by Rae Shaw
A Chance Encounter
Rae Shaw
A Chance Encounter
Julianna Baptiste Novel #1
Years ago, he chose a victim.
Now the wait is over.
Julianna Baptiste, a feisty bodyguard, finds her new job tedious, until her boss, the evasive Jackson Haynes, spikes her curiosity. Who is behind the vicious threats to his beautiful wife and why is he interested in two estranged siblings?
Mark works for Haynes’ vast company. He’s hiding from ruthless money launderers.
His teenage sister Ellen has an online friend she has never met. Ellen guards a terrible secret.
For eight years their duplicitous father has languished in prison, claiming he is innocent of murder. The evidence against him is overwhelming, so why does Mark persist with an appeal?
Keen to prove her potential as an investigator, Julianna forces Mark to confront his past mistakes. The consequences will put all their lives on the line.
HIDE OR CONFRONT?
Published by Spare Time Press
Copyright © 2021 Rae Shaw
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 978-1-9996307-8-2
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
For Mum and Dad
Part One
* DUPLICITY *
1
Julianna
AUTUMN
She raised her fists, swept her arm back and slaked her anger with a punch. By the time she’d worked up a sweat, she’d dealt with Alex’s fake smiles, his smirking lips and the dimple in his chin. The punch bag continued to dance on its rope, shaken by the force of her blows, then limped to a sway, the crimson cover sticky in places.
The album was empty. She had no more photos to tape to the shabby leather. She had punched her way through the wedding ones, and the honeymoon snaps, shredding them with her knuckles and kicking feet. There was always the weekend in Paris.
Another jab. Another kick. Forget Paris. Forget the walk along the Champs Elysees. The kiss under the Eiffel Tower. The nice Parisian who had caught them cuddling on the banks of the Seine and added a shot to the collection. She punished her wrapped knuckles, the blistered heel of her bare foot. Every inch of her had to hurt.
What mattered, what had to be expunged, was the night she had propelled him out of the front door with one powerful kick up the ass. The satisfaction of seeing his smile disintegrating, replaced by fury and humiliation, was worth the unneighbourly curtain twitches. What she felt had been there on his face for everyone to see. That was what gave her the idea for trashing photographs.
Julianna began each day in the cellar. It wasn’t much of a basement, more of a claustrophobic sliver under the mews house. To hide the crumbling brickwork, she had hung curtains rescued from charity shops across the walls and, to cushion her feet, she had laid a threadbare rug over the concrete floor, but it lacked any substance and occasionally her knees jarred as she hopped about on her toes.
The punch bag therapy lasted ten minutes. She buried her face in a towel and heaved a sigh of relief. There were more photos, things she could aim at, but nothing could remove the bitterness, the memory of finding the necklace on her bedside table, planted there because he had given up waiting for her to find out the truth.
She wanted to see things clearly again. But nobody would understand how hard it felt trying to recapture that skill, not even those she counted as friends or family.
During her police training, and the subsequent more in depth assessment she had undertaken when she worked for the intelligence services, her mentors had told her she was “insightful”, “observant”, able to “read between the lines and see the detail hidden in the big picture”. Oh, the irony of that excellent appraisal; the buzz it had given her equal to kickboxing. Alex had taken her out to an exclusive restaurant and applauded her with his usual wit and languid remarks. Again, she had missed the signs.
He’d taken that bitch to the same restaurant.
She had amassed numerous theories as to her failings. The obvious was her husband had drained her of her precious abilities. She had gone soft on him, pandered to what he needed, and in the end, all that self-effacing effort meant nothing to him. She quit working for the government, those secret agencies that Hollywood romanticised in spy films when in reality they relied on hard graft and few rewards. What good was she? The numpty on the money laundering desk who couldn’t even spot her husband’s duplicity wasn’t going to “see” the things criminals hid.
To her surprise, the misery of handing in her notice was salvaged by somebody she had heard of, but never met. Alex’s alumni friend, Jackson Haynes, had headhunted her and brought her to work for him at Haynes Financial Services, a thriving business that bought and sold lesser companies; it also happened to excel at exposing fraudsters.
She had the most unusual set of roles in the company and no authentic job title. It was exactly what she liked about it, although the job had yet to thrive in the direction she desired. There again, the circumstances weren’t right for pushing through her ambitions. God forbid somebody put her in charge of anything and promoted her to management. She wasn’t ready to deal with people. Not yet.
Versatility was the key to her success. Depending where she was needed, she migrated between tasks, such as fraud investigations, and occasionally the chauffeur’s seat of an executive car where she doubled as a protection officer. She enjoyed driving the high-powered car with its reinforced bodywork. The black paintwork reflected the rows of skyscrapers. The leather seat gently creaked under her legs. Together, she and the car crawled through the city traffic. Driving was tolerable, sitting around waiting for something to happen wasn’t. She passed the time listening to the radio and finished a book of ten-minute crosswords. Each one took six minutes – she felt cheated.
However, her feelings toward Haynes were ambivalent. The man was impenetrable, a bastion protected by rigorous deportment. She rarely drove him, mostly she ferried the wife, and the kids. When she had driven him, he had stretched out on the back seat, engaged in telephone conversations or absorbed in thought. If she caught his eye in the rear-view mirror, he admonished her with a glare. She was supposed to be invisible, something that hit her hard. Invisible during a covert investigation was one thing but being ignored by the people she was supposed to protect was tough.
Neither was she convinced by Jackson’s highbrow ethics. Why was a financier patronising a charity for those lost to the dark world of trafficking? Was he the romantic hero rescuing fallen women, as he might appear to some of his loyal employees, or using the foundation for his own machinations? After she had cruised through the probationary period, she started to wonder more about his wife and why Hettie stuck with Jackson.
Mrs Haynes had a regular driver, Tess, but Julianna was the back-up. Chauffeuring meant keeping a diplomatic distance while Mrs Haynes went about her daily life, but Julianna had a woeful tendency to put on superhero capes and leap into action when nobody asked or expected it of her. She rather liked the criticism. She wore it as a badge of honour.
The call from headquarters instructed her to pick up Mrs Haynes from the emergency department of the local hospital. The eldest child, a boy named Noah, was at home with the nanny, Lara – another loyal servant who practised martial arts in her spare time. However, the new baby, Evey, went everywhere with Mrs Haynes because
of the need to feed her. Julianna drove as quickly as the congestion allowed and parked in a taxi bay outside the minor injuries unit.
Stripped of a layer of foundation, Mrs Haynes’s heavy-lidded eyes shadowed her alabaster cheeks; a small part of her renowned beauty lost to exhaustion. A row of strips sealed the wound on her forehead. She fingered it, tutting to herself. While Mrs Haynes slipped into the backseat, fussing, Julianna strapped the baby carrier in next to her. Evey smelt of baby wipes.
Julianna was about to leave the busy hospital car park when her mobile beeped. She read the text message. ‘We’re to swing by and pick up your husband from the office,’ she told Mrs Haynes.
‘Why's he bothering...’ Hettie muttered in dismay, her voice drowned out by the wail of a siren.
Why wasn’t she pleased? Wasn’t it what she wanted – her husband by her side? In fact, why hadn’t he rushed off to the hospital already? Julianna was still trying to piece together the Haynes marriage. She rarely saw them together, since they were apart during the day, which was when Julianna was assigned to be a chauffeur. Most of the time her superiors, Gary Maybank and Chris Moran, drove the couple in the evenings. Mr Haynes was extremely protective of his wife and kids and the level of security around the Haynes family was high. Julianna had seen the confidential reports and understood why. She doubted Mrs Haynes had a clue about the constant threats.
She parked outside the monolithic building. Mr Haynes strode across the pavement and handed Julianna his laptop case, which she placed in the boot space next to the baby’s buggy. There was dried blood on the handles of the buggy.
‘Home, sir?’
Mr Haynes nodded and sat in the front. The car pulled away and he twisted in his seat to look at his wife. Julianna caught his expression out of the corner of her eye. Why the scowl?
‘Is she asleep?’ He cocked his head at the baby carrier hidden behind where he sat.
‘Yes,’ Mrs Haynes said.
‘What happened?’
‘We went for a walk. I tripped, okay? Stupid heel broke off and I fell against a tree. My phone got smashed on the way down. The roots had torn up the paving stone and my heel was caught in the gap.’
The phone would be replaced by the end of the day. It was a minor inconvenience. Operating a well-oiled machine was the key to Haynes’s business practices, and his home life.
‘Lara said you were bleeding everywhere. So, what happened, Hettie?’
‘I don’t know. I don’t … remember.’
Julianna tightened her grip on the steering wheel and stayed focused on the car bumper she was following. Seriously, the man had no bedside manner. He wasn’t worried about his wife, he was annoyed at the intrusion into his working day. Perhaps a few of his photographs on the punch bag…
‘She called an ambulance because you froze. You freaked her out. An ambulance for a little cut on the head.’
Not one word of comfort or concern had passed his lips. Unbelievable.
‘Don’t, Jackson. I didn’t ask for the ambulance. Lara, she’s never seen me lose it. I haven’t done it for months and months.’ There was a low sob, quite distant; Mrs Haynes was far away. Julianna bit on her lip and stayed silent. None of my business.
‘She probably thought you were concussed. The symptoms are similar. Are you all right?’
Julianna rolled her eyes at the belated show of compassion.
‘Yes. I came out of it in one of those cubicles. They gave me oxygen and I suppose it helped me. There’s blood on Evey’s buggy.’
‘Lara can clean it up.’
‘You didn’t have to leave work,’ Mrs Haynes said.
His profile twitched. ‘Yes, I did. You’re going to need sorting out, aren’t you?’
And what the hell did he mean by sorting out? It made Julianna’s blood run cold hearing him speak that way. The man was an ass.
Jackson, now facing forward, was tapping his fingers on his lap and glancing at his wristwatch from time to time. In the rear-view mirror, Mrs Haynes brushed aside a lock of hair; her hand was trembling.
She was afraid.
A few minutes later Julianna pulled up outside the Holland Park whitewashed house with its three floors and battery of CCTV cameras focused on the windows and doors. Jackson carried the baby carrier indoors.
‘I won’t be needing you again.’ Hettie climbed out of the car.
Jackson held the front door open for his wife. She hobbled on her broken heel and rushed past without a glance in his direction. With a kick of his foot, he slammed the door shut.
Julianna sped off back to Haynes’ headquarters, her driving duties finished for the day. Her supervisor, Chris Moran, owed her an explanation about Hettie’s marriage. Hasty, misplaced sentiment, intrusive: those were Julianna’s flaws, but she wasn’t going to let somebody else occupy her punch bag if she could help it, and she liked Hettie; the woman was blessed with dazzling looks and talent, and something else, which frustrated Julianna because words couldn’t describe what she felt. The feelings Julianna could express magnanimously regarding herself were bitterness and envy. Compassion, too, if she dug deep enough, although it wasn’t an emotion she wore on her sleeve.
She relayed the incident in the car to the security chief in an abbreviated fashion. He scratched his bald patch and tilted his chair back with his long legs. His desk was a well-guarded corner plot in the team’s open plan office in the basement. Lunchtime, and they were alone. Her stomach rumbled as she reached the point about the blood on the buggy’s handles.
Chris interrupted her. ‘I should have briefed you on her phobia of blood before today. Sorry, I thought you’d been told.’
‘That wasn’t what bothered me, Chris. She didn’t look happy. The way he spoke to her, it sounded like he was, well, going to bite her head off… or something.’
Chris groaned and his chair landed back on the front legs with a jolt. ‘Look, take my word for it, they love each other. Crazy mad love. It’s just their way. Don’t read into what they say to each other. It’s a minefield. Don’t go there. I don’t and I’ve been with Mr Haynes for years.’
‘He didn’t show much sympathy—’
‘Julianna, leave it!’ The bark was a familiar rebuke. He was an ex-copper, too.
Chris was nominally her line manager. He pulled rank when it came to what she did for the company; whether it was helping the forensic accountants or bodyguard duties, Chris had the final say. She couldn't afford to risk upsetting the status quo.
‘New guy in forensics – Mark Clewer.’ Chris slid a folder across the table. ‘He’s been checked out. If he needs help, then you’re the contact.’
She opened the manila folder and read the first few lines of the report. ‘He doesn’t start until Monday.’
He turned away and waved a dismissive hand. ‘Haynes handpicked him. Just do your stuff, Julianna. It’s what we employed you for.’
Her stuff. She wasn’t sure exactly what her stuff entailed anymore.
~ * ~
Chris had told her to leave the couple alone. But her palms itched, like a scab needing to be picked. In the celebrity press, Mrs Haynes appeared on Mr Haynes’s arm, smiling and playing her part beautifully. Maybe that was all she was to him: a beautiful object or a trophy wife whom he adored for the sake of good publicity. It didn’t help her conscience knowing that there were young children in the Haynes household – what if they witnessed the unpleasant truths about their parents’ behind the scenes relationship? Julianna was determined to re-establish her credentials as an investigator, even if it was only in the privacy of her own mind.
For the rest of the week, she wasn’t asked to drive Mrs Haynes. The opportunities for spying were few.
The intelligence service had recruited her from the Metropolitan’s Serious Fraud division. They had needed her brains – her brawn was under appreciated – to help track the money hidden by terrorists and organised crime, but she had been trained to do undercover operations. Nothing glamorous, just ro
utine surveillances, which were generally tedious and uneventful. By Friday, she had formulated a plan. Her weekends were typically free time, however she was on the reserve list. One of the security guards who worked the night shift at Jackson’s Surrey estate wanted time off at short notice. Julianna volunteered to do the shift.
Heading south out of the City of London in her ancient personal vehicle, Julianna approached the estate with a smidgen of trepidation at her treasonous plot. The secluded house was Georgian and well-maintained, and a substantial property compared to the townhouse in Holland Park where the couple lived during the week. Fasleigh House was a squire’s sanctuary, and with its extensive network of security cameras and fences, it posed few issues for the team based in the gatehouse.
Tom Draper, the other guard on duty, was already there when Julianna rolled up. He briefed her, then buried his ginger mop in a bike magazine. She drummed her fingers on the table, wondering when to make her move. She hadn’t been this excited in a long time. Adrenaline accelerated her heartbeats to a manageable pace. She was ready.
‘I thought I saw something on the monitor, over by the perimeter fence.’ She waggled her finger at the screen.
‘Probably a rabbit or fox. Happens,’ he said, without looking up.
‘I’ll go check. Better safe than sorry.’ She picked up a torch.
‘If all you want is fresh air, just say so. It’s not as if anything ever happens here. Stay away from the house though,’ he said, still focused on the photo of a Harley-Davidson.
‘I’m sure I saw something odd.’ Pretence was better than appearing foolish.
She collected a pair of binoculars and hurried into the garden. She skirted around the perimeter wall and performed a cursory hunt for the benefit of the cameras. Ruse completed, she snuck into the shrubbery and trained the binoculars on the large bay window at the back of the house. There were no curtains drawn or blinds lowered, the house was lit up like a Christmas tree. Choosing a bush to perch behind, she had an excellent view of the sitting room.