‘Bloody hell! I must have talked in my sleep.’
‘I’m serious, C?dmon. So far, you’ve refused to give me any answer as to why we’re on this insane quest.’
‘I believe you’ve just hit the nail square on the head. It’s a quest, is it not? Like a knight of old, I seek knowledge and enlightenment.’
‘Oh, puh-
C?dmon inwardly cringed at the comparison. In later Grail legends, Sir Gawain, possessed of a singular arrogance, failed to grasp the holiness of the quest. He suspected that Edie had purposely plucked the name from the Round Table cast.
‘All I’m saying is that we need to give this a little forethought before rushing off like a pair of fools into the great unknown. And what about MacFarlane and his holy warriors?’ She stared at him, clearly apprehensive. ‘What happens if we run into them while wandering around in Godmersham?’
Although most fringe groups were all mouth and no trousers, he knew MacFarlane’s group to be the exception to the rule.
‘Rather than succumbing to fearful imaginings, let’s concentrate on finding the blasted Ark.’
A pronounced silence ensued. Uncomfortable, he feigned an interest in the passing shop windows.
‘We can always go to the police,’ Edie suggested, the first to break the unnerving quiet.
‘And promptly be accused of two murders we didn’t commit?’ He forcefully shook his head. ‘We can’t go to the authorities unless the situation absolutely demands it.’
‘And who gets to make that call, you or me?’
‘We’re a team, are we not?’ As he spoke, he slung an arm round her shoulders, marrying trunks, hips and thighs, one to the other. ‘“She winters and keeps warm her note,”’ he murmured into her ear, reciting the lyric from an old English song.
Edie wrapped an arm around his waist. Turning her face up, she smiled. ‘Yeah, I’m with you. I much prefer to make love than war.’
50
Oh man, he wanted to fuck her.
So bad his dick had been standing on end for the last couple of hours. Ever since, peephole video camera shoved against the adjoining door, he’d had a front-row seat on what had turned out to be an unbelievable fuck fest.
At first Boyd had been pissed off he’d been given the surveillance shift. Small wonder Sanchez had been grinning when Braxton relieved him. Who the hell would have thought the curly-haired bitch had the moves of an experienced whore? It’d been all he could do not to jerk himself off against the door like a raghead in an Islamabad alleyway.
The colonel was fond of saying, ‘When lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin. And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.’ The Bible verse helped to keep his lusts in check. Usually.
Placing a hand over his crotch, Boyd Braxton rearranged his equipment.
A shop assistant manhandling a bucket of flowers behind a plate-glass window glared at him. He glared right back. And continued on his merry way, Aisquith and the woman one block ahead of him. The streets practically empty of pedestrian traffic, shadowing them was a piece of cake. Besides, the red-headed Brit was too intent on whispering sweet nothing into the bitch’s ear to even realize he had a tail.
On account of the audio surveillance, he knew they were headed to the local bus depot. His job was to head them off at the pass, grateful for the chance to redeem himself after the fuck-up four days ago in DC.
He adjusted his stride, quickening the pace.
As he did, his heart excitedly pounded against his breastbone.
He couldn’t wait for the take-down. Knowing it would happen in ten, nine, eight…
51
Craning her neck to examine a shop window display, Edie caught a sudden flash of movement reflected in the plate glass.
She turned her head. First stunned, then shocked.
Without thinking, she pivoted on her booted heel, placed both hands on C?dmon’s shoulder and shoved him as hard as possible off the pavement.
‘C?dmon, run!’ she screamed at the top of her lungs, realizing too late that she’d pushed him directly in front of an oncoming vehicle.
Car horns blared. Tyres screeched.
Deciding that C?dmon would be safer in the road than in the line of fire, she ran, sparing a quick glance over her shoulder.
As she had hoped, the killer, forced to choose between the two of them, decided to pursue her rather than C?dmon.
Up ahead, Edie caught sight of an aproned man pushing a trolley loaded with cardboard boxes. A second later, he disappeared into a building. Without thinking she followed, surprised to discover the entry led to an indoor shopping arcade, narrow corridors snaking out in several directions. Like he’d vanished into a big black hole, the delivery man was nowhere in sight.
Not so Padgham’s killer, the behemoth having followed her into the arcade.
Edie willed her legs to move that much faster as she veered down a deserted corridor. All of the shops were closed, their darkened windows decked with Christmas greenery.
Hearing a heavy footfall directly behind her, Edie, frantic, grabbed a display stand wedged into the doorway of a closed gift shop. With a yank, she hurled it to the ground. Roadblock erected, she kept on running.
A second later she heard a muttered curse. Then a crash. Evidently her pursuer had encountered the stand.
Catching sight of plucked and trussed birds hanging from a wall, she ran in that direction. The course adjustment took her down a different corridor, this one well lit. Several shops — a greengrocer’s, a coffee emporium and a butcher’s — were actually open for business, although customers were few and far between. And the ones that were afoot took no notice of the harried woman running past.
On the periphery of her senses, she became aware of an almost nauseating swirl of fused scents — Stilton cheese, ground coffee, fresh meat. As though a hundred years of smells had coalesced into one uniquely weird odour. She opened her mouth and gulped down a breath of air.
Which is when she ran headlong into a pimply-faced tattooed youth carrying a wooden box of iced fish.
‘Silly cow!’ the teen bellowed as iridescent fish and white blobs of crushed ice arced through the air, pelting him on the head and shoulders. A scatologically detailed rant immediately ensued.
Managing to stay upright, Edie muttered an apology as she sprinted off. Her energy flagging, her leg muscles now protested each and every forward stride. And she didn’t have to turn her head to know that her pursuer was fast closing on her, the collision with the fishmonger almost wiping out her lead.
No more than ten yards away, Edie saw what looked like an exit, the bar across the steel door meaning it was for emergency use only. Fast running out of options, she raced for it. Slamming her palms onto the metal bar, she pushed for all she was worth.
The door swung open.
