The Pretender- Escaping the Past

by C R Martens

  “Did you finally get it? Belov isn’t coming.” She smiled. “I had a little chat with him in the early hours this morning. It didn’t go well, not for him at least.”

  “What is it you want out of this?” he asked.

  “I want to put an end to FIA. I want everyone in the organisation to know what kind of work they are really doing. Because it isn’t good work. It isn’t to save people from dangerous terrorists, drug cartels or human trafficking.” She walked closer to him. “It’s all in the name of money. FIA crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed and now there is no coming back. FIA got greedy but greed only makes you exposed. And when we are exposed we make mistakes. Mistakes well-trained agents start to notice. Hellström. Harlow.”

  “You seem to have figured it all out,” he said. “But I am failing to see your evidence.”

  “Don’t worry about that,” Eve said. “I have sent it all to a good friend of mine. He’ll get it out there. Media, police, secret services around the world – they’ll all get a little convenient care package.”

  “Well, then, you should see this coming.” He pulled a gun from his coat. “I’ll just spin a little story of my own about a broken, delusional agent. FIA may not survive this, but it won’t have any repercussion for me.”

  “The difference between you and I, though,” Eve said, “is that I don’t mind dying. Just know this, your dirty little secret and how you used the firm as your own personal hit agency will be the first story out.”

  The situation shifted, the tension was unmistakable. Eve noticed the footsteps coming from behind her, but having heard them before, she wasn’t worried. It was Hellström. He had whispered in her ear a few minutes earlier; he had spotted three men, but they were all hidden behind Cain.

  “Daniel Hellström?” Cain was taken aback.

  “Surprised?” Hellström stepped off to the side of the building, taking cover. “Tell your boys to step forward.”

  “My boys?” He was still trying to play games and stalling time.

  “Well, you didn’t come alone as you specified earlier,” Eve said. “So, let’s see them, play fair for once, Cain.” He made a sign and two men stepped out from the shadows.

  “All of them,” said Hellström. Cain signalled the last one to step out of the shadows.

  Eve recognised two of them, they were former colleagues of hers at FIA. Colleagues she had shared jokes with, had coffee breaks with, shared classified case information with, discussed tactics and strategies with. Did they know the truth? Or was this just another case for them?

  “Just come with us,” said Cain. “It’s over. There is nothing more for you to do. Harlow’s dead.”

  “Sam Witchen,” Eve said. “My last case. The case I was on just before you killed Harlow.

  “What about it?” He lowered his gun.

  “It was a simple case, listen and gather,” she continued. “There was no criminal history but he had a family connection that was vital to FIA. Supposedly. Then the order came, an order to kill. It just felt wrong, there was no precursor for that order. However, it wasn’t the first time I had been in that situation where I had an order to kill and the facts didn’t add up. When I get a feeling that something isn’t right, it never leaves me. It was an itch that I had to keep scratching. Those two cases, they sparked my curiosity.”

  “What was the other case?” he asked.

  “Well, these two cases were so similar. It wasn’t about the money and they weren’t criminals. They felt personal, it wasn’t something they had done that warranted their deaths. No, this was directly targeting them as specific people. Which is probably why you assigned two different agents to the cases. You didn’t want anyone making the connection.” She smiled. “Sir Jules. That was the other case.”

  “What?” he asked, his eyes in a blind panic. “That was Harlow’s case.”

  “She had to pass it on. I gladly took it to help her out. Back then when I got the brief to kill I didn’t think twice. I was still new and I didn’t question the firm’s authority. However, before he died he did give me a name and that name has haunted me all these years. Of course I didn’t see the connection until you put me on Sam Witchen’s case.”

  “You didn’t report that you had taken over for Harlow,” he said, his breathing clearly getting faster. It was even visible from a distance. “That’s a breach of the firm’s policies.”

  “I don’t really care about the firm’s policies anymore. I thought that was pretty clear,” I said. “Let me finish my story. So, when you gave me Sam Witchen as a straightforward simple case and then told me to kill him, I decided to dig a little deeper into his background. I wanted to have a good conscience afterwards. Or as good as it’s going to get when you are charged with killing someone.”

  Eve stood motionless, unmoved by the guns pointed in her direction. “And I uncovered the most peculiar thing. You knew him. He had been an exchange student in Boston at the same university you went to, same year and same classes. Of course, then it didn’t take long to make the connection to Sir Robert Jules who had also attended that university on exchange.”

  “Well, that story ended with them.” Cain raised his gun again.

  “Not entirely. See, I made the mistake of killing Sir Jules and that always felt wrong, but I don’t make the same mistake twice,” she said. “Sam Witchen is still alive.” No sooner had Eve uttered the words before Cain fired the gun. She threw herself through the door of the empty building. Hellström fired back. His rifle gave a shockwave of sound which echoed around the empty buildings. The first shot took down one man. Eve pulled her gun and fired at Cain, hitting him in the thigh. He collapsed against the building opposite Eve. She couldn’t see his face, only his feet were visible in the construction lights. Bullets were bouncing off the buildings, Eve heard Hellström cry out. His voice in her earpiece let Eve know he was in distress. It had only been seconds since the first shot but it felt like an eternity. Eve slowed her breathing right down in order to regain focus.

  “YOU COME HERE FEELING ALL SANCTIMONIOUS!” Cain shouted from the other side. “But you are no FUCKING angel. I know what you have done.”

  “And that’s where the difference between you and me is so clear,” Eve shouted back. “I know what I have done, I live with that hole in my heart every day. I know that it was wrong and I would do anything to change it, even if it means going to prison for the rest of my life. Unlike you. You would kill until there was no one left to kill if it meant your secret was preserved.”

  Silence fell over the courtyard. Eve could hear little noises coming from different places.

  “Daniel?” she whispered.

  “Yes,” he groaned. “I’m hit.”

  “Can you give me a few seconds cover?” Eve asked. “Then I can come to you.”

  “Be ready,” he said. “Beware of the shooter by your left eastern, the son of a bitch snuck around the building.”

  “Right. Now!” said Eve. As soon as she moved out into the light, the gunfire started up again. Walking fast but steady and with a calm hand, she shot her colleague to the left of Hellström. She took a deep breath, taking in the smell of hot metal and turned her gun towards Cain. There was a loud crack as she pulled the trigger aiming at Cain and then everything went eerily silent. Eve stood looking in his direction, but where was he?

  14.

  I always put my job up on a pedestal. I felt important and it gave me a purpose. But it wasn’t until that night that I realised that my job was just a replacement for all the other abusive things in my life. I had never had a chance to figure out who I was before someone else told me who I should be.

  She ran and she kept running. Eve could hear her heart in her head; it was fast and unsteady. Her breath was heavy and the taste of iron was overpowering in her mouth. Then she looked down to see the blood seeping through her blouse. Eve didn’t realise at the time that she had been shot. All of a sudden her chest felt tight and her breathing became shallow. Hellström’s
final words were circling her mind and his face was haunting her in her last moments. The image of her lifting his dying body over the ledge of the canal and throwing him into the waters was wrenching Eve’s heart. Out of all the hard decisions she had had to make in her life, this was the toughest. He looked calm, though, at his decision; the bullet had struck his spine instantly making him numb from the waist down. He didn’t want the firm to get him, he didn’t want them to fix him up only to torture him to death again. The water was an all-consuming black when he disappeared into the depth. His final breath was nothing but a small cloister of bubbles breaking against the surface. Assisted suicide, he called it, with a faint begging smile on his lips.

  “Did you know it was Cain and not Fowler?” Hellström’s speech had been strained.

  “Yes. I wasn’t sure I could trust you completely though,” Eve said, failing to hold back her tears. “Sorry, I clearly have issues.”

  “Can you trust him?” he asked. “This Landen Fowler.”

  “He’s a good man, though his priorities are a little fucked up at times,” she replied. “But he is your typical hero; he always has to do the right thing. It’s in his nature. Please let me take you to a hospital.”

  “It couldn’t have ended any other way.” Hellström looked at ease. “Eve, I beg you to do this for me. I’m dying anyways, this way it just goes a little faster. You did the right thing. You did what I should have done a long time ago with Harlow. Now let me go.”

  “Daniel.” She couldn’t keep calm anymore. Everything she had built was being pulled apart. “I can’t lose another person.”

  “I’m already gone.” He exhaled. “Eve, you will get past this.”

  She couldn’t get Hellström out of her mind as she fell to the ground, exhausted. All the people she had cared about had died, and right now, it would seem to have been in vain. The night was black. Eve took out her mobile and sent her insurance to Landen. She had written it several days ago, knowing she might not survive.

  “… All I wanted was to know the truth but I allowed my feelings to get involved and now people are dead because of it. Good people. My only hope is that you will finish what I couldn’t. Do the right thing, the right way. Expose them for who they really are. Make them pay for Harlow’s death. I hope you know this means I forgive you for what you did. Because I do, Landen, and I understand now. It’s funny what dying does to someone’s mind, I would have probably hated you forever for throwing me under the buss back then, but now my anger seems so pointless. I’m sorry. Take care. Eve”

  With the email, she also sent coordination’s for all the documents she had gathered, Harlow’s flash drive back in London and Hellström’s flash drive too – everything Eve had gathered. There was nothing more she could do now so she surrendered herself to the night, thinking of all the people she should have spent her time with but didn’t and it was too late for explanations. She wanted their forgiveness, she wanted her brother to know the truth about his father and what had happened to him and she wanted her mum to know that this, Eve turning out this way, wasn’t her fault. They would never know what had happened to her – her mum, brother or friends – all Eve could hope for was that they had already forgotten about her and that they would not be too hurt by her passing. If none of this had happened, had Harlow not died, Eve thought she would have been content with avoiding reality for the rest of her life. Playing pretend for a living. But she had died, and though Eve was full of regret, this experience of dying was somehow familiar to her and not all that frightening. It was the same sort of giving in she had felt as a child when John almost suffocated her. You can feel the pointlessness in fighting back death, so don’t. And as absurd as it may have been that that memory was part of her final moments, it somehow felt like she had come full circle. As the streetlights started to blur and her heart slowed down, she saw the warm air from her lungs drift cloudlike out into the blackness. There was nothing more to do but to close her eyes and surrender.

  The voices came sudden but faint. “Female with a gunshot wound to the abdomen,” a man’s voice said. There was a mixture of sounds in the background but everything was muffled, there was no great rush around her, on the contrary everything seemed quite calm and controlled.

  “Has she got any ID?” someone else asked.

  “Hi, sweetheart. Don’t worry, we are going to take care of you,” said a woman. “What’s your name, dear?”

  What Eve desperately wanted to say was: ‘I don’t know who I really am. I think I lost myself many years ago, I don’t really think I was ever given a chance to figure out on my own who I am or was.’ But those words didn’t come out.

  “I’m Eve,” she finally whispered. “I don’t want to die.”

  To be continued

  Acknowledgements

  Writing a book has been an intense process, but something I had to do. I never thought I would go at it alone and self publish but here I am and therefore I firstly have to thank my husband, Kasper. Thank you for championing me on this book writing journey, thank you for your absolute belief in me, even when I was full of self doubt. I admire your strong and supportive character, especially amongst my endless complaining and procrastinating; I could not have done this with out you. And thank you to my kids for keeping me grounded.

  Secondly thank you to family and friends for inspiration and for being my test people. I value and thank you for the precious time you have spent reading chapters and giving feedback. Your help has made my writing better. Finally a big thank you to editor Josie Ferguson who have helped edited this book and for your excellent advice along the way. Thank you to editor Laura McFarlane for fantastic feedback and to Cherie Chapman for making me the perfect book cover.