“When?”
“What’s the time?”
“Ten past four.”
“Fifteen minutes. Name your price.”
“I have all the money I need.”
“Great, what don’t you have?”
“I’m set.”
Now what? She’d been convinced money would sway it. She fought down the urge to panic. She couldn’t let him read any weakness in her lies, her anger that he was wasting time.
“Okay, I’ll go elsewhere. You need to untie me.”
He held her gaze. She tried to keep it blank, to not panic that this could be a life and death decision. Lily.
He walked out of the kitchen.
“You realise we won’t be replacing your front door, don’t you?” A last try.
“No battering ram’s getting through that.”
Eva laughed, forcing it to sound less like hysteria, more like she was driving this. “A battering ram? You think we’re amateurs?”
He sauntered back in.
“They’re on their way already,” Eva ad-libbed, “my back-up, and the one you need to be worried about is the one who used to study IEDs for the military. He loves a big bang.”
“IOU for me to do what you want, if you call them off.”
“I’m not making any calls until you untie me.”
“I can make you, you’re forgetting I have the upper hand.”
“Do you?” Eva smiled sweetly. “Charles said you’re good, but enough that you know my code word for everything’s okay and the one to blow this place wide open? That’s pretty impressive.” Eva faked a yawn, though her heart was hammering so fast she was surprised he couldn’t see her rocking to its beat. “Untie me, I’m leaving.”
“An IOU.” CJ insisted.
“Untie me.”
He bent down behind her and snap, snap, her legs were free. “IOU.”
Taking a gigantic leap into places she didn’t want to be, Eva agreed. “You have two requests only, I have one veto.”
CJ considered. “Fair enough. Two requests, one veto. It’s their details on the paper you had on you?”
Eva nodded.
He picked it up from the worktop, ran up the stairs and she heard the fast keying of someone who’d used keyboards for most of their life. Silence, more tapping.
She stood up slowly, the effects of the sedative almost gone now. She focussed on the sound of him typing as she walked upstairs, if he was occupied, he couldn’t knock her down them.
“You called your people off?”
Eva held up her bound wrists. “I’ll need to use your phone.”
“I have other fail safes around this house if you act out any stupid ideas.”
“Why would I do that, you’re doing what I want.” She held her wrists out and he snipped the cable ties off her. He pulled a mobile out of the many drawers and handed it to her. “Don’t make me use another one on you.”
Eva went through the charade of a raid-pausing conversation until she reported in, once she’d left her current location, with her broken mobile voicemail. A crazy message if anyone thought to look for it, if she was never seen again. At least there was a record of where she’d been.
“They’re talking to me.” CJ gestured at one of the screens on his desk. She’d have to take his word for it, the scroll of text covering most of the page was gobbledygook to her. “What do you want them for?”
“To find out who instructed them to kill Charles Buchanan and Eva Janssen.”
CJ typed, interpreted the answer. “They’re asking if you have a job for them.”
“Did you tell them what I said?”
He typed again, “there, twice. . .same response.”
“Try this, I want to buy out the contract on Charles Buchanan and Eva Janssen.”
CJ consulted the screen’s response. “You can’t afford it and it’s not their way.”
Their way? They killed people, now they were clinging to ethics?
“How do I stop them murdering my husband and me? I’m listening.”
CJ typed as though he was trying to break the world speed record. “They’ll give you a task, acquit yourself well, and they’ll consider cancelling the contract.”
“What do they want me to do?”
“Find out who killed Hunter Malone.”
“Do I have their agreement that Charles and I are safe while I do this?”
CJ typed. They watched the screen. Who was on the other side reading it, holding her and Charles’ lives in their hands?
The screen flashed blue then black.
CJ shrugged, “guess that’s a no.”
45
This time being on the outside of CJ’s house was a relief, the long walk to the bus stop a chance to think about what Eva had learned. And not think about what she’d agreed to.
It was the Sherlock Holmes question: if you eliminated the impossible, even just the improbable, whatever remained was the truth. Therefore, if The Society wanted to know who killed Hunter Malone, they hadn’t. Unless it was a test to see how resistant to scrutiny their safeguards were. She could second guess this for ever.
Eva got on the bus, tapped her Oyster card at the console and climbed to the top deck. She sat in the front where Lily used to pretend she was driving, as if that could make her materialise beside her. Eva smoothed the fabric of the seat next to her, remembering the patterns Lily used to see in it—Lily, where are you?
Eva closed her eyes, her fingertips on the fabric grounding her in her painful here and now. I’m finding you, baby, I’m coming.
Being back under the SIS umbrella loosened controls, changed priorities, so when Eva made it to her desk, the email she’d wanted from the police was already waiting. The e-fit of the man who’d attacked her stared out at her from the monitor. It surprised her, the rise in her heart rate. His likeness couldn’t hurt her. And she’d hurt him back. He didn’t look quite like that anymore if the amount of his blood that had splashed over her was anything to go by.
Eva
