, even if my mind refused to shut down. What woke me was the shots nearby.
Jack jerked suddenly awake, clutching at me. A kind of clammy nausea gripped my insides, the shock of memory hitting me a
s if one of those shots had been aimed at me.
‘What the hell was that?’ Jack hissed.
I shook myself. Focus, Sophie. Gunshots are more important than the shoddy state of your conscience.
And then there was another one. Definitely a gunshot.
‘Shit,’ Jack said, and scrambled out of bed. He pulled on his jeans first, tucked his gun under the waistband and shrugged into a t-shirt. ‘Stay there,’ he said, and left the room, barefoot.
I stayed there. For about ten seconds. Then I threw the covers back, wincing when my arm reminded me I’d been damn well shot, and pulled on my own clothes. I checked my gun, tucked it in my waistband, and checked the recorder in my pocket.
It was cold outside, still really freezing cold, and pre-dawn dark. There was just enough light from the stars and moon that I saw the door of the main house standing open. Jack was nowhere outside, so I guessed he had to be inside. Where the gunshots had come from.
The air was cold, but so was I. Frightened, in a deep ball down inside somewhere, but externally I suddenly felt bulletproof. Reckless. Last night had been the single most stupid thing I’d ever done in my entire life. Whatever waited for me inside the house couldn’t be worse.
I crept up the steps to the porch. Two of them creaked and I shushed them, my heart pounding. Evidently it hadn’t heard about being bulletproof. Probably it was nothing, uh, someone cleaning a gun like in Gone With The Wind or something. Yes. Except that wasn’t really anyone cleaning a gun, and besides, who cleans a gun in the early hours of the morning?
I got to the front door. The house was dark, but if I listened really, really hard, I could hear someone moving about inside.
Here goes.
I flicked the safety off, held my gun high and walked inside as quietly as I could. My ankle clicked loudly and I froze in agonised silence for what felt like about ten minutes before I yanked together enough courage to move again.
I was in the hallway. To my right was a dining room, to my left a cosy living room. Ahead of me were stairs and a corridor leading to a kitchen. All of it was very, very dark, the sort of total dark you only get in the country.
A shadow moved in front of the kitchen window. My trigger finger suddenly felt very stiff.
It’ll be Jack, I told myself. Just Jack.
Just Jack. How Will & Grace. See, funny, think funny things. You told Jack it was all okay, and you can’t lie to him, not now. It will have to be okay.
For him, at any rate.
The shadow bent down to something on the floor, and as my eyes adjusted a little I could see that it was a person. A man. The shadow was Jack and the thing on the floor was a man. A dead man. Jack had a gun in his hand and the floor was covered in a dark pool of liquid
I took a step back, and as I did my eyes flickered up to the landing. And there behind the beautifully turned spindles of the wooden railings, was a body in a pale wrapping. A woman, blood staining her nightgown. She sprawled down the stairs, unmoving, unnatural. Dead.
‘Jack,’ I croaked hoarsely, and he looked up, and opened his mouth to say something.
And then the world exploded.
Well, not so much the world, but the kitchen. There was a bang and a massive fireball, and I stood paralysed. Jack had been flung across the kitchen and now I couldn’t see him. Tremors shook the building.
And then I found my feet, and raced forward, into the furnace of the kitchen. Everything was burning. Everything was made out of wood or fabric, and it was all turning to smoke and dust. I couldn’t breathe. My eyes burned viciously. It was all so bright and so, so goddamned hot. It was like hell in there. The fire was deafening, crackling so loud I couldn’t tell if I was imagining the bangs of gas tanks and oil reservoirs exploding. And I could see something behind the flaming, crackling wreck of the kitchen table, something that might have been Jack. But I couldn’t tell.
‘Jack,’ I yelled, but the fire was too loud and I couldn’t even hear myself. ‘Jack!’
I took another step forward, but the air was choking and I fell back. I raced back into the living room where the flames were just starting to break through, stared wildly around and ripped a throw off the back of the sofa. I slung it over my shoulders like a shawl, pulling a fold over my nose and mouth, and ventured back into the furnace.
The furnace. Of course. Someone must have shot a gas tank or something. That would account for the explosion.
I took a few cautious steps further forward than I’d been before. Christ, it was so hot. Sweat was trickling down my face. I could see Jack, and I was sure it was him and I knew he was still alive. He was blackened and still, but I couldn’t leave him.
And then something creaked and cracked above me, and I looked up and saw a hole in the ceiling. I saw it, moved, and seconds later a beam smashed down onto the floor where I’d been standing. Flames blossomed from it and when I ventured closer, my blanket caught fire and I shoved it to the ground, hopping back hastily before it toasted me, too.
Wall cupboards started falling down. The walls were disintegrating. I looked back at the hall and saw the fire spreading. If I didn’t get out now, I’d never get out. I wasn’t bulletproof at all.
‘I’m sorry, Jack,’ I choked, and stumbled out of the kitchen. As I ran through the hall, dodging the bannister spindles which were tumbling one by one, flaming like a cheerleader’s batons, I heard more loud bangs, and figured it was more things exploding in the house, until I glanced through the front door to the porch and saw a figure outlined there by the flames, a silhouette with a gun. Firing at me.
I ducked and darted into the dining room, which was a bad choice because most of the furniture there was made of wood. Suddenly, I realised what it must be like for those hedgehogs who curl up in bonfire pyres and then can’t get out when they’ve been lit. I grabbed a chair by the bit that wasn’t flaming and started smashing it at the far window. Then I hurled myself through it, and found to my surprise that the house was built on a hill, and this was the bit that sloped downwards. I fell six or seven feet before I landed, and my ankle gave a loud crack as it took the full weight of my five feet and ten inches of well-padded frame.
I rolled down the hill and lay at the bottom, a safe distance from the burning monstrosity of the house, panting and sobbing without even realising it. I could hardly breathe. My lungs felt full of ash, dry and hot and about to turn themselves inside out with coughing.
I hauled myself onto my back. Sweet merciful crap, my ankle hurt. I couldn’t move it much. There was no question of standing on it.
And then it got worse.
Just as I was trying to figure out how far away my gun was and where it might have ended up after that tumble down the hill, I heard footsteps running down the slope. I looked up.
It was a woman, dressed in black. Her hair was dark, tied back and clinging to her neck with sweat and grime. She had a weapon belt on and a gun in her hand.
Her hand.
She had her index finger on the trigger and her middle finger curled around the barrel. Except that it wasn’t her middle finger, it was simply her other finger. Where the last two should have been there was nothing. The outside of her hand was just not there.
‘I don’t know why you’re staring,’ she said, and I dragged my eyes up to her face. ‘You did it.’
The funny thing was, despite all my denials, despite all the reasons why it couldn’t have been possible, I wasn’t surprised. It felt as if I’d always known, that the knowledge had always been there inside me, and it was only now that it was emerging.
‘Alexa,’ I said. ‘Fancy seeing you here. How was prison?’
‘Revolting,’ she said, ‘but sadly you’ll never find out. I’ve been torn between letting them catch you and killing you myself, but you really are a bugger, Miss Green. You just won’t be caught. Run, rabbit, run, rabbit, run run run …’ she sang, miming running with the fingers of her free – and whole – hand. In her voice the nursery rhyme sounded sinister, distorted.
As well it might. The woman was bloody insane.
‘How did you get out?’ The last I’d heard she’d been sentenced to about a million life sentences. People who committed crimes like Alexa had didn’t get parole.
She shrugged. ‘Bribery. Blackmail. Drugs. Distraction. It’s not hard when you’re an evil genius and the authorities are all incompetent and easily corrupted.’
‘You’re Sarah Wilde,’ I said.
‘Yep. I look damn good for someone who had a broken back five years ago, don’t you think?’
‘Did you ever get your money?’
Her nostrils flared. ‘You’ve been digging. But of course, that’s just what you do. You find out the truth. And you stop the bad guys.’
‘While you kill the good guys.’
‘Oh, come on. Irene Shepherd tried to blackmail me. Well, she didn’t try, so much as succeed. She knew, you see, what I’d hidden from everyone else.’
‘That you weren’t really crippled in a wheelchair?’
‘Exactly. Hard to start a new life when everyone knows about your old one. It’s expensive to run for Supreme Court Judge, you know. She was going for Chief Justice next year.’
‘But why Jack? What’s he done to you?’
She shrugged again. ‘Right place, right time. Could have been anyone.’
I squeezed my eyes shut. Oh, Jack.
‘Sir Theodore?’
‘Failed to get me my money. Imagine my absolute glee when I found out you were visiting him. You! Two birds with one stone. Just couldn’t resist.’ She put her head on one side, as if considering who else she might have murdered. ‘And of course, he knew my secret, too. The security guard got in my way. Couldn’t take the risk. The maid …’ she shrugged. ‘Could have figured it out –’
Could have? Christ.
‘So I got Canolti to help me out. Christ, he was an arse. What sort of idiot leaves his phone number with a woman he’s been sent to kill? Thanks for taking care of him, by the way.’
‘It was Jack,’ I said, my voice breaking ever so slightly on his name. ‘He shot Canolti.’
‘Well, what do I care?’
‘Why the doctor and his sister?’
Alexa shrugged. ‘The sister was collateral damage. I knew you’d go running to the good doctor for answers. And he was a good doctor. Look how much I can move.’ She kicked out at my ankle and white-hot pain shot through me. ‘More than you can, anyway. Hey, Sophie?’