by Blake Banner
I took a moment to put some Wensleydale on a cracker, eat it and sip some whiskey. English cheese and Irish whiskey is a combination that would make the gods weep with envy.
“Marni, I have loved you since I was a kid. You were always the only girl for me, and you still are. I thought—I hoped—that Abi would make me forget…” I shook my head. “But I never did.”
I saw tears in her eyes, but she was smiling. “I never forgot either, Lacklan.”
“When you told Gibbons about the job in Europe, I thought—I hoped, again—that that would cure me. But it didn’t. You are the only thing that makes sense to me in this world, Marni. I got into this whole business with Omega because I thought you were in danger. I went to find you. It’s what I’ve been doing all my life, looking for you.”
She frowned, reaching for my hands again. “But why, when I came to London, what was it, seven years ago now? Why did you send me away?”
“Because I was stupid, Marni. Because I was trying to protect you from what I had become. Because I didn’t want you to be a part of what I was. But that is all over now. I’m done with it, and the fact is, Omega is finished. There is no way they can recover from what we have done to them. So I’m done, and I want to do something different with my life now, Marni.”
Her eyes were bright and she was smiling. “What do you want to do?”
“I want to stop destroying and killing, and I want to start creating, and giving life. I want you to come back to Boston with me. I want you to be my wife. I want to have children. And together I want us to think of ways that we can make a difference.” She closed her eyes and squeezed my hand and I saw a tear trickle down her cheek. For a moment, I felt a stab of anxiety. “Will you do that?”
She opened her eyes, gave a small, wet laugh and nodded. “Yes.”
“You know, Ben always criticized me, both of us, because we attacked Omega, but we never had anything to put in its place. We offered no solution, no alternative. So, now that they are broken, maybe we, with Cyndi and others, maybe we can start to work on a solution, a way of offering hope…”
She reached across the table with her right hand and put her finger to my lips. “One step at a time. First, let’s heal a bit, spend some time, you and me, together, building a home; not fighting any wars, but enjoying each other and being happy.”
“See? That’s why I need you in my life.”
She laughed. I laughed too and it felt good. We finished the cheese and ordered another round of Irish and talked about our plans. She clung to my hand again with both of hers. “Don’t go back yet! Stay with me for the month while I wrap things up. Call Kenny in the morning and give him the news…”
“He’ll be happy. He always wanted it to be you.”
“Bless him! We’ll get a shipping company to send my stuff over. Then, Lacklan, let’s go by boat! To New York! We’ll take a cruise! And then we’ll drive up to Boston!”
“That sounds perfect…”
“And we’ll get married at the church, in May! Please?”
The church where Ben and my father were buried. I put the thought from my mind and smiled. “Anything you want, Marni.”
She was quiet for a bit, smiling back at me. Finally, she said, “All I want, all I have ever wanted, was you. We’ve both made mistakes in the past, Lacklan. But this time we are going to get it right.”
“Yes.” I reached across now and took her hand. “Come on. Let’s go. I want to tell you things I can’t tell you in public. I need to whisper them.” I winked and her cheeks colored.
I called the waitress for the bill and while she was getting it, Marni became pensive. “Lacklan, do you remember a long time ago, in Colorado, when this whole business began, I gave you my diary?”
“Sure. I still have it.”
“And I kept telling you to do your reading…”
I frowned and thought about it. “Yeah, I guess you did say that a couple of times.”
“Did you ever do it?”
“My reading?”
“The diary! Did you ever read the diary?”
I shrugged. “I read bits…”
She shook her head and smiled. “Son of a gun…”
“Why?”
The waitress came with the bill. I paid and looked at Marni, waiting for an answer.
She shook her head. “Come on, I’ll tell you on the way home.”
We stepped out into the warm evening air. I stood on the outside and she clung to my arm with both of hers. We started to walk along the old street, with the amber streetlamps washing the blacktop and the ancient buildings. “You remember there was a whole business about my father’s research? Everybody was searching for it high and low. Omega were crazy to get their hands on it…”
“I remember. I thought you and Gibbons got hold of it, when you arranged the conference at the UN.”
She leaned against me slightly. The cars sighed as they past. We dodged a couple of people, strolling, taking our time. “Not exactly.” She laughed. “All of his research was contained in the diary!”
I frowned at her. “What?”
“It’s crazy. I didn’t realize it for a long time. He was a very clever man. He wanted me to have it, and he didn’t want anybody else to get their hands on it. So he put it in the diary.”
“How?”
“That was the thing. He left a letter with his attorneys, to be posted to me on that particular date, telling me where—and how—to find it. It was…”
Her eyes became abstracted, her smile a little rigid, looking down the street, ahead of her. I followed the line of her gaze. About twelve or fifteen feet away, there was a man walking toward us. His head was down and he was walking quickly, on a collision course. I stepped aside and pulled Marni with me. By then, he was just two strides away. He changed course too, still looking down at his feet. I said, “Hey pal, look where you’re go…”
And he looked up. For a fraction of a second, I saw him as I had seen him last, floodlit from above by a bank of spotlights, with the red Toyota behind him. For a moment, I felt the dark water lapping at my legs, heard the rumble of the earth as the bomb detonated nine hundred feet below, heard the shouting voices and the stutter of automatic fire. And then I was back in Oxford, with the traffic hissing slowly past in the amber streetlight. He was staring into my face, holding my eyes with his. He spoke softly. His accent was strongly South African.
“You made a mistake, Mr. Walker.”
A soft sound, like a soft hiss of gas, and he had shouldered past us. I looked after him, watched him disappear among the crowds on the sidewalk. Marni was heavy on my arm. I looked at her and saw that she was sagging. Her hands were clutching at her belly, with thick, dark blood oozing between her fingers. She looked up into my face and there was fear and panic in her eyes.
“Oh, God, Lacklan… I’ve been shot…”
She went down on her knees. People stopped, gathering around. A voice was shouting, screaming, “Get an ambulance! For god’s sake! Somebody call an ambulance!”
I was on my knees by her side, holding her hands, stroking her face, weeping, begging her to stay with me, fumbling for my cell. Somebody was holding my shoulders, telling me the ambulance was on its way. Sirens wailed across the night. There were people gathered around her. Somebody said he was a doctor. Her eyes were on mine, glazed, out of focus. Her skin was pale, cold and pasty.
Then they were lifting her onto a gurney. Men and women in reflective clothes were pushing me, jostling me, telling me to let them do their job, that I was in the way, that she was critical and I was not helping.
And then the ambulance was pulling away and I was running, running like a maniac though the traffic, trying to keep up, calling her name. Men in uniform surrounded me, gripping my arms, telling me to stop, to calm down, to focus. A big, broad face with a broken nose, piercing eyes staring into mine. “Sir! Sir! Look at me. Look at my eyes. Listen to me.” The crackle of radios in the night. “She’s going to the hospital.
We’ll take you. I’m a police officer. My name is Sergeant Hogben. I’m going to take you to the hospital. Do you understand me?”
My breathing, loud, trembling, slowing. “Yes. Please.”
“And then I’m going to need to know what happened.”
“She was shot.”
“Yes,” he said. “I know.”
* * *
Black windows inhabited by cold ghosts. Chairs made of cold vinyl and cold steel, reflecting the cold strip lighting from the ceilings. Sergeant Hogben had gone. He had gone to get coffee. I didn’t know how long he’d been gone.
Marni had been rushed into the operating theater. She was bleeding out. She’d been shot in the gut with a 9mm round at point blank range. You don’t survive that kind of wound. That is an execution with malice, making an example. It is one of the most painful ways to die. Mercifully, she had become unconscious. She would die in her sleep.
A surgeon appeared at one point. He seemed to be standing in another, parallel reality, separated from my reality by a sheet of impenetrable glass. He stared into my eyes as he spoke, like he was trying to read my face to see if I understood him.
“She’ll be in surgery a while yet. We are doing everything we can. You should go and get some rest.”
I told him, “We got engaged tonight. Home… we were going home together.”
He said something about seeing the nurse, about being sedated. Then he went away. Slowly, my thoughts began to take shape. I didn’t go to see the nurse. I didn’t want to be sedated. I called Billy Beauchamp.
“Lacklan. Twice in just a few…”
I cut across him. “They murdered Marni.”
He was silent for a moment. “I am so sorry.”
“On Oxford High Street. They shot her in the belly.”
“What do you want from me? Anything…”
“Get the cops off my back. I have a Sergeant Hogben asking me questions. Get him off my back.”
“I’ll make the call.”
I hung up and called Jim.
“Lacklan, where are you?”
“In Oxford. They shot Marni. She’s in surgery, but she won’t survive.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll wait till she dies. I’ll bring her home and bury her at Weston. Then I’m going to hunt them down. I am going to kill every last one of them. I am going to destroy Omega, burn their buildings to the ground, annihilate their companies, their bank accounts, everything they have, I will destroy. I will crawl inside their minds and their dreams and I will destroy them too. I will destroy everything, until not even the memory of them exists.”
He was quiet for a moment. “Welcome home, Lacklan. I will be right there with you, my friend. I’ll be right there with you.”
* * *
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DEAD COLD MYSTERY SERIES
An Ace and a Pair (Book 1)
Two Bare Arms (Book 2)
Garden of the Damned (Book 3)
Let Us Prey (Book 4)
The Sins of the Father (Book 5)
Strange and Sinister Path (Book 6)
The Heart to Kill (Book 7)
Unnatural Murder (Book 8)
Fire from Heaven (Book 9)
To Kill Upon A Kiss (Book 10)
Murder Most Scottish (Book 11)
The Butcher of Whitechapel (Book 12)
Little Dead Riding Hood (Book 13)
Trick or Treat (Book 14)
Blood Into Wine (Book 15)
Jack In The Box (Book 16)
Dead Cold Box Set #1: Books 1-4 (SAVE 33%)
Dead Cold Box Set #2: Books 5-7 (SAVE 33%)
Dead Cold Box Set #3: Books 8-10 (SAVE 33%)
Dead Cold Box Set #4: Books 11-13 (SAVE 33%)
THE OMEGA SERIES
Dawn of the Hunter (Book 1)
Double Edged Blade (Book 2)
The Storm (Book 3)
The Hand of War (Book 4)
A Harvest of Blood (Book 5)
To Rule in Hell (Book 6)
Kill: One (Book 7)
Powder Burn (Book 8)
Kill: Two (Book 9)
Unleashed (Book 10)
The Omicron Kill (Book 11)
9mm Justice (Book 12)
Kill: Four (Book 13)
Omega Box Set #1: Books 2-4 (SAVE 33%)
Omega Box Set #2: Books 5-7 (SAVE 33%)
Omega Box Set #3: Books 8-10 (SAVE 33%)
* * *
[1] See Kill: Two